Ulysses 31
(Complete Collection)
(dr. Bernard Deyries, Kazuo Terada, Kyosuke Mikuriya, Tadao Nagahama 1980)
published in Empire No.66, Sydney, 2007
Much
of the retro anime currently on sale is a generous mix of
camp sentiments and hyper-stylised visuals. Ulysses
31 potentially outdoes them all. A Japanese-French co-production
based on the legend of Ulysses, it puts cultural mash-up
into overdrive. The storylines are Homer's Odyssey on board
the Battlestar Galactica, while the US voicing sounds like
an Aaron Spelling production. But the visual style is somewhere
between an 80s gay pantomime (all butch beard and angelic
figurines) and late-period Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Throw
in some gorgeous hand-painted backgrounds and 80's rock-disco
and you have the definitive precursor to Daft Punk's Interstellar
5555.
