Little Pollon

Little Pollon (Japanese: おちゃめ神物語コロコロポロン, Hepburn: Ochamegami Monogatari Korokoro Polon, lit. The Story of Little Goddess Roly-Poly Pollon) is a musical Greek mythology-based Japanese anime television series, based on the 1977 manga Olympus no Pollon (Pollon of Olympus) by Hideo Azuma. The anime television series consisted of 46 episodes and aired across Japan on Fuji TV from May 1982 to March 1983, and was also popular in some European countries, such as Italy. The series is noted for its faithful portrayal of the Gods of Mount Olympus as fallible beings succumbing to real human faults and weaknesses, such as selfishness, temper tantrums, debauchery, laziness, and vanity.

Story

The main character of the story is Pollon, a sweet, precocious little girl who is the daughter of the God of the Sun, Apollo. Pollon's goal in life is to grow up to become a beautiful and powerful goddess. She attempts to do good deeds and help out any way she can in order to achieve the status of godhood. Invariably, her overtures backfire and end up causing major trouble for both the gods of Olympus and their human subjects. However, Pollon's kind heart, perseverance and indomitable spirit win out in the end, as she attains the title of "Goddess of Hope."

Characters

• Pollon (voice: Masako Miura) - The daughter of Apollo, the sun-god, she is a kind-hearted but somewhat naive girl who wants to be a goddess when she grows up. However, her attempts to prove herself worthy of the title of goddess usually result in disasters of comic proportions.
• Eros (voice: Keiko Yamamoto) - The God of Love, and Pollon's cousin and best friend. He shoots heart-tipped arrows at people to make them fall in love, but as he is quite an ugly creature, he ironically has no girlfriend of his own.
• Apollo (voice: Akio Nojima) - Pollon's father, the God of the Sun. He is a lazy drunk who is somewhat neglectful of his daughter. His main job is to drive the Sun's chariot across the sky each day, but as he is often too lazy and/or drunk to do so, Pollon often ends up driving the chariot herself.
• Zeus (voice: Masashi Amenomori) - The king of the gods, father of Apollo and grandfather of Pollon. Despite his advanced age, he has a strong attraction to younger women, which often gets him in trouble with his wife, Hera.
• Hera (voice: Eiko Yamada) - The queen of the gods, mother of Apollo and grandmother of Pollon. She is portrayed as the stereotypical hen-pecking wife, somewhat neurotic and given to temper tantrums, and often responds violently to her husband Zeus' flirtatious ways.
• Artemis (voice: Rumiko Ukai) - The Goddess of the Moon, one of Pollon's aunts.
• Aphrodite (voice: Yoko Kawanami) - The Goddess of Beauty, and another of Pollon's aunts. She is also the mother of Eros. Aphrodite is very beautiful and very vain, and spends hours admiring herself in the mirror. She's ashamed of her unattractive son and frequently disowns him.
• Poseidon (voice: Banjou Ginga) - The God of the Sea is very tall in stature, towering way over the other gods. Although he is the god of the sea, he ironically can't swim.
• Atlas - Atlas is the Titan who holds the weight of the sky. It is shown that he is ticklish.
• Hephaestus (voice: Kenichi Ogata) - God of smithing and Aphrodite's husband, he's an amiable, if bumbling, inventor. He however dislikes most of the other male gods, especially Apollo, because they're more handsome than him.
• Athena (voice: Kachiko Hino) - The armor-clad goddess of wisdom and war. One of the most serious and wise characters in the cast. Nonetheless, others dislike her prickly attitude.
• Dionysus (voice: Masaharu Sato) - God of wine and merrymaking, he's a bald, stout man with dark glasses. He's never seen without a bottle in his hand. The other gods very much enjoy his company (and the wine he brews).
• Hades (voice: Naoki Tatsuta) - God of the underworld, he reigns unopposed over his realm with his wife Persephone. They enjoy inflicting the most absurd punishments and tortures on the damned.
• Cha Cha Cha - A somewhat modern-looking scientist. Bumbling and foolish, he genuinely believes himself the sanest person in this crazy world of fools. He tries to help Pollon by providing her with concoctions and potions that, according to him, could potentially solve every trouble Pollon meets in her adventures, but they always fail to provide the intended effect. He also provides Pollon with a powder able to induce happiness and euforia.
• Dosankos (voice: Masaharu Sato) - Apollo's horse.
• The Sun - The long-suffering Sun is often ripped, torn or otherwise disturbed by Pollon and/or the other gods. He has become a heavy smoker to deal with the stress in his life.
• Narrator - A cute little sprite who tells the story of Pollon and the gods as it unfolds.

Overseas Distribution

In addition to its success in Japan, Little Pollon was an extremely popular television program in Italy during the mid-1980s, where it was known as C'era una volta... Pollon (Once upon a time there was... Pollon) and featured an Italian theme song by Cristina D'Avena. Many of the Pollon fan sites on the Internet are in Italian, and there are regular reruns of the anime. Azuma's original manga has also been published in the Italian market. The series was also broadcast in France on La Cinq in the late 1980s under the title La Petite Olympe et les Dieux, with Pollon's name changed to "Olympe."

Enoki Films USA holds the U.S. license to the anime series, although no English dub or subtitling of the series has ever been commercially released.

The Little Pollon production team followed up the series in 1983 with another anime based on a Hideo Azuma manga, Nanako SOS (aka Nana the Supergirl). In one scene in Nanako SOS, the Little Pollon anime is being played on television.

Anime staff

• Original creator: Hideo Azuma
• Executive producer: Juzo Tsubota
• Series director: Takao Yotsuji
• Scenarists: Masaru Yamamoto, Kenji Terada, Toyohiro Ando
• Character designs: Toshio Takagi, Tsutomu Fujita
• Animation directors: Toshio Takagi, Hirokazu Ishiyuki
• Music: Masayuki Yamamoto
• Theme song performance: Yoshie Hara
• Production: Kokusai Eiga (Movie International Co., Ltd.) / Fuji TV

External links

• Little Pollon (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia