Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds

Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds is a Spanish–Japanese children's animated television series based on the classic 1844 Alexandre Dumas story of d'Artagnan and The Three Musketeers, produced by Spanish studio BRB Internacional, with animation by Japanese studio Nippon Animation, that was first broadcast on MBS in Japan in 1981–82.

Most of the characters in the series are anthropomorphizations of dogs, hence the title of the cartoon, although there are a few exceptions, most notably, Milady the cat and Dogtanian's two sidekicks Pip the mouse and Planchet the bear, among several others.

In 1985, BRB Internacional released a television film edited from the series entitled Dogtanian: Special. In 1989, they produced with Televisión Española and Thames Television a sequel series entitled The Return of Dogtanian. In 1995, they released a television film edited from the sequel series entitled Dogtanian: One For All and All For One. In 2021, Apolo Films (BRB International's cinema studio) and Cosmos Maya released a feature-length CGI film entitled Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds in cinemas.

All twenty-six episodes of Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds can be watched on the official YouTube channel set up by BRB Internacional.

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. 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. A year after its premiere, it was broadcast for the first time in Spain on Televisión Española's Primera Cadena on 9 October 1982. The partnership between BRB International and Nippon Animation worked so well, that they collaborated again to work on another successful animated series two years later called Around the World with Willy Fog.

Japanese team

Source:

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:

Lyrics: Kayama Yoshiko
Lyrics & arrangement: Katsuhisa Hattori
Sung by: Kusaka Marron
Chorus: Suginami Children Choir

Japanese ending:

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.
"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.
"Dogtanian and the Blue Falcon": The Muskehounds unmask the robber chief the dreaded Blue Falcon.
"The Shipwreck"
"The Jungle Adventure": Dogtanian and his friend Pip try to escape from the Blue Falcon and his pirates.
"Marco's Mission"
"The Impostor"
"Milady's Revenge"
"Dogtanian's Dream Comes True"

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. 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. 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. 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.

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.