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The Children of the Sun arrive on Region 1 DVD.

Does anyone remember Nickelodeon as it used to be? No, I don’t mean back when they ran ‘60s shows during Nick at Nite. I don’t mean SNICK and the Big Orange Couch. I mean before that – back when Nickelodeon was a haven of, well…badly-dubbed anime.

I remember this era better than I should. I would have been quite young at the time, somewhere between about four and seven years old, and the memories probably stick with me more because television was a special treat as opposed to anything I really liked. My mom would take me over to my grandparents’ house for a couple of hours, and I would sit in their yellow-carpeted TV room – a big handful of peanut M&Ms all to myself – and trawl back and forth between the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. The Disney Channel was exciting because it was “premium,” but all the truly strange, weird stuff was on Nickelodeon. I understand now that it was all imported programming, but at the time, I was just taken in by the peculiar, half-real, half-puppet worlds of Canadian shows like Today’s Special, the never-patronizing wonder of miniature UK serials like Paddington Bear and Bagpuss, and perhaps most outrageous of all, the imported anime where nobody’s mouth matched what they said: David the Gnome, The Little Prince, and other series whose names I no longer recall.

One such series was The Mysterious Cities of Gold, which for years I recalled only as a set of disassociated images (taken, it would seem, almost entirely from the opening title sequence). Unlike David the Gnome, which I had recorded on to off-air tape, Cities of Gold was dangerous and unpredictable, mixing history with science fiction long before I knew what science fiction was. Probably, I never taped the show because it secretly scared me just a bit (and boy, was I easily scared). So imagine my delight to see it finally available on region 1 DVD, all together in a single set, ready for me to rediscover. Break out the peanut M&Ms – it’s time for old-school anime.

Watching this series “again for the first time,” it’s easy to see how it confused or even worried me at five or six years old. The lead character is Esteban, a young Spanish boy claimed to be the “Child of the Sun,” who is told of his special destiny and brought to South America by Captain Mendoza, a conquistador with his heart set on discovering the legendary Seven Cities of Gold. With Esteban comes Zia, a little Mayan girl, and Tao, the last of the people of Hiva (an Atlantis-like civilization). Together, they are forever running from danger to danger, looking for clues to the Cities of Gold and – in the case of Esteban and Zia – searching for their long-lost fathers. It’s a simple premise, but one which actually lends itself more naturally to an adolescent adventure series: there’s a lot of violence in Cities of Gold, with routine battles in which soldiers and native warriors routinely, if bloodlessly, die. A great deal of the story’s continuing narrative hinges on the greed of Mendoza, his rival Gomez, and his comic-relief assistants Sancho and Pedro, none of which Esteban really understands. Tao has lost his people, Esteban has lost his sense of security, and Zia spends an awful lot of time being upset and afraid and worried for the native peoples of South America. Despite the narrow escapes and ancient secrets and a giant, golden, mechanical condor, this isn’t always the happy-go-lucky adventure series the opening titles lead you to expect.

Cities of Gold is even stranger when you consider the source on which it is based: The King’s Fifth, a 1966 adolescent historical novel by Scott O’Dell, who wrote a lot of similar material for kids and young adults. (His first and most famous book, Island of the Blue Dolphins, is required reading in a lot of school systems.) As one might expect, only the bare tenements of the novel made it to the TV adaptation: Esteban and Zia are both teenagers in the novel, Mendoza is an outright maniac, and while he does have two comic-relief assistants, the names of Sancho and Pedro seem to have been taken from Mendoza’s ship, the San Pedro. A couple of short visual set pieces found their way into the series, but that’s about as far as it goes. The surprise here is how outright vicious O’Dell’s book; unlike his TV counterpart, Mendoza will go to any length to get his gold, and most of the main characters are dead by the novel’s end. (Don’t worry, Esteban only ends up in jail!). The premise of the book from page one is how men are corrupted and destroyed by greed. Who decided this would make great children’s TV fare?

With all that in mind, Cities of Gold sounds like it should be a singularly dramatic experience. Occasionally, it is. But with the plot stretched out over 39 episodes, even allowing for a significant, sci-fi shift in proceedings toward the last third, things start to feel really, really thin. There are only so many times you can watch Esteban, Zia and Tao be chased by angry Amazons/Olmecs/Mayans/Spaniards before you’ve pretty much had enough, and regrettably, that sort of thing makes up a considerable bulk of the series. Worse, there only seem to be four or five pieces of instrumental music for the entire series, some of which are paired with hideously inappropriate visuals, and instead of using the episodic nature of the story to provide thrilling cliffhangers, the creators end nearly every installment with a visual assurance that Esteban and his gang have made it through their latest conflict and are safely back on the road to the Emerald Ci…I mean, the Cities of Gold. I’m sure it is meant to calm the child viewer, but it saps the tension straight out of the narrative. And don’t even get me started on the goofy English dubbing…

The Mysterious Cities of Gold comes as a 6-DVD set from Fabulous Films. The 4:3 transfers look about as good as they can without going back to the original masters; I believe fans assisted in filling in the gaps made by overseas cuts, and there are only one or two places in the entire set where you can tell material has been “re-attached.” Colors are strong, with lots of reds and yellows used throughout, and overall, it’s a very comfortable viewing experience. My only complaint was with the caption card used at the end of each episode, to preview the following installment; was there no cleaner version of that card available?

Sound, on the other hand, is a less pleasant prospect. Perhaps my single biggest disappointment was in the lack of Japanese or French language tracks (seeing as how Cities of Gold was a French/Japanese co-production). Instead, we are left to the 1980s English dub-tracks, which – as I said – can be pretty annoying to the ear. Unfortunately, you must add to that the consideration of the music. I don’t know where Fabulous Films found their audio tracks, but the incidental music is frequently both warped and tinny, sounding flat in the same way you often get on old, extended-play VHSes. You get used to it, sure, but it’s never pretty.

There are no subtitles or closed captions included, which is a real shame.

Before I turn to the supplementary material of each disc in the set, I should probably mention the single biggest special feature: the 39 miniature documentaries, one for each episode. At three to five minutes each, consisting entirely of narrated live-action footage, these were designed to follow the (roughly) 25-minute episodes, and many are specifically geared to address an issue or topic seen in that week’s story. One week you might get a miniature history lesson in the defeat of the Aztecs; the next, a scenic tour around Machu Picchu. Sometimes the documentaries are presented at just such a detached level, while others are more personal, such as an encounter with a Japanese fisherman, or a look at modern Mexico City. Perhaps my favorite is the one where a small group of “villagers” go up a mountain to perform an arcane ritual, which involves sacrificing a chicken before a stone idol; yes, you do see the priest chop into the chicken, and yes, you do get a couple of seconds of a headless poultry flapping around on the ground. It’s both morbid and fascinating at the same time, helped immensely by the omnipresent narrator (“It seems a nasty, barbaric thing to do…if nothing else, I hope the children have a good meal”).  Despite these English narration tracks, I don’t think the documentaries ever ran on Nickelodeon; they were probably prepared for the English-language broadcasts in Canada, and on the BBC.

Disc one includes a variety of special features, starting off with a text-based Series Synopsis. After that, Deleted Scenes (3 mins. combined) features four silent sequences from Episodes 1 and 4, all taken from the Japanese version of the show. One is only two seconds long; clearly, these are less deleted scenes and more cuts made for the international version of the series. I would assume they are silent because Fabulous Films did not license the Japanese soundtrack.

Alternate Intro Sequence – Episode 1 (3 mins.) is a very slightly different opening; a casual viewer wouldn’t even grasp the difference, I think.  Realtime Storyboard Sequence – Episode 1 (2 mins.) and Realtime Storyboard Sequence – Episode 2 (1 min.) are more interesting; they split the screen into two halves, with a genuine storyboard sheet on the left and the boxed episode footage on the right. One small issue is that this technique renders both page and footage fairly small on the screen, so you need a big TV to really enjoy them. Finally, a gallery of black-and-white Original Episode Production Drawings are included for machines, ships, props, sets and character designs from episodes 1 – 5.

Disc two is headlined by the Interview with Dubbing Cast (29 mins.), a new featurette shot in Montreal in 2007. Howard Ryshpan (dub director and voice of Mendoza) is the main interview here, carrying the story of how The Mysterious Cities of Gold came to be prepared for the English audience, and how the dub process actually works. There are also interviews worked in with Adrian Knight (Tao), Shiraz Adam (Esteban), and Janice Chaikelson (Zia), as well as fan Tim Skutt, who – while a bit of an awkward speaker on camera – did a lot of research to piece together a “complete and unedited” version of the series, which he distributed as a fan DVD set (and which Fabulous Films, very graciously, took in as the basis of their commercial release). It’s a nice little talking heads piece and shouldn’t be missed. This is followed by a Dubbing Cast Recreation (2 mins.), in which a scene from an early episode is re-dubbed by the cast;  Ryshpan and Chaikelson’s voices are dead-on, but it’s clear Adam and Knight are now long past puberty! A Dubbing Cast List rounds out this section.

Next, there is another Realtime Storyboard Sequence – Episode 13 (2 mins.), and Original Character Drawings is another in the series of galleries. Character Biographies for the Cast actually details the main characters of the series (which is a little odd), while Voice-Over Cast Biographes returns to the four main English dub actors. Rather charmingly, none of the three children are actors today; Shiraz Adam, for instance, is in pharmaceuticals! 

Disc three features an Interview with Mitsuru Kaneko, which is sadly just a short series of text-based question-and-answers with one of the original Japanese creators. There is also a Realtime Storyboard Sequence – Episode 19 (2 mins.), an Episode Stills Gallery (why?), and a shortOpening Sequence Gallery.

Disc four includes The Story of the Production (36 mins.), the other major featurette. This traces the origin of the actual series (as opposed to merely the English dub), focusing primarily on an interview with creator/writer/producer Jean Chalopin. Chalopin is very frank about his concepts and goals for the series, the lack of support from French television stations, his plans for a continuation of the series, and his love of the fans. His comments are supplemented by interviews with director Bernard Deyriès and composer Shuki Levy, who also seem quite pleased to be recognized for their work. It’s a good featurette overall, even if the accents are sometimes a bit tricky (and remember there are no subtitles!). Production Crew Biographies covers many of the major players in the series’ production, while Original Drawings – Machines and Props is, yes, another black-and-white gallery. The lazily-named Various Images appears to focus on actual color animation cels – why not just call it that?

Disc five boasts another Deleted Scene – Episode 32 (2 mins.), this time with actual English sound, so why was it not included in the show proper? (Perhaps a version of high-enough quality could not be found?) Original Episode Production Drawings cover episodes 29 – 33. The Original French Sales Brochure and Original Japanese/English Sales Brochure are of reasonable interest, but they’re the sort of thing that really should have been included as PDF extras instead.

Disc six includes yet another Realtime Storyboard Sequence – Episode 35 (2 mins.), Original Episode Production Drawings for episodes 34 – 38, an Opening Theme Tune Karaoke (2 mins.) which is exactly what it sounds like, and text-based DVD Credits.

To round the set off, a 32-page collector’s booklet is included in the DVD case, with 39 full episode synopses, a character guide, and color art from the series.

(NOTE: If you purchase the Deluxe Version of this set, you will receive the exact same discs and content, but with the addition of “a 12-page historical details booklet,” “8 exclusive postcards,” and a “double-sided fold-out poster” – all for almost twice the cost of the standard set. Pop Syndicate was not provided with the Deluxe Version, so we cannot review these extra materials.)

It was quite something to revisit The Mysterious Cities of Gold with only a few loose images and a snippet of theme tune residing in my memory. Overall, I can’t deem it an entire success: the story takes far too long to develop, and as with so much English-dubbed anime of the ‘80s, most of the voices are enough to make you want to bust your TV set with an axe. Trying to watch all 39 episodes in a limited timeframe is certainly not an adventure I would lightly undertake again. Still, I can certainly see why the series has its cult status and dedicated fans; for that audience, this is an excellent set and well worth the cost. For everyone else, I recommend a rental – sometimes, what we remember fondly from our childhood is best left as such.

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