Neptune's Legions

Neptune's Legions^[1] are a group of supporting characters featured in the 1932 Silly Symphony short King Neptune. They are a group of sea creatures who live under the reign of King Neptune and serve as his allies.

Background[]

Neptune's legions consist of various sea creatures - consisting of fish, seahorses, octopi, pufferfish, lobsters, swordfish, electric eels, and whales obeying their ruler King Neptune. They are shown to live in harmony with each other at the ocean under Neptune's rule. However, when one of the mermaids was captured, the other mermaids begin to sound the alarm, resulting in the sea creatures in an all-out joint attack in the form of a mob to fight off the pirates. To this, they were able to defeat the pirates with King Neptune sinking their ship to the bottom of the ocean.

Appearances[]

King Neptune[]

Assorted fish (and a stingray and an eel) are first seen swimming in the background while King Neptune introduces himself, followed by a group of fish riding on seahorses sounding a fanfare just as he sings about how he is the king of the sea. Suddenly, a parade of sea creatures - consisting of various fish, seahorses, octopi, pufferfish, and lobsters begin to march, introducing Neptune to a group of mermaids. Furthermore when a group of pirates captured a mermaid, more mermaids begin ringing bells to sound the alarm, getting the sea creatures' attention. Amongst the sea creatures aware of the alert are fish, octopi, swordfish, sea turtles, eels, lobsters, seahorses, whales, and flounders. Throughout the battle, a whale fires swordfish to chop down a mast on the pirate ship while the pirates counterattack with cannonballs, followed by an octopus using turtles to deflect the cannonballs to counter the ambush and later lobsters on a whale aided by flying fish deploying them on the spot to pinch the crewmen with their claws.

Suddenly, another octopus climbs onboard the ship and tosses a pirate overboard, just as he dons his hat and boots, arming himself with makeshift swords while fighting off the pirates. Meanwhile, swordfish and whales toss cannonballs onto the ship to counterattack, just as the octopus begins using his weapons as makeshift pistols to scare off the pirates, causing them to retreat onto the crow's nest. However, due to many pirates standing onto the mast, this results them to fall into the ocean where they are attacked by electric eels, generating electricity on them. Later, another octopus loads cannonballs onto another fish to pelt the pirates with the projectiles that he loaded onto the fish, just as the sea creatures continue to attack while Neptune frees himself from the anchor and chain the pirates put on him. As Neptune frees himself, the sea creatures back away to make way for him so that he can create a storm to defeat the pirates. After Neptune sinks the pirate ship to the bottom of the sea, the sea creatures and mermaids then retreat from the ship, just before the blonde-haired mermaid frees herself from the chest, causing the legions to be victorious in winning the battle against the pirates.

Trivia[]

A clip of the sea creatures marching towards King Neptune was used for the "At the Codfish Ball" segment of the Disney's Sing-Along Songs volume of Under the Sea.
In real life, electric eels are not actually eels but rather a species of knifefish, unlike the eels seen in King Neptune generating electricity (making them a literal interpretation of electric eels) to attack the pirates.
Portions of the battle sequence of the sea creatures attacking the pirates were later used as an animation reference in the 1989 Disney animated feature film The Little Mermaid, specifically during the part where Scuttle leads the sea creatures and the lagoon creatures to stop the wedding between "Vanessa" and Prince Eric.^[2]