Now this showed up in the 89th position in the 2006 broadcast chart, but I’m wondering if it was a combined vote for the 90s series Hajime Ningen Gon AND the 70s series Hajime Ningen Gyators. Both are based on the gag manga by Shunji Sonoyama. Youtube has nothing on the more recent series, so here’s the OP animation for Gyators.
Here’s some blurb about the show from the EXPO 2005 site
GON, THE STONE-AGE BOY (Hajime ningen Gon) : EXPO 2005 AICHI, JAPAN:
Originally broadcast about 30 years ago as Gyatoruzu. NHK (Japan Brodcasting Corp.) began showing a new version of the show, GON, THE STONE-AGE BOY on one of its broadcast satellite stations in 1996. This cartoon is sometimes rebroadcast on NHK Educational Television. Through the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and in the twenty-first century, a wide audience has watched this cartoon show. The setting for this show is the Stone Age in which people and animals live together in peace and harmony. Gon is a curious, mischievous young boy full of energy. He is surrounded by his friends and family, including his mother, father, his girlfriend Piko, and his best friend, a gorilla named Dotechin. Every day is full of adventure and excitement.
And from Studio Pierrot’s English language site:
PIERROT – Animation Production Pierrot:
It is the primitive age. There are people enjoy life in harmony with nature. Although they have no television, cars or personal computers, their world is an open paradise filled with gifts from God. Gon, a little boy, lives with his parents and his best friend, Dotechin, a gorilla. Gon’s family does not have much foods, but they always share what they get. Together with Dotechin, Gon goes on adventures in the wild where mammoths run around and sabertooth tigers swagger. He runs into a child Dragon, finds a poor baby bird with a big appetite, and encounters a fairy from a star. Animals, birds, plants, fish, and everything which exists on earth becomes his friends. This is a heartwarming comedic story. It certainly entertains not only children, but also their parents.
And Ben Ettinger makes with the history over at AniPages Daily.
Pelleas.net | AniPages Daily – Hajime Ningen Gyators:
In October 1974, a new Tokyo Movie TV series begins: Hajime Ningen Gyators, or Early Man Gyators. Working on this series we see a smattering of both ex-Mushi Pro and ex-Toei figures, now working for various small subcontracting studios: First and foremost, Osamu Kobayashi, Tsutomu Shibayama, Yoshio Kabashima, Yoshifumi Kondo, Hiroshi Fukutomi and Yuzo Aoki at A Production, the studio that was the subcontracting backbone of Tokyo Movie’s situation comedies in the early 1970s, and indeed provides the backbone of Gyators; but also Yoshiyuki Momose at Studio Neo Media, run by Keiichi Kimura (Tiger Mask), and Minoru Maeda and Minoru Okazaki at Takao Kosai’s Studio Junio, as well as possibly a few other small studios I’m not aware of.