Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds

Did You Know?

• In the English-language dubs, the names of Athos and Porthos were interchanged, making Athos the extrovert and Porthos the secretive noble.
• The 2021 CGI film Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds was released in UK cinemas on 25 June 2021.
• The sequel series The Return of Dogtanian was produced in 1989 by BRB Internacional, Televisión Española, and Thames Television, with animation by Wang Film Productions and Morning Sun Animation.

Production

Dogtanian originated from Claudio Biern Boyd's childhood love of literature, particularly works by Alexandre Dumas (père), Jules Verne, and others. After adapting Cantar del mío Cid as Ruy el pequeño Cid, he chose to adapt The Three Musketeers, setting the main characters as dogs. The species were defined by his imagination: Milady became a cat because Claudio disliked cats, and Richelieu became a fox in homage to a village where a fox raided henhouses. Dogtanian was made a beagle as a tribute to Charles M. Schulz's Snoopy. Pre-production was done in Spain, post-production at Nippon Animation in Tokyo. The series was directed in Spain by Luis Ballester and Claudio Biern Boyd, with the latter supervising the script. In Japan, Shigeo Koshi headed the department, and Shuichi Seki served as character designer. Claudio wrote the original Spanish scripts, which were translated into Japanese by Akira Nakahara, Taku Sugiyama, and Yoshihiro Kimura for animation. BRB's voice director Manuel Peiró then rewrote the dialogue to fit the Japanese animation for the final Spanish cut.

Episode list

The 26 episodes include titles such as "Dogtanians Journey," "Dogtanian Meets The Black Moustache," "Paris, The City of Dreams," and "The Three Invincible Musketeers." Later episodes cover events like "Juliette's Secret," "Juliette Kidnapped," "Dogtanian to the Rescue" (where the Cardinal and Count Rochefort try to capture Juliet), and "In Search For Juliet." The series concludes with "Dogtanian's Dream Comes True."

Broadcast

The series first aired in Japan on 20 of the 25 stations of the Japan News Network (TBS), with MBS as co-producer, on Fridays at 7pm. Ratings in the Kanto area were sluggish at 4%, leading MBS to withdraw from producing animated shows for that timeslot and Calpis to end sponsorship. It was replaced by Jarinko Chie. The series premiered in Spain in 1982 on TVE1, marking its European debut. It was sold to channels including RTP in Portugal, RAI in Italy, the BBC in the United Kingdom, and TF1 in France. In Brazil, it aired on Rede Manchete in 1984 as part of Clube da Criança, hosted by Xuxa Meneghel. The English dub was produced by Intersound USA in 1985, using American expatriates in Madrid. The BBC first broadcast it in the UK on 3 January 1985, and The Disney Channel aired it in the US from 1986 to 1988.

Home media

In the late 1980s, Video Collection International Ltd. released multiple episodes on VHS in the UK. Revelation Films released the series on DVD in Region 0: episodes 1–9 on 28 April 2003, episodes 10–15 on 25 August 2003, episodes 16–20 on 22 March 2004, and episodes 21–26 on 25 May 2004. A complete series boxset followed on 20 September 2004. The television films Dogtanian: Special and Dogtanian: One For All And All For One were released on 26 July 2004. In November 2010, an HMV-exclusive version containing both series and both films was released. The complete series was released on DVD in the US in 2012 by Oasis DVDs. The series is available on YouTube, Netflix, and ITVX in the UK. The original soundtrack, called Dartacan Soundtrack, can be downloaded from Amazon UK in MP3 format.