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I was comparing the sound tracks between the ELV and the original Japanese to the 1963 and 1980 Astro series. In the first episode of both during Astro's birth scene the event was punctuated by a musical background. In the 1963 series the music used in both the ELV and the original Japanese was the opening of the first movement of Beethoven's 5th symphony.

In the 1980 series different music was used in the ELV and the Japanese sound tracks for the same scene. The ELV went for a more subtle background by using a melody from "Les Preludes" by Franz Liszt. The Japanese sound track used the more bombastic "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss. This choice of music was probably made by Tezuka himself, for he was fond of the sound track from the movie "2001 - A Space Odyssey", and often played the record while he worked on his manga. Tezuka had to turn down an offer by Stanley Kubrick to work on that film because he was too busy at Mushi Studios to make the trip to the US to help design some of the artwork in the film.

I know that the 1980 Astro series was dubbed into other languages besides English. I am fairly sure a French dub was made, do any of our readers know what music was used in that sound track?

I just checked, the music in the French 1980 series is the same as in English.

For the American dub of the 1980s series, the tracks came to us with music already in place. Only the dialogue was stripped out.

Once in awhile there were some oddities, such as Jump showing up on the music track, or SFX track, or disappearing completely, in which case one of us would have to bark.

Huh, that's interesting. I wonder if that's because the original audio for Jump was already odd.

"jayrath" wrote:For the American dub of the 1980s series, the tracks came to us with music already in place. Only the dialogue was stripped out.

Once in awhile there were some oddities, such as Jump showing up on the music track, or SFX track, or disappearing completely, in which case one of us would have to bark.

The theme that played in the background when Atom came to life was not underneath any dialog, and the music used for that scene in the ELV was NOT the same as that used in the Japanese version (Both sound tracks are on the DVD). I suppose that the music track could have been edited after the voice tracks were. I actually like the Liszt melody better than the Strauss one.