Taotao ehonkan sekai doubutsu-banashi (1983–1985) User Reviews

TaoTao is a Japanese animated series from 1983 and a movie, dealing with the life of the male panda TaoTao.

[bloodhound_omega · 7/10 · 27 April 2006]

TaoTao is a Japanese animated series from 1983 (I believe), with 52 Episodes and a movie. Though I must confess I always thought the series would be Chinese. The movie was aired first and deals with the entire life of the male panda TaoTao, from his birth over tragic events in his youth till his adulthood.

The TaoTao series takes place completely in TaoTao's childhood. In actually every of the 52 episodes mother panda has got a special story to tell her son and his friends, which suits a topical situation. Those stories base on famous tales taken from all over the world. It appears to be overly moral at times.

The main characters are of course TaoTao, his mother, TaoTao's best friend , the ape Kiki and various other animals appearing more or less regularly.

The animation style varies slightly from movie to series (whereas the series might be considered to have a more cute design)and proofs to be rather... "special" and not everybody's taste.

Original Tao Tao

[tomi-kaunisto · 2 May 2005]

Before TV-series there was a Tao Tao movie. Unlike the series, the movie was pretty dark and grim: hunters shoot panda mother and Tao Tao ends up living rest of his life in zoo, not very happily.

So, the TV-series is set in the beginning of the movie, in Tao Tao's happy childhood.

It's not said clearly in the movie, but the end kind of suggests Tao Tao dies in zoo after 12 years of sad imprisonment.

The movie features many characters seen in series, though only Kiki the monkey is named. But it also has human characters (I don't remember seeing any in series).

Occationally among animation there's some film like a real river in cartoon background.