Around the World with Willy Fog

Around the World with Willy Fog (Spanish: La vuelta al mundo de Willy Fog) is a Spanish animated television adaptation of the 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne produced by Spanish studio BRB Internacional and Televisión Española, with animation by Japanese studio Nippon Animation, that was first broadcast on TVE1 weekly between 8 January and 15 July 1984.

Around the World with Willy Fog
Spanish	La vuelta al mundo de Willy Fog
Genre	Adventure
Based on	Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
Developed by	Claudio Biern Boyd
Theme music composer	Guido and Maurizio De Angelis
Opening theme	"Around the World with Willy Fog" by Mocedades
Ending theme	"Sílbame" (aka "Rigodon") by Mocedades
Country of origin	Spain
Original language	Spanish
No. of episodes	26 (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	26 mins
Production companies	BRB Internacional Televisión Española
Original release
Network	TVE1
Release	8 January (1984-01-08) – 15 July 1984 (1984-07-15)
Related
Willy Fog 2 (1994–95)

In the same vein as BRB's Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds, the characters are anthropomorphisms of various animals as the species depicted are of much greater variety than in that series. The core trio are all felines being pursued by three canine foes. Willy Fog (Phileas Fogg in the original book) is depicted as a lion, while Rigodon (Passepartout) is a cat, and Romy (Aouda) is a panther.

An English dub of the series was directed by Tom Wyner, which featured artists such as Cam Clarke (as Rigodon), Gregory Snegoff (Inspector Dix), Steve Kramer (as Constable Bully) and Mike Reynolds. While the series never achieved popularity in the United States, the English version found fame when it was broadcast on Children's BBC in the United Kingdom. The series was initially screened in 1984 in the UK (and has been repeated many times since) and then on RTÉ in Ireland, while other dubs gained the series fanbases in several other countries. The series was also dubbed into Japanese and aired on Japan's TV Asahi in 1987, where it was titled Anime Around the World in 80 Days (アニメ80日間世界一周, Anime Hachijūnichikan Sekai Isshū).

With all of the international versions, the height of popularity remains in Spain, where a sequel series, Willy Fog 2, was produced in 1993 which has the characters in adaptations of Verne's science fiction novels, Journey to the Center of the Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. Furthermore, in 2008, the series spawned a live-action theatrical musical show in celebration of its 25th anniversary.

Plot

As with every morning since he moved into Savile Row, Willy Fog awakens at 8:00 am and rings for his servant, only to remember that he fired him the previous day for his inability to follow Fog's precise schedule. He has already arranged an interview for a replacement – former circus performer Rigodon, who is even now rushing towards Fog's house to make his 11:00 am appointment. Rigodon is accompanied by his old circus colleague Tico, who hides within his travelling bag, and prompts him through the interview, which gets off to a bad start when Rigodon arrives four minutes late. Nonetheless, Rigodon is hired by Fog as his butler and soon departs for the Reform Club.

At the club, the main topic of conversation is the recent theft of £55,000 from the Bank of England which was discussed until the bank's governor Mr. Sullivan arrives and requests a change of topic. Sullivan's off-hand remark that the thief is still in London causes the elderly Lord Guinness to bring up an article in the Morning Chronicle, detailing how it is now possible to travel around the world in eighty days. The article states that one departs London by train for Dover, where one crosses to Calais, and on to Paris. From there, it is a train journey to Brindisi, and the Suez Canal, all within a week. Having rounded the Arabian peninsula, one would arrive in Bombay on day 20 and then a three-day railway journey to Calcutta. Hong Kong is reached on day 33, Yokohama on day 39, and then a mammoth three-week crossing of the Pacific to arrive in San Francisco on day 61, a week-long train crossing to New York City and then finally a nine-day crossing of the Atlantic back to London making it possible to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days. The other members of the club laugh at Lord Guinness's suggestion that he would take on the challenge if he were younger, prompting Fog to defend his honor by taking up the task himself. Sullivan bets Fog £5,000 that it is impossible, and additional wagers by three other club members increase this amount to £20,000. He then stuns the club by announcing that he will leave that very evening and promises to return to the club by 8:45 pm on 21 December 1872.

Rigodon is less than thrilled to hear the news of their impending trip, having spent his life travelling with the circus. However, he dutifully accompanies his master as they set out, with Tico still in hiding. Little do they know, however, that they are pursued by three individuals determined to halt their progress. Inspector Dix and Constable Bully of Scotland Yard are convinced that Fog is the thief who robbed the Bank of England, and the wicked and conniving Transfer, a saboteur, was hired by Mr. Sullivan to impede Fog's journey in any way.

Cast

Main characters

Willy Fog

Willy Fog (Phileas Fogg in the original novel and French, Finnish and Greek translation of this series, but he shares the name for the original character's inspiration, William Perry Fogg) is a well-mannered, well-read English gentleman who is loyal to his friends and always true to his word. He leads his life according to many strict, precise rules – something afforded him by his long-term bachelor lifestyle. He resides in London and although he is well known for his wealth, the precise source of his money is unknown as his occupation is never elaborated on. Ever the gentleman, he eschews violence of any form whenever possible, but is never without his cane, which is all he needs to defend himself and others. Willy Fog is a member of the Reform Club in London and is challenged to travel around the world in 80 days; prior to this, he had not travelled for several years.

Rigodon

Prior to working for Willy Fog, multi-talented French feline Rigodon (occupying the role of Passepartout from the original novel; however, Greek dubbing named him Rico, whereas in the Brazilian, Finnish, French, Hebrew and Slovak dubbing he was named Passepartout) was a circus performer, but wanting to escape the travelling life of the circus, Rigodon sought out employment as a manservant. His first attempt was a failure, as he worked for a gentleman who constantly travelled, and so he sought out employment with Willy Fog, knowing that Fog's strict routine meant he never travelled far. Rigodon's hopes of a quiet lifestyle, however, were quickly dashed when Fog accepted the wager to travel around the world in eighty days. Nevertheless, Rigodon dutifully accompanies his master on his trip, his circus-born agility and daring coming in handy on more than one occasion.

Tico

Self-proclaimed "mascot" of the show, Tico is Rigodon's best friend and former partner in the circus. The pair are inseparable, but Rigodon was forced to hide Tico from Mr. Fog at first, concealing the small pika within his travelling bag until their journey was underway. Tico is well known for his epic appetite, and is rarely seen without his "sun-clock", an archaeological artifact gifted to him early on the trip that uses the sun to tell time. Tico is the only case in which the original version and English-language dub differ on a character's nationality: in the original version, he is Spanish (dubbed with a strong Andalusian/Seville accent though, not typical for dubbed characters), while in the dub, he is Italian.

Princess Romy

Orphaned following the deaths of her parents, Romy (Aouda in the original novel) became a princess when she was married to an Indian Rajah who worshipped the goddess Kali. When the Rajah died, she was destined to be burned alongside him on the funeral pyre, but was rescued by Rigodon, who risked his own life in the process. She originally accompanies Willy Fog on his journey with the intent of finding relatives of hers in Singapore, only to stay with his company after finding them long dead and acting as a medic to care for the wounded that they encounter. Tico has a crush on her and is always looking out for her safety, but as their journey together continues, it becomes clear she only has eyes for Mr. Fog.

Inspector Dix

The blustering Inspector Dix (based on Inspector Fix from the original novel and named the same for both the French and Finnish translation of the series) is a scent hound who works for Scotland Yard. Convinced that Fog is the one responsible for robbing the Bank of England, he trails the travellers around the world looking for the proof he needs to arrest Fog, constantly trying to delay their travels to keep them on British soil so that he might arrest them, if the warrant he awaits is ever delivered. Despite his role of antagonist, he is an honorable character, driven by a strong sense of duty and is often outraged to see Fog spending what he believes to be stolen money, but is also an exceptionally excitable comic foil, who frequently muddles his words, at one point claiming to be a "pursuit officer in police of the criminal who robbed the Bank of England!", and even accidentally speaking in spoonerism ("Yank of Bengland!"). In addition, he has a tendency to forget Rigodon's name, regularly addressing and referring to him as "Brigadoon". In the original version, he calls Rigodon "Tontorron", which is a Spanish word for "fool" or "idiot". The English dub of the series provided him with the given name of "Clifford".

Constable Bully

Constable Bully – a cockney bulldog, as his name implies – is Inspector Dix's partner, although he would rather be playing darts at the pub or enjoying a Sunday roast at his mum's house than trekking across the globe. A good-hearted fellow at his core, Bully is subject to the whims of the demanding Inspector Dix, and his general clumsiness and tendency to get travel-sick often strain the inspector's patience to the breaking point.

Transfer

Transfer is a gray wolf, hired to sabotage Fog's journey by his rival, Mr. Sullivan. Throughout the series, he employs a variety of tactics to delay Fog and his party, ranging from leading them in the wrong direction to deliberately causing accidents. He is a master of disguise and can imitate perfectly the voices and mannerisms of those he is impersonating – but the audience can always identify him by light briefly catching his glass eye. For narrative purposes in this adaptation, the addition of Transfer not only provides a recurring villain for the story, but he also performs Fog's more morally questionable if necessary actions to drive the story forward, allowing Fog to remain the unblemished hero. In the Greek dub he was named "Mascarone", from Greek μασκαράς /maskarás/ meaning both "swindler" and "masquerader".

Supporting characters

Mr. Sullivan

Mr. Sullivan, the head of the Bank of England, is a wolf and rival of Willy Fog in the Reform Club. He accepts Fog's bet and, determined to ensure Fog's failure and expose him as a "worthless bragger", decides to send a saboteur, Transfer, after Fog's steps. Following Transfer's failure to stop Fog he is sacked as head of the Bank of England on charges of misappropriation of funds.

Farrel, Johnson, and Weston

Farrel, Johnson, and Weston are the other Reform Club members who bet against Fog. Weston (a stoat) is the owner of the Morning Chronicle and Ralph's boss, while Farrel (a fox) and Johnson (a raccoon) own a shipping line and a railway respectively.

Lord Guinness

Lord Guinness, the wheelchair-using oldest member of the Reform Club, is a white goat. He and Ralph continue to support Fog and his party, even when popular opinion has turned against them, and he sometimes expresses regret that his age has prevented him from joining the expedition.

Ralph

Ralph, a squirrel, is the idealistic young reporter who wrote the article which inspired Fog's journey. Even when the odds seemed stacked against Fog and his party, he rarely loses hope that they will succeed.

Commissioner Rowan

Commissioner Rowan, a cat, is the head of Scotland Yard and was the one responsible for sending Dix and Bully after Fog, warning them they would be fired if they bungled the assignment. Throughout the series, he has to fend off the demands of Sullivan, who has learned of the suspicions against Fog.

Brigadier Corn

A deer, member of the British Army stationed in India, Brigadier Corn is on his way to rejoin his regiment when he crosses paths with Fog and his friends. He chooses to accompany them on their journey through India "for the honour of Great Britain", and is instrumental in helping to mount the rescue of Princess Romy. Whether or not his being both a deer and a brigadier is a deliberate pun is unknown.

Parsi

Parsi is an Indian tiger who is the owner of an elephant named Koa. Parsi is very friendly and very devoted to his elephant, he helped Willy Fog and his team get to Alakhabad, despite the difficulties that occurred due to the actions of the Transfer. Parsi was very shy when Mr. Fog offered him a large sum of money and did not want to take it, but he insisted. Parsi took the money and said goodbye to the team.

Andrew Speedy

Andrew Speedy (a bear) is the short-tempered Russian captain of the cargo ship Henrietta. He does not normally carry passengers, believing them to be a liability, but agrees to take Fog and his party after Fog offers to pay him $2000 for every member of his party. After falling victim to Transfer's attempt to poison Fog, he gives Fog command of the ship and orders him to head for Liverpool so he can receive medical attention; however, he recovers while still at sea. Shortly afterwards, the Henrietta runs out of coal, compelling Fog to buy the ship in order to burn the wood on board as fuel; Speedy, who will be allowed to keep whatever remains, is forced to look on helplessly as the ship is stripped of wood. Rather oddly, Speedy appears in the show's opening sequence (among a group consisting of Dix, Transfer, and Ralph), despite only featuring in a small number of episodes towards the end of the series.

Music

Spanish

Six songs were crafted for the series, composed by Italian background score writers Guido and Maurizio De Angelis and performed by the group Mocedades. The songs were synced with the movement of the animated characters. The eponymous theme song, "La Vuelta al Mundo de Willy Fog", was sung by Fog, Rigodon, Tico and Romy, while Rigodon and Tico also provided the ending theme, "Sílbame" ("Whistle to Me"). Extended versions of both the opening and closing theme tunes were regularly sung by the characters in-show in short musical numbers during the course of the series. As was the "Dix y Transfer" duet in addition two different melodies performed by the protagonists entitled "America America" and "Hay Que Viajar" ("It Is Necessary to Travel"). The sixth song, "Romy", was performed by the titular character, although it only featured in the series in an instrumental form. It would, however, later be used as the closing theme of the sequel series, "Willy Fog 2". The Spanish soundtrack was released in 1984 in LP album, CD and cassette formats. The soundtrack can also be downloaded in Spanish in MP3 format from Amazon's Spanish website.

English

The songs in the English dub of the series were sung by Ted Mather, re-using the De Angelis's music but with new English lyrics that are similar to the original Spanish. Perhaps most prominently, "Hay Que Viajar" was retitled "Daisy", and became a song about a woman by that name. All six songs were re-recorded in their entirety – even "Romy", which did not appear in the series. The English soundtrack is available to download in MP3 format from Amazon's UK website.

Japanese

Two new theme tunes were composed for the Japanese dub of the series, both sung by Keiko Han. The opening theme was entitled "Sky Way", while the closing tune was named "Our Two Watches".

Finnish

Songs in the Finnish dub were sung by the actors of YLE Import re-using the De Angelis's music but with new Finnish lyrics. In the Finnish dub some scenes are cut, which includes musical numbers in some episodes.

Czech

In Czech some scenes from Willy Fog episodes are cut (songs), but those "deleted scenes" are used in the opening and ending.

Crew

Spanish production

• Produced by: BRB Internacional
• With the collaboration of: Televisión Española
• Music by: Guido & Maurizio De Angelis
• Music producer: Cabum Magister
• Outdoors location scouting: Iberia, the airline of Spain
• Songs performed by: Mocedades
• Songs performed in: Discos CBS
• Directed by: Luis Ballester
• Executive Producer: Claudio Biern Boyd
• Original screenplay: Claudio Biern Boyd
• Script Coordinator: Rafael Soler
• Dialogue Adaptor and Voice Director: Manuel Peiro
• Associate Productors: José Luis Rodríguez & José Manuel Iglesias
• Audio mixed by: Oscar Gómez
• Editor: Soledad López
• Assistant Editor: Carmen Ortega
• Special effects: Luis Castro
• Production Assistant: Maria Aragón
• Production Coordinator: Marisa Mato
• Sound technicians: Eduardo Fernandez, Alfonso Pino, Jose Esquirol, José Maria, San Mateo
• Recording studio: Exa, S.A.
• Laboratory: Fotofilm Madrid, S.A.

Japanese production

• Animation by: Nippon Animation
• Director: Fumio Kurokawa
• Producer: Koichi Motohashi
• Character Design: Isamu Kumata
• Storyboards: Eiji Okabe, Fumio Kurokawa, Hiromitsu Morita, Katsumi Endo, Ko Suzuki, Shigeo Koshi, Shigeru Omachi, Toru Hagiwara
• Episode directors: Fumio Kurokawa, Eiji Okabe, Hiromitsu Morita, Toru Hagiwara, Yukio Okazaki
• Animation directors: Hirokazu Ishino, Hisatoshi Motoki, Takao Kanishi, Yukio Abe
• Music by: Shunsuke Kikuchi
• Theme songs by: Izumi Kobayashi
• Theme songs performed by: Keiko Han

English dub

• Music Sub-publisher: Southern Pictures Music inc.
• Recorded and re-mixed at: Intersound Inc., Hollywood, USA
• English version directed and supervised by: Tom Wyner
• English adaptations by: Tom Wyner, Byrd Ehlmann, Cynthia Lake, Ben Martin

Home media

UK DVD cover

The series distributed by BRB Internacional, was co-produced with Televisión Española, as a result, BRB Internacional must give approval before any home video release of the series is made available.

In December 1985, Sony Video Software announced the release of the series on VHS in the United States.

From 3 October 1988 to 10 September 1990, select episodes were released in the United Kingdom on PAL VHS tapes by Video Collection International (then: Lollipop Video), rated  U  for "Universal" and deemed suitable for all ages.

In 1995, BRB Internacional released three direct-to-video Willy Fog movies – Around the World in 80 Days, Journey to the Center of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – each one created by heavily editing the first series from roughly 650 minutes in total down to a truncated 75 minutes apiece. All three films were dubbed by Village Productions, who had previously dubbed the second series for the United Kingdom, and later reached the United States on DVD. Notably, the Village Productions dub for the first movie was able to secure use of Intersound's English-language version of the theme tune.

In 2004, Revelation Films released all twenty-six episodes of Around the World with Willy Fog on DVD in the UK, across five Region-0-encoded discs. Extras included character profiles, a Jules Verne biography, and bonus episodes of Arthur! and the Square Knights of the Round Table and Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds. In 2005, all five discs were collected in a complete series box set.

Around 2016, the English dub of all episodes of the series was uploaded to the official channel of BRB Internacional on the video-sharing website YouTube.

Willy Fog 2

Main article: Willy Fog 2

Due to the success of the first series, BRB Internacional and Televisión Española revisited the franchise ten years later, with animation by Wang Film Productions in Taiwan and Shanghai Morning Sun Animation in China, released a sequel series simply titled Willy Fog 2. The series ran to 26 episodes, and consisted of two separate serialized stories that were based on the original novels Journey to the Center of the Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.

Around the World with Willy Fog: The Musical

La vuelta al mundo de Willy Fog: El Musical poster

La vuelta al mundo de Willy Fog: El Musical was released in 2008 in celebration of the show's 25th anniversary in its home country of Spain. With the original cartoon soundtrack by the De Angelises, the theatrical performance featured live actors Jaume Ortonobas (Fog), Laura Toledo (Romy) and José Troncoso (Rigodon) in make-up and masks to replicate the anthropomorphic characters of the cartoon. Tico is represented as a puppet manipulated by Celia Vioque. Scripted by original series creator Claudio Biern Boyd and directed by Ricard Reguant, the musical ran twice a day in the Teatro Häagen-Dazs Calderón in Madrid from October 2008; although originally intended only to run until the end of the year, the show's success saw its run extended first until early February 2009, after which it proved so successful that it went on tour around the country until the end of the year.

Feature film

By November 2020, a film based on the series was in development by Apolo Films and is scheduled to be released in 2023. The film will be 3D computer-animated.

External links

• Around the World with Willy Fog at IMDb
• Around the World with Willy Fog at Discogs
• (in Japanese) Official Japanese at Nippon Animation
• Around the World with Willy Fog (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia