Anime Profile: The Amazing 3

Under the orders of Galactic Control, a space saucer lands on Earth. In that saucer (Patrol A3)- three superior beings from outer space named "THE AMAZING 3", who were sent to Earth to help achieve law and order. When they land on Earth, a huge vacuum cleaner attached to their ship sucks up 3 animals; a duck, a horse and a bunny. The Amazing 3 take over these bodies to be used as a disguise, to decide if the war-hungry Earth is a threat to the rest of the galaxy and should be destroyed or not.

The bunny was named Captain Bonnie. She was the leader of the group. She was the sensible one and had a cute voice, a big fluffy tail, and long pointy ears. The duck was named Lieutenant Zero and was the aggressive one always wanting to blow Earth up. The horse was named Corporal Ronnie and was always making contraptions such as an autopictograph where pictures were put into a machine and would come to life. Kenny Carter was a boy who knew the secret of The Amazing 3, and when in great danger called on his secret agent older brother, Randy Carter, to help. He worked for the Phoenix Bureau of Peace Enforcement. This organisation was the greatest crime-fighting agency in the world. His code name was P77.

The Amazing 3 regularly signed in and gave reports about earth to Galactic Control, and after 12 months the members of the Galactic League, representing all advanced planets of space, analysed the reports and voted to destroy Earth. It was Kenny Carter, however, who was taken to The Amazing 3's planet and who convinced them that earthlings love each other, so they delayed their decision to blow up Earth until Kenny was older.

Kenny and The Amazing 3 travelled around in a huge wheel. The Amazing 3 was called "Wonder 3" in Japan. 52 episodes were made. It was created by Osamu Tezuka (Kimba and Astroboy) through his own production company- Mushi Productions. It was released in Japan in 1965 and was shown on Melbourne TV in April 1969 at 4pm on channel 9.

Like 8th man, Amazing 3 was also produced by Gene Prinz and his staff at Copri International. Reuben Guberman went on to work with producer Salvatore Billiteri (Prince Planet) writing the scripts as well as dubbing the occasional villain's voice on both Prince Planet and Johnny Sokko's "Flying Robot". Corinne Orr was not the voice of "Bonnie Bunnie" (this was reconfirmed by Corinne herself) as stated in many Anime history books. The actors hired to do the dubbing were thought to be lost to history until Andy Shepherd uncovered who they were. They were college students and local actors from Miami's little theatre.

* Bobbie Byers (Capt. Bonnie Bunny)
* Neil Patrick (Col. Ronnie Pony)
* Paul Brown (Zero the Duck)
* Kurt Nagel (Kenny Carter)
* Jerry Burke (opening intro)

Amazing 3 has not been released on video, as the existing 16mm prints as well as the audio tracks has been lost or destroyed in the US, but there could still be some in the archives of television stations or collectors' homes around the world. There seems to be no record of where the 16mm prints were distributed (production info from Andy Shepherd).