Marine Boy

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Marine Boy was one of the first anime cartoons shown in the U.S., in the 1960s and later in Australia and the United Kingdom. Marine Boy was known as Kaitei Shonen Marien (Marine The Sea Bottom Boy) in Japan. It was produced in 1966 and 1967 in Japan by Minoru Adachi through K Fujita Associates Inc and released by Japan Tele Cartoons and Seven Arts Television world wide. It was about the undersea adventures of a boy who was able to breathe under water by chewing a special chewing gum called "oxy-gum". He was powered underwater by his booster boots and armed with an electric boomerang. Marine Boy's father was part of the Ocean Patrol, an organisation set up to maintain peace and security in Earth's oceans.

Adventures often featured the Ocean Patrol craft P-1, a submarine crewed by Piper and Bolton (a double act), who would assist Marine Boy. Other regular characters in the show also included Neptina (a mermaid), Splasher (a dolphin) and Professor Fumble, the Ocean Patrol's absent-minded scientist.

This series as it was known consisted of 78 episodes dubbed into English from the Japanese series Submarine Boy Marine. It would seem that in Japan, Marine Boy was seen as three distinct series, and the first series of just three episodes was produced in B/W. Broadcast information and records tend to indicate that in total, 130 episodes were produced, although this may simply be an indication of the number of episodes broadcast; the major problem with the information about the series is that the main title of the series changed three times. What isn't known is whether episodes were simply lifted out of one series and re-imported into another for a 'repeat'.

Stanley Jaffe was the producer of the English version. The voice of Marine Boy, Neptina and Cli Cli was that of Corinne Orr (female) who was also the voice of Trixie in Speed Racer. Jack Grimes was the voice of Professor Fumble and Splasher and Peter Fernandez (other work includes The Space Giants, Ultraman, and Star Blazers-aka Space Battleship Yamoto and most of the Godzilla films) was the voice of Piper and Dr Mariner and later went on to be Speed from Speed Racer. Jack Curtis was the voice of Bulton. Warner Brothers bought out Seven Arts and its library and holds all the Marine Boy masters.

[edit] Trivia

• In a possible nod to Marine Boy's "oxy-gum", Jimmy Neutron gives himself and his buddies "Neutronic Air Gum" that allows them to breathe underwater, in two episodes: Season 2 - Episode 3 (Operation: Rescue Jet Fusion, 2003) and Season 3 - Episode 13 (The Evil Beneath, 2006).