The Mysterious Cities of Gold/Trivia

• Ascended Fanboy: Shiraz Adam, the VA for Esteban, was a huge fan of the show back when it was popular in Montreal according to a DVD interview. Slightly subverted in his case because he didn't see it for another few years when he visited his cousins in the UK (Despite being dubbed in Canada, the English version was only ever screened in the UK and the US). Similarly, Zia's English VA, Janice Chakielson, didn't get to see the finished English version until she visited her grandparents in Florida.
  • In terms of keeping the show alive, honourable mention should go to fan Tim Skutt who gets a well-deserved interview on the DVD release. Years before an official English DVD release, this guy did a one-man fandub of the entire 39 episode series using the Japanese and French DVDs, taking the sound from his original home VHS recordings of the Nickelodeon broadcast.
• Feelies: The regular box set comes with a collector's booklet including official art, character synopses and episode synopses. The Deluxe Edition comes with an additional historical facts booklet, a double-sided poster including a map of the route taken by the protagonists, and six postcards of differing art between release regions.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Shared a lot of voice talent with Ulysses 31, most notably Ulysses and Telemachus's VA's as Gomez and Tao. The Montreal-based English VA's will ring a bell for many viewers as they were used for many dubs of foreign animation during the '80s and '90s.
  • In Japanese, Esteban has the same voice actress as Goku, and Zia has (in the original) the same voice actress as Minky Momo and Nils Holgersson.
  • Hey, It's That Studio!: The original series was animated by Studio Pierrot, which had previously made The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, also for NHK, with the same director and character designer.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The original Japanese version from 1982 is extremely rare with only a few home video recordings extant. This was because the series wasn't very popular in Japan and NHK recorded over the original audio masters, as was their practice at the time.
• No Export for You: The soundtracks and postcards.
• The Other Darrin: When NHK was set to rerun the series on an NHK satellite channel in 1998, they had to redub it from French back into Japanese, since NHK, as explained above under Keep Circulating the Tapes, had lost the original voice track from 1982. Thus, every character except Esteban (who was again voiced by Masako Nozawa) got a new seiyuu: Rei Sakuma as Zia (replacing Mami Koyama), Motoko Kumai as Tao (replacing Junko Hori), Masako Katsuki as Malinche (replacing the by-then-retired Rihoko Yoshida), and so on.
• What Could Have Been: The Japanese score was considered for use for the French version but it wasn't used because the music didn't seem to have that adventurous feel that was expected.
  • It would have been the difference between this show being considered another well-made addition to the early '80s Japanese/Euro co-productions, as opposed to arguably one of, if not the best of its type.