Rayman: The Animated Series (also known as Rayman: The TV Series, or just Rayman) is a series of animated short films created by Ubisoft in 1999, based on the Rayman series, following the success of Rayman 2: The Great Escape. It was meant to be a series of 26 episodes with a projected release during the fall of 2000, but only four were completed when it was cancelled mid-series, leaving a fifth episode near to completion. The series was only broadcast in France, Germany and the Netherlands, but was released on VHS in North America, and additionally on DVD in France prior to the TV airing.

Premise

Lac-Mac is the star of a galactic circus, run by Rigatoni and Admiral Razorbeard. He and his friends are forced to live life as circus freaks, hit by whips and generally mistreated. They only wish that they can be free from their dreadful, unfair lives. One night, after Lac-Mac has just done a great performance, the circus closes for the night and Rigatoni picks up a new circus recruit Rayman. Rayman is forced to stay at the circus because he can do amazing tricks with his floating limbless hands. He discovers that the other performers are forced to stay in this prison despite not having done anything wrong. Rayman won't take this. That night, he helps them escape. Rigatoni hires the bumbling detective, Inspector Grub, to bring the "fugitives" back. Rayman leads the circus freaks in outsmarting Grub and living in the city of Aeropolis, the populated world the traveling circus landed on.

Characters

Episodes

Production

According to producer François Pétavy, the series was internationally co-produced by Ubisoft's teams in France (pilot episode, design, storyboard, a scenario portion, layout and post-production), Canada (animation, set modeling, characters integration and rendering), and the United States (script). Twenty-six quarter-hour episodes were planned (although some sources incorrectly say thirteen or mean thirteen half-hour episodes), but after the fourth episode was completed, the show was cancelled. Although not confirmed, animator Émile Ghorayeb stated that it was cancelled due to high costs and "marketing reasons". The second episode "No Parking" was the pilot episode that debuted at Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 1999. They were aired in very few countries in Europe, notably France, Germany and the Netherlands. The fifth, unfinished episode was to be called "My Fair Lac-Mac", earning much fan speculation about the episode's content. This episode was almost done in production, but was stopped at the last minute.