TMS Entertainment announces 60th Anniversary YouTube campaign, including timed uploads of Japanese Sonic X and Orguss episodes

TMS Entertainment, a beloved Japanese animation studio currently owned by Sega Holdings Inc., a subsidiary of SegaSammy holdings, has just announced that for their 60th anniversary, they’ll begin uploading special animated features of significant importance to the company to their official YouTube page. Most noteworthy to Sega/Sonic fans, this includes the first six episodes of Sonic X in its original Japanese dub. The entire campaign begins on August 5th, 2024. This is a good chance to get a taste of what Sonic X was originally like, free of both English voices and the cacophony of censorship edits imposed on it in its original English dub by 4Kids Entertainment.

EDIT: It’s come to my attention that one of the other anime part of this celebration: Super Dimension Century Orguss (1983), also has a Sega connection, as Sega made an SG-1000 game based on it. I’m adding details about that show below the break too.

Gotta go fast as you rush past the break for the skinny on this special event. GO! GO! GO! GO! LET’S GO!

EDIT: The 60th Anniversary event has ended and all these videos have, unfortunately, been removed from the TMS Entertainment YouTube Page. Fortunately, Discotek Media has released both Japanese Sonic X and Super Dimension Century Orguss on Blu-Ray. You can buy them from Amazon or Crunchyroll’s store. I removed the dead YouTube embeds from the article

As stated above, Sonic will be the one to kick off TMS Entertainment’s 60th anniversary celebration on August 5th. On that day, at noon EST, 9AM PST, they will upload episode 1: The Supersonic Hero Takes The Stage, in its original Japanese format with English subtitles. On August 6th, episode 2 will follow, then episode 3 on August 7th, and so on, but episode 6 will come on August 12th instead of August 10th. Strangely, their schedule says they will upload episode 5 again on August 13th-16th. Based on this, it’s possible each episode besides episode 5 will only be online for one day, so just in case, make time to catch each episode on the upload date. 

UPDATE: Turns out the episodes are staying up for longer than a day, plus TMS Entertainment is also uploading episodes 7-10. Their own website was likely filled with typos. I have added embeds to each of those episodes so you can catch their premieres.

Fortunately, TMS has already provided links to episodes 1-5 on YouTube. You can go to each and click the “Notify Me” button to have YouTube send you a notification for when each episode will premiere. Here are the embeds to each episode.

As for the rest of the 60th anniversary event, TMS will also be uploading episode 1 of Big X (The studio’s very first anime from August 3rd 1964, based on the Osamu Tezuka manga), Super Dimension Century Orguss episodes 1-10, and the Takeshi Koike directed Lupin III movie trilogy, consisting of Jigen’s Gravestone, Goemon’s Blood Spray, and Fujiko’s Lie. Go to TMS Entertainment’s 60th anniversary celebration news page for the details and schedule on all anime being presented.

EDIT: It’s been pointed out to me in the comments below that Super Dimension Century Orguss is also connected to Sega. Sega made the SG-1000 game Orguss (1984), based on this anime. They have also made three different spiritual successors to Orguss, each on different hardware and divorced from the Orguss license: Transbot (1986), Transformer (Also 1986), and Arrow Flash (1991). All three games were titled Arrow Flash in Japan. TMS Entertainment will premiere two episodes of Super Dimension Century Orguss at a time on their YouTube page from August 19th – 23rd. I will share embeds to each one after they’ve been shown online. You won’t want to miss this anime if you’re a fan of those games.

TMS Entertainment has been the animation studio for many beloved anime throughout the decades. They are most associated with long running franchises such as Lupin III and Detective Conan (Known in the west as Case Closed), as well as several anime based on Sega franchises, not just including Sonic X, but also Virtua Fighter, Hi-sCoool! SeHa Girls, and Phantasy Star Online II: The Animation. They also animated the FMV cutscenes in Burning Rangers. Besides anime, they also had a hand in animating several western cartoons, including Inspector Gadget, Cybersix, The Real Ghostbusters, Batman: The Animated Series, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, and The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Currently, they are working on popular anime such as Undead Unluck and Dr. Stone. 

TMS Entertainment’s official YouTube page currently hosts trailers, clips, and full episodes of many anime they have produced throughout their long history. In same cases, they have the entire series of some of their anime available to view absolutely free, including Karate Master (1973), Cat’s Eye (1983), Magic Knight Rayearth (1994) (Along with its Brazilian Portuguese dub), Virtua Fighter (1995) (As well as its Spanish dub), Itazura na Kiss (2008), Lupin III Part 2 (1977), Lupin III Part 4 (2015), and the English dub of Sonic X (2004) (Season 1) (Season 2) (Season 3) (Plus, the Brazilian Portuguese dub, surprisingly). They are gradually uploading episodes of The Gutsy Frog (1972), Yowamushi Pedal Grande Road (2013), Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas (2009), and Z/X Ignition (2014) right now. They are also, as of this writing, in the middle of an ongoing Lupin III celebration in which they upload a feature-length Lupin III TV special every month, with this current month’s pick being Tokyo Crisis (1998). They’re a channel worth following if you love watching all kinds of anime, no matter its age.

So will you be catching these uploads of Japanese Sonic X? Are there any TMS animated productions you’re a particular fan of? Give us a holler in the comments section before.

And remember, if you like Sonic X in Japanese, the entire series has been made available on Blu-Ray courtesy of Discotek Media. (Who also blessed us with complete Blu-Ray releases of Hi-sCoool! SeHa Girls, Virtua Fighter, and The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog)

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