It’s the future, where my Cyclops at?
With Christopher Nolan’s take on The Odyssey arriving in just a couple of weeks, it’s high time to catch up on what the story is actually about: family, myths and a whole lot of murder. And while there are plenty of ways to do that catching up (you should probably read Homer’s Odyssey, duh) there’s one that you probably don’t remember or know about: Ulysses 31.
Set in the 31st Century, this French-Japanese anime debuted in the early 1980s during the height of one of the first waves of the art form in the US, so it carries all of the magic of that era. This mix of French storytelling with Japanese anime art with Greek themes with American superficiality is certainly a lot to take in, but it works. It works!
I was a huge fan of the show as a kid, for various reasons. As I was glued to rewatches of Clash of the Titans on Saturday afternoon syndicated monster television, alongside flipping through picture books in our home of Greek mythology and watching Star Wars on repeat, Ulysses 31 seemed to hit all of the buttons in my young childhood: cool hero, cool monsters, myths, SPAAAAACE.
The story is loosely based on Homer’s epic poem, with Ulysses (the Roman name for Odysseus) at the helm of the space ship The Odyssey, returning from Troy. While celebrating his son Telemachus, an urgent request sends them back to Earth. Along the way, though, Ulysses makes a pit stop to rescue his son by slaying a Cyclops, thus angering the (now) space gods of Greek mythology, with Zeus sending the hero off course on a perilous journey home.
Sadly the show was canceled far too early, but it was both a product of the anime of its a time and an inspiration for those that came after it. I doubt we’d have Voltron or Silverhawks or even Daft Punk’s Interstella 555 in the same way without it, and we certainly wouldn’t have THE MOST RIPPIN FUCKING THEME SONG OF ALL TIME stuck in our heads for the past 40 years.
The show has been released on DVD over the years with a few versions and translations, but that original is probably the one we’d recommend starting with.
The first episode is embedded below, found on YouTube.
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