Adventures of the Little Koala


Adventures of the Little Koala is an anime television series produced by Tohokushinsha Film Corporation. It aired originally in Japan on TV Tokyo from October 4, 1984, through March 28, 1985, and then aired in the United States on Nickelodeon dubbed in English from June 1, 1987, until April 2, 1993. The storyline revolved around Roobear Koala and his friends and their utopian village in a fictional version of New South Wales, Australia, known in the Japanese version as Yukari Village, within the shadow of a real rock formation known as the Breadknife.
Production of the English and French versions of the series was done by the Canadian studio Cinar Films.
It also aired in Greece, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, in the Arabic-speaking world and other countries, but its biggest success by far was in the United States on Nickelodeon.

Characters

Historical background

In 1984, the Tama Zoo in western Tokyo welcomed its first koala, and the government of Australia sent six koalas to Japan as a token of goodwill. As a result, according to The Anime Encyclopedia by Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy, Japan went into a koala frenzy and anything to do with koalas became very popular. It was during this "koala-mania" that The Adventures of the Little Koala was made, as was another anime on Fuji TV, Nippon Animation's Fushigi na Koala Blinky, which would later be broadcast alongside Little Koala on Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. block in 1988, as Noozles.

Production notes

The Japanese animation studio Topcraft, best known for providing animation duties on many of Rankin-Bass' American animated TV specials as well as the feature film The Last Unicorn, worked on The Adventures of the Little Koala. Topcraft provided animation assistance for Hayao Miyazaki's 1984 feature film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind; in fact, some of the animators who worked on Little Koala also worked on Nausicaa. After Nausicaa, a number of Topcraft animators went on to work for Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli.
Some notable animators who worked on this series included Katsuhisa Yamada and Hidekazu Ohara.
The series has a total of 26 episodes, each of them contained two 11-minute segments.
  1. "The Old Clock Tower" / "Mingle Takes A Dive"
  2. "Is Weather A Frog?" / "Lost in a Race"
  3. "Ghost Ship" / "Balloon Pamie"
  4. "The King of the Castle" / "Hang-Gliding With Roobear"
  5. "The Mysterious Moa Bird" / "Love That Baby Moa!"
  6. "Snow White and the Seven Koalas" / "Roobear's Invention"
  7. "Papa on Stilts" / "Detective Roobear"
  8. "The Dinosaur Egg" / "Treasure Hunt"
  9. "Pamie Falls in Love" / "The Koala Butterfly"
  10. "The Koala Bear Gang" / "Back To Nature"
  11. "Roobear Saves the Day" / "Editor-In-Chief Roobear"
  12. "Monster Scoop" / "The Biggest Jigsaw Puzzle in the World"
  13. "Who Will Be the Flower Queen?" / "Circus Day"
  14. "Roobear the Babysitter" / "Papa Makes a Pie"
  15. "The Amazing Boomerang" / "The Runaway Hat"
  16. "Conquering Mt. Breadknife" / "Save the Eucalyptus"
  17. "Mommy Can Fly" / "The Secret of the McGillicuddy Vase"
  18. "Heavenly Fireworks" / "Save That Junk"
  19. "The Winner" / "A Hundred-Year-Old Camera"
  20. "Nurse Pamie" / "Any Mail Today?"
  21. "The Writing on the Wall" / "A Ride in a Spaceship"
  22. "Is Mingle a Nuisance?" / "Allowance Problems"
  23. "A Whale of a Ride" / "Laura Finds An Egg"
  24. "A Broken Umbrella" / "Save The Butterflies"
  25. "The Moon Goddess" / "The Flying Doctor"
  26. "Eucalyptus Rocket" / "Penguins Don't Fly"

    Home media release

In 1989, Family Home Entertainment released four English-dubbed episodes on a VHS cassette entitled The Adventures of the Little Koala and Friends: Laura and the Mystery Egg, with the episodes "Laura Finds an Egg", "Conquering Mt. Breadknife", "Save the Eucalyptus", and "Mommy Can Fly".