Astro Kyūdan (manga)

In 1992 an anime adaptation of Astro Kyūdan was planned by Group TAC. It was going to update the story by having it take place in the 90s instead of the 70s and changing Astro Stadium's location from Shinjuku to the Odaiba Bay Area. Unfortunately, since no baseball anime had been made at that time since 1989-1990's Miracle Giants Dome-kun, no TV station felt comfortable airing it. Also, the OVA boom's heyday had already passed by then, resulting in the anime adaptation becoming nothing more than a "phantom". In 1999 Ohta Publishing released Group TAC's original anime proposal & steel cel prototype in the book Astro Kyūdan Memorial. Astro Kyūdan did eventually get animated, to an extent, when TV asahi commissioned Production I.G. to create a 30-second anime intro for the station's baseball coverage in 2005, which was also used for the J-Drama adaptation of Astro Kyūdan that same year.

The number 9 is an ongoing theme in this manga. All 9 Astro Superhumans were born at 9:09:09 on 9/9/1954 (or Showa 29), and the 183 weekly chapters were even later collected together to make 99 chapters.