Anime Reviews: The Mysterious Cities of Gold(S1)

Name: The Mysterious Cities of Gold(original series/aka season 1)
Release Date: 1982
Genre: Historic, Adventure, Sci-fi
Director: Bernard Deyries, Hisayuki Toriumi
Writer: Jean Chalopin, Mitsuru Kaneko, Mitsuru Majima, Soji Yoshikawa
Creator: Jean Chalopin, Mitsuru Kaneko, Mitsuru Majima, Soji Yoshikawa
Number of Episodes: 39
Studio: Studio Pierrot, DIC Audiovisual

Overview

It's the early 1500s, the age of exploration where many a seafaring adventurers seek to cross the great oceans in search of fame, and gold. In Spain there's this orphan boy Esteban who gets talked into going along with Mendoza, a seasoned adventurer on a Voyage to the New Word, which is the area Esteban's father was last seen. Mendoza also kidnaps a Incan girl named Zia, who can read the language of the Incas, whom was taken to Spain years earlier as a prize for the Queen, and together they set sail on a ship heading towards the New Word. Later they meet another boy named Tao, the last descendent of a ancient, highly advanced civilization, who comes along, hoping to find out the secrets of his people, and together they all search for the lost cities of gold.

Personal Opinion

Where to begin, wow doesn't quite cover how amazing this anime is. The character art by its self is pretty standard for the time, It's on the higher end though, so it still looks good even today, but the background art is a different story. The background art is downright amazing even by today's standard, very few anime can even hold a candle to it, nevermind beat it, and it gets better. The animation is off the charts, it makes studio Ghibli films(that are always pointed out as prime examples of what great animation is), seem so amateurish in comparison. Also things aren't just animated, to be animated, they took their time/did research to animate things in such a realistic way. The way the waves move, how water splashes, the way a natural wind blows clothing or hair, ect. Hell the character's clothing actually moves with the characters exactly how they would if they were real. Then to top it off, the animation is "smooth", as in like perfectly smooth, which is something that was rarely the case back then even with the simplest animation sequences.

The music, and sound is amazing as well. It's clear such wasn't recorded in the US or Japan, because the 80s was the dark ages as far as sound quality goes(for both US, and Japan), unless you were a Hollywood blockbuster movie, which by the way, such movies used London concert halls to record the music. One of the studios working on this is a French company, which no doubt made life much easier on the music/sound front. The music its self is amazing, very memorable(understatement of the century), and is even used properly in emotional situation. Pretty much the entire soundtrack is awesome too, It's not like there's only 1 or 2 good songs, and the rest are meh. I will say, that a better overall soundtrack would not be seen, until the 2000s.

The plot is great(definitely something you don't expect from this era), and the main char are all pretty damn good, as are the villains. The main characters are smart, and each character gets a pretty equal amount of time to shine(It's very balanced). The villains while not super complex, have motives for doing things. With all this said, there are 2 characters that are somewhat annoying. They are nowhere near as annoying as people make them out to be, but they are still a bit annoying, to the point the show would've been slightly better without them in it. Mendoza has two sidekicks, that in pretty much every scene they're in, they are either complaining or fighting amongst each other. Luckily, they aren't in a whole lot of scenes, so it doesn't bog down the series much at all. Also it should be noted, that the scenes they are in, generally aren't very important scenes anyway, so their annoyance never ends up ruining/downgrading major scenes. The Sci-fi aspect gets a little out of hand near the very end of the series, but the ending is still pretty good.

People always cite the English dub as a negative with this anime, people are just grasping at straws at this point, trying to find something negative besides 2 annoying characters who get very little screen time lol. Is the English VA great, no, but is it actually bad, not really. The VAs could've had more range to their voices definitely, but considering this anime Isn't a emotional rollercoaster or even have many emotional scenes at all, It's not a big deal, infact It's barely even worth mentioning. The actual voices for the characters are pretty great too, so It's not like there's a bunch of awkward, annoying voices going around(the 2 sidekicks are the only characters with annoying voices in the entire series).

At the end of each ep is like a few minute documentary, which is pretty cool as well, and It's not just cheap picture stills/stock footage either, they actually went to these places to film the documentaries. It's only a few minutes worth after each ep, but It's still pretty sweet.