Swan Lake

Swan Lake (世界名作童話白鳥の湖 Sekai Meisaku Dōwa Hakuchō no Mizūmi) is an anime film based on the ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. The film was released in Japan on 14 March 1981 by Toei. The film was produced by Toei Animation of Japan in partnership with Soyuzmultfilm from the Soviet Union and directed by Kimio Yabuki. The adaptation uses Tchaikovsky's score and remains relatively faithful to the story.

Synopsis

When Prince Siegfried spots a beautiful swan with a crown on its head, for some reason he feels compelled to follow it. He discovers that the swan is, in fact, a princess named Odette, who is under a wizard's curse that causes her to become a swan by day. The wizard, Rothbart, wants to keep Odette to himself, and the only thing that can break the spell on Odette is a man who truly loves her, with all his heart and soul.

Dubbing History[]

The film was originally dubbed in 1981 by Frontier Enterprises in Tokyo. This dub would be released on VHS by Hi-Tops Video in the late 1980's.

Around the same time, an alternate dub was recorded at Golden Sync Studios and was distributed to television by The Samuel Goldwyn Company, being broadcast on various networks over the years such as The Disney Channel and American Movie Classics (AMC). This dub was directed by Ardwight Chamberlain and featured celebrities as the main principles (Pam Dawber, Christopher Atkins, David Hemmings, and Kay Lenz). This version also had better syncing compared to the Frontier Enterprises dub. The dub would not see any home video release until 2017, when Discotek Media gave the film a DVD release with both dubs and the original Japanese audio. Because of The Samuel Goldwyn Company being purchased by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1997, their dub is often incorrectly called the MGM dub as a result, despite them not having ever released the film themselves.

Cast[]

Character	Seiyū	Dub Actor	Dub Actor
Princess Odette	Keiko Takeshita	Nancy Link	Pam Dawber
Prince Siegfried	Tarō Shigaki	Steve Knode	Christopher Atkins
Rothbart	Asao Koike	Joseph Zucatti	David Hemmings
Odille	Yōko Asagami	Patricia Kobayashi	Kay Lenz
Margarita	Fuyumi Shiraishi	Nancy Culluci	Lara Cody
Hans	Yoneko Matsukane	Gerri Sorrells	Robert Axelrod
Queen	Taeko Nakanishi	Judith Sackheim	Louise Chamis
Benno	Akira Murayama	Don Johnson	Ardwight Chamberlain
Adolph	Mugihito	Greg Starr	John Hostetter
Minister	Jōji Yanami	Mike Worman	Ted Lehmann
Princess Katherine	Chiyoko Kawashima	Helen Kataoka
Princess Rosanna	Chiyoko Kawashima	Debbie Davidson
Princess Francine	Seiko Nakano	Donna Zucatti