New worlds of animation: Ulysses 31, The Mysterious Cities of Gold and the cultural convergence of anime in the West

In the eady 19805 the then France-based television production company DIC produced two highly influential children's cartoon series, Ulysses 31 with lapan's Tokyo Movie Shinsha (nowTMS Entertainment), and The Mysterious Cities of Gold with Japan's Studio Pierrot. Viewed today, these French-Japanese co-productions arc fascinating examples of convergent media texts, convergent not only in their production, but also in their content-combining live-action documentaries with animation, blending science fiction with classical myth and adventure stories and mixing Japanese anime with European art styles. In this paper-and through these texts - I explore ideas of convergence culnIre in the pre-digital age and the broader implications such texts carry for textual production and dissemination in the increasingly globalised world of the future.