Production
Dogtanian stemmed from Claudio Biern Boyd's love for literature. As a child, before television arrived in Spain (the first broadcast was in 1956), he enjoyed reading works by authors such as Jules Verne, Emilio Salgari, Alexandre Dumas (père), Karl May and Edmondo de Amicis, while imagining the situations in the books he read. By the time he was part of the newly-formed BRB Internacional, after signing important contracts with animation studios for broadcast and merchandising, Claudio decided to do an original series instead, based on his favorite childhood books.
After adapting Cantar del mío Cid as Ruy el pequeño Cid, he adapted Dumas' The Three Musketeers and set the main characters as dogs, with the starting point being a two-part Salvat encyclopedia on them, costing 25pts. The species were defined according to his imagination. For the villains, Milady was set as a cat, an animal Claudio hated, and Richelieu was set as a fox in homage of a village he spent summers for years where the local villagers complained about a fox that raided henhouses at night. As of 2021, Claudio owned a bulldog, which, in the series, was the species of Richelieu's guard. Moreover, Dogtanian was chosen as a beagle in homage to Charles M. Schulz' character Snoopy, for which Claudio had an affinity.[4][1]
As with his early series, pre-production work was done in Spain and post-production work in Japan at Nippon Animation's facilities in Tokyo.[5] On the Spanish side, the series was directed by Luis Ballester and Claudio Biern Boyd, with the latter supervising the script, while in Japan, Shigeo Koshi was at the helm of the department while Shuuichi Seki served as the series' character designer.[1]
Adapting the novel was complicated, mostly due to its length and tragedy. BRB's scripwriting theme created a "clean and polished" product, removing most of the dark undertones of the original novel: the novel was set in a chaotic period of French history, with violence happening throughout. The Musketeers in the original work had the following characteristics: Athos was an alcoholic, Porthos the lover of a woman married to a rich man, whose only way to marry was with the death of her husband. D'Artagnan himself was an adulterer, courting his two loves, Milady and Constance. Much of these characteristics were removed from BRB's adaptation.[1]
The choice of anthropomorphic characters was cheaper and removed traces of violence found in the original work. This style was not new for Nippon Animation, having done several animated series before where the characters were all anthropomorphic animals. These were made as such to be more attractive to children, expressing the way of being of the characters in a more direct manner. Dogtanian and the Muskehounds are portrayed with more "rounded" characteristics while the villains, especially Richelieu, were drawn in a more aggressive style. Milady, a cat, also represents the animal's association with stealth and espionage.[1]
The series was produced in 1981 by BRB International and Nippon Animation[1] and was first broadcast by MBS in Japan, where it began airing on 9 October of that year.[6] A year after its premiere, it was broadcast for the first time in Spain on Televisión Española's Primera Cadena on 9 October 1982.[7] The partnership between BRB International and Nippon Animation worked so well, that they collaborated again to work on another successful animated series two years later called Around the World with Willy Fog.
Japanese team
Source:[6]
- Production company: Nippon Animation
- Executive producers: Endo Shigeo, Junzo Nakajima
- Director: Taku Sugiyama, Shigeo Koshi
- Screenplay: Akira Nakahara, Taku Sugiyama, Yoshihiro Kimura
- Music: Katsuhisa Hattori
- Character design: Shuuichi Seki
- Storyboard: Taku Sugiyama, Shigeo Koshi, Fumio Kurokawa, Suzuki, Baba Ken, Saito Shuhokaku
- Layout supervision: Koji Mori
- Animation director: Takao Ogawa
- Art director: Kobayashi Shichiro, Kazue Ito
- Color: Takasago Yoshiko
