Commissioned to mark the 25th anniversary of the television channel NHK, Future Boy Conan (1978) was the first and last time that Hayao Miyazaki would oversee a television production from start to finish. A ratings disappointment on its initial broadcast, it became one of the focal points of early anime fandom, and shows the early signs of many tropes and ideas Miyazaki would use in his later works.

Jonathan Clements and Andrew Osmond trace the dramatic story of the “directorial debut” of anime’s most famous visionary, taking the reader on an analysis of this landmark television series, its production, release and historical footprint.

The second part of Anime Limited’s Future Boy Conan complete set includes a 90-page book by me and Andrew Osmond, tackling the history of the series within the anime industry and the career of Hayao Miyazaki. For those that have been asking, unlike my solo work on the life and work of Mitsuyo Seo, this will not be available separately as a Kindle edition — for legal reasons, we were only allowed to write it as an extra in a box set, not as a third-party book in its own right.