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I was surfing YouTube and I found these amazing cartoon intros. I miss the days when they used to import and horribly dub cartoons from other countries, it's a weird kind of cultural learning for the brain of the childrens.

I apologize in advance for all the german, it's the only localization I could find for all these.



Heidi, Girl of the Alps
Okay, just take one look at this and tell me who directed it. If you can't get it in one guess you fail, I'm sorry. The interesting thing is that it wasn't only directed by Isao Takahata, but the scene design was done by Hayao Miyazaki himself and the character designs were done by Yoichi Kotabe. Yes, the very same Yoichi Kotabe who designed Mario and Pikachu (in some of their many incarnations anyway).

Holy shit! That's intimidating. This doesn't look like some of their best work of the era though. I think Sherlock Hound looks way better than this, actually. I really shouldn't say anything though, it's bad manners to nitpick at people with that much talent. Although one thing bugs me, what's with that last scene with Heidi on the hill? Who drew that?

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

I don't know about you guys, but I think this one looks fantastic. I could eat those backdrops up like a chocolate mousse. From the way it was done you might think this is a European production. It's not. You know who directed this one? Mamoru Oshii. That's right, the guy who made Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor. Now that I've told you, you're all like: "Damn! I should have known that! Look at all the birds in this thing! There's birds everywhere!"

Shunmao Monogatari Taotao
This is a weird one.  I looked it up on wikipedia and I'm not sure I trust it.  It says it was a co-production with Mushi Productions, which was Osamu Tezuka's animation studio after he left Toei.  This sounds a little fishy.  I don't know if this is the kind of project that Tezuka would want to do, and I don't recall ever reading about him working on something like this.  I can believe it's a Japanese-Chinese co-production, and it was apparently localized in Germany...but I don't know if I can say anything else for sure.


Other than that I think it looks great.  It's fluid and soft and has really neat use of live footage.  The typeface is really freaking cool too, how can you not love that?  Some of the animation in it is so segmented and smooth it feels like it was made with modern software!  That said though, some scenes look kind of weird.  I don't know if the part with the cranes taking flight really works for me.  Something about it just feels...not right.  I really like the character designs though, very simple and expressive.  It sure is sugary though.  This show looks like its an IV drip of pure sucrose.

Anyway, I thought those were cool.  I'll leave you with a live version of some of Yuji Ohno's Captain Future soundtrack performed by...some guys from Paris.  It's funky.