yes,you heard me correct,this is the infamouse tatsunoko anime version of Pinnochio which was dubbed here in the U.S by saban as "adventures of Pinnochio",i remember watching this as a kid on HBO back in 1992 on weekday mornings,and beleive me,this version of pinnochio was surprisingly insanley dark in tone.
many of the adventures and danger that pinnochio gets into in this version are very twisted and insane like with episode 5,he tried to take the life of a young boy's heart with an axe,and the 2 part episode storyline in episodes 7 and 8 where he dealed with a vampriss vampire woman who wanted children for blood,and the most tragic episode where he tried to save a boy in the river but ended up drowning in the river. and the episodes where pinnochio tried to get off devil island during the story arc where he was trying to find his father,
again,this version of pinnochio was very twisted compared to the campy disney pinnochio,the enemies he makes in the series like Jack(fox),whillie(weasle) and charlie(rat) who were cruel to him in the early episodes taking advantage of his gulliable simple personality some how later become friends (espescially the story arc where they constantly tried to escape from that wicked puppet master the second time pinnochio ran into him)
and of course pinnochio also has the ghost cricket by his side to constantly remind him when ever he's about to do something foolish (beleive me,he's far more annoying than his disney counter part jimminy cricket),also when pinnochio gets into seriouse trouble,he also has he guardian oak fairy to constantly remind him that he needs be on good terms by thinking before he acts before he can learn the true trials on how to become a real boy.
also the music (for the saban dub version,never seen the original) was wonderful and fits every mood of every tragic scenes in this show,animation has that cartoony americanize feel to it,but hey,what do you expect,this is something to be expected with most tatsunoko animes from the 70's.
overall,this was a very interesting twist on the classic pinnochio tale and reccommend it,this version should defentially not be taken for granted,as i said before,it deals with contact which teach moral vaules which can disturb younger kids.
