Future Boy Conan (Season 1)

Future Boy Conan (未来少年コナン, 1978) — Hayao Miyazaki's television debut before Ghibli — is available to watch online on iFILM. Made for NHK a full decade before My Neighbor Totoro, this is where Miyazaki first built the visual and thematic language that would define Studio Ghibli.

The premise: a nuclear war sank most of the land. Boy Conan grew up on a tiny island with his grandfather, believing no other humans existed. Then a girl named Lana washes ashore. She is captured and taken to Industria — a surviving city built on old-world technology — and Conan leaves his island for the first time to find her.

Based on Alexander Key's novel The Incredible Tide, the series runs twenty-six episodes and holds up without any nostalgia discount. Co-supervised by Isao Takahata, it carries the unmistakable marks of everything that followed: hand-drawn nature, physical storytelling, and a world that earns the hope it promises. Stream all episodes online on iFILM.