Discotek Media picked up the rights to the Chargeman Ken anime series last summer and has done some minor streaming on a couple of services such as Crunchyroll, YouTube, and Amazon Prime Video. Through their Retrocrush YouTube channel, they’ve now cut loose with the opening sequence “チャージマン研” by Hibari Children Chorus.
The 1973 series was directed by Noboru Miura based on the original work by Tetsuhisa Suzukawa. Eiji Tanaka served as the character designer and Tama Production handled the animation. Kazuko Sawada stars as Ken.
Plot Concept: Infamous among anime fans in Japan, this 1974 series by Knack Productions is known for its nonsensical plots, absurdly incompetent animation, and brutal 10-year-old hero. See young Ken Izumi gun down wave after wave of ineffectual aliens, while dealing with misaligned animation cels, repetitive music, and a near total lack of sound effects. The best joke is that none of this was meant as a joke.
