I've stumbled across a rather interesting looking children's show that aired on Spacetoon in Arabia but originates from Japan. it's called "أصدقاء الدروب" in Arabic (which translates to "Friends of the Paths"). The series focuses on educating children on how vehicles work and other methods of transport. but what I can't find is the Japanese title. I've tried a lot of different ways. the show has a Wikipedia page but doesn't say anything about it's Japanese title or the exact year it aired aside from being in the 1990s.
I've translated the name into Japanese but no luck there. I tried doing extensive research with the Arabic name on Google but none lead to a page having the title. The credits in the show are all in Arabic and are unreadable (Yandex of course can't make anything out.) and there isn't even enough English text in the clips I found that would be a lead to discovering a page about the series.
The Arabic dub of the show itself is pretty rare too. as I can only find the opening and ending along with a promo. which I'll link below
Post by cleamingthegube on Jul 18, 2020 5:27:04 GMT
Here is what I have gathered (allegedly):
Original Japanese theme was done by Rasha Rizk
Bouthayna Shaya had a voice role
Venus Center (https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D8%B1%D9%83%D8%B2_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B2%D9%87%D8%B1%D8%A9) did the Arabic dub
Animation International distributed the series, but shows no record on their site/archived site
Premiered in 1990, and included 51 episodes (https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A3%D8%B5%D8%AF%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%A1_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AF%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A8)
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If I had to guess, the title was likely originally translated to something like "Road Friends" or "Vehicle friends", as those would make more sense than "path".
Hmm... Been on this for a good few hours now. Still no luck IDing it, though I did find this alternate opening (perhaps for a later/earlier season):
Also found out that Spacetoon identify this as a Bon Bon show, if that helps at all (from this page, translated):
EDIT:
I thought I'd try translating the Japanese text in the alternate opening (since it's the first Japanese text we've actually found on this so far). Here's what I got:
CAR ビー クル - "vehicle" いそけー - "isoke" (a Japanese name - maybe the name of the car?) / last character is obscured, could be いそげー - "issoge"? いきすぎた - "went too far"
AMBULANCE アンビ - "ambi" あか?のいえ - "no idea lol" (after messing around with a bunch of combinations for what the obscured character could be, here's what I came up with: "あかしのいえ" - "testimony", "あかびのいえ" - "red mold", "あかどのいえ" - "no idiot" [probably not this haha]. Not entirely sure what to make of this one... I'm guessing "red" is on the right track though) しあわせ - "happy" グーグー - "googoo" (Japanese onomatopoeia?)
I found it! It's called "のりもの王国ブーブーカンカン" ("Kingdom of Vehicles Boo Boo Can Can" - maybe "Kang" instead of "Can"? I dunno, Google translate is giving me conflicting translations depending on what's written after the title)
For those curious as to how I ended up finding it - I googled all 4 of the Japanese names that I transcribed from the video in my last post - ie. ロコモ ドーザ アンビ ビー クル - leading me to the above Wikipedia page. In hindsight, I could've just thrown the names "Locomo" and "Dozer" into Google translate, which would've given me the correct spellings and lead me to the same place (though, the Google translate result for "Vehicle" is spelt differently and the ambulance is actually named "Ambi", not "Amb", as is written on the character - so those threw me off). Oh well, got there in the end XP
EDIT:
And here is some music from the original show! Taken from this soundtrack ("のりもの王国ブーブーカンカン ヒットパレード!")
Theme song:
Not sure about the context of this one:
EDIT 2:
Looks like the uploader of those two tracks has a handful more tracks from the show on their channel (I won't embed them here coz I don't wanna clutter the thread, but they are there for those curious)
I've came back late. Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who helped identify this. I think I'll consider talking more about this series more in the future as the original Japanese version looks to be mostly lost as well.