Mowgli's Brothers

For his final dip into Kipling’s work, Jones decided to tackle the biggest character, and the first story, in The Jungle Book, Mowgli. Nothing against Disney’s film version, but Jones’ television specials are the clearly superior versions. There’s no need to describe the story, as you’re already familiar with it from any of the numerous incarnations of the tale, but Jones’ version sticks closest to the text, restoring characters and relationships to their rightful places after Disney’s mutations of them.

Jones’ love for the source material bristles throughout his three Kipling shorts. Perhaps it’s how pliable they were to the animated form, allowing Jones to explore and expand what a children’s cartoon could look and feel like. It’s certainly true that Mowgli’s Brothers displays an artistic maturity that several other cartoons of its type don’t.

This version enchants me from the opening credits straight through, where Shere Khan is made up of black triangles stalking across a hot pink background, to the end, where Mowgli tries to return to the man village. If the backgrounds in The White Seal were abstract, then the ones here are the vaguest of impressions. An angular jungle of jagged shapes and rounded figures that looks more like the impressions and imaginings of a bright child than a typical cartoon.

June Foray and Roddy McDowell return to vocal duties, and Foray is particularly warm and maternal here. McDowell gets the bulk of the work here, and he gives a full array of vocal styles to the various characters and a clipped, posh accent for his moments of narration. Much like Welles in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, McDowell wraps his delicious vocal intonations around Kipling’s text with aplomb.

The poetry of Kipling is brought to life by Jones in Mowgli’s Brothers, both in the narration and in the experimentation of the piece. Taken individually, any of the adaptations are beautifully crafted wonders, but taken all together they’re something even greater. Each with a unique look and tone, each possessing individual strengths, they form an array of colors and sounds that push the boundaries of what American animation can be and look like. But how many people still watch them? I feel as if they’re criminally underrated and overdue for a reappraisal and place of prominence in Jones’ work.