Konnichiwa Anne – 14

Meh, this episode was a step down for this series. It had good intentions, definitely, but the CHEESE. This episode wasn’t WMT, it was just a random episode that the creators decided to stuff in. The summary of this episode is a bit shorter than usual because it turned me into a bad mood.

So this episode starts with Anne arriving late at school because Noah chose the wrong time to relief himself. In classes meanwhile, Randolf is screwing up again and the girls are laughing about him. Anne then arrives and demonstrates how well she’s been learning when she was taking care of Noah. Randolf then thinks it’s funny to throw a chalked blanket on her, and he then gets scolded by the teacher.

Bert meanwhile runs into a rich guy who is yelling at one of the poor people who owes money from him. He turns out to be Randolf’s father. After classes, Randolf thinks that Anne was laughing at him, and starts yelling at her. That evening, he’s trying to study even though he doesn’t understand the material, and instead starts playing with the cows on his farm. And turns into a completely different person while doing so, until he gets called (or screamed) back by his father who stubbornly orders him to continue studying.

The next day the teacher gives the assignment for the children to write down their ambitions for their future. Anne obviously wrote up an incredibly moralistic dream inspired by Robert Browning, while Randolf didn’t write down anything. When Anne reads her own piece, Randolf can’t take it anymore and starts making fun of her right in front of the class and the two starts fighting until the teacher takes them apart.

That afternoon when classes are over, Randolf’s father drops by the school and yells for his results. In the meantime, it turns out that Randolf and Anne live quite close to each other, and that’s where they run into a bunch of the cows on their farm that decided to wander off. At this point, Randolf changes character again and starts talking about how it’s his dream to be like his father: he started out incredibly poor and managed to build an entire farm and became one of the richest people in town from pure scratch.

So yeah, as it turns out Randolf wanted to be like his father, who worked hard as a farmer and achieved all of his success on his own. His father meanwhile wishes to forget those days and wants Randolf to grow up with a solid future, so that he doesn’t have to go through the same pain he did. So yeah, once they talk this out, they understand each other and everyone lived happily ever after: Randolf gets to chase his dream (although he does have to study for it), Randolf and Anne become friends and Randolf even develops a crush for Anne (yugh). And the episode ends.

I’m feeling really blegh about this episode. Not only was it a cheese-fest that SO doesn’t belong in the WMT, it also destroyed my suspense of disbelief and forced me to take critical look on the rest of the series, and I’m starting to understand what Windy meant with how this series isn’t as good as the previous WMTs.

The first arc is fine. While it had its rough edges, it was a roller-coaster of emotions, that definitely brought out the best in Anne’s character and shaped her to become like that great character we came to love. The Marysville arc however is different. I’m not bothered by the fact that it’s much lighter. It’s a nice change of pace for the darker parts of the story that are yet to come.

I’m only very much bothered by the fact that it’s a complete rip-off from Emily of the New Moon. Eggman and Henderson combined give Mr Carpenter. Mildred? Well, if it isn’t Lorna, the stuck up princess. Perry, Teddy and Ilse can be compared to Anne’s new posse of Randolf and Sadi (who by the way completely disappeared in this episode… wtf?). The thing is that Kaze no Shoujo Emily really was an amazing series, but when all of these things get taken out of context, they lose all of their meaning. Carpenter was an honest critic: he was there for the characters when they needed support, and he was the one who motivated everyone to keep chasing their dreams and aim high. Here, Eggman is a nice grandpa who lost his daughter (I just realized… we’re going to get an entire episode devoted to that one, aren’t we?), while Henderson is an idealistic feminist who does nothing but praise Anne over and over.

Mildred as well. Lorna and the girls were annoying, yet amusing, but the whole formula only worked because Emily too could be a bitch at times. Here, it’s simply the good Anne who gets bullied and teased by her evil and stuck-up classmates. Bitch-fights like these aren’t fun when one side is clearly in the right and the other clearly in the wrong. On top of that, the most memorable thing of Lorna was her grown up self: seeing how she grew out of that stuck-up character of her. Konnichiwa Anne however, is not going to travel that far into the characters’ lives. How are the characters going to develop her without making it look the same as Randolf’s?

The way this show stands out is in the research it did. According to Wikipedia, the creators went to actual Nova Scotia to study how kids live there, and it shows. Kids really behave like kids here, especially during the slice of life parts and that’s what makes this show so memorable but I’m starting to see that in terms of storytelling, the creators of this anime fall short, especially when compared to the other World Masterpiece Theatres.

There is one point about the realism in this series that bugs me a bit though, but I’m not sure whether or not the creators are accurate on that matter. Henderson has really set herself apart as a teacher who keeps praising the ones who do a good job, while ignoring the ones who are just average. On top of that, the top students are all looked up to in awe by their fellow classmates. This is really something typically Japanese, because it sure as heck doesn’t happen in the Netherlands at least. I’m just not sure what the standards for this are in Canada, and especially the Canada of 100 years ago. Any Canadians here to fill me in on that?
Rating: – (Disappointing)
A rather boring cheese-fest about Randolf