The Time Masters
The Time Masters 1982

The Time Masters

Released
21 Mar 1982
Running time
01:18:00
Directed by
Rene Laloux

The Time Masters belongs to the 1979-1983 stretch, when animation was spreading across anime features, adult cult films, television specials, auteur shorts, and international productions.

About the cartoon

Studio: TF1 Films Production, Pannonia Film Studio

Short Plot Synopsis

The Time Masters belongs to the 1979-1983 stretch, when animation was spreading across anime features, adult cult films, television specials, auteur shorts, and international productions.

The entry matters because it catches one part of that spread: a national studio, a fan culture, a literary adaptation, a compilation film, or an experiment in tone.

Why Is It Worth Watching?

  • It joins Rene Laloux with Moebius for cerebral science fiction whose strangeness is visual before it is narrative.
  • It captures animation entering the early 1980s with more cult films, anime franchises, television repackaging, and international festival work than ever before.
  • It helps connect the decade's famous milestones to the surrounding productions that made the medium feel newly crowded.

Legacy And Impact

The Time Masters earns its place by showing how wide animation had become by the early 1980s.

In this book, The Time Masters works as evidence that animation was no longer moving along one main studio road.

Its value also comes from the way it preserves a production context, not just a plot: a studio habit, a national style, a television format, or a feature-length experiment.

It also gives this section texture by showing how many animated works survived through fandom, regional memory, television recycling, and festival circulation.

Trivia

  • Moebius's designs make the alien planets feel drawn from European comics rather than Hollywood space adventure.

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