This has to be one of my favorite animated series of all times. In this series, Ulysses (or Odysseus, if you prefer the original Greek version)is taking his son out for a trip through space when the boy is kidnapped by a cult of cyclops-worshipers. When Ulysses rescues him, and two Zotrian children Yumi and Numenor (actually, it's hard to call Numenor a child since he appears to be anywhere between 18 and 20 or so)the cyclops, the cult who worships it, and the very planet itself go up in a big fireball. Needless to say, Poseidon and the other gods aren't to happy about this and Ulysses and the children (plus a robot named NoNo)have to go through a series of trials in order to finally go home.
The characters are the most memorable thing about this series. They move with great fluidity and are drawn in a fairly realistic style, yet their ability to emote is not limited by this, unlike the characters in Filmation works, for example. My favorite character, by far, has to be Yumi, a blue-skinned little girl of about 8 years of age (little alien girls had never been seen before on animated TV). She was an alien, but she was also perhaps the most human character in the show whose sole motivation was love, for her brother and for the family to whom she desperately wanted to return. Another Zotrian character who appears early in the series is Atina,a young woman of about 20-25 whose love for a elderly blind human man is so deeply touching that you feel sorry that she only appears in one episode.
All in all, Ulysses 31, with its warm characters and moments of breakneck action, is by far one of the best animated programs of the 80s. By the way, unlike most animation of its era, the animation has actually aged quite well. There are a couple of episodes which seem a bit corny or nearly hallucinogenic in their weirdness, plus the dialog can occasionally be a bit groan-inducing due to language differences, but these minor quirks shouldn't turn anyone off. A classic in every sense...
The characters are the most memorable thing about this series. They move with great fluidity and are drawn in a fairly realistic style, yet their ability to emote is not limited by this, unlike the characters in Filmation works, for example. My favorite character, by far, has to be Yumi, a blue-skinned little girl of about 8 years of age (little alien girls had never been seen before on animated TV). She was an alien, but she was also perhaps the most human character in the show whose sole motivation was love, for her brother and for the family to whom she desperately wanted to return. Another Zotrian character who appears early in the series is Atina,a young woman of about 20-25 whose love for a elderly blind human man is so deeply touching that you feel sorry that she only appears in one episode.
All in all, Ulysses 31, with its warm characters and moments of breakneck action, is by far one of the best animated programs of the 80s. By the way, unlike most animation of its era, the animation has actually aged quite well. There are a couple of episodes which seem a bit corny or nearly hallucinogenic in their weirdness, plus the dialog can occasionally be a bit groan-inducing due to language differences, but these minor quirks shouldn't turn anyone off. A classic in every sense...