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Sazae-san Anime Celebrates 50 Years With 3.5-Hour Anime/Live-Action Special
posted on by Egan Loo
The landmark family television anime Sazae-san will commemorate its 50th anniversary with a special that will run for three and a half hours on Fuji TV this fall. The special will have both anime and live-action segments featuring the family of the titular housewife character.
The anime segment of the special will bring in fantasy elements as it depicts the past of Sazae's family, as well as a family trip. Earlier this year, the staff chose 28 families from Tokyo's Asahigaoka district (the setting of the Sazae-san story) to be animated into the series, and this anniversary special's anime segment will feature three of those families. These families' names will even appear in the anime segment.
The live-action segment will depict the family 20 years into the future. This segment serves as a follow-up to the September sequel stage play that imagines the family 10 years into the future.
This Sunday's episode of the anime will be the final one for Hideyuki Tanaka, who is retiring from voicing Masuo Fuguta since June 1978. Hideyuki Tanaka will take over the role of Masuo next Sunday.
In 2017, Cup Noodle's animated "Hungry Days" advertising campaign imagined how Sazae and her future husband Masuo Fuguta met in high school.
Fuji TV already aired a one-hour New Year's special on January 6. In addition, the "Sazae-san-ten The Real" exhibition is running in Fuji TV's Tokyo headquarters this summer. Collaborations with popular television programs are also slated for this fall.
The anime adaptation of Machiko Hasegawa's family life manga Sazae-san began airing in October 1969. The anime is usually the highest ranked animated series in Japan each week. In 2013, the show was awarded the Guinness World Record for longest-running animated television series.
Source: Comic Natalie
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