AstroBoy Online Forums

So before I get to the topic of this thread, I thought I'd introduce myself. I'm Foxwolf and I grew up in the 80's in Australia. I vividly remember Astro Boy being the first cartoon I ever watched and I always woke up extra early each morning to watch it. It has and always will be one of my favorite cartoons.

I'm also an Admin at "Behind The Voice Actors", a site that display images of characters and their voice actors. So when I came across this site and found the thread where Jay Rath did voice actor commentary for every episode, I was so inspired I watched the entire series in just over a week and took over 700 screencaps of basically every character that spoke. It's amazing even 30 years later the animation and stories hold up well.

So first of all, thanks Jay!! Thanks for bringing back some great memories and sharing your own

Anyway, this is a work-in-progress but I have the major characters added and will hopefully have all the rest done by the end of the week.

http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/tv-shows/Astro-Boy-1986/

It's great to have found this site and I look forward to nerding out about Astro with the community.

And for the record, I'm happy to donate money towards Jay's upcoming book and any possible DVD reunion's/commentaries.

"foxwolf2099" wrote:So before I get to the topic of this thread, I thought I'd introduce myself. I'm Foxwolf and I grew up in the 80's in Australia. I vividly remember Astro Boy being the first cartoon I ever watched and I always woke up extra early each morning to watch it. It has and always will be one of my favorite cartoons.

I'm also an Admin at "Behind The Voice Actors", a site that display images of characters and their voice actors. So when I came across this site and found the thread where Jay Rath did voice actor commentary for every episode, I was so inspired I watched the entire series in just over a week and took over 700 screencaps of basically every character that spoke. It's amazing even 30 years later the animation and stories hold up well.

So first of all, thanks Jay!! Thanks for bringing back some great memories and sharing your own

Anyway, this is a work-in-progress but I have the major characters added and will hopefully have all the rest done by the end of the week.

http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/tv-shows/Astro-Boy-1986/

It's great to have found this site and I look forward to nerding out about Astro with the community.

And for the record, I'm happy to donate money towards Jay's upcoming book and any possible DVD reunion's/commentaries.

Thank you so much for making us aware of this site. I was very disappointed when a recently published book about voice actors, especially those who have voiced animated characters, did not include Billie Lou Watt, (who was a very nice and special person, who I had the fortunate opportunity to meet). Just one thing! The year of premiere for Astroboy should be 1983, as I believe that was the year it first premiered in Australia. In the U.S. it was poorly marketed and not received well airing in only in one or two markets beginning in 1986. (The Canadian dub which only aired in Canada began airing in 1985.) So, thank you again and welcome to the site.

I

"ASTROBUDDY" wrote:[QUOTE=foxwolf2099;202297]So before I get to the topic of this thread, I thought I'd introduce myself. I'm Foxwolf and I grew up in the 80's in Australia. I vividly remember Astro Boy being the first cartoon I ever watched and I always woke up extra early each morning to watch it. It has and always will be one of my favorite cartoons.

I'm also an Admin at "Behind The Voice Actors", a site that display images of characters and their voice actors. So when I came across this site and found the thread where Jay Rath did voice actor commentary for every episode, I was so inspired I watched the entire series in just over a week and took over 700 screencaps of basically every character that spoke. It's amazing even 30 years later the animation and stories hold up well.

So first of all, thanks Jay!! Thanks for bringing back some great memories and sharing your own

Anyway, this is a work-in-progress but I have the major characters added and will hopefully have all the rest done by the end of the week.

http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/tv-shows/Astro-Boy-1986/

It's great to have found this site and I look forward to nerding out about Astro with the community.

And for the record, I'm happy to donate money towards Jay's upcoming book and any possible DVD reunion's/commentaries.

Thank you so much for making us aware of this site. I was very disappointed when a recently published book about voice actors, especially those who have voiced animated characters, did not include Billie Lou Watt, (who was a very nice and special person, who I had the fortunate opportunity to meet). Just one thing! The year of premiere for Astroboy should be 1983, as I believe that was the year it first premiered in Australia. In the U.S. it was poorly marketed and not received well airing in only in one or two markets beginning in 1986. (The Canadian dub which only aired in Canada began airing in 1985.) So, thank you again and welcome to the site.

I [/QUOTE]

Sorry! I did not notice that you noted that 1986 was the year of debut in U.S So forgive remark above. (Except of course for the welcome. Great site!)

I

Holy cow! Thanks for all this work!

Welcome to the forum, foxwolf2099! Excellent work, thanks for sharing!

"jayrath" wrote:Holy cow! Thanks for all this work!

You're very welcome. But there's no way I could've done it without all your commentary. It's a little frustrating sometimes when a shows credits is simply a list of actors, rather than crediting specifically to a character. So I was so happy to find these forums.

fyi - you're currently in the lead voicing the most characters This is a different view group a cast member with their characters.

http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/tv-shows/Astro-Boy-1986/voice-credits/

I did have a question Jay. I know you posted a lot of photos from back in the day, but I was wondering if you had any others that might be of higher quality and have close-ups of the cast members. I did my best but a few of the cast photos I put on the site are a little blurry.


And thanks to ASTROBUDDY and Astro Forever for your welcome!

I noticed that on your website you did not have the rest of the Astro Boy (1963) voice cast. So I have taken the liberty of providing a picture of the three main actors who worked on the English dubbing of the show. Along with Billie Lou Watt, who not only voiced "Astro Boy", but "Astro Girl" as well, you will see Cliff "Ray" Owens who was also the voice of Dr. Elefun, as well as Dr. Boynton and the narrator. And Gilbert Mack, who was the voice of Mr. Pompous, as well as other characters, too many to name. (Also here is a little known fact--Billie Lou Watt was not the first actor to voice "Astro Boy"! That honor falls to a little known actress by the name of Mary Lou Foster, who performed the voice of Astro Boy in the very first two episodes dubbed, "The Birth of Astro Boy" & "Expedition to Mars". Billie Lou Watt replaced Foster when Foster became ill and was hospitalized; therefore becoming unable to continue in the role.)

[QUOTE=foxwolf2099;202308]fyi - you're currently in the lead voicing the most characters /QUOTE]

I'm flattered! And suspicious. I'm sure Dave was in at least as many episodes as I was. And my memory may be faulty. I'm going to go through all my scripts sometime and check.

Anyway, it's not a competition, of course. At the time, I was jealous of the other cast members who had larger recurring roles. Skunk was in only a few, and Freddie in just two, if I recall correctly. Skunk was so prominent in the pilot that I assumed he'd appear all the time.

Looking back today, I'm very glad that I had so many different roles and got to have so much fun with them.

The book is still in the works, but it's taking longer than I thought.

It's truly is an honor to have one of the voice actors share his experience of Astro Boy with the rest of the crew. I'll definitely buy it if it comes out on iBook.

Okay, phew. I'm done. The page now featured basically every voiced character that appeared throughout the series. That comes to a total of 513 characters.

http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/tv-shows/Astro-Boy-1986/

I suggest checking out the different views the page offers (Side-by-Side and Credits)

I've credited as many characters as possible thanks to Jay's forum DVD commentary. Any help in identifying the many uncredited roles would be greated appreciated by anyone here in the community.


Now in response to the latest posts.


@ASTROBUDDY - I would be happy to add the rest of the 1960's main cast but can you provide me with images of some of the major characters these actors voiced as well? Thanks


@jayrath - yeah, I think it's cool that your tight family voice cast was able to voice the entire series. You don't see that happen very often in this day in age. At the very least, major guest roles get a guest voice actor.

I too always remembered Skunk being in more episodes. It seems that once Atlas was no longer in the series, Skunk went MIA as well. I mentioned elsewhere that it would've been fun to get more recurring characters in the series.

If you check out the Side-by-Side view, you can see there's a lot of minor roles that are uncredited. If and when you ever go through your scripts again and any of these roles are mentioned in the scripts, I'd really appreciate if you could share which voice actors voiced which characters. Thanks a ton again for your efforts. This page wouldn't exist without you.