| Native Name: |
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| Genre: | Animation, action, comedy-drama, fantasy | ||||||||||
| Creator: | Claudio Biern Boyd | ||||||||||
| Executive Producer: | Claudio Biern Boyd | ||||||||||
| Music: | Katsuhisa Hattori | ||||||||||
| Opentheme: | Guido & Maurizio De Angelis | ||||||||||
| Num Episodes: | 26 (24 aired in Japan) |
Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds is a Spanish-Japanese children's animated television series that adapts the classic 1844 Alexandre Dumas story of d'Artagnan and The Three Musketeers, produced by Spanish studio BRB Internacional with animation by Japanese studio Nippon Animation, that was first broadcast on MBS in Japan in 1981–82.[1]
Most of the characters in the series are anthropomorphizations of dogs, hence the title of the cartoon; although there are a few exceptions, most notably Dogtanian's two sidekicks Pip the mouse and Planchet the bear, among several others.[2] [3]
In 1985, BRB Internacional released a television film edited from the series entitled Dogtanian: Special. In 1989, they produced with Televisión Española and Thames Television a sequel series entitled The Return of Dogtanian. In 1995, they released a television film edited from the sequel series entitled Dogtanian: One For All and All For One. In 2021, Apolo Films (BRB International's cinema studio) and Cosmos Maya released a feature-length CGI film entitled Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds in cinemas.
The story, set in 17th-century France, follows a young Dogtanian (D'Artagnan (ダルタニヤン) in the original Japanese version and voiced by Satomi Majima (間嶋 里美) and D'Artacán in the Spanish version) who travels from Béarn to Paris in order to become one of King Louis XIII of France's musketeers. (They are referred to as musketeers throughout the cartoon and only the title calls them 'Muskehounds'.) He quickly befriends three musketeers (Porthos, Athos and Aramis), saving Juliette, a maid-in-waiting for Queen Anne of Austria. A key difference between the English-language dubs of the Dogtanian adaptions and Dumas' novel is that the names of Athos and Porthos were interchanged, making Athos the extrovert and Porthos the secretive noble of the group.
The series was produced in 1981 by BRB International and Nippon Animation[1] and it was first broadcast by MBS in Japan, where it began airing on 9 October 1981.[4] One year after its premiere, it was broadcast for the first time in Spain on Televisión Española's Primera Cadena starting on 9 October 1982.[5] The partnership between BRB International and Nippon Animation worked so well, that they collaborated in another successful animated series two years later called Around the World with Willy Fog.
The series was dubbed into English by Intersound USA in 1985. As well as dubbing the TV series, BRB also produced a TV movie, which was again dubbed by Intersound USA. The series was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC starting on 3 January 1985 and The Disney Channel in United States in 1986 to 1988.
Nowadays the series is still being broadcast on different platforms such as YouTube[6] and Netflix.
Source:[4]
Dogtanian stemmed from Claudio Biern Boyd's love for literature. As a child, television hadn't arrived to Spain (the first broadcast was in 1956), reading works from authors such as Jules Verne, Emilio Salgari, Alexandre Dumas (père), Karl May and Edmondo de Amicis, while imagining the situations in the books he read. By the time he was part of the newly-formed BRB Internacional, after signing important contracts with animation studios for broadcast and merchandising, Claudio decided to do original series instead, based on his childhood books. After adapting Cantar del mío Cid as Ruy el pequeño Cid, he adapted Dumas' The Three Musketeers and set the main characters as dogs, with the starting point being a two-part Salvat encyclopedia on them, costing 25pts. The species were defined according to his imagination. For the villains, Milady was set as a cat, an animal Claudio hated, and Richelieu was a fox in homage of a village he spent summers for years where the local peasants complained about a fox that ate chickens at night. As of 2021, Claudio owned a bulldog, which in the series was the species of Richelieu's guard. Moreover, Dogtanian was chosen as a beagle in homage to Charles M. Schulz' character Snoopy, for which Claudio had an affinity for.[10] Using anthropomorphic characters[1]
As with his early series, pre-production work was done in Spain and post-production work in Japan at Nippon Animation's facilities in Tokyo.[11] In the Spanish side, the series was directed by Luis Ballester and Claudio Biern Boyd, with the latter supervising the script, while in Japan, Shigeo Koshi was at the helm of the department and Shuuichi Seki was the character designer.[1]
Adapting the novel was complicated, mostly due to its length and tragedy. BRB's scripwriting theme created a "clean and polished" product, removing many of the dark undertones of the original novel: the novel was set in a chaotic period of French history, with violence happening throughout. The Musketeers in the original work had the following characteristics: Athos was an alcoholic, Porthos the lover of a woman married to a rich man, whose only way to marry was with the death of her husband. D'Artagnan himself was an adulterer, courting his two loves, Milady and Constance. Much of these characteristics were removed from BRB's adaptation.[1]
The choice of anthropomorphic characters was cheaper and removed traces of violence found in the original work. This style was not new for Nippon Animation, having done several animated series before where the characters were all anthropomorphic animals. These were made as such to be more attractive to childre, expressing the way of being of the characters in a more direct manner. Dogtanian and the Muskehounds are portrayed with more "rounded" characteristics while the villains, especially Richelieu, were drawn in a more aggressive style. Milady, a cat, also represents the animal's association with stealth and espionage.[1]
The series first aired on the 20 of the 25 stations of the Japan News Network (TBS) at the time, in block, with the Mainichi Broadcasting System responsible for co-production. The series aired on Fridays at 7pm during its run.[12] Unlike in certain markets, ratings in Japan during its first run were sluggish, reporting only 4% ratings in the Kanto area. With poor viewer performance, MBS withdrew from producing animes for the 7pm timeslot and Calpis withdrew from sponsorship. After it ended, it was replaced by Jarinko Chie in its timeslot, which had been moved from a 5pm Saturday slot on a handful of affiliates and was finally shown on much of the network as consequence.[13] The series competed with Ninja Hattori-kun, despite the competition from other anime titles at the time, merchandising was released in Japan..[1]
The series premiered only in 1982 in Spain on TVE1 because of scheduling problems. This marked the premiere of the series in Europe.[1] Before long it was sold to RTP in Portugal, Rai in Italy, the BBC in the United Kingdom and TF1 in France, to high ratings.[14] In 1984 it aired on Rede Manchete's Clube da Criança when Xuxa Meneghel was still its host. It was repeated until 1986 in other children's programs of the network. The success of the show caused Editora Riográfica (later Editora Globo) to import the comics based on the series from Spain. In the mid-2000s, the compilation film, released there under the home video title Lord Dog, aired on TV Brasília in the period when the station had disaffiliated itself from RedeTV!.[15]
In the UK during the late 1980s, Video Collection International Ltd released numerous video releases of Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds after its broadcast on BBC from 1985 to 1987 and its latest reruns on ITV from 1988 to 1990.
| Title | Release date | Episodes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds (VC 1101) | 3 October 1988 |
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| Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds: Episodes 3 & 4 (VC1109) | 3 October 1988 |
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| Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds: Episode 5 (WP 0008) | 7 November 1988 |
| |
| Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds: Episodes 6 & 7 (VC1118) | 6 February 1989 |
| |
| Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds: Episodes 8 & 9 (LL 0005) | 1 May 1989 |
| |
| Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds: Episodes 10 & 11 (LL 0006) | 1 May 1989 |
| |
| The Complete Adventures of Dogtanian (VC1174) | 10 September 1990 | ||
| Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds (KK 0003) | 22 July 1991 |
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The series has been released on DVD in the UK by Revelation Films in Region 0 format:
In November 2010, a version that contains both series and both television films was released exclusively for HMV. Later, the complete boxset was made available at other retailers.
The complete series was released on DVD in the U.S. in 2012 by Oasis DVDs.
The original version of the soundtrack to Dogtanian (called Dartacan Soundtrack) can be downloaded from Amazon's UK website in MP3 format. It includes an English version of the theme song that uses the second series opening lyrics, but the music is similar to the original opening, in this version Dogtanian however is referred to as Dartacan, his Spanish name, and the theme is sung with very high voices, similar to the original opening, and rendered in a style reminiscent of the French dub. An insert song in Spanish which has been replicated twice (Richelieu and Bulibu, probably an error on Amazon's part or that of the record company) and a few instrumental tracks that are heard in the show itself and one unused instrumental track.[16]
In 1985, BRB Internacional released a television film edited from the series entitled Dogtanian: Special.[17]
See main article: The Return of Dogtanian. In 1989 a sequel series entitled The Return of Dogtanian was produced by BRB Internacional, Televisión Española and Thames Television with animation of Wang Film Productions and Morning Sun Animation.[18] The outsourcing had changed a few years earlier due to a price hike at Nippon Animation.[11] Like the first series, 26 episodes were produced.
In 1995, BRB Internacional released a television film edited from this second series entitled Dogtanian: One For All and All For One.[19]
See main article: Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds (film). According to their main website, BRB Internacional was planning a new feature-length CGI film to be released in 2016, but it was delayed for unknown reasons.[20] [21] In April 2019, it was announced that Apolo Films, their new cinema studio, has since taken over production of the film.[22] On 11 February 2020, the first image of the film was revealed. The film is written by Doug Langdale and directed by Toni Garcia.[23] The film was released on theatres under the title Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds.[24] It was released on SVOD.
The film maintains the original series opening main theme tune composed by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis. Additionally, they have composed new songs for the film.[25]
The film was released in the United Kingdom on 25 June 2021.[26]