Astroboy yeti

Astroboy was a television series in Japan in the 1960's. It's the first anime to hit the U.S.

In 1963, Episode 40 of the black & white cartoon featured a villain named Sam Caesar. Sam was a brilliant madman who recreated the Roman Empire inside a mountain cavern using robots, setting himself up as the emperor.

The title of the episode is "The Abominable Snowman" despite the fact that a yeti plays only a minor role in the plot. At the beginning of the episode, an Abominable Snowman captures Astroboy's friend which leads them to the cavern. Later, it's revealed that the yeti is in fact a robot, one of the creations of Caesar. Side Note: Could this be the first example of the "Yeti is Actually Robot" trope, seen most famously in the 1970's Dr. Who?

One wonders why they went with the title "The Abominable Snowman". Other more obvious options could have been "Empire of Robots", "Roma Robotica", "All Roads Lead to Robots", "My Plot to Recreate Ancient Rome Using Robots", or something similar.

Ah, I've done some research and the original Japanese title was "Neo Caesar" (which makes oodles of sense), and the American one is "Abominable Snowman". It's almost as if the English translators only got as far as the first scene before titling it.

Anyway, here's what the yeti looked like:



This is exciting to see because these were the early days of Yeti Depiction. If you'll recall my time-line, there had been only a handful present in the popular culture (Tintin and the Bugs Bunny version being the most notable). Bumble from the Rudolph special was still a year away. Coincidentally, the same year as this cartoon, the Japanese public got to possess an actual robot yeti of their very own: the Marx Yeti, which I blogged about here.

This Astroboy yeti is decidedly ape-like and has the brown fur and conical head (inspired by the Pangboche Scalp) of the Tintin version.

I'd love to see the Astroboy episode but couldn't find a clip online. One can purchase the entire run of the original 1963 series, but its very pricey.