A Rather Spoilerific Comparison Between Ie Naki Ko (1977) and Ie naki Ko Remi (1997)

Okay, so for the past weeks I’ve finally sat down and watched the 1977 version of Ie Naki Ko. I’m currently at episode 45, and a review will probably be up somewhere tomorrow. Still, while watching it, I noted that more and more things popped up that I wanted to talk about, yet either contained massive spoilers or wouldn’t fit in an actual review of it, especially when I started to compare it to the 1997 WMT version.

So yeah, if you haven’t watched either Ie Naki Ko 1997 or 1977, but plan to watch it at some point: this post will probably spoil the entire plot so you might want to close the window. It’s a bit of a post with a really small target audience, because I only know of one other person who watched both series, but I just have too much that I want to say about it.

Watching Ie Naki Ko 1977 amazed me at how much extra detail there was compared to the 1997 series, but at the same time it also gave me a new respect for the 1997 series. More on that below though, because the fact does remain that the 1997 version is miles away in terms of realism here. Ie Naki Ko 1977 showed us a great down to earth depiction of what France must have been like, around 140 years ago. Backgrounds are realistic, and yet vividly imaginative.

On top of that, Ie Naki Ko’s biggest problem, the comical bad guys are much better handled. Take for example the prologue, in which Remi’s foster father tries to sell him/her in order to get rid of his money problems. In the 1997 series, the creators came up with this one dimensional villain who could have walked out of a 1960s American cartoon. In the 1977 version, Vitalis instead just buys Remy directly.

The rest of the villains of the series are also quite interesting here. The guy who keeps the children slaves was a carbon copy of that same bad guy in the 1997 series. In the 1977 series however, we learn a bit more about him. Nothing is said explicitly, but it is made very clear that this is a guy who made many wrong turns in his life since he saw Vitalis for the last time.

And finally, the bad guys who try to kidnap Remi for his very wealthy mother: in the 1997 series, it was just the same slave guy. He just randomly decides “okay, I’m going to make some money here”, and from that point onward he consistently fails in just about everything he does due to a rushed plot. In the 1977 series however, they’re completely new characters who actually have been planning their actions for quite a bit and spending a great bit of money on it in order to pull it off successfully. Amongst the bad guy’s gang, there are a bunch of idiots, but I’m amazed at how often they actually managed to catch Remi back after he tried to escape them.

At the same time though, in terms of the storyline, the bad guys are the only parts at which I feel that the 1997 series screwed up completely. The rest of the changes it made, even when they were nowhere as good as the 1977 series, are changes that do have their own merits and that I can understand, either due to a lack of time or for reasons that have to do with its own storyline. Take for example Vitalis’ past: the 1977 really surprised me when it actually devoted half an episode to Vitalis’ past, just after he died. The 1997 series never said anything about this, and in that way they created two completely different characters: for all we know 1997 Vitalis could have been a random gypsy and that really reflected back in their actions: 1997 Vitalis was much milder than the rugged 1977 Vitalis.

Another detail at which the 1977 version put much more attention was are for example Zerbino: the 1977 gave him a ton of extra character by making him into a glutton, in which he stole food on a regular basis. It created a great deal of tension, plus it also forced some development on both Remi, Capi and Vitalis when they tried to deal with him. It also caused his death to make much more impact, because this time it really was his own flaws that caused both him and Dolce to get eaten by those wolves.

There are two final parts at which the 1977 was much better that I want to talk about. The first is Remi’s development. The way in which the 1997 started off with Remi, who was already much older than her 1977 counterpart. She already was a headstrong character instead of the innocent country kid that 1977 Remi started out as. This greatly limited her own development, because one of the things that is currently making the final third of the 1977 series so enjoyable to watch is Remi’s development, even though it’s far from the darkest part of the series.

Finally: revisiting old characters. I absolutely loved it when 1977 Remi actually travelled back to his foster mother, so that we could actually see what became of her and her husband. Especially that husband received a great amount of character development in the end, and I especially loved the way he changes in 1977 Remi’s percievement. It’s the point in which that maid that took care of Remi’s foster father told Remi that she too was an abandoned child too at which I really started to like the character Remi grew into.

In comparison, there are only a few areas at which the 1997 version really is better than the 1977 version. The first and most notable is the soundtrack. While the 1977 also had some pretty good music, the 1997 version’s is just that good. It had by far the best OP and ED out of any WMT series I’ve seen as well.

The second is that it’s a bit better at masking its coincidences, which were the biggest flaw of the 1977 series: somehow we have this kid who is the lost son of the single most famous family of London, travels with the former most famous opera singer of Italy, gets sold as a child due to his foser father getting into an accident, survives a harshly cold winter outside, gets his life ruined by a sudden giant hail storm and gets caught in a mining accident… I mean, dear God. Could you perhaps also get him to catch the plague or something to make this picture complete?

The 1997 series instead made sure that at least the main events flowed into each other: coincidences are used more for irony, and it’s really the characters who decide the plot there, instead of how the setting decided the plot in 1977. And that just shows how different your adaptations can get with different visions behind them.

Beyond that, though: In the past I have often called the 1997 series a cheap version of the 1977 series. By this, I’d like to take that back. It’s obviously not as good as the 1977 series, but my assumptions that it just blindly tried to follow the same story with some random and pointless changes were really wrong. I’m really surprised, but a surprising amount of thought went into its series composition.

So I was at the halfway point of the series, at Jolie Cour’s death. I watched the 1997 series two years ago, and I clearly remember him surviving that cold winter night. That was my first big surprise. Then however, they suddenly got to Paris, and Vitalis wasn’t dead yet! The more Vitalis went in order to search for a job, the more I began to wonder how the heck the Garofoli would make sense in this story. At that point, there was no reason for Remi to stay at such a bastard’s home. And indeed: Remi pays a visit to Garofoli (who actually also wasn’t dead yet, compared to 1997 in which he did kick the bucket), notices the horrors that went on there, Vitalis notices it too and takes Remi away. After that, to my surprise, the two plots of the series diverge completely. I really expected Garofoli to play a huge part in the original story, and yet he was a mere tiny side character!

And with that, I really have to admire what the 1997 series did there: it didn’t pull the mother of all middle-fingers by changing the gender of the lead character (something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before…) just out of random. It really knew what it wanted to be. Its biggest problem in the end was the television station that denied it the proper amount of episodes, leading to a rushed ending.

When you think about it, there is no way that 1977 Remi would have stayed at Garofoli. It’s impossible. He would have gone to the street and travelled alone with his experience. And in fact, the 1997 Remi could have done to, if her character wasn’t completely different. compared to the 1977 Remi, she was much more compassionate. Whereas the first half of the 1977 series focused mostly on Remi adapting to his new harsh life style and gaining experience, the 1997 version instead focused on Remi, helping out others. There was much less drama between Vitalis and Remi herself, but instead these episode kept stressing that Remi was the kind of strong girl who loved to help others.

And then she gets stuffed into Garofoli’s care, and the only thing that pretty much prevented her from just leaving is that she couldn’t get it over her heart to abandon all these small children and hand them to the mercy of Garofoli. In essence, the creators of the 1997 version picked one minor part of the original story, and based its entire second half around it, essentially becoming a really dark story about severe child abuse and slavery, a topic that most series only gloss over, if they discuss it at all.

Uhm, so yes, this has become rather tl;dr. In essence: Ie Naki Ko 1977 > Ie Naki Ko 1997, but both are worth watching if you like WMT-ish series and both series are different enough to watch both of them.