When I was a little boy I think I saw these animated series a million times. I can’t really put a  year to it, but it wasn’t during the original Hungarian TV airing of the late eighties for sure, yet I am fairly certain my brother was still in kindergarten at the time. I must have been around 8-9.

We had it on a video cassette from the local library, and my brother and I just watched it over and over. (He was the really hardcore one though, as soon as he arrived home from kindergarten he sat down on the floor about 1 meter from the TV and goggled at the screen as if glued to it.)

This is the pirates’ song and the enchanting intro sequence of the Hungarian version.

I remember the story was quite hard to understand at times. This is not one of those dumbed down action animations you get to see on TV nowadays. Rather a full blown sci-fi with long lost civilisations, underground cities, forbidden museums, artificial suns. And with the music of Vladimir Cosma the series were pretty scary at times. Nevertheless, I think all the boys secretly loved Arkana and wanted a hand-mounted harpoon gun like the one Spartacus had.

Someone commented on Youtube that there is going to be – or already is – a DVD with the original dubbing. And that Minimax screened the series a few times not long ago. For me the very first episode had to suffice. It’s on youtube in three parts: 1, 2, 3.

Back then they knew how to make good stuff for children.