Uchūsen Sagittarius

Uchūsen Sagittarius
Members of the team. From left to right: Toppy, Rana, Seebeep, Giraffe, and Ann. In the background is the spaceship Sagittarius.
宇宙船サジタリウス
Genre	Science fiction, Comedy, Adventure
Anime television series
Directed by	Kazuyoshi Yokota
Produced by	Kyōzō Utsunomiya Takaji Matsudo
Written by	Nobuyuki Isshiki Nobuyuki Fujimoto Harumi Hisaki Adai Shirotani Naomi Furunaga Mikio Matsushita
Music by	Haruki Mino
Studio	Nippon Animation
Original network	TV Asahi
Original run	January 10, 1986 – October 3, 1987
Episodes	77

Uchūsen Sagittarius (宇宙船サジタリウス^?, lit. Spaceship Sagittarius) is a 77-episode Japanese science fiction anime television series directed by Kazuyoshi Yokota and created by Nippon Animation and TV Asahi. It aired from January 10, 1986 to October 3, 1987. The series is based on Altri Mondi, an Italian series of novels written by physicist Andrea Romoli.

The series depicts the adventures of four astronauts who travel through space and visit many planets. On each planet they have an adventure. Each adventure seems to have a sort of morality, such as the value of friendship or the protection of endangered species.

The series takes place in a seemingly not so distant future. The world greatly resembles the world of the late 20th century, but there is a considerable amount of futuristic technology: interstellar travel is common place (the spatial agency which employs the characters is a modest private agency not related to the government), weapons which fire lasers exist, etc... But there isn't any mention of the Internet (the series was created before the internet became really common) and the characters use outdated technology such as floppy disks (instead of CDs or DVDs) to store data. At the beginning of the series the characters are mostly on Earth, but as the series progress the characters travel through space on board of their spaceship called "The Sagittarius". The characters visit many planets on which they have many adventures. Although the Sagittarius is an old spaceship which use a sort of oil as fuel, the spaceship is able to leave Earth and reach planets sometimes in as little time as a few hours. The characters do not require artificial respiratory systems and are able to breathe on each of the planets which they visit.

The show was full of humour but incorporated also very mature themes. Many episodes talked about subjects such as: friendship, war in general, danger of nuclear war or nuclear explosion (which is not surprising if we think about the fact that Japan was the victim of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings), protection of the environment and of endangered species, slavery (Sebeep was the personal singer of a taxidermist in one episode), alcoholism (there was an adventure in which Toppy had become an alcoholic and abandoned his family), pirates, virtual reality (in one adventure there was a complete world which was an illusion entirely controlled by a computer),etc.