Taiyou no Ko Esteban (The Mysterious Cities of Gold)

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Esteban, Child of the Sun

Japanese: 太陽の子エステバン

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Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 39

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: May 1, 1982 to Feb 5, 1983

Premiered: Spring 1982

Broadcast: Unknown

Producers: DiC Entertainment

Licensors: None found, add some

Studios: Pierrot

Source: Novel

Genres: Adventure, Sci-Fi

Theme: Historical

Duration: 27 min. per ep.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 7.75¹ (scored by 5,632 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1112²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #5644

Members: 13,590

Favorites: 118

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Synopsis

1532. Esteban, age 12 is a foundling from Barcelona, with a mysterious power of ordering the Sun to appear, for which he is called "Child of the Sun." Upon the death of his adoptive father, Esteban learns he was rescued as a baby from a sinking ship in the ocean. The mysterious medallion that Esteban wears since ever has a trace somewhere in the New World, probably coming from the Mysterious Cities of Gold. Esteban leaves Spain to find his parents and find out who he is. On the way he meets Zia, an Inca girl who was kidnapped from her people years back and has exactly the same medallion as him. Later on, they are joined by Tao, a young Galapagos robinson, the last descendant of the Empire of Heva, an Empire said to have built the Cities of Gold. Following Coyolite, the shining star represented on their medallions, the three children travel through the unexplored New World, searching for the Cities of Gold, believing that this way is leading them to their lost parents.

(Source: ANN)

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Characters & Voice Actors

Mendoza

Main

Sasaki, Isao
Japanese

Esteban

Main

Nozawa, Masako
Japanese

Zia

Main

Koyama, Mami
Japanese

Tao

Main

Hori, Junko
Japanese

Wayna

Supporting

Marinche

Supporting

Yoshida, Rihoko
Japanese

Kraka

Supporting

Kitamura, Kouichi
Japanese

Menator

Supporting

Tsujimura, Mahito
Japanese

Sancho

Supporting

Aono, Takeshi
Japanese

Picchu

Supporting

Uetake, Mako
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Nishikubo, Mizuho

Director, Episode Director

Bernard, Deyriès

Director, Screenplay

Toriumi, Hisayuki

Episode Director

Chalopin, Jean

Script

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Opening Theme

"Boukensha-tachi (冒険者たち)" by Pal

Edit

Ending Theme

"Itsuka Dokoka de Anata ni Atta (いつかどこかであなたに会った)" by Pal

Reviews

Oct 23, 2019

mouthpiece

Recommended

Yet another animated series I watched as a kid and had no idea it was to the most part made by Japanese people. Then again, it was so good to be made by any other country so that pretty much explains it. Technically, The Mysterious Cities of Gold (TMCOG) was the One Piece of anime back in the early 80’s. It is a children’s adventure regarding seeking treasure, discovering ancient civilizations, uncovering secrets, and occasionally using relics to fight their way through various challenges and opponents. It is partially based on actual history, the age of exploration during the charting of America, and even has ...

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May 21, 2015

Sylvidres

Recommended

One of the best animated I've seen ... It's my childhood bitch to him I became interested in the pre-Columbian civilizations and history in general ! The senario is really great, one path he looked really top (presence of the Nazca lines, ...). I really committed to this series throughout my childhood. Too bad the incompetant have soiled the image of the series trying to make a Season 2 (especially not if !)

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Dec 28, 2009

zawa113

Recommended

Given that a lot of reviewers admit right off the base that it has nostalgic value for them, the first thing I'm going to say is that this show does not for me. I wasn't born until 1988 and I didn't even get cable until late 2001, I had no way to watch this show until hulu and DVD. So, this is a review from someone who did not have nostalgic factor involved as a disclaimer before I even start this. Now, onto the review!

I'll start with the weaker elements first, the animation did not age particularly well and the voice acting often comes across ... as stiff. Now, it's pretty cool that they actually used kids to voice the kids, but they're not terribly good most of the time and not having a strict script resulted in saying way too much at certain times and having it come off rather stiff and forced a lot. I am thinking this is simply the era it was dubbed, I've heard other 80s cartoon dubs in my life before and a lot of them sound similar, like America did not learn how to dub well until the 90s. Robotech was a rare exception for me where I quite liked most of the voices and voice acting, so good acting has come out of the 80s, but I'm not going to say this was a particularly good dub. I did eventually get used to the voices, but certain animations on screen would cause a syndrome in which the characters would be forced to say incredibly obvious things like "watch out for the rocks!" while the rocks are already falling or make several characters obsess over the same event for way too many lines ("wow, I can't believe we dodged all those falling rocks! There were so many!" "Yeah, that was close!" "Is everyone ok?" "Yes, we're all ok! I'm glad none of us got hurt!" "So am I!"). I'm fairly sure a lot of these instances had to come from the animation itself, which was another thing that didn't necessarily age too well. The backgrounds look nice most of the time and for its time, it's actually pretty good, but fight scenes are pretty poorly animated and you can just see that a lot of animation was reused as the same guy climbs up a ladder right behind his identical twin. The animation really felt like it limited the series too me, I often felt that they had to write around it and came up with scenarios that required less animation.
The music is pretty nice, but certainly comes off as 80s sounding with some synthesizer stuff mixed in everywhere. You either like it or you don't, but it did fit the series pretty well.

But onto the actual reason for watching, the story and characters. Now, I'm not sure if this was a requirement of all 80s and 90s adventure type series, but there are several worthless characters who just tag along for what I can only imagine is to annoy the audience, and here we have two and a half, the two idiot Spaniards who's entire mission it is to almost kill everyone by being stupid and getting them in trouble and the most useful thing they do the entire series is find a cave behind a waterfall while spending the rest of it demanding gold and being useless and whiney and a little bird who is actually useful in warning of danger, but it's voice is just annoying as all hell. While I can forgive the bird (it is kinda the team pet), those two idiots are pretty much worthless to the point where their employer says so and these two are there the entire series while contributing nary a drop to the story or action and they're so annoying they can't pull off funny either.
For me, the best character was probably Mendolza, you could never quite tell who he was siding with, the side that gets the gold or the side that follows the kids on adventures, and it was interesting to second guess what he was going to do. Even after all this time, he still felt interesting, he did age well.
As for the kids themselves, they obviously are the main focus of the series here, well they tended to vary in how interesting they were. It would often depend on what the episode was focusing on, but for the most part, Tao stole the spotlight for me while Zia stood in the corner shouting "Oh, Esteban!" while being kidnapped or held at...sword point (I suppose you would call it) way too often (I'm assuming because of animation limits) in need of rescue. Esteban could be pretty interesting too, he showed he had some brains and did some clever and unexpected things, but he can't bargain with bad guys very well nor outsmart them. As soon as any given bad guy threatened Zia or Tao, he'd instantly give in to whatever there demands are. On the rare occasion he did manage to outsmart one, it was quite fun to watch. Oddly enough, the bad guys themselves weren't terribly smart, they often do the same stupid tactics and are easily fooled by falling rocks, they all just happened to be extremely good at capturing Zia and holder her at sword point. It only helped the bad guys that the animation forced a syndrome in which no one could look behind them to notice someone obviously about to kidnap Zia until she went "Oh, Esteban, help!" even when there were obviously bad guys in the room, all armed with swords, standing closest to Zia. I was unable to suspend my belief here when it happened almost once an episode.

But it all boils down to one thing for me: is this a good adventure series? And I would have to say that yes, it is. The locales were fun and imaginative while still being based in reality and some ridiculously unlikely dangerous thing was on the verge of happening every other second to spur the plot along (to quote family guy: "and then he was attacked by a pots and pans robot!!") and the episodes just flew by. Despite spending a bit too long talking about stupid stuff, a lot of stuff happened each episode, so pacing was fast. I liked it all until the sudden appearance of a certain group towards the end that just seemed out of place within the show, annoyingly, this group was there from that episode pretty much until the end of the series. It didn't ruin it, but it did annoy me at least.
If you can ignore things like animation, long winded scentences about what you already see happening, and some really stupid characters, it's still an enjoyable ride and most of it is pretty good. It was, however, overly predictable with the exception of Mendolza who could always be counted on to add a bit of spice to the show in any given situation. I'd still call it good, but would probably most recommend it to people who find nostalgia in it, like adventure shows a lot, like 80s shows, or are going to show it to a younger child, sibling, niece/nephew, etc. The educational segments at the end sometimes contain some mild nudity, but they really helped add to the world and were usually very interesting (a few sucked, maybe 4 out of 39).

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Poll: Mysterious Cities of Gold Episode 1 Discussion watkinzez - Jun 20, 2010	4 replies	by Daveman75 »» Jan 31, 2:39 AM
Poll: Taiyou no Ko Esteban Episode 4 Discussion tr25a3 - Nov 30, 2019	0 replies	by tr25a3 »» Nov 30, 2019 2:54 PM
Poll: Taiyou no Ko Esteban Episode 3 Discussion Bubcus93 - Jan 26, 2014	1 replies	by tr25a3 »» Nov 29, 2019 3:47 PM
Poll: Taiyou no Ko Esteban Episode 2 Discussion tr25a3 - Nov 29, 2019	0 replies	by tr25a3 »» Nov 29, 2019 7:04 AM
MAJOR SPOILERS!!: dankest history channel anime RedPlaty - May 28, 2019	0 replies	by RedPlaty »» May 28, 2019 5:07 PM

Taiyou no Ko Esteban

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Mendoza

Esteban

Zia

Tao

Wayna

Marinche

Kraka

Menator

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Taiyou no Ko Esteban

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