Arabian Nights: Adventures of Sinbad (アラビアンナイト シンドバットの冒険, Arabian Naito Shinbatto No Bōken) is an anime series produced by Nippon Animation which was first aired in 1975.
The story goes: Sinbad is a young boy and the son of a famous merchant from Baghdad. Sinbad especially enjoys listening to the adventure stories of his uncle Ali, who has given Sinbad a speaking mynah bird with him from his journey (which Sinbad had named Shera, after the mysterious girl he had just seen in a dream).Sinbad decides to joins his uncle and in hope of being a part of his uncle's next adventure. After a giant whale attacks the boat, he ends up alone on a deserted island. Sinbad begins the adventure alone with only Shera for company. When he returns home from his first adventure, he finds to his shock that his parents are missing, since they have gone to find him and were apparently lost at sea. Inheriting their fortune and determined to become great merchant just like them, Sinbad sets out again in search for adventure.
Throughout the series Sinbad journeys to different destinations together with Shera and his friends — a youth named Ali Baba who's good at using ropes, and a wise old man named Aladdin. They encounter a number of strange creatures, including giant birds, gigantic snakes, mermaids, genies, Lilliputians, and hostile magicians. He also meets several other characters and enacts stories featured in the Arabian Nights, including the Forty Thieves, the stories of The Genie and the Merchant, and the Flying Horse.
Arabian Nights: Adventures of Sinbad provides examples of the following tropes:
- Age Lift: The series reimagines Sinbad as a young boy, while in the original tales he was an adult.
- Adaptation Amalgamation: Besides taking inspiration from the tales of Sinbad the Sailor, the series also adapts elements from various other tales from the Arabian Nights, with Sinbad replacing the original protagonist of those stories.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Sinbad's friend Hassan has three younger brothers, all of which can be quite annoying.
- "Arabian Nights" Days: Oh, so very much.
- Art Shift: Being a 52-episode series, this occurs a few times to characters. Especially Shera. There's quite a lot of difference between episode 1's vision of her and her actual appearance of episode 47.
- Back for the Finale: Many past characters make a surprise comeback to help Sinbad track down one of his long-time enemy.
- Beard of Evil: Seem to be a staple of evil wizards.
- Benevolent Genie: Both the genie from the ring and the genie from the lamp qualify.
- Big Bad: The Great Blue Demon.
- Cool Old Guy: Aladdin.
- Eek, a Mouse!!: Tabasa the witch is terrified of mice, which Sinbad uses against her more than once.
- Evil Doppelgänger: One episode had three evil sorcerers turn themselves into doubles of Sinbad, Aladdin and Ali Baba.
- Evil Sorcerer: Sinbad encounters quite a few of these. Three of them, a Wicked Witch named Tabasa and her two sons Balba and Satajit, are even recurring villains.
- Forced Transformation: Since the setting is based on Arabian Nights, you must expect to come across them quite a lot. Shera was also victim of this. She's a princess transformed into a bird. So are her parents, who got turned into white eagles.
- Foreshadowing: In the very first episode, Sinbad dreams of a beautiful girl laughing and when he wakes up, he sees Shera laughing. Shera's is later revealed to be a human turned into a bird.
- Genie in a Bottle: Well actually, one inside a lamp and one inside a magic ring.
- Giant Flyer: The 2 Roc-birds.
- Heel–Face Turn: Ali Baba used to be a member of the forty thieves.
- I Hate Past Me: Ali Baba doesn't like it at all when Sinbad points out ot someone that Ali Baba used to be a desert raider.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Sinbad and his two friends Ali Baba and Aladdin all greatly differ in age, with Sinbad being a child, Ali Baba being somewhere in his twenties, and Aladdin being an old man of undetermined age.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Sinbad find the sorcerer responsible for turning Shera into a bird. He forced him to turn her back into a human. By the end of the episode, the sorcerer is transformed into a turkey and is never seen again.
- Magic Carpet: It wouldn't be an "Arabian Nights" Days without at least one of these now would it?
- Magic Pants: Even though Shera was cursed when she was a baby (in blankets), when she gets turned back into human, she's wearing clothes fit for her age and height.
- Not Allowed to Grow Up: Sinbad never seems to age, despite the fact that his adventures could easily take months or even years.
- Related in the Adaptation: Satajit is the evil wizard from the story of "Aladdin", and Balba the evil wizard from the story "The Enchanted Horse". While in the original story collection these are two standalone stories, and the two wizards are thus unrelated, the anime turns them into brothers.
- Sibling Rivalry: Satajit and Balba argue as much as they work together.
- Significant Name Overlap: There are 2 characters named Ali Baba: Sinbad's friend and a former desert raider, and the leader of the forthy thieves. The two are frequently confused with each other.
- Talking Animal: Shera, justified since she's a mynah bird.Apparently, the fact that she is actually a cursed human being also contributes to her high intelligence and talking skills.
- Taken for Granite: The trio of brothers who turned themselves into Evil Doppelgänger of Sinbad, Ali Baba and Aladdin. Our heroes manage to trick an evil wizard into turning them to stone by impersonating their evil counterparts.
- Three Successful Generations: It's Sinbad as a boy, Ali Baba as a youth, and Aladdin as an old man, plus one cute talking mynah bird Shera.
- Turtle Island: Sinbad encounters an island on the back of a whale
- Wham Episode: Shera's secret is revealed in episode 47. She's a princess turned into a bird and she was in Sinbad's dream in the first episode.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Sinbad, definitely.
