Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds

Plot

The story, set in 17th-century France, follows a young Dogtanian (D'Artagnan (ダルタニヤン) in the 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'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.

Cast

English version

Aramis – Eddie Frierson

Juliette – Rebecca Forstadt

Pip Squeak – Steve Kramer

Widimer – Mike Reynolds

Cardinal Richelieu – Kerrigan Mahan

Queen Anne – Robin Levenson

King Louis – Simon Prescott

Narrator – Tom Wyner

Dogtanian – Cam Clarke

Porthos – Dan Woren

Athos – Michael Sorich

Blue Falcon – Robert Axelrod

Planchet – Milton James

Pig Guard – Richard Epcar

Count Rochefort – Dave Mallow

Monsieur Treville – Michael Forest

Milady – Edie Mirman

Rochefort's henchman – Theodore Lehmann

Duke of Buckingham – Tom Wyner

Production

Dogtanian stemmed from Claudio Biern Boyd's love for literature. As a child, before television arrived in Spain (the first broadcast was in 1956), he enjoyed reading works by 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 an original series instead, based on his favorite 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 set as a fox in homage of a village he spent summers for years where the local villagers complained about a fox that raided henhouses 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.

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. On 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 while Shuuichi Seki served as the series' character designer.

Adapting the novel was complicated, mostly due to its length and tragedy. BRB's scripwriting theme created a "clean and polished" product, removing most 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.

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 children, 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.

Japanese team

Source:

Production company: Nippon Animation

Executive producers: Endo Shigeo, Junzo Nakajima

Director: Taku Sugiyama, Shigeo Koshi

Screenplay: Akira Nakahara, Taku Sugiyama, Yoshihiro Kimura

Music: Katsuhisa Hattori

Character design: Shuuichi Seki

Storyboard: Taku Sugiyama, Shigeo Koshi, Fumio Kurokawa, Suzuki, Baba Ken, Saito Shuhokaku

Layout supervision: Koji Mori

Animation director: Takao Ogawa

Art director: Kobayashi Shichiro, Kazue Ito

Color: Takasago Yoshiko

Animation: Sakai Shunichi, Kimura Keiichiro

Additional animation: Anime R

Overseas adaptation

Production company: BRB Internacional S.A

Executive producer: Claudio Biern Boyd

Director: Luis Ballester

Dialogue adaptation: Manuel Peiro

Music editing: Cabum Magister

Sound technicians: Eduardo Fernández, Alfonso Pino, José María San Mateo, José Esquirol

Sound: Estudios Exa, S.A.

Lab: Fotofilm Madrid, S.A.

Editing: Soledad López

Editing assistant: Alicia Saavedra

Effects: Luis Castro

English adaptation

Directed by: Tom Wyner, Robert Barron, Byrd Ehlmann, Dave Mallow & Doug Stone

Written by: Tom Wyner, Jason Klassi, Garry Morris, Melesio Rosales, Dayna Barron, Byrd Ehlmann

Music

Spanish opening and ending

Composed by: Guido and Maurizio de Angelis

Sung by: Popitos

Japanese opening: ワンワン三銃士 (Wanwan Sanjūshi)

Lyrics: Kayama Yoshiko

Lyrics & arrangement: Katsuhisa Hattori

Sung by: Kusaka Marron

Chorus: Suginami Children Choir

Japanese ending: そういうお主は？ (Sōyū onushi wa?)

Lyrics: Kayama Yoshiko

Lyrics & arrangement: Katsuhisa Hattori

Sung by: Kusaka Marron

English opening and ending

Edited by: Cabum Magister

Subpublished by: Southern Pictures Music Inc.

Sung by: Hilary Mather, Elissa Mather, Ted Mather

Recorded and re-mixed at: Fizz Sound Creation, Intersound Inc.

Episode list

"Dogtanians Journey"

"Dogtanian Meets The Black Moustache"

"Paris, The City Of Dreams"

"The Three Invincible Musketeers"

"Monsieur Treville, Captain Of The Musketeers"

"Dogtanian Meets His Match"

"Dogtanian Meets The King"

"Juliette's Secret"

"Juliette Kidnapped"

"The Great Getaway"

"Dogtanian's Trance"

"Dogtanian to the Rescue": The Cardinal and Count Rochefort try to capture Juliet and find themselves in trouble with the Muskehounds.

"Dogtanian Meets Monsieur Pip"

"In Search For Juliet": The Cardinal and Count Rochefort do their best to come between Dogtanian and his friend Juliet.

"Dogtanian Saves the Day": Dogtanian and Juliet keep guard over the Queen during her secret meeting with the English duke.

"Daggers And Diamonds"

"The Journey To England"

"The Chase": Dogtanian and the Muskehounds race to get the Queen's necklace back to her in time and foil the Cardinal's plans to denounce her.

"Dogtanian is Put to the Test": Dogtanian has to win three races before he can become a full Musketeer.

Accolades

Bronze medal at the 1982 International Film & TV Festival of New York.

Honorable mention at the 7th international 'Child of Our Time' festival, Milan.

TP de Oro award for most popular children's series.

Special award in the International Contest for Children & Youth of Gijón.

Broadcast

The series first aired in Japan 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. Unlike in certain markets, ratings in Japan during its first run were sluggish, reporting only 4% ratings in the Kanto area. Due to poor viewer performance, MBS withdrew from producing animated shows 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. The series competed with Ninja Hattori-kun, and despite competition from similar shows at the time, merchandising was released in Japan.

The series premiered in Spain in 1982, and it only aired on TVE1 due to scheduling problems. This marked the premiere of the series in Europe. Before long, it was sold to numerous TV channels around the world, including RTP in Portugal, RAI in Italy, the BBC in the United Kingdom and TF1 in France, to high ratings. In Brazil, it aired on Rede Manchete in 1984 as part of the children's show Clube da Criança when Xuxa Meneghel was its host. It was repeated until 1986 on other children's programs shown on the network. The success of the show in Brazil 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!.

The series was dubbed into English by Intersound USA in 1985. Unusually for such a dub, it was made in Madrid by a group of American expatriates who lived there because of the Torrejón Air Base, which made it easier for BRB to find American voice talents. As well as dubbing the TV series, BRB also produced a TV film, which was again dubbed by Intersound USA. The series was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on the BBC on January 3, 1985 and on The Disney Channel in the United States from 1986 to 1988.

Home media

UK VHS releases

In the United Kingdom during the late 1980s, Video Collection International Ltd. released multiple episodes of Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds on VHS after its broadcast on the BBC from 1985 to 1987, and its reruns on ITV from 1988 to 1990.

DVD releases

The series has been released on DVD in the UK by Revelation Films in Region 0 format:

Episodes 1–9: 28 April 2003

Episodes 10–15: 25 August 2003

Episodes 16–20: 22 March 2004

Episodes 21–26: 25 May 2004

Dogtanian - The Complete Series Boxset: 20 September 2004

The television films Dogtanian: Special and Dogtanian: One For All And All For One: 26 July 2004.

In November 2010, a version that contains both series and both television films was released exclusively to HMV. The complete boxset was later made available at other retailers.

The complete series was released on DVD in the U.S. in 2012 by Oasis DVDs.

Streaming

The series can be found on different platforms such as YouTube, Netflix and ITVX in the United Kingdom.

Soundtrack

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 is referred to as Dartacan, his Spanish name, and the theme is sung with high voices, similar to the original opening, and rendered in a style reminiscent of the French dub. It includes 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.

Television film

In 1985, BRB Internacional released a television film edited from the series entitled Dogtanian: Special.

Sequel

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. The outsourcing had changed a few years earlier due to a price hike at Nippon Animation. 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.

Film

BRB Internacional was planning a new feature-length CGI film and was originally planned to be released in 2016, but was delayed for unknown reasons. In April 2019, Apolo Films, their new cinema studio, took over production of the film. The film was written by Doug Langdale and directed by Toni Garcia. The film was released in theaters under the title Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds. 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.

The film was released in the United Kingdom on 25 June 2021.