Blake and Mortimer is a French-Canadian Animated Adaptation of the eponymous Belgian Comic Book series by Edgar P. Jacobs. It was made in 1997-1998 by Ellipse Animation (which previously made The Adventures of Tintin with Nelvana) and Cactus Animation. In the French version, Blake, Mortimer and Olrik are voiced by, respectively, Robert Guilmard, Michel Papineschi and Mario Santini.
The series follows the adventures of two friends, Welsh Ace Pilot and MI5 agent Francis Blake and Scottish Omnidisciplinary Scientist Philip Mortimer, as they battle Diabolical Masterminds and Mad Scientists and solve mysteries in a Cold War-esque world.
Blake and Mortimer contains examples of:
- Adaptational Early Appearance: In The Secret of the Swordfish, two prototypes of the eponymous rocket plane have already been built before The Empire's global offensive, with Blake testing one right away as the episode starts and the other being blown up during the offensive to avoid capture. The Swordfish first appears much later in the comic book album, at the base in the Strait of Hormuz (it is the third Swordfish in the episode). Blake does not test it in the comic book, he inaugurates it by flying it in battle against the Yellow Empire's fleet.
- Animated Adaptation: Of the Blake and Mortimer books that existed at the time (from The Secret of the Swordfish to The Francis Blake Affair, inclusive). The four last stories ("The Viking's Bequest", "The Secret of Easter Island", "The Alchemist's Will", "The Druid") were made exclusively for the animated series. The series counts 26 episodes, for nine comic book stories and four new ones, each one being divided into two episodes. NB: in this series, the stories covering more than one album (The Secret of the Swordfish, The Mystery of the Great Pyramid, Professor Satō's Three Formulae) are now not any longer than the shorter ones (The Yellow M).
- Adaptational Badass: Miloch, due to being Spared by the Adaptation, is prone to Xanatos Speed Chess moves his already deceased comic counterpart wouldn't be able to do, such as trapping Blake in the time machine when he comes to rescue Mortimer and Agnès.
- Ascended Extra:
- Blake was Demoted to Extra in the original Time Trap, which was a solo Mortimer story. In the animated adaptation of this comic, he joins Mortimer mid-way and is promoted to main character as a result.
- Princesss Agnès remained in her Middle Ages era in the original Time Trap comic after Mortimer saved her life. Here, she joins Blake and Mortimer in their time travel to the 51th Century and helps them and La Résistance against the Sublime Guide and its machines, before staying there as Blake and Mortimer return to the present, deciding to help humanity reconstruct their devastated world.
- Bait-and-Switch Credits: Minor one. The opening features three Swordfish fighter/bomber rocket planes flying over Mortimer and Blake. At no point in The Secret of the Swordfish do we see more than one Swordfish flying (unlike the comics, in which a squadron of them nukes the Yellow Empire's heardquarters). There's only the mention by Blake that the free world nations plan to mass-produce it at the end of the episode.
- Bowdlerise:
- In the adaptation of The Secret of the Swordfish, the Yellow Empire becomes simply "The Empire", all its members are now Caucasian, they no longer wear World War II-era Japanese uniforms, they no longer wield Nazi-era guns, their flag isn't the Japanese-looking flag from the comic book, and there aren't any references to their geographic origin. In short: the original ones were a transparent expy of both Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, explicitly described as being Tibet and refered with a racist name, while the animated version are generic (and politically correct) bad guys. The Emperor is The Unseen and his hand is that of a Caucasian, so he's very much not the Tibetan Basam Damdu. Also counts as Pragmatic Adaptation.
- Mortimer's orginal catchphrase "By Jove!" (in other words, a synonym of "Oh my God!") became "By the tartan of Clan McGregor!". Somehow, "By Jove!" is given to Blake in the French version.
- Canon Foreigner: All of the new characters from the original episodes not based on any comic book.
- Character Catchphrase:
- Mortimer's was "By the tartan of Clan McGregor!". At one point Olrik even interrupts him when he says it and says "yes, yes, don't you have something else to say?"
- "By Jove!", which is Mortimer's in the comics, is given to Blake here in the French version.
- Compressed Adaptation: A number of subplots and characters from the original material's complex stories have been axed to streamline the episodes.
- Gender Flip: Prince Icarus from Atlantis Mystery is transformed into a blonde princess named Ariane.
- Genre Shift:
- The comic book version of The Necklace Affair is a story deprived of any sci-fi or supernatural element, which plot is about a heist planned by Olrik. The episode adapted from the comic book is a Scooby-Doo-like story featuring the (faked) ghost of Marie-Antoinette, no less.
- In general, the four episodes written specially for the animated series belong to the supernatural / fantasy genre, instead of the usual science-fiction themes of most of the original comic books.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Towards the end of The Secret of the Swordfish, just as Olrik declares that the Empire has won the war with the flag planted on the Resistance's base, Blake emerges from the water in the Swordfish and proceeds to completely destroy the Empire's fleet.
- Karma Houdini: Olrik due to being Spared by the Adaptation as he's Killed Off for Real in Professor Sató's Three Formulae. The ending of the last two-part episode, The Druid, has him escaping from the authorities.
- Recycled Animation: At the end of The Secret of the Swordfish, most of the footage of Blake destroying the enemy fleet with the new Swordfish is the same as him destroying the dummy fleet with the first Swordfish at the beginning of the first episode, with some color changes.
- Spared by the Adaptation:
- All of the villains (Tlalak, Magon, his men and Olrik) in the original "Atlantis Mystery" comic had been left to drown in the collapsing Atlantis, with only Olrik surviving through Unexplained Recovery. In the animated adaptation, they're tied up and arrested instead and end the episode alive.
- Miloch died prior to the events of The Time Trap in the original comic, due to having been fatally irradiated in S.O.S. Meteors : Mortimer in Paris. Here, he's only Faking the Dead, and while defeated at the end, is stated that he'll make a full recovery in the hospital.
- Olrik survives the events of Professor Sató's Three Formulae here (as well as the entire animated series for that matter, see Karma Houdini), while he was Killed Off for Real in the original comic.
