Les mystérieuses cités d'or

Growing up in the 80's, I was witness to the one of the greatest networks for kids of my generation, Nickelodeon. Shows like Double Dare and You Can't Do That on Television owned the attention span of kids in my neighborhood. Among other shows was the Mysterious Cities of Gold. Nothing else like it was on television. It was among some of the best animated series of the 1980's. Now, many many years later, season 2 has arrived, sort of. Premiering in the foreign market in 2012, it finally hit the UK market 2 years later in 2014. Still, as of today, the North American market (US) has very little ways to watch it unless we find a way to view it online. Season 2 picks up where we left off back in the 1980's. With better production value and an interesting story, Season 2 is worth watching. However, without a network like Nickelodeon, the Mysterious Cities of Gold Season 2 has taken more than three years to find an American audience like it had with Season 1. If you are a fan of the original, I recommend you attempt to find it online. It will bring back childhood memories.

The original Mysterious Cities of Gold is a gem in animation and a beloved part of my childhood. The producers waited 30 years to do a sequel and it does not fully live up to the original. The most heartbreaking thing is the voice casting; they sound horrible. Tao had the husky voice and Esteban had the sweet high-pitched voice. What really grinds my gears is that Disney makes a huge effort in keeping their voice casting consistent with every generation yet this French production does not put in the same effort to maintain consistency.

There are other inconsistencies. Mysteries that had a basis in science and physics have been replaced by magic. The Golden Condor, for example does not operate the same way and the medallions also act differently.

Kokapetl is the most irritating character. Previously he served a useful purpose of warning everyone when danger was near. Here he is a loud squawking screaming chicken always in your face. He also interrupts during the documentaries. To top it off, he has his own short documentary following the educational part where he asks a question from something seen in that episode.

The story overall is not all bad. This could have been a better sequel if not for those dreaded points I mentioned. If you can get past those cringeworthy shortcomings, you will be able to enjoy this. The animation is very glossy aided by modern technology.

This should have been done in 1992 and then we would not have those problems mentioned here. The production would have been more consistent in all of its elements.

Who ever cast the voice actors needs removing from the industry, especially if they watched the original and thought these voices sounded anything alike. Esterban no longer sounds like a boy and Mendoza has lost his fatherly tone. Maybe if I hadn't just finished rewatching the original it might have been barely bearable, but it is unwatchable for me. Hopefully someone will one day sample the voices of the original and overlay it.

The original "The Mysterious Cities Of Gold" was such a core element of my childhood. Well before I'd ever heard the name "Indiana Jones" it was that series alone that sparked my lifelong love affair with both the treasure hunt genre, as well as ancient mythology. With that in mind, I do not take the task of appraising this sequel to that amazing story lightly.

This long-coming sequel series did a great many things right. First and foremost among them was simply getting made. The first time I ever saw this show, as a boy of maybe 5 or 6, I wanted more. Buried deep within me throughout my teenage years and then adulthood was a forgotten yearning for more of that enthralling story. Now that it has finally arrived, the sense of satisfaction is undeniable. Even with all it's flaws and subtle stylistic incongruities that make it feel like it's skewed just a bit from the story I remember, this new chapter was clearly made with the purest of intentions, by people who respect the original stories and wanted to do it, and it's fans, justice. These diligent efforts have certainly paid off and given us a compelling new story.

But, I feel I would not be doing justice if I didn't also note some of it's more distracting flaws.

First of all, the voice acting was, for the most part very good. The 2 main exceptions being Mendoza and Tao. Tao, in particular, now sounds like a whiny Kath Soucie character. In the original, he always sounded the most mature of the children and this was reflected a lot in his character. He'd grown up alone for many years on an island and this self-sufficience hardened him a lot I think and made him a little wiser in the realities of the world then a typical boy his age. In this series he just seems more like a whiny brat and is a little too trusting for me to mentally associate with the mistrustful hermit boy from the original. This new Tao feels like he was played by an adult actress, whereas in the original, I'd guess he was played by a teenage boy. A similar casting choice in this series would've worked much better.

Mendoza, on the other hand… it's not that he was portrayed poorly. It's just that in the original, Mendoza was all man. His voice had hutzpah. He was a strong "don't screw with me"-type leader, the kind of character you'd expect to be played by Brad Pitt or Russel Crowe in a live-action film. This was perfectly encapsulated in the original voice acting. The new voice actor makes a noble attempt, but he's just too… vanilla. I have a sense that his voice may actually be deeper then the original Mendoza, but it lacks the fire that the original did; the sense of command and perhaps also the sense of his remarkably quick intelligence. As the principal adult character in the story, the series really needs a strong Mendoza.

Otherwise, the voice casting was marvelous. I especially thought that the recreations of Sancho and Pedro were marvelously loyal to the original characters. And I love Cocoapettal's new cutesy-poo voice! It mightn't sound very parroty, but it is much better then the old-lady-with-hemorrhoids voice he had in the original series.

Another mis-step with this series was that the sci-fi side was a bit overdone in this series. First of all, the Mu bases now have things like holographic control screens & projectors? That is way beyond what we saw of their technology in the original show! I'm not saying it's implausible that they could've been so advanced, but the technology we see in this series is out of step with what was established in the original series. Worst of all, it feels more like these stylistic choices were made with an agenda to impress modern day kids with technology that is way more advanced then what they are used to, rather then having an organic progression of the story.

Also, the sci-fi aspects of this story were far more grandiose, and came far more quickly and easily then they did in the original. How many comparatively primitive machines the kids encounter on their way to the first city of gold? With rare exceptions like the Solaris and the condor, their highlights of their quest comprised of mostly of stone booby-traps and secret doors. It was about halfway through the series before they encountered the "Jade Mask" booby-trap, which was really just an arrangement of many simple stone piston devices. By contrast, only a few episodes in to this series we encounter a gigantic gold room that spins cyclonically and somehow manages to spell out a message in a manner that defies our modern grasp of science.

It's just too much too soon. This series was overloaded with super sci-fi, whereas the original had a wonderfully suspenseful subtlety to it's sci-fi side. Only once we met the Olmecs did that show really show us the true lengths it was going to take us to. The new series burns that suspense out in just a couple hours.

Finally, the "big twist" (if one could call it that) of this show was ridiculously drawn out. From the beginning I had my suspicions. By about halfway through Peking I was in no further doubt. And the series gives you sooo many glaringly obvious hints that there is absolutely zero shock when it is finally revealed. I cannot believe that their carrying this "mystery" over in to the next series. One can only hope that they don't try to keep up the pretense for more then a couple of episodes. It's an appallingly poor "mystery". Admittedly, though, there's a secondary twist that is quite clever and well-managed.

But once again, I really liked this series and I can't wait until they release series 3!

All the faults of current French animation : Destruction of the original work for political quotas, Wokism, Misuse of 3D, Horrible graphics, Poor animation, Incoherent script, Inability to make a mature series without Japanese presence, Feminism, No respect for the original material, Infantilization of the audience, Media hype masking incredible artistic poverty, Silliness, The proportions of the characters and the great condor are disproportionate, and the soundtrack is insignificant.

In short, I don't recommend watching this series, and urge people to go back to the magnificent 1982 series. The one by Jean Chalopin, Scott O'Dell and Soji Yoshikawa.