Forum - View topicBuried Treasure - Mysterious Cities of Gold
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 1684 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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Hey, I'm a big fan of electronica -- as you could probably tell from the Jean-Michel Jarre reference in the article (who I've been a fan of before I could walk). In fact, if you saw my iTunes library, you'd find well over 50% of it reeks of analog synth or emulated analog synth. 
I think my problem here wasn't the music itself (which really DOES sound like second-rate Jarre) but the fact that it was so overused. They really needed to cool it with the constant wall-to-wall music or at least mix it up with a few more tracks. It really got grating after a while.
Fair enough, I may have overreacted. Apologies. However, I do think my point still stands that, in the name of nostalgia, people to tend to blind themselves to the flaws of a particular work. I do obsess over relics of my childhood (such as old Manga Entertainment dubs from the UK) but I like to think I can at be objective about it when they're not successful. |
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Showsni
 Posts: 641 |
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Presumably if I'd been born slightly earlier I'd have watched this on Children's BBC, but as it was it just passed me by... Though I can't help but think of Phillip Schofield singing the theme tune whenever anyone mentions it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QD3IYxGHOs Perhaps he should stick to doing Joseph... |
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Kabuto
 Posts: 7 Location: Stockholm, Sweden |
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You are mistaken, there are no aliens in MCoG. spoiler[The Olmecs are the descendants of survivors of the global war who hid under their mountain. Only their elite were able to survive, suspended in cryogenic hibernation, and it is implied that they have horribly mutated from the fallout of the Nuclear war that destroyed their ancestors] |
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Dorian
 Posts: 111 Location: Houston |
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We started to watch it back in the day then it disappeared. Don’t know if the local channel moved it or just stopped.
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? |
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ChibiGoku
Posts: 676 |
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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 found particularly interesting regarding the Japanese and French cuts, they are different and actually have footage that is exclusive to each other. Sometimes the cutting and arrangement of footage is slightly different (Which occured in episode 1 a couple times). Most of the differences are within the first 8 or so episodes, but a couple of differences exist outside of those episodes. 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. Another disapointment I had was they recasted pretty much everyone, sans Estaban. However, at the same time, I'm glad Masako Nozawa was atleast kept as Esteban. Music... I've heard people mixed about. Someone compared the Japanese score similar to "Scooby Doo" music and just didn't fit the series. Honestly, while I can see it being a potentially good comparison to say that it does sound like Scooby Doo, the music was nicely orchestrated and I thought each piece fit well within each scene. The French music, while I think in its own right worked, there is the sense of feel like omething was missing in it. It's not to say there weren't some pieces I didn't love from the French OST, I just overall prefer the Japanese music and usage. I could go into more, but for some reason, the scroll bar on this is freaking out. However, I am actually still going through the series in Japanese and have yet to finish it. I'll probably do a full run of viewing the series in English or French somewhere down the road afterwards. Edit: Heh. So my 300th post ended up being about Esteban. |
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Greg Aubry
 Posts: 224 Location: Detroit, MI |
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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. |
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KanjiiZ
 Posts: 661 Location: Central Coast |
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Unlike Voltron, I don't like this series anymore. As much as I want to like it, I just don't. Maybe because the subject it's about doesn't interest me. It's a "nostalgia anime" that would really only appeal to people who watched it back in the day, which was before my time sadly. I still got to watch it in VHS though. Like Nadia, Devil Hunter Yoko and not Voltron I realized why I liked them. I was a kid looking for anime. Anything I could see looked like gold. But now that I have so much access to almost anything, it's like having candy for dinner everyday and I can only consume so much.
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Chesis
Posts: 27 |
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I watched the Hulu English version on the strength of the show's reputation, having missed it as a kid, with no nostalgia goggles. The dub is horrendous, but the show's quality - especially the animation and the various takes on South American culture - shines through. It reminded me of Nadia and Avatar the Last Airbender, especially the random sci-fi machines. the exotic landscapes, and the supernatural powers. I especially like that Teo wasn't just the comic relief, the way most native kids in those old adventure shows often were. And that Mendoza was a heroic grown-up despite being of questionable trustworthiness.
I don't know that it would appeal to modern kids even with a better dub, but as a kid in the 90s I would have loved it. |
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zawa113
 Posts: 7357 |
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Funny you should say that, the only Robotech counterpart I've seen so far is Southern Cross and Robotech didn't fill the silence gaps with music- they filled them with a narrator. If you ask me, he was the biggest addition to the cast in all of Robotech (I'm sure I don't have to tell you this, but that guy never shut up). At least MCoG doesn't have a narrator explaining everything the viewer can already see while you're watching (and I'm not counting the narrators in the OP, next ep preview, and previous ep recaps here). And thank god play-by-play narrators have gone out of style.
This is what I'm in the process of right now, and yeah I agree with you on the dub. I still don't think it's as bad as either Astro Boy 1980, Fantastic Children, or 4Kids One Piece's dubs (since my ears actually didn't try to flee my head when I watch MCoG in dub) but yeah, that sure didn't hold up but eh, seems like I can desensitize myself to it enough somehow to where I won't call it "good" but I can still call it servicable. Mendoza is almost certainly my favorite character so far, simply because spoiler[I can't tell whose side he's really on here, oooo the mystery!] |
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Greboruri
Posts: 376 Location: QBN, NSW, Australia |
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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. |
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nicomorr
 Posts: 127 Location: London, UK. |
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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. A request: Would it be possible to list the items covered so far in Buried Treasure? Nico M 
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Kabuto
Posts: 7 Location: Stockholm, Sweden |
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Check the archive; animenewsnetwork.com/buried-treasure |
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Anime World Order
 Posts: 389 Location: Florida |
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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.
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. |
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ChibiGoku
Posts: 676 |
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I want to be perfectly honest with you, but it's hard to consider the Japanese version an adaption. The cutting of the material is different from each other, to which while sometimes the French version would have footage not found in the Japanese version, the Japanese version would sometimes have footage not found in the french version. As for the creative staff, I honestly wouldn't say most of it is on the french end. The production work was split with both sides, so I wouldn't quite say one side is most responsible for another. However, hadn't it been for the Japanese side of things, I honestly think some of the look and feel of the series wouldn't be the same had it not been for them. Not to mention, all of the animation production including episode writing, as well as from my understanding of the documentaries, were all done by Pierrot and NHK. Pierrot also considers this their own project, as opposed to simply being an "outsourced" series. If we were to look at the French and Japanese versions, I honestly feel both are different enough to warrent to consider them somewhat seperate products and each other are their own versions. Thus, one could consider either or as the original version. That's my honest take on the whole matter. |
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nicomorr
Posts: 127 Location: London, UK. |
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Jeez, I already have, obviously, long ago - I meant a neat list of names & dates - not a load of URLs that are not always obvious. NM |
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