I was very very young when this animation was on TV, 7 or 8 years old I guess. It did not look like any other animation I had seen before and I had no idea what the plot was, though I always somehow caught it up on the screen by luck, thanks to its marvellous generique music. All that I remembered ever was that music, some strange looking characters related to a fictional planet, matryoshka doll-like children, a robot-like large vehicle and funny and clumsy pirates. These small bits and pieces of images could never add up to a story on my mind and yet I was always curious about what it was about, without even knowing the original name of the animation, and translating the turkish name of the show to english, which happens to be "lost worlds", never returned any result.
About 20 years later, I finally found it and today I watched the very first two episodes. I had all this time thought that despite this obsessive search of the animation, I would be somehow disappointed had I ever watched it as an adult, and that maybe I should not ruin those childhood memories, should only listen to its music from time to time, but no, today I was convinced that it has one of the strongest stories ever to exist in an animation, a mainstream animatıon even. And the characterizations are absolutely unique.
"Ever since the time of the Great Cataclysm, the Arkadians have lived deep in the center of the earth. They believed they were the only survivors of this great devastation. Their civilization thrived under the power of their sun, the Shagma... until it began to fail. In desperation, the children of Arkadia broke the law and entered the forbidden Archives searching for a solution. What they discovered gave them hope. Anxiously, they used their special powers and created a messenger to the people above. They named her Arkana..."
So the story basically starts as above, Arkana is later joined by Bob and Rebecca, two children from the surface world, Bic and Bac, a pair of Arkadian pangolins, and Spartacus, a wanderer who vows to help Arkana, and so does their journey to find the long lost and forgotten secrets of the city of Arkadia and its sun Shagma begins.
***
Certainly the way to the nostalgia does not consist of one single image from the past, as you move along, you remember those alike. And how can I write about childhood animation obsessions without mentioning Clementine? It was certainly different from and much more remembered than Les Mondes Engloutis, but the animation style, the impact of music and the impact of images are the similarities between these two French animations of the year 1985.
And just to touch the hearts of those who wanted to fly on that goose, or was imitating japanese while listening to the generique song, or wondered how to land softly on a cloud that looked like a giant pillow, comes the following:
It was a time when we believed that everything would be great, that we would be always together and happy, and yes, I miss it.
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we will always be together and happy!!!
ReplyDeleteright?
mais bien sure !!
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