France has had some influence around the world through some of their Generiques of dessin animes or should I say Anime Opening dubs. This is especially true for some of the big Japanese animated shows from the 90s. Specifically Saint Seiya aka Knights of the Zodiac, Sailor Moon and Ranma 1/2. These intro songs were recorded by Bernard Minet and aired on Club Dorothée. For various reasons, they had international influence. So let’s take a look at them.
Club Dorothée was a programming block that aired plenty of foreign cartoons from Japan and the USA. Some of these anime would get new openingsJean-François Porry wrote the lyrics, Gérard Salesses composed them and Bernard Minet sang them. They use plenty synths, electronic,have simple choruses witha n upbeat tempo. Lyrics are heroic sounding and a bit over the top. They describe what the show is about mostly on a high level, with Saint Seiya having the least details, only Ranma going more into detail, and Sailor Moon’s somewhere in between. They all sound fairly similar in style and tone which is why I even made the conneciton.
These are the ones I’m focusing on but there’s also Bioman, Ronin Warriors (Les samurais de leternel) that also came from AB Productions with similar sounding OPs. So while the intros don’t include too many if any influences from the japanese intros they do have some charm to them, despite sounding a bit cheesy.
Les Chevaliers du Zodiaque which is Saint Seiya / Knights of the Zodiac, actually has the most impact. La chanson des chevaliers was translated for the Spanish dub with the same lyrics and music, just changing it for a more epic tone for Los Caballeros del Zodiaco. Later that theme was reused in the LATAM dubs of Saint Seiya instead of Pegasus Fantasy. While not the original French song the localized Spanish version reached far more people than Pegasus Fantasy ever did.
For Sailor Moon’s choice, it didn’t have quite as large impact but it did reach the Americas with Canada airing the French Dub which included the opening. So a whole generation in another country also grew up with the French Sailor Moon Dub. Ranma 1/2 on the other hand wasn’t as lucky as that dub and opening stayed in France. These big 3 90s anime however all had the same type of intro in France at the very least.
The actual footage of the openings is just random clips fromt he show with Bernard Minet dancing around. However you might notice that in he kind of tries to emulate the show. This is especially noticeable in the full length versions of the song music videos. He starts channeling his cosmo in the Saint Seiya openings. Not only that but he also tries to wear an attire that is like characters of the shows, well sometimes as others he’s just wearing very 90s attires.
Even if the song didn’t change, they did update the video as the seasons changed with new footage of Bernard. Not only is it full of 90s effects, they definitely abused the green / blue screen as you see Bernard actually taking part of random parts of the animes. Either as Toxedo Mask or just chilling with Seiya and the other saints. It’s really cheesy but as cringy as it can feel, you can see he really enjoyed doing it, he literally cosplayed the characters from the shows. I can’t help but respect that
So, while listening to French Generiques I came across this little rabbit hole that most people outside of France might not know about but was defintiely worth sharing. These anime shaped fans in the 90s and at least 2 of these openings had worldwide international influence.