Clémentine is an animated series from the 1980s co-produced by French and Japanese studios.
Clémentine Dumat is the 10-year-old daughter of a French aviator and former World War I Ace Pilot, Alex Dumat. She becomes a wheelchair user following an airplane accident caused by the demonic entity Malmoth, who seeks to capture her soul and make her his plaything. As she travels the world with her father and younger brother Petit-Boy, looking for a cure that will restore the use of her legs, she meets famous figures from legend and literature in her dreams, and with the help of the fairy Hemera, foils Malmoth's evil schemes in both the dreaming and waking worlds.
Created by Bruno René Huchez, Clémentine was inspired both by Huchez' love of Anime - he was one of the producers responsible for bringing anime dubs to French television - and by his own childhood, as his mother used to tell him stories about a young girl and her fantastic journeys when he was ill. The first and best-loved season, 26 episodes long, featured Clémentine's adventures in various literary, legendary and historical settings, accompanied by Hemera and her pet kitten, Hélice. Marie Dauphin performed the opening song.
A second season was based more on contemporary (1920s) figures, but its weaker plot line and the poor quality of the artwork made it significantly less memorable.
A rumored live-action film has been rotting in Development Hell for years. It apparently would have been a Turkish/American co-production.
Clémentine provides examples of the following tropes:
- Action Dad: Clémentine's father, Alex Dumat. He was a veteran of World War I, has won several prizes for his aviation skills, and often puts them to use for a good cause, such as delivering medicines to sick children in Africa, or searching for Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
- Action Survivor: In her fantastic travels, Clémentine almost never fights, but because of Malmoth's fixation on her, she regularly has to flee from and evade his minions, with the help of her ally/ies of the episode. Her main concern is to help her new friend(s) accomplish their destiny and/or escape a fateful end, while she has to stay alive and well long enough to come back to present day. Malmoth's servants are usually taken care of by third parties (in a battle, stomped by a horse, etc.), Hemera herself, or are even dumb/incompetent enough to be self-disposing.
- Anachronism Stew: Gontrand tries to sing Édith Piaf's "La Vie en Rose" to Starlett, but in fact this song wasn't released before the 1950s, while Clémentine takes place in the 1920s.
- A minor obe, but when Clémentine comes back from her adventure in Ancient Egypt, she learns that Tutankhamon's tomb has just been discovered. This is not possible, has the tomb was found in 1922 and the series is set in 1925.
- Ancient Egypt: Clémentine's penultimate adventure, in the first season, has her travelling back in time to meet Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, better known to history as Akhenaton, and his son-in-law Tutankhamon.
- Badass Adorable: Hélice. For a cute little kitten, he can be remarkably heroic and combative.
- Big Bad: Malmoth is the source of the overarching conflict of the show since he caused Clémentine and her father's plane accident after which her legs got paralyzed. Every Villain of the Week in the show works for him, sometimes several in the same setting at the same time, like the Troll tribe and the Red Spiders from the story in Sweden. His ultimate goal is to make Clémentine's current state permanent so she will not heal and lead a "miserable and suffering life". This would "give [him] new ideas to make people suffer".
- Book Dumb: Clémentine's little brother, only referred to as "Petit Boy", isn't too good at schoolwork, and often ends up wearing the dunce's cap.
- Bowdlerise: Some scenes got cut in the two U.S VHS releases note .
- Christianity Is Catholic: Naturally, this being a French series, the Catholic Church makes a couple of appearances. In Clémentine's Spanish adventure, Chief Inquisitor El Draco is a villain, but he is clearly shown to be a tool of the demon Malmoth rather than a "true" Catholic. A far more positive portrayal is of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, a young Iroquois girl who is victimized for being a Catholic convert, but finally ends up saving the day and winning the respect of her tribe's chief.
- Circus Brat: Eole, the trapeze artist whom Clémentine befriends, and who eventually falls in love with and marries Alex Dumat.
- Cute Kitten: When hospitalized following her accident, Clémentine falls into a pond while trying to save a kitten, and both of them are saved by a kindly nurse. She later adopts the kitten and names him Hélice, which is French for "propeller".
- Despair Event Horizon: Towards the end of the first arc, poor Clémentine falls prey to this, as she thinks she'll never be able to walk again. Hemera will have none of this, and shocks her out of it by showing her a young girl whose life is far more miserable than hers.
- Family-Unfriendly Violence:
- During Clementine's adventure in Japan, a samurai commits seppuku. Onscreen.
- In the German adventure, Reseda, the princess, is attacked by a giant mole. She counterattacks him by taking a knife and stabbing him in the chest. Even blood is visible. However...
- Family-Unfriendly Death: ...unfortunately for her, he takes no damage, pulls the knife back from his chest and kills her off the same way. She does not come back.
- Female Angel, Male Demon: The Big Bad Malmoth is a demonic giant man made of fire; by contrast Clementine Guardian Angel is a woman named Hemera.
- Funny Animal: A cast full of them, whose adventures sometimes form side-plots to the main arc:
- Hélice, Clémentine's pet kitten and inseparable companion.
- Gontrand, a partly deaf, cranky, philosophical old cat who lives on the airfield at Villacoublay.
- Starlett O'Wawa, an acrobatic circus dog who falls in love with Gontrand.
- Ginette, a performing circus flea who can write, and who acts as Gontrand's hearing aid.
- A few other circus animals, including a performing elephant, an acrobatic monkey, and a goat.
- Good Colors, Evil Colors: Hemera's color is blue, while Malmoth's is red.
- Greed|The Miser: Mollache, the circus owner, starves his animals and employees alike to save money. He also shamelessly tries to extort as much money as he can from Alex Dumat for minor damages the latter caused to his self-crafted flying rocket.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Eole is a sweet circus girl, and her hair is light blond.
- Historical Domain Character:
- Kateri Tekakwitha really lived, and was a Catholic convert from a Canadian Indian tribe; however, she wasn't the White Magician Girl that the series portrays. Incidentally, she was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI, and is now Saint Kateri.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery was an adventurous aviator and storyteller, best known for The Little Prince. He puts in an appearance at the beginning of Clémentine's Egyptian adventure, having crashed in the desert and being rescued by Alex Dumat.
- Clémentine's first dream adventure is set in Venice, and features Leonardo Da Vinci, portrayed as a Renaissance man and genius, but also the inventor of the Italian gelato. Of note is that Pinocchio appears in the very same adventure, despite having been written in the 19th century.
- Pharaoh Akhenaton (Amenhotep IV), his queen Nefertiti, and his son-in-law Tutankhamon are all real people from ancient Egyptian history, though the historical Akhenaton was by no means the saint-like, idealistic monarch portrayed in the series; and Tutankhamon certainly did not marry Clémentine. Akhenaton's portrayal can probably be explained through the smaller knowledge about his rein available at the time.
- Kateri Tekakwitha
- Hollywood History: The beliefs and reign of Akhenaton, during Clémentine's Egyptian adventure, are romanticized, almost to the point of Artistic License – History. Akhenaton was actually quite a monomaniac ruler solely focused on his new religion (which had bad consequences at the frontiers), and he didn't exactly "give his people a God of love, years before Christianity"; he was just an early monotheist who wanted all his people to worship the Sun God Aton, probably to undermine the ever-growing power of the clergy of Amon.
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Starlett, to Gontrand; he's a grumpy old cat, but she awakens his hidden romantic side, with hilarious consequences. For example, when she's captured by Mollache, he dresses up as Zorro to save her, and later, he sings her a
hilariously terrible version of Édith Piaf's classic love song, La Vie en Rose. - Meaningful Name:
- Clémentine's implacable demonic enemy is called Malmoth; mal means "evil" in French. He also shares, save for one letter, practically the same name than the Villain Protagonist of Melmoth the Wanderer, who offers a Deal with the Devil to his victims. Malmoth's relationship with his minions oscillates between this and pure worship.
- Hélice, Clémentine's kitten, originally gets his name because the tuft of hair on his head looks like a propeller (hélice, in French). Later, during Clémentine's adventures, Hemera gives him an aviator's cap with a real propeller on top, enabling him to fly for real.
- Hemera, Clémentine's guardian angel, has a name that means "dawn" (or "day") in Greek. Hemera is also the Greek goddess of the dawn.
- Mollache, the cowardly, villainous circus owner, has a name that evokes both his physique (molle could be translated as "soft" or "weak", as in the slang phrase chiffe molle - literally "wet rag", but idiomatically "wuss" or "weakling") and his personality (lache means "coward" in French.) Also, the name sounds suspiciously like Moloch, a mythological demon.
- Engelhardt, Alex's Worthy Opponent from World War I, has a name that literally means "angel heart" in German. By the time we meet him, he's living in cozy domesticity, and his wife puts Clémentine to bed after their journey.
- Eole is an acrobat and, later, an aviatrix. Eole is also the name of the Greek god of winds.
- Inverted with Lady Câline (roughly translates as"Lady Cuddly") whose name is actually a Deceiving Name since she's one of Malmoth's servant, and one of the most dangerous, cruel and perfidious at that. It's telling that she's one of the last of Malmoth's transformed minions to be eliminated by Hemera in the final episode of season 1.
- Minion with an F in Evil: Mollache, the first of Malmoth's lackeys, is a comically inept villain who gets a beating (or, more accurately, a sweeping) even from Clémentine's housekeeper.
- Missing Mom: Clémentine and her brother are raised by their father, who is a widower, with a little help from their housekeeper, Léonie.
- Opposites Attract: Gontrand, a curmudgeonly philosopher of a cat, and Starlett O'Wawa, a vain and flirtatious circus dog, end up being a couple quite early on in Season One. They often fight like cats and dogs, but are also genuinely fond of each other.
- Or Was It a Dream?: In the beginning, it seems as if Clémentine's adventures with Hemera are just the dreams of an imaginative young girl. However, at the end of Clémentine's African adventure, she is shown to have a small burn that she acquired while escaping from a volcanic eruption in her "dream", and at the very end of the first season, when Malmoth is defeated in her dream, she is cured and is able to walk again.
- Even moreso, it's shown that Malmoth's servants do not suffer from No Ontological Inertia, since after his death, they collectively try to get revenge, even if they're still in their transformed state. Hemera swiftly and effortlessly takes care of this minor threat with practically no one noticing something even happened.
- Our Fairies Are Different: Hemera describes herself as a fairy to Clémentine. She has a wide array of powers which most (but not all) are tied with her "Bulle bleue" (literally "Blue bubble"). The more confident and brave Clémentine becomes towards her paralysis and Malmoth, the more powerful Hemera becomes in return. This allows her to actually kill Malmoth towards the end of season 1. All in all, Hemera appears as Guardian Entity not so different than a Fairy Godmother, if not plotwise, but at least as a magical protector.
- Parent with New Paramour: Clémentine's father, Alex Dumat, meets Eole, a pretty circus girl, in the very first episode. They are married by end of the first season. This counts as a Type 1: Clémentine and Eole generally get on well note , and she's a Parental Substitute when Alex isn't around.
- Real-Place Background: Clémentine's hometown is Villacoublay, a suburb of Paris notable for being the location of a lot of pioneering work in French aviation.
- Reality Is Unrealistic: Clémentine's Sailor Fuku-like by defaut outfit may seem out-of-place to some Western viewers for a show set in France's The Roaring '20s. In fact it was quite fashionable to dress girls and boys alike with navy/sea themed clothes by then, and the Japanese Sailor Fuku itself finds its origin into this trend.
- The Roaring '20s: The story is set in 1925, and Clémentine gets to meet historical figures from that era such as Charles Lindbergh.
- Self-Disposing Villain: From the Nils Holgersson themed episode, we have The Trolls and the Red Widows (which are red spiders), with a touch of Bad Boss. Here, Clémentine gets shrinked to the size of Nils Holgersson (more or less gnome-like). The Trolls are of this size too, while the Red Widows are comparatively much bigger. But the Trolls are so bad at catching Clémentine and Nils that Malmoth resorts to the Red Widows as an additional force, despite the King of the Trolls pointing out the spiders would eat them too, since the hungry monsters won't/can't discriminate. Malmoth makes it clear his decisions are not to be discussed and the Troll King goes along with it. Finally, the Red Widows and the Trolls' rafts meet on a subterranean lake. The spiders rush agressively towards these potential meals, provoking a wave which flips the Trolls' boats and ends up drowning everyone, Red Widows and Trolls alike. The Troll King last words have him pitifully screaming "Haaaa!! Malmoth!!..." in a pathetic attempt to get some help from the demon, or incomprehension of why events turned out this way.
- Mollache is another, partial example. He tries to flee in his self-built flying rocket but the circus artists secretly sabotaged it with fireworks, so it explodes in flight. Given it was crafted by Mollache himself who proves multiple times to be incompetent on equally multiple areas, his fate would probably have been the same anyway.
- Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains: In the second-to-last episode, Morea, who wears a cape, a bikini and a pair of boots, fights against the more modestly drssed Hemera. Hemera even sarcastically congratulates Malmoth for choosing someone having as much good taste as Morea.
- Shapeshifter: Since he's a demonic entity, Malmoth can take virtually any form he sees fit to reach his goals. He mostly does so in the first episode though. First, he assumes the shape of a fierce thunderstorm which forces Alex and Clémentine's plane to an emergency landing. Then upon said landing, he becomes or summons a giant horned demonic-looking rock which suddenly appears out of nowhere, just to make sure the crash really is brutal. On both the cloud and the rock, his malevolent red eyes briefly appear, clearly hinting that these otherwise possible "natural" hardships are in fact, not.
- After the 1st episode, he settles to his giant Demon-Made-of-Flames persona. Moreover, from then on, he will extremely rarely intervene himself, letting his Minions of varying competence "doing" most of the work.
- Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Clémentine. She's the heroine and is a redhead with green eyes. 'Nuff said.
- Besides, if all her adventures are not simple dreams/fantasies, then she played an important part in many stories known across the world.
- Talking Animal: Downplayed. Hélice becomes able to talk only during Clémentine's dream-journeys. Otherwise he's just a normal kitten with an oddly shaped tuft of hair on the tip of his head.
- Of course, he still follows the Animal Talk rule (i.e., by narrative convention, communicating with most other animals via "speaking", even if they're of different species who proverbially cannot understand each others like cats and dogs).
- Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Every time Malmoth appears, heralded by his sinister musical theme, there is a massive Mood Whiplash in the series, turning considerably darker. While for most part the series is very sweet and light-hearted he is a genuinely horrifying villain.
- Wicked Witch: Malorea, who rules over an island of lepers and convicts, forces them to hunt pearls and has magical powers over her surrounding ocean. Later, she becomes Malmorea, the wife of Malmoth.
- Worthy Opponent: Engelhardt, a German World War I ace who had many confrontations with Alex Dumat in combat. When they meet after the war, they're on much friendlier terms; the Dumats stay in his house as guests, and his wife Lieselotte tells Clémentine a bedtime story.