Taiyou no Ko Esteban

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)

Mendoza Main

Sasaki, Isao Japanese

Esteban Main

Nozawa, Masako Japanese

Zia Main

Koyama, Mami Japanese

Tao Main

Hori, Junko Japanese

Kraka Supporting

Kitamura, Kouichi Japanese

Marinche Supporting

Yoshida, Rihoko Japanese

Wayna Supporting

Genda, Tesshou Japanese

Menator Supporting

Tsujimura, Mahito Japanese

Sancho Supporting

Aono, Takeshi Japanese

Picchu Supporting

Uetake, Mako Japanese

Nishikubo, Mizuho Director, Episode Director

Bernard, Deyriès Director, Screenplay

Toriumi, Hisayuki Episode Director

Chalopin, Jean Script

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 ... live-action documentary segments in the end of each episode that teach the children to the basic events that took place at that era. Thus it entertaining and educational at the same time, two elements that usually conflict with each other when it comes to animated shows. I sort of see it as a great combination of a historical documentary such as the journeys of Christopher Columbus with a classic fictional adventure full of action and suspense, such as Treasure Island. Although there actually are anime made about both those titles around the same time, none were as captivating as TMCOG because they both felt too basic.

Despite its age, the production values are not bad at all. Although the character figures look rather simply drawn and have minimal shading on them, their motions are usually very dynamic in terms of performance (not frames per second) so your eyes are kept busy looking at something all the time. I am even willing to say most modern anime shows have far less things going on in each scene compared to this oldie, thus tend to be far easier to be bored if all you look at is frozen caricatures with a flapping mouth. Also, since none of the characters has superpowers you are guaranteed an interesting event no matter how simple it may appear to be. Steering a ship or climbing a mountain tends to be a dangerous task and the series takes its time to show how they need to organize in order to do it right. Whole episodes are spent in just having the characters sailing or walking, while at the same time flavouring them as personalities and making the simplest thing they do to appear hard, dangerous, and meaningful.

Sadly, the above doesn’t stand true all the way and in the second half there is way too much super technology going around to water-down the feeling of adventure. The characters will simply use their medallions to unlock gates nobody else can or fly with an airplane (made in ancient times!) to complete any task in a few seconds. They make it seem so simple and rushed, it loses its initial importance.

Regarding the sound part, I never watched the series in the original Japanese or French dub; just in Greek as a kid and in English as an adult. In both cases I can’t say they were very impressive. In fact, I could say they felt very colourless, childish and simple but then again it is a show aimed at children so no worries here. The music themes are very nifty and they tend to be very memorable. They have tunes that make them sound like they are from native Central America and the lyrics are full of adventure-inspiring words; so I say they are successful at what they set out to do.

The story is simply amazing if you see it as a whole. It combines both historical facts, has lots of adventure and mystery, has lots of character interaction, has lots of excitement and above all HAS ALMOST NO FILLERS! The main three heroes are kids who seek to find something important in the Incan ruins (each one has different goals though) and are supported by a crew of explorers who simply want to find gold and get rich. So there is variety in the motivations of its characters, something which usually leads to internal conflicts. The themes are also changing from time to time so you are again not getting the same atmosphere in all the episodes. Some of them can be about adventure, others about pacifism, others about greed, and so on. Some of them event have science fiction in them which may feel out of context a bit (makes the Incas to appear like they had 20th century technology) but I guess it is excused in a children’s adventure and since we already have all those weird Nazka theories.

What may feel tiresome is how the action is almost always very basic and any conflict is resolved in a rather cop-out manner. It tends to get boring if you are sure the heroes will find a way to get out of any danger without ever getting hurt. Also, some parts will feel unnecessary long and the payback will be just something you knew all along that would happen. But as I said, waiting for those live action segments just to see how all that fit in the story was keeping me interested no matter what was happening.

The characters will feel rather basic and stereotypical but they definitely get some sort of development along the way and everybody is given enough focus for you to know and like. Although they are all very simple as personalities and act rather cartoony (extreme personal quirks or traits), they are all a colourful bunch and I liked them for what they are. We get the usual high-spirited kids, the greedy adventurers, the stupid megalomaniac villains, the vengeful natives, but thanks to the variable themes of the story, they definitely manage to grow on you.

It is without doubt one of the best animated retro adventures of all times and I recommend it to everyone who wants some good old fashion excitement regarding treasure hunting and exploration.

And now for some excused scorings.
ART SECTION: 7/10
General Artwork 1/2 (basic)
Character Figures 1/2 (generic)
Backgrounds 2/2 (basic but enriched with live action footage)
Animation 2/2 (basic frames per second but lots of action)
Visual Effects 1/2 (basic)

SOUND SECTION: 6/10
Voice Acting 1/3 (childish and colorless)
Music Themes 3/4 (not great but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Sound Effects 2/3 (ok I guess)

STORY SECTION: 9/10
Premise 2/2 (interesting)
Pacing 1/2 (good to the most part but makes circles and stretches out at points)
Complexity 2/2 (combines many themes and elements)
Plausibility 2/2 (excused nicely with in-series logic)
Conclusion 2/2 (solid)

CHARACTER SECTION: 6/10
Presence 1/2 (generic)
Personality 2/2 (simple but well founded)
Backdrop 1/2 (generic and simplistic but it’s there)
Development 1/2 (childish but it’s there)
Catharsis 1/2 (childish but it’s there)

VALUE SECTION: 7/10
Historical Value 1/3 (still remembered by some as an interesting retro title)
Rewatchability 2/3 (high because of the good pacing and the variety in themes)
Memorability 4/4 (unforgettable)

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 7/10
Art 1/1 (looks nice)
Sound 1/2 (voice acting is bad but the music pieces are good)
Story 2/3 (good ideas that are mostly exploited properly)
Characters 3/4 (they are not anything special but are surely looked upon and become likable)

VERDICT: 7/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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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 !)

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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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).

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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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
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