Visions of a Future Past. Ulysses 31, a Televised Re-interpretation of Homers Classic Myth

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of the animated series Ulysses 31 (1981), a French-Japanese co- production based on the epic poem The Odyssey, which introduced children and young audiences to Greek myths, relocating the original narratives into futuristic contexts such as the 31st century. Twenty-five years later Ulysses 31 remains a cult series, however it is also largely unknown since the images it invokes are buried in the memories of childhood. Although the series substitutes the wooden ships with spacecrafts crossing the universe of Olympus, Ulysses 31manages to capture some of the original relationships within Homer’s thesis, in spite of their eccentric portrait. The heavy use of pastiche takes us back to the 1980s and the emergence of the‘new’ fantasy-driven science fiction cinema; thus it is important to examine and discuss the series’employment of futurist aesthetics and technology in its exposé of classic mythology.