Discover the end of the cartoon “The Mysterious Cities of Gold”, which tells the adventures of Esteban, Zia and Tao in search of ancient cities entirely made of gold.
“Ahhhh, ah-ah-ah-ah, Esteban, Zia, Tao, the cities of ooooooor!” The Mysterious Cities of Gold is an anime based on the novel The Gold Road by Scott O’Dell, published in 1966. Broadcast from 1982 in Japan, the series arrived in France the following year on Antenne 2. It has been broadcast multiple times since.
Spain, 1532. A 12-year-old boy, Esteban, leaves Barcelona Cathedral to go and listen to the extraordinary stories of sailors. This is how he meets the navigator Mendoza who claims to have saved him at sea when he was a baby. He has as proof a part of the mysterious pendant that Esteban wears around his neck. When his tutor dies, Esteban decides to follow Mendoza in search of the legendary Cities of Gold. He then embarks for the New World, on the trail of his origins…
MK Production, DIC Esteban and Zia
In the previous episode, Esteban and his friends found the golden city of Tseila, but the Olmecs come to attack it in order to recover the Great Legacy. A fight ensues, from which the Olmecs end up defeated, their ship crashing. Two of them survived, Ménator and Calmèque.
At the beginning of the last episode, titled Towards New Adventures, we find on the mountain of the Smoking Shield Menator and Calmec, who have got their hands on the Great Legacy, an hourglass whose center is a glass column and which allows the heart to a solar reactor to operate. They start the mechanism and the Great Legacy will sink into the Earth and dig deeper and deeper. In doing so, toxic gases will escape, and spread over the world’s population.
MK Production, DIC
Calmec manipulates the Great Legacy under Menator’s guidance
Moreover, an error in manipulation by the Olmecs causes an additional catastrophe: the city of gold is about to be destroyed and the two leaders succumb without being able to repair their fault. The High Priest, guardian of the cities of gold, who possesses a golden vase which is also the operating key of the Great Legacy, decides to go to the Mountain of the Smoking Shield in order to stem this impending catastrophe.
MK Production, DIC
The High Priest facing Esteban
As destruction draws near, Navigator Mendoza learns that the High Priest who has gone to the mountain is none other than the Prophet Traveler, who visited the city of Tseila a few years ago. He took on the role of High Priest when the latter died, thinking that his son would one day come to find him thanks to the medallion of the sun he had left him. In other words, the High Priest is Esteban’s father.
MK Production, DIC
Esteban talks (unknowingly) to his father
The latter has a chance to speak to his son one last time. He then arrives at the mountain and exhausts his last strength in removing the column from the glass of the Great Legacy, placing the vase on it, and putting it back in place. He dies saving the Earth. On the other hand, nothing remains of Tseila and Gaspard like Gomez, who remained in town out of greed, perished.
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The city is destroyed
Mendoza, Sancho and Pedro survived and saved some gold before the total destruction of the city, of which there is now nothing left. They decide to go back to where it all began: to Barcelona to “achieve great things”. As for Esteban, Zia, Tao and Pichu, they board the Grand Condor and go in search of the six other cities of gold, which still exist throughout the world.
End of the series.