One of the more internationally widely syndicated early Mushi Pro series, this was one of the last Mushi Pro TV series based on a manga by
Osamu Tezuka. After this point Mushi Pro became obliged to animate works by other manga artists.
It also has the distinction of being the first shôjo anime.
Hata's only episode tells of a wandering puppeteer who arrives in town one day and puts on a free show for the children.
As soon as the show is finished, he tells them, "Next time, bring money!" That night, while everyone's sleeping, he goes from rooftop to rooftop stealing money from
people using his puppet Collette. Sapphire's guardian angel, Chink (wisely called something else in the English
dub), who had meanwhile fallen in love with Collette at first sight earlier that day, decides to pay her a visit, but finds the wagon empty, instead discovering
the puppeteer in the act of stealing a coin chest from the greedy banker. Before Chink can turn the puppeteer in, the banana-nosed
bad guy who has it in for Sapphire captures the puppeteer and forces him to put on a play in the castle to reveal Sapphire's
true gender. Chink foils his scheme by dressing as one of the puppets and scaring the puppeteer off. In the chase
that ensues, the puppet wagon hits a rock and crashes, bursting into flames. Chink saves Collette
and her companions from the blaze just in the knick of time, but the puppeteer thinks he's lost everything, and is crushed.
Chink returns his puppets to him, and the kind gesture and relief of finding his puppets intact causes him to have a change of heart. He gives up his devious ways
and from then on puts on free puppet shows for the children.
In this episode Hata sneaks in a reference to Gokû by having
the puppeteer handling puppets of Tatsuko and Gokû at the beginning of the episode (pictured above).
This episode in fact feels quite different from the other episodes in the series,
so it's not difficult to see why Hata was not assigned more than one episode.
It is lacking in the sort of intrigue, swashbuckling action and plot complexity which characterizes most of the other episodes, though it's certainly interesting in its own way.
Hata's talents seem more suited to comic or fantastic material like Gokû. This episode was broadcast on July 16, 1967 in the period between episodes 22 and 33 of Gokû.