ekkaman: The Space Knight (宇宙の騎士テッカマン Uchuu no Kishi Tekkaman) was an anime produced by Tatsunoko Productions in 1975.

Released in the mid 1980's in the United States, Tekkaman the Space Knight received excellent ratings on television in the U.S. and generated lots of positive fan mail. As syndication sales grew, television was suddenly bombarded with toy-driven "robot series" including "Voltron," "The Transformers," "Go-Bots," "Robotech," "Silverhawks," and more. This flood of bartered ("free") programs, all produced by large multi-million dollar corporations, destroyed future sales of Tekkaman (regardless of the excellent ratings) because at the time William Winckler Productions was a small independent company without a major toy company behind it.

Over forty-thousand original Tekkaman the Space Knight VHS video cassettes were successfully sold throughout the U.S. to major retail stores by Congress Video Group (the largest video distributer at the time), and later by L.D. Video. Congress Video sold half-hour episodes, whereas L.D. Video sold the two 96-minute movie compilations.

Winckler attempted to stay as true to the original Japanese series as possible, doing as little editing of violence as possible, and leaving all the original Japanese music and sound effects in. This was very unusual at the time, considering how show's like "Gatchaman"/"Battle of the Planets" were handled. In fact, at the time, Ted Turner was considering buying Tekkaman for his giant cable network, but turned the show down due to the heavy battle scenes. Tekkaman is one the last of the four hero shows from Tatsunoko Productions, and has a huge cult following worldwide. The opening theme Tekkaman no Uta is sung by Ichiro Mizuki. (Wikipedia)