Around the World With Willy Fog combines the artistic talents of a French author, a Spanish production company, Japanese animators and pop music - a strange combination of ingredients to be sure, but it just works.As an adaptation of Jules Vernes' classic adventure novel, this series is pretty faithful, though it manages to differentiate itself in a few positive ways. While all major plot points remain intact and only names were changed, additions include a spirited sidekick for Mr. Fog's butler and a villain who constantly tries to thwart the heroes. The backgrounds and scenery are gorgeous and detailed, and are well-utilized by the series' diverse locations, although the character animation lacks fluidity, which is unfortunately typical for anime. It has a great soundtrack as well, composed by Mocedades, a prolific Spanish pop group, and it shows, as the opening and closing songs are particularly pleasant ear-worms. (But strangely, for the English dub at least, any mid-episode song is of much worse sound quality.)

This is such a fantastic animated series (for everyone, not just kids!) for a number of reasons. Firstly, there are obviously the lovable characters, the way we see them develop throughout the series is a joy to watch. Secondly, the story lines are enticing, you just have to know whats going to happen in the next episode- take the jungle episode and the evil worshippers approaching as a great example of how great this series was at cliffhangers. Thirdly, the music score is really fun to listen to. Although it is distinctly '80s' sounding, each tune really tends to capture the atmosphere of the moments in the series. For just a cartoon series there are so many 'true to life' things in this series- like morals, the evolution of friendships, romance, financial problems and solving problems. Not forgetting the enormous geographical value of this programme- how many places do they visit throughout the series? Point proved. The only thing I have to say against it is repetition. How many times do we have to hear them say they're hungry or they're late for a train? Mind you this recurrence amuses rather than annoys me.

"Around the World with Willy Fogg" is basically just Verne's "Around the World in 80 Days" anime-style with one or two characters added and Fog's named changed to something easier on the tongue. This is one of my favourite childhood tv-series'. Everybody (oh well, next to everybody) know the story, and if you find this series watch it. It's dated but despite the artistic licence with the story is true to Jules Verne's spirit of adventure. The English version even has a great song. You'd have to be very stuck-up not to like it. Oh yes, everybody's animals too. So this is a nice little anthropomorphic spin on the tale.

"La vuelta al mundo de Willy Fogg"("Around the world with Willy Fogg") is one of my all-time favorite cartoon-shows. I first rented all the episodes way back in 1988, and I saw every single episode again in 1992, and I was lucky to catch many of the episodes recently on the Spanish tv-channel TVE("Television España"). Thank goodness I`ve learnt Spanish instead of French!The series is based on a novel by Jules Verne, which is called "Around the world in 80 days"(I don`t remember the original French title). The main character in the series is Willy Fogg, who was called Phileas Fogg in the novel.We follow Willy Fogg & co. on a fantastic journey around the world against the clock, because Willy Fogg has made a bet that he`ll be able to travel around the world in 80 days.I think the series has got great atmosphere, nice animation, great characters, great music and quite a few "scary"(for the kids) scenes too.**"Plot spoiler"**My favorite episode is without a doubt the one where Willy saves a princess from being sacrificed in India. Sadly I missed that episode when I caught parts of the series on TVE. There are 26 episodes which are on 5 tapes. The tapes are very difficult to come by, so buy them when you see them. I know that I will!