Just for the information, for the upcoming winter-season I’m again planning to not look at any of the promo material of the upcoming series, so again I won’t be writing a preview for it. I’m going to make one exception for this, though: Konnichiwa Anne, the next instalment of the World Masterpiece Theatre. I figure with such a title, and the “kids”-label most people who might be potentially interested in the series will be turned off before the series even started.
For those of you who don’t know about the World Masterpiece Theatre, here’s a short description. They started back in 1975, and each year, a new series of usually around 52 episodes would be shown as an adaptation of a famous children’s novel. One of the big trademarks of the franchise was the huge focus on creating “real” characters: characters that felt like real people. The different series come in all sorts of different sizes: sometimes they get gut-wrenchingly sad, others are quite light-hearted, others are inspirational. They can be surprisingly mature for mere children’s’ series, and therefore are also an excellent watch for the older viewers.
This has both its good and bad points. The good side of the franchise is that because the characters are so well fleshed out, they become a delight to watch, and they’re very easy to identify with as a viewer. The bad side is that nearly every series of the franchise is very slow paced. There are a lot of slice of life moments that help to identify and define the characters in question, and if you can’t enjoy those, you probably won’t find much enjoyment, and the series will most likely bore you to death.
Anyway, about Konnichiwa Anne. It’s based on the novel “Before Green Gables”, which is the prequel of the famous children’s novel “Anne of Green Gables“, a novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery, and adapted in 1979 into an anime by Isao Takahata of Ghibli-fame. The original series was a slice of life series, which depicted five years out of Anne’s teenaged life.
Before Green Gables actually wasn’t written by Lucy Maud Montgomery herself, but instead by a completely different woman: Budge Wilson. She wrote it in 2008 as the 100th anniversary of the original novel, and it can be very well considered as professional fan fiction, telling about the first eleven years of Anne’s life, which only had been hinted at in the novels (or the anime, at least). What the tv-series told us about Anne’s past was that her parents died when she was only three months old. She then moved from family to family, living there as something as an unwanted child for those already overcrowded families, eventually ending up at an orphanage.
So my prediction is that this series is going to be completely different from the original Anne of Green Gables anime, and that instead it’s going to be a very dark but heart-warming slice-of-life series with quite a bit of drama every now and then.
The problem with this series is obviously going to be that there’s a very low chance of it actually getting subbed or licensed. I was hoping that the fanbase of Akage no Anne would at least give this series a small advantage over Les Miserables and Porfy no Nagai Tabi, but it’s nearly one month until broadcast and the information about the production staff hasn’t even been announced yet for goodness’ sake. All we know is that it’s going to be the next WMT and that it’ll be based on the book Before Green Gables.
However, if you’re a fan of sad slice of life series, then I do urge you to give this series a chance if it does get subbed somehow. In any case I’ll probably be providing a detailed summary for each of the episodes, for those who want to watch it raw but are still uncomfortable with Japanese. The World Masterpiece Theatre Series are actually relatively easy to understand.
YES, fucking YES!! Akage no Anne is probably my favorite series and i’m reading one of the books right now. Can’t wait to see this, I’ll be following your reviews.
I feel so sad, I’d love to watch to many of the World Masterpiece series (especially Les Miserables), but I can’t understand a word of Japanese beyond the usual. And while your summaries are wonderful, it’s not the same. D:
Hopefully, slim it may be, some random fansubber will pick it up.
Thanks for the heads up ! Cant wait to see it.
I’ve just finished the last episode of Akage no Anne, and I would love to see this prequel, but unfortunately I have no proficiency with Japanese…
But honestly my biggest regret is not being able to watch Porfy no Nagai Tabi…
Your comments on the detailed summaries and the facility to understand WMT anime make me wonder: If during christmas break I spend some effort for one week to learn the basics of spoken japanese, do you think I might stand a chance of catching something? I guess I could watch the raw, read your summary, and have a second go at it. Hopefully after 4-5 episodes most of the basic vocabulary of the series should be integrated.
Anyway it was clever of you to review fansubbed Akage no Anne a few days ago, now I feel sufficiently invested in the series to actually try to learn enough japanese to be able to follow it ^_^
Kids series ? Where the fuck did this come from ?
Les Misérables, a KIDS novel ?
3000 Leagues in Search of Mother ?
Tom Sawyer ?
Since when, for Heaven’s sake, since when ??
Budge Wilson is a lady btw. >_>
I’ve been learning Japanese for more than 3 years, but I’m still far from comfortable watching a series without subs. I can catch most of the dialogue for these WMT anime, but having to look things up or think too much about the language gets on my nerves. (I sit too far from the TV and have no remote for it -_-)
It’d be nice if some raw provider also bundled some closed captions in, I can read Japanese quite well but listening is still a problem. With some CC, chances of it being subbed would be much better. I’ve already assumed nobody will sub the show anyway so not getting my hopes up about anything 🙁
Not sure if you’ve answered this in a past post or something before, but why don’t you get involved with fansubbing these under-appreciated series yourself?
Since it’s only 26 episodes (apparently), I might give it a try raw, so I’ll be relying on you to blog it.
Sparkie: uh, where did you read that it was only going to be 26 episodes? And the reason why I’m not doing fansubs is simple: I’m already putting a lot of my free time into blogging, so I don’t have the extra time to invest into fansubbing. My Japanese also still isn’t good enough to give accurate translations of every single sentence.
Windspirit: Yeah, unfortunately that’s what most people see them as.
AlexS: It’s indeed possible. You obviously don’t have to expect to be able to understand every single sentence, but it’s surprisingly easy to understand the gist of every episode. If you’re looking for a good online dictionary: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1C
There’s also http://www.jisho.org it’s the same dictionary (wwwjdic) as the one psgels linked to but it’s a bit easier to use and a lot easier on the eyes. The only thing that http://www.jisho.org is missing are the conjugation chargs, which I admit can be handy at times.
Thanks for your news on Konnichiwa Anne!
I’m sure to follow this new WMT!
By the way, are you going to follow the 4th season of “Maria – sama ga miteru” next month? The first three ones were really awesome!!!, I watched all of them not so long ago, I’m definitely going to look forward to it!!!!!
And also the OAV of Higurashi!!!!
Windy: not sure, I haven’t watched the first three seasons yet. I’ll consider it after watching the first episode. ^^;
I’m very curious about this prequel, but unfortunately I don’t understand Japanese so watching it raw is out of the question. I really hope that a fansub group picks it up, will you tell if any of them does? Anyway, I’ll follow your reviews closely.
I also hope that they don’t change Anne’s personality. If she turns out to be different from the young Anne at the beginning of Akage no Anne, it’ll be very disappointing. I hope they have a strong sense of coherence.
Uhm, what other series were produced under this World Masterpiece Theatre Project? Did they really made one series per years since then?
Solaris: well, there was a break from 1997 to 2006, but apart from that a series each year was made:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=430
I read 26 episodes on Moonphase or somewhere, but not an official statement. I’m sure they got 26 from somewhere though, don’t normally just make up the num of eps.
I can understand about not having so much time to fansub anyway. I didn’t necessarily mean doing it all yourself though, some groups are just short on a TL checker which doesn’t require so much time. There’s no rush either, not like episodes need to be speed subbed. I’d be happy if I got 1 episode a month :).
Anyway, I’m sure it’ll get subbed eventually. When I’m a bit more proficient I’ll be going for these kind of series myself, although finding raws for Les Miserables perhaps may not be a fun task.
Ah, okay. That statement confused me as well. It actually doesn’t say that it’s going to have 26 episodes, but rather that it’s going to be the 26th World Masterpiece Theatre. 😉
Thank you Psgels, i didn’t know of that project.
I’va also found a list with explanation and titles (also related titles that are not in the project itself)
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Masterpiece_Theater
Thank you for nice informations. I think Konnichiwa Anne cna have a great success.