The Adventures of Dogtanian

I discover Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds in the most hilarious way imaginable. I was watching Pointy Hat doing an essay on D&D’s Rouges and it’s plethora of sub-classes. It was briefly mentioned passing mention in how he specifically choose the “dog version” of the musketeer in order to get an idea of so-and-so subclass.

As the name suggests, it is an anime adaption of The Three Musketeers featuring everyone as dogs. From what I’ve read, it seems to be one of the more faithful ones. As someone who never got a chance to read the books, I’ve only known of the Musketeers by what they stand as a whole rather their individual nature or their most notable adaptions.

Ironically, Disney’s 2004 adaption is both somewhat accurate to the source and yet backwards all at the same time. Goofy and Donald are their natural flawed selves. Meanwhile, Mickey’s biggest flaw is just being small. Are you kidding? I mean, yeah, that is accurate to the text but I’d hardly call that a flaw. I’d treat it more as a physical quirk and agility advantage. Don’t get me wrong, it looks like a fun movie, but you can tell the writers really had to compensate.

Dogtanian’s Journey

Our hero, Dogtanian, starts out as anything but the idealist due his short temper. His heart is in the right place and his parents, especially his father, know this. They see the potential in him at the very beginning. It’s only when one of the Muskehounds comes to visit their family that someone other than his family appropriates his talents.

His short temper quickly gets him the best of him during his travels to Paris. From destroying an inn and breaking his father’s sword. He is forced to go to without his horse for the rest of the journey. It isn’t until he meets his eventual love interest that is finally near the city’s border. But Dogtanian’s mistakes only come to bite him in the tail even further as he is without money and almost passes out if it hadn’t been for. His dinky sword is the only thing he has.

The famous apple slicing scene really shows that Dogtanian is a nice guy at heart. And the only reason he even gets looses his temper in the first place is because of respect he never got at home. That and going against everything the Muskehounds stand for are what genuinely grind his nerves his nerves overall. But when he isn’t fighting battles, Dogtanian is easily flustered. He just feels like someone you want to hug.

However, Dogtanian unintentionally redeem himself when he discovers who later turns out to b impersonating Athos to give the Muskehounds a bad name. As he chases and fights down the imposter, he stumbled upon Aramis he fills him in on what’s going on. What really tipped him off was the different feather tip that Dogtanian’s cut off during the fight. When Aramis finally reveals the culprit, Dogtanian apologizes and begins to self reflect on his actions.

A Fun Adventure

This is just within a span of 4 out of 25 episodes with a span of a single season. I’m assuming it chronicles the entire novel. It’s really just a fun adventure overall to see him fail every step of way until he is gradually rewarded for doing good. There has been a lot of criticisms about Hollywood making films where pep talk suddenly changes a person, such as Rebel One, but here we don’t see that. It’s refreshing to see such legendary characters feel like people you could hang out with right now.

I have to say what really makes me want to keep coming back for more is the intro. Wherein the TMS version of Sherlock Hound was soft and soothing, Dogtanian’s upbeat and cheerful. It perfectly describes who these guys are and what they’re about as we follow Dogtanian. It is so adorable.

Thanks to being in the public domain, the original Three Musketeers is free for anyone to get. I’ve downloaded a copy from Standard eBooks to compliment my watching of this show. The show doesn’t replace the original. It simply enhances it. I remember seeing a video that criticized how Disney stole our childhoods, how it explain that Walt’s original films were simply homages because books were still a dominant medium even into the early days of TV. This is what Dogtanian feels like.