"Amazing Three (W3)"

"Amazing Three" is an SF drama featuring three aliens who come to survey the earth and a human boy, Shinichi, and tells the story of their fight against various bad people.
It is the year 196X, experiments with the hydrogen bomb continue and the world is at war.
To resolve whether to save the barbarous earth or erase it with an antiproton bomb, the superior beings gathered in the Milky Way confederation deep in space decide to dispatch three investigators to earth.
So as not to appear suspicious to humans, Bokko, Pukko and Nokko, the three people in the Milky Way patrol known as the Amazing Three, are transformed into a rabbit, a duck and a horse and sneak into a village called Ogawa-mura somewhere in the countryside of Japan.
There they get to know a wild but simple-hearted boy called Shinichi Hoshi and start to run with him.
Meanwhile, Shinichi's older brother, Koichi, is involved in a fight for justice as a member of the secret intelligence agency "Phoenix" against a global plot, a position he has concealed even from his own family.
Shinichi and W3 get sucked into this plot. Through their exchanges with Shinichi and Koichi, the three members of W3, who initially thought the earth was just a barbarous planet, find their feelings being gradually transformed.

May 30, 1965 to May 8, 1966
Appeared serially in "Weekly Shonen Sunday" (Shogakukan, Inc.)

Although the "W3" magazine serialization and the television anime series, produced by Mushi Production, were started at the same time and the basic set up were identical, the stories were completely different.
"W3" was first serialized in the publication "Weekly Shonen Magazine." However, shortly after the serialization started, Tezuka Osamu axed the series after just four episodes because the television anime was launched and its settings were very similar to the magazine version.
This work was later serialized under the same title but with a completely different concept in "Weekly Shonen Sunday."
Tezuka Osamu's friends frequently appear in his works, and in this creation, his friend the Manga artist; Mr. Baba was the model for the teacher of the same name, forming an important member of the cast.
Likewise, the hero, Shinichi Hoshi, is associated with Tezuka Osamu's friend, the SF writer Shinichi Hoshi.