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Buried Treasure - Mysterious Cities of Gold

Btw, Justin did you even *watch* the educational segments? Because I didn't know "Japan" had so many ruins and peoples that look exactly like the ones you find in South America!

Also, coming back to the dub a second, Justin probably was subconsciously turned off by the fact that the voice actors for the kids are clearly actual kids, not women trying to sound like kids. While you can't expect quite the same level of acting as you get from professional VAs, I'd rather take the authenticity over the feminine boy voices in modern cartoons any day of the week.

I never really got to see this show much as a kid. It aired on Nick Junior, the name of the programming block Nickelodeon had during the day while most kids are at school. So I never got to see things like this, Noozles, Maya the Bee, and the various other properties that I now know were anime that dominated the block unless there was a holiday or I was sick. (That said, the theme song to The Adventures of the Little Koala is permanently stuck in my head all the same. AND NOW IT'S STUCK IN YOURS. GO WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE NOW! THIS...I COMMAND!)

So I never really had a great deal of nostalgia for the series, other than thinking "this is pretty cool" due to its visual style.

For what it's worth, I actually went back and watched The Mysterious Cities of Gold a few years ago for the first time in full, and it was not a case like what happened to me when I went back and rewatched Thundercats only to realize "my God, this show is AWFUL! Why didn't I just let it stay a childhood memory?!" I would classify this as "a good show." At the same time, it's very much a product of its time and much of what it did that was unique back then is nothing special nowadays.

This was the first cartoon I ever saw to feature a continuing, serialized storyline.
Of course for me it was Belle & Sebastian, which did air on Nick Jr. when they created that block in '87, though it was on regular Nick since '84.

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I never saw Robotech until the 90s, so my childhood was one built on things like He-Man (EDIT: the Internet informs me that some of the BGM tracks from MCoG were reused for He-Man!), Transformers, Dangermouse, M.A.S.K. (which I later learned had Shinji Aramaki mecha designs, just like Transformers!), Inspector Gadget, and all that stuff. None of these shows had any sort of ongoing narrative because I guess that limits your syndication options if you have to show episodes in a set order.

Other than just the BGM being handy for coming from the same place.

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It was also the only cartoon I ever watched where people said "damn" and "hell" and they acknowledged matters such as death, so it was a little bit more "mature" than other shows of the time. I will grant that the story does sort of take a nose dive near the end spoiler[which involves space aliens more or less out of nowhere, and ultimately they only end up finding one of the cities of gold]. But while it certainly has its faults (I recall the decision to have the one guy stutter his every line in the US dub to be particularly irritating), I don't think they're quite as bad as Justin's making them out to be. I would not object to showing this series to young children now in 2009.

It would be nice to show this to everyone!

[quote="Raz_G"]Other than that, I can totally understand why they won't jump on the opportunity to purchase a 26-episodes show originally broadcasted in 1978 (!) that has no fanbase of any kind in the US, because unlike Mysterious Cities of Gold, it was never broadcasted in America (in an English dub, at least). Yes, it has the Miyazaki label on it, but will it be enough to justify purchasing the rights and then go through translation and dubbing? I don't think so. Don't get me wrong: I LOVE Conan, but I can see why a big studio like Disney will consider it too niche.

And I know that American anime distributors have checked the possibility of purchasing and distributing Conan in the US, and all backed because the price was just too high for them. There are many-many other anime (and animation in general!) classics that are still unavailable for home-viewing in the US, because the market for them isn't considered big enough. All this is hardly Disney's fault.

I seem to remember a disturbingly large chunk of my time in the mid-1980s was taken up with watching European-produced, Japanese-animated cartoon epics (Mysterious Cities of Gold; Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds; Ulysses 31; 80 Days Around the World) and Mysterious Cities of Gold was easily my favourite of them (Dogtanian came a close second).

I'll pick up the UK boxed set at some point but I'm in no rush - I got the Dogtanian set a while back and while the theme song certainly brought back some memories, it really hasn't aged well and I've no great desire to see my fond childhood memories of Mysterious Cities of Gold similarly battered as a result of re-watching the show through cynical adult eyes.

I too remember this. It was one of the best reasons for watching the BBC after uni. Coincidently I only just finished watching the complete box set back in the spring, and unlike you Justine, I enjoyed the whole thing very much. I grew up with synthisized music since the 60's Moody Blues first used Dr. Robert Moog's synthisized organ. It was all the rage up until the 90's. and is sort of making a slight comeback today. And considering the technology of the day, the digital clean up has done it justice. The original looked like a film with opitical sound track transfered to 2" quad tape, hense the warbly sound quality, and wobbly vision.

The Japanese version, he actually has a pretty normal sounding voice. Pretty much both in the 1982 and 1998 versions. And if you're asking, Japan had to redo the Japanese dub, since NHK lost the original recordings.

One thing I was a little disapointed with the new dub was the fact they cut out the recaps, next episode previews, and documentaries. However, given the original audio materials were no longer accessable, it's understandable why these were removed. I did managed to see the last episode's, which was rather interesting. From what I understood, they still had access to the recorded "documentaries", but it seemed they opted to remove them. From what I read, I think it was due to "accuracy" of them, but this could be wrong.

Robotech suffers from the exact same problem, as do a lot of shows from that era. I guess children's television producers of the '80s felt that wall-to-wall noise is what children responded to. In a way, they weren't wrong if that were the case.

Fantastic show. I've only just finished watching the UK box set which I've had in my backlog since I bought from HMV when it was first released. Though I recall it being screened on the ABC in Australia during the late 1980's (on James Valentine's show) I never watched it. I later read about it and a couple of years back obtained a DVD-R copy via a guy who remastered the show using the Japanese and French box sets. I was really impressed. Now a couple of years later, as I'm watching Fabulous Films’ box set the thing which really struck me is how the show was such a quality piece of children's entertainment. Especially when you consider the other shows which were on TV at the time in the west.

Unlike Justin, I think the music is a big part of the show's success. There's just something about it which fits the show really well. The dub isn't bad at all. Looking at how it was dubbed on the extras on the DVD box set, I'm really amazed it sounds that great.

I think Justin is a bit wrong on the history of the production of the series. In the extras on the box set, Bernard Deyriès states that Pierrot, NHK and DiC were co-producers right from pre-production. In fact it was DiC (the French side of production) who came up with the idea. The live action documentaries aren't bad either and are still pretty accurate now (at least I think they are). At any rate I found them to quite informative, if a little simplistic. Though some, like the chicken sacrifice, footage of a bull goring an unconscious man on the ground and a soothsayer putting a snake in his mouth, maybe they shouldn't really be shown to young children.

I'm surprised that Sherlock Hound has not been mentioned as a similar possibility for Buried Treasure. Six episodes of that were directed by Miyazaki Hayao & it was an Italian/Japanese co-production. I am a fan.

Dogtanian also of course - and I have the original Japanese Laserdisk limited edition of Future Boy Conan, I even bought two LD players (one modded for AC3) to play it with.

Thanks for clearing up my question about the stuttering character and whether or not he did so in the other versions of the show. For these co-productions it's always murky to figure out which version is the "original" and which is the "dub," but for my money's worth The Mysterious Cities of Gold is first and foremost French, such that both the Japanese and English versions are the adaptations. My justification is that the creative staff (writers, etc) were predominantly on the French side.

Indeed, the ending credits as they were broadcast on Nick Jr in America were in French, not English! I only know this because the VHS tapes I rewatched the series on were taped off Nick Jr and occasionally neglected to cut out the commercials for the various other Nick Jr anime shows I didn't know were anime at the time, like Maple Town.

Dorian wrote:

There was another program on at the same time but I cannot remember the name. As I recall two children, boy and girl go underground run into pirates one of which was a woman that would yell ALERT with a voice that could bend steel and there were two talking aardvarks that could make fire by touching their noses together and said things to each other like “Do I see what you see?” This sound familiar?

That was definitely Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, a French animated series that was dubbed into English. That also ran on Nickelodeon, but if memory serves it came on at very early hours of the morning and what little I saw never really grabbed me as a kid.

Oh yeah, I just remembered: a year ago when I interviewed the guys from the Philadelphia Animation Society (not to be confused with this year's interview, which after a month is STILL the latest episode put out! Gah!), I asked the founder Bill Thomas about his thoughts on The Mysterious Cities of Gold. He responded with an anecdote of how he was in France and decided to stop by DiC's offices, and they gave him a tour of the place! Interesting stuff.

When you come down to it, it really shouldn't be seen as an anime at all given that circumstance, but since a Japanese studio was involved in the animation section, it often slides for that. People only think of the surface elements.

I think the "blame Disney for everything that's wrong with the world today" attitude is really inappropriate here. Disney won't distribute Conan because above all, Conan is not a Ghibli product, and their deal is with Ghibli.

etc. etc. long rant on why Conan is pretty darn niche and I shouldn't blame Disney...

StudioToledo wrote:

When you come down to it, it really shouldn't be seen as an anime at all given that circumstance, but since a Japanese studio was involved in the animation section, it often slides for that. People only think of the surface elements.

anime#385

Episode Director:
Bernard Deyries
Edouard David
Hisayuki Toriumi
Katsuhiko Fujita
Kenichi Maruyamaerrorsource
Kenichi Murakami
Mizuho Nishikubo
Ryo Tachiba

Original creator: Scott O'Dell

Character Design: Toshiyasu Okada

Art director: Mitsuki Nakamura

Since when did animation companies outsource character design, episode directing and art directing? To my knowledge Japanese studios mostly commission in-between animation and not much else.

Another early DIC effort done with TMS, "Ulysses 31", went through a similar collaboration as well, though it's original unused pilot features some more striking differences in the design end that went through more revisions.

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Another early DIC effort done with TMS, "Ulysses 31", went through a similar collaboration as well, though it's original unused pilot features some more striking differences in the design end that went through more revisions.

Wow, thanks for mentioning those clips. It was quite different and interesting, with much in common with the Japanese version of the Ulysses theme song (which was not actually in this pilot).

Other people have commented on the He-Man music in MCoG and it's true: Saban never expected that the two shows would ever air in the same places and never expected anyone to notice the recycled music.

Recycled music happens a LOT more often than anyone would expect. Plenty of anime series have done that: L-Gaim, Outlanders, Hi-Speed Jecy and Moldiver shared the same music. So did Lygar and Borgman.

If a show doesn't have a full music budget, they will use whatever they can get. This is even more common nowadays with music libraries out for license for pennies. This is off topic, my apologies.

MCoG and Ulysses 31, along with Robotech, are probably the most memorable shows from my childhood. I loved them because they were totally unlike any other show aimed for kids. They didn't feel like they were trying to spoon fed me toys and other merchandizing but instead wanted to tell me a good story. I loved the whole atlantean tie-in and the ancient technology part of MCoG and the occasional, surprisingly dark tone of Ulysses (who could forget the story of the eternal punishment of Sisyphus). Both shows showed a level of sophisticated imagination totally unheard of in the gimmick-filled shows of the 80s. MCoG left me in such awe that I still remember parts of it vividly, even after almost two decades.

Not too long ago I found the Ulysses 31 DVD box. Upon reviewing the show after almost two decades, I still couldn't help but feel impressed at some of the stories contained within not to mention finding some rather big names in the ending credits, such as Shoji Kawamori.

I should give MCoG a go as well to see how well it has aged.

Yeah I remember it from back in the day. Although I don't ever recall seeing it on the usual networks. It was broadcast on Nickelodeon only in my area (which was probably sometime after the very first TV network runs), but I could be mistaken.

For some reason I've always thought that Mysterious Cities of Gold animation style was indistinguishable from lots of American animated shows of that type. I was clearly aware of Japanese origin of some children shows since previously watching Starblazers, Battle of the Planets, and others. Maybe because the credits (which I always payed attention to) showed French and American names and the content of the show was just so Anglo-Saxon looking I didn't connect it with things I identified as Japanese animation as a kid.

Now I can recognize the subtle characteristics and can now say, hey yah that was anime. Just back then it was so rehashed and watered down that it was just another one of those cartoons I enjoyed.

Let's see: 1980s anime? Check. NHK title with 39 episodes? Check. Story about legendary civilization? Check. The 3 checks were also shared by Nadia: Secret of Blue Water.

What do you mean by "big-lipped alligator moment"?