Category: Konnichiwa Anne

Amidst all the sadness, episodes like this one really help to brighten up the mood. Anne gets her own room (with Katie Morris included) and meets a guy who plays cello and sells eggs, who’s going to teach her how to read. She’s still such an adorable little child.

The episode starts with the carriage loaded with all of the stuff that they took from their old house, as it heads to Marysville. The snow has stopped and Horace and Edward are fooling around again. When Anne starts talking to Katie Morris again, the two of them start making fun of her. Johanna asks what kind of home they’re going to live in, but Bert says not to expect too much. It’s not a very big home, but there are three bedrooms: one for Johanna and the kids, one for Horace and Edward and one for Anne herself (probably as thanks for offering Bert the job in the first place. Anne obviously get elated when she hears this.

When they arrive at the house, Bert and Johanna immediately start with unloading the carriage, but Anne is too impatient to see her own room (and Horace and Edward are already running around the house like crazy). When Anne sees her room, she is the most happy to find a window. She’s a bit disappointed that there is no lake that she can see, but quickly lets her imagination make up for it. Bert and Johanna then appear, carrying Katie Morris inside her room. Apparently there was no other place for it, so they just let Anne have it (to Anne’s delight, of course).

Anne’s attention also falls to a worn-out mat that’s sitting in a corner, and she reckons that she can make something out of it once she cleans it, so she gets to have that too. A bit later, Bert and Johanna leave (very rare for the two of them to be something together): Bert to his new job and Johanna to do the groceries. when they left, Anne grabs a brush and starts cleaning the mat and gets excited when she finds out that behind the dirt it indeed has a nice colour.

When they’re in the town and split ways, Johanna asks around for the nearest shop to buy salt and eggs. As it turns out, eggs are rather expensive in this town. Only a guy named “eggman” seems to sell them cheaply, though he seems to be a bit of a strange fellow. Bert meanwhile meets his new employer: Jeffrey Parker.

Anne is meanwhile preparing the potatoes as the two of Bert and Johanna get back. Johanna however isn’t pleased to find out that Anne used a brand new brush to clean the mat, and she gets really angry at Anne for basically ruining it right after it was bought. During dinner, Horace notes that there are lots of squirrels in the forest around them. As a punishment for ruining the mat, Johanna sends her out the next day to get some eggs from eggman, who apparently according to one of the stories Bert heard is a magician.

On the way to eggman, Anne’s imagination of course has enough opportunity to form all sorts of crazy theories about the guy. On the way there she also spots a Moose. When she gets to eggman’s house, a cello suddenly starts playing. She then sees a wounded chicken and knocks on the guy’s door, carrying the chicken. The door opens, though Anne is too scared to say something so he closes the door again. She knocks for a second time and then she does get the chance to ask for some eggs, and tell him that one of his chickens has been hurt.

He fies up the chicken, and then asks her to bring him the basket to put the eggs in. He asks her how much, which she misinterprets as him asking for her age, so she happily tells him that she’s six years old before he can say to her that he meant how many eggs she wanted, so eventually she walks out with twelve nice eggs. He then starts playing his cello again and she listens by his window a bit more, to suddenly see that he’s crying a bit.

Anne then falls off and makes some sound that make eggman notice her standing beside her window. When she’s discovered she scaredly starts telling him about all the strange ideas she had about him and his cello. While she fell, she also hurt her leg, so eggman takes her inside in order to treat her. He then introduces her to his cello. It then turns out that eggman is pretty interested in Anne’s imagination, and when she says that she actually isn’t allowed to imagine from Johanna, eggman instead tries to convince her that imagination is very powerful. He then writes down the word “Imagination” on paper, which I guess is pretty appropriate to be the first word Anne learns to read and write.

Anne then comes back to Johanna, and happily tells her how eggman isn’t the evil magician they thought to be, and the episode ends.

I guess that eggman is going to be Anne’s mentor for the future, just like how the new teacher was this for Emily and her friends. It’s good to see that she’s finally learning how to read, and I think that this is either going to be the first step of Johanna to send her to school, or he’s going to teach her until whatever is going to happen that’s going to cause Anne to move out. With such a happy episode as this one, it’s hard to believe the drama that went on in the previous episodes. The only drama in this episode really came from typical children’s antics: accidentally ruining something brand new in one’s enthusiasm, or not knowing when to stop talking. This show really has some awesome nostalgic moments.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Quiet and happy episode was happy and quiet.

What an awesome, awesome series. This episode yet again convinces me that this show indeed is my favourite show this season, even taking epics as Phantom and Cross Game into account. This series did EXACTLY what I hoped it to do. The original series was an absolute masterpiece in terms of characterization, but it lacked one thing: conflict. It would really have been able blow its audience away if it was a bit more dramatic and bitter-sweet. And even though that lack of conflict was also part of the original series’ charm, Konnichiwa Anne is currently showing how incredible it could have been if that extra bit of drama was included. While it’s of course not as solidly produced as the original series, the creators managed to really capture what makes a Lucy Maud Montgomery-adaptation so incredibly charming.

We start the episode when Bert’s asleep after wrecking half the house, and Anne is hiding scared in her bed from what he did to Katie Morris. When Johanna wakes up and sees the mess he created, she breaks down and asks him why he started drinking again. Anne meanwhile fins out that Katie Morris didn’t die, and Bert wakes up to tell Johanna that he got fired, and walks to his shed again leaving Johanna crying.

Johanna tries to distract herself by cleaning up the glass for the next morning, to prevent Horace and Edward from walking on it, and is surprised that the two of them slept through everything. The next morning, the two of them find out that Bert has been fired, and get happy thinking that they can spend a lot of time with their dad, but Johanna quickly yells at them that this also means that they’re not going to be able to afford food and oil for light.

Johanna then says to Anne that she should prepare to leave as well, just in case things become too hard for Johanna to even sustain her own family. Meanwhile at the station Mrs. Minton yells angrily at Bert’s former boss who fired him, and she’s very angry that they didn’t just dupe Bert, but also put his wife and children in a very bad situation. The then blackmails the station owner into giving Bert a new job (she once gave him money in order to reach his position).

Minton then arrives at Johanna’s house and asks to talk with Bert. She immediately notices the stench of alcohol, and it turns out that he’s been drinking despite their huge money problems. She tells him that he isn’t going to be able to find any work anymore in his town. When Bert laughs it off, she tells him that he shouldn’t take this so lightly and that it was his own fault that that happened. She then comes with the good news: in Marysville she managed to find a job for him. Bert looks down a bit in his surprise. Minton however does make him swear to not touch alcohol again. Bert really doesn’t know what to say to thank her, and Minton says that he should be thanking Anne: she is the reason why Minton bothered to find this job for him in the first place.

Since there is no time to lose, Bert walks into the house with the message that they’re going to leave the house and move to Marysville because he managed to find a new job there and wants to start as soon as possible. Johanna is overwhelmed, to say the least, and worries how she’s going to move three small children in such a short time, but at the same time she’s very glad that there’s some sort of solution. When Johanna’s away, the boys start joking again at how Anne is going to be left behind, taking Johanna’s words of that day before a bit too literally, although these words hurt Anne a lot.

That afternoon, Anne is still wondering whether she’s going to say goodbye to Katie. Then, an interesting guest arrives: Bertha’s former friend: Jessie. It’s been six years since the two of them saw each other for the last time. She mentions how Bertha was such a nice person, just as Walter. She then notices Katie Morris, and as it turns out it turns out to be a bookcase precious to Bertha. They used it often to read books in front of Anne, and it was often used. Unfortunately, Bert sold all of the books for money when they died and he took it over. Jessie then comes with the real reason she dropped by: she’s willing to adopt Anne and give her a proper home and education. Her own daughter had just died when Bertha passed away, so she didn’t have the courage to take over Anne, but now she’s different and has the confidence to raise her. Johanna however, declines. She’s been raising Anne for the past six years now, and they’ve grown dependant on each other. he’s not going to hand Anne over that easily.

While Bert is breaking up stuff in order to make it fit on the carriage more easily, Anne asks him (nearly in tears) whether she’s going to stay behind as well. Bert gets a bit shocked by that, but then reassures Anne that she’s going along with them. Johanna meanwhile sends Jessie away without letting her see Anne. Thanks to a foreshadowing narrator, we now know that this is something that she never managed to forgive herself.

The next day, the move happens. On the way, they tun into Minton and she says a few words to Anne before they go away, and the two of them say goodbye for now. The road to Marysville is a snowy one, but Anne while sad on one side for having to say goodbye to the place where she grew up, but on the other side she’s happy that she wasn’t cast aside and looks forward to her new home.

Well, there you have the irony: just think how differently Anne would have grown up if she was taken care by Jessie: she would have had a loving family and she’d never have met the Cuthberts at all. Both this series and the original Akage no Anne had these moments in which a character was forced to make a choice that would have a major impact on how they would lead the rest of their lives: Matilda when she decided to adopt Anne, Anne when she had to go to college, Elisa when she was asked to go to London and now again, with Johanna who had to choose whether or not to give Anne a better future.

And it really was one heck of a selfish decision: simply because she needed Anne’s help she denied Anne a chance for a better future and good education. But the sad thing is that we know that eventually, she’s going to be forced to really let go of Anne. Right now, Bert is saved, but the problems have nowhere near ended at this point. If Bert makes another miss, he’ll really be screwed.

Rating: *** (Awesome)
Bittersweet aftermath of the previous episode. There were so many pure emotions in just 20 minutes.

Oh my god. Seriously, is this series ever going to stop being so awesome? I mean, seriously. I deliberately tried to keep my expectations for this series low because I was 100% sure that Konnichiwa Anne wasn’t going to live up to Porfy and Les Miserables because of its unimpressive staff and low production-values, but Christ, this series has got to have the best 10 opening episodes of any WMT I have seen yet. Good lord! This is something I’ve never seen coming!

This episode was a real Bert-episode. It starts as Anne is talking to Katie Morris when the Winter has just fallen. Anne is happy that with the money that Bert is getting from his job, she can finally eat things that she’s never eaten, and the family seems a lot better now. She then gets called by Johanna in order to deliver Bert’s lunch, which he himself forgot.

At Bert’s meanwhile, the lady we saw a few episodes ago who was a good friend of Bertha: Grace Shermon. She’s actually very worried about how Anne is doing, though Bert, exhausted from his job and boss just gives her the cold shoulder when she tries to talk to her, so her husband imagines how Anne must be living in a horrible place, and Grace wonders why at the time, she never offered to take care of Anne.

Anne arrives when Bert’s boss is yelling at him for slacking off, and she talks a bit to the boss and drops off his lunch. That afternoon, Bert is in trouble because one of the packages (he’s working at a train station) is missing, and the boss blames Bert because he’s known to be a good for nothing guy. However, it seems to be a simple case of a mix-up. Bert is especially angry when the boss (Franklin) doesn’t even apologize for his actions. One of Bert’s co-workers then offers a bit of alcohol to cool off, though Bert manages to resist the urges.

When Bert gets home, it’s a total chaos, and all of the boys are yelling, crying and fighting with each other. When Bert gets home, he can’t take the noise and starts screaming. He tells that it’s Johanna’s job to take care of the children and cooking, and how he himself is tired from his job.

The next day, a couple from Bert’s childhood happens to run into him. As it turns out, they believe that he’s holding some high position due to the way he used to be. He also used to be the star of dance parties, and looked up to by the women. The woman then wonders how his children have been doing with dancing, but Bert says that they’re still small. He then offers Bert to join a dance party that they’re holding that evening, though then Bert’s boss shows up, and shows them that Bert didn’t really turn out to be the guy they expected.

That same evening Bert again walks out of the dinner room in order to get some fresh air. Anne then walks out to do the same in order to give the youngest baby a bit of fresh air. Bert wonders how she’s able to take all the noise, but then Anne says that doesn’t really get on her nerves, since Bert used to be much scarier when he still drank. The two of them then talk for a bit longer. It makes Bert think back of the dreams he used to have, and none of them really came true. He tells her how he and Johanna used to love dancing, and Anne really gets excited when she hears it, and this prompts a quick flashback to when Bert proposed (and oh god, the two of them looked so different from the way they look now!).

Bert then grabs the courage to tell Johanna about the dance party, though Johanna very quickly says that it’s ridiculous for people to be still interested in parties with this weather, so Bert drops it. In the end though, he does grab his carriage and heads off to the dance party on his own. The carriage unfortunately gets stuck, and he ends up missing the party. He listens from a distance how his two former friends talk about him, and he hears them making fun of him, and laughing at the mess that he has turned into.

And this really breaks him, and he stops by some of his older friends who are drinking some alcohol, and starts drinking away his miseries. His former boss then happens to walk by (probably returning from the dance as well), makes a few snide remarks, and that was the final straw for Bert and he starts beating him up. The result is of course that he gets fired.

Later that night, he returns singing loudly, waking up Anne. He seems to have been drinking even more, and spends the rest of the episode breaking just about everything inside the house up in his drunken rage.

I must say, that this series so far couldn’t have been better at all. There are SO MANY great shows this season. I honestly consider this to be the best season we’ve had in years so far. There are many series with unique executions, and even the slice of life genre has already got a very strong show with the wit of Cross Game… and yet Konnichiwa Anne turned into one of my absolute favourites for this season. I did not expect that.

Oh, how Bert turned into such a wonderful character. I really feel sorry for the guy, even though he loses himself so much, and all of his misery can be simply attributed to his actions. He’s really stuck in a downward spiral of his own feelings that is SO hard to get out of, because of his own alcohol addiction, but also because the people around him have lost faith in him because of the things he did.

And the downwards spiral has the entire family in its grip. Johanna herself really is a terrible mother: she does nothing but yell at her children, she fails to keep order and never seems to provide parental support for Horace and Edward, but that’s because she too is away most of the time, in order to make some extra money to get by. I was especially struck by how she refused to go to the dance: she’s too much caught up in her own lifestyle that something tells me that she’s forgotten how to have fun and enjoy herself. It’s a rather uncomfortable truth of poverty that you really don’t see often in anime.

On a bit of a lighter note, this episode really showed why Elisa was so important to Anne for the first couple of episodes. Without her, Anne would simply have grown up to be a quiet girl who lives inside her own world, but because she had someone to talk to and share her thoughts with, she really learned to express her feelings through words. It’s pretty similar to Kaze no Shoujo Emily, in which Emily had her own father for the first eleven years of her life.

If this show is already this awesome with only eight episodes, I really wonder what the creators have in store for the rest of the 39 episodes. So far, this series has been really heart-warming yet very, very sad. That on one side is so typical of the WMT, and yet it also has its own feel.

Rating: *** (Awesome)
A Bert-episode, and what a sad one it was!

Okay, so I had my doubts, but now I’m for sure: Anne is AWESOME. Even in an episode in which nothing major happens, she never fails to charm, and that really is the strength of the WMT-series: at times it really can be about nothing, and yet the characters rock beyond belief. Anne was downright adorable in this episode, simply because her talking really never seemed to stop!

With episodes like this, I’m not crazy enough to summarize every single thing that Anne rambles on and on about, I’m just going to discuss the important points of the episode. The episode starts as Anne is holding Noah and talking to Katie Morris (a cupboard). She tells that Katie once was a friend of Elisa who she told everything to, and so Anne is also going to tell everything she experiences to that the cupboard in the same fashion.

In the meantime we return to the house of the old lady that we saw in the first or second episode. Her name is Minton (or however it’s spelled), and we see two of her relatives paying a visit to her house. Not knowing that she’s there, they start talking about how she’s known to be very grumpy and greedy, when in fact she fell on the floor because her back went out. the house is also a mess because she hasn’t been able to clean up because of this, even though she refuses to take on help.

Next up we switch to a local shop in which her relatives are worrying about her in front of the shop owner, about how she really needs someone to help her out, but the shop owner says that it’s practically impossible since she’s known to be greedy and probably the most disliked person in the entire town. Anne then hears this and offers to take up the task to work for her. The relatives don’t really believe in her, but take her along anyway.

When they arrive at the house, Anne quickly forces herself in the house and starts cleaning and annoying Minton a the same time). At the same time there’s also a cat that runs wild, and Minton quickly sends her away when she gets distracted by some pretty drawings on a plate. It’s pretty hilarious to see that Anne doesn’t have any shame, and still thinks that Minton is just a friend of the “real” Minton, like how she introduced herself in the first episode, and so she calls Minton all sorts of things that her relatives have been calling her.

Anne of course doesn’t leave that easily and doesn’t understand at all that Minton doesn’t want her. She just keeps rambling on and on. Minton eventually gets to sleep, but that evening Anne comes and says that she has to leave. Later Minton finds out that Anne spent the afternoon cleaning up. The next morning, Anne is up early and Minton finds her talking to another cupboard: Alisa Morris, Katie’s twin.

When Minton starts eating her breakfast, she’s finding it hard to eat because Anne keeps looking at her. When she offers her a bit of bread, Anne refuses it since she can’t take away other people’s breakfasts. In the end, Minton gives in because of this, and promises to give Anne her breakfast when she finishes cleaning in order to make her accept this breakfast. But she also says that she’s never allowed inside one of the rooms in her house.

A week later, the shop owner talks to Bert about how he’s surprised that he’s still working. He then tells Bert that Minton used to have a daughter, but she changed after this daughter died. At the same time, Anne screws up by letting the cat inside the secret room, and ends up entering it. This room indeed turns out to be the room of Minton’s late daughter, and when Minton finds out about it she gets angry and immediately sends Anne away.

Anne runs away to Bert, of all people, and there Bert tells about Rosa, Minton’s daughter. She died 34 years ago and ever since Minton locked herself in and became the greedy old lady she is now. The next morning, Anne asking Horace and Edward to look around for a couple of roses. She then gives these roses to Minton as she visits Rosa’s grave, as a bit of a strange birthday present. It turns out that Minton had even forgotten her birthday, and so the two of them make up and the episode ends.

So yeah, the episode ended on a pretty sappy note, but I don’t care! This was such a sweet episode and in fact, this has been the pattern of this series for the past four episodes now. Sure at times it’s a bit too dramatic, and the same flaw turned me off from watching Kemono no Souja Erin, which also was just too formulaic, and yet I just CAN’T bring myself to dislike this series. Anne is such an awesome character that she SO makes up for some of the overly sappy moments. With more than thirty episodes still to go, I foresee lots of awesomeness in this series’ future.

I also like how Budge Wilson decided to write this story. She announced clearly that she wasn’t going to mimic Lucy Maud Montgomery’s writing style, but instead went with her own. But still she did include quite a few homages to some of Montgomery’s other works. This episode shows some parallels to Emily of the New Moon, and especially Elisabeth’s secret room of her lost sister.

My only real problem with this series is that the animation doesn’t look as solid as it’s supposed to. There quite a few points at which character drawings looked rushed. Porfy and Les Miserables were able to cover this up, but in this series, it unfortunately does stand out.

Rating: *** (Awesome)
With most other characters, this kind of episode would have been dull, but Anne single-handedly made it awesome.

Oh my god. I really did not expect this. Let me say that this season features lots and lots of great and excellent series, and so I never considered Konnichiwa Anne as the top of this season.

But seriously, this episode was without a doubt the single most emotionally powerful episode of the entire Spring Season so far. I expected that the entire episode would deal with Elisa getting emo over and over about not wanting to leave Anne behind, and then it pulls this. I so did not expect that.

We start the episode with a little recap of what happened in the previous episode, and we see how the conversation between Elisa and her father goes on for a bit longer. Bert tells her that if Elisa’s going to stay, just because of Anne, she’s going to regret it every day, and blame Johanna and Anne for it, and hate him even more than she already does, and he tells her that her life is of her own, and that she should leave the house.

Elisa leaves, saying that she saw a side of her father that she never knew he had. Anne meanwhile is running away into the nearby forest, which is quite troubling for Johanna as she’s approaching the birth of her new child and wanted someone to rub her back. Elisa goes to look for her, and quickly finds her. When they get back home, Johanna again reminds Anne of how she’s not going to London. Anne then goes to her room and tries to pack her stuff along with that of Elisa, in the hope of getting to travel with Elisa, but the wedding ring on Elisa isn’t helping much.

The next couple of days, Anne doesn’t say anything and just quietly and angrily does her job, even scaring off Horace and Edward, no matter how Elisa asks her to start speaking. Roger then arrives at their home, and the two of them make up for the time in which Elisa ran away in the next episode. As Anne watches them, she promises herself not to fall in love (and that explains why sin the original series she never really was that interested in love).

Elisa tells Roger about Anne’s behavior, and roger tells her that he managed to get the ship’s tickets, and they’ll be leaving the next week. There’s no time left, so he figures that they’re going to have to rush the marriage, but Elise doesn’t want to get married without Anne being there. That’s why Roger proposes to delay the marriage, and simply go to London with the two of them.

At the day that Elisa is going to leave, she says goodbye to her mother, who comments on how the baby inside of her is remaining awfully quiet. Elisa then says goodbye to her little brothers and gives them a farewell hug. Anne still is nowhere to be found, so Elisa and Roger wait until there’s no time left, but Anne stubbornly remains hidden under Elisa’s desk. Bert gives his own subtle farewell gesture, and the two of them leave. Anne realizes too late that she still wants to say goodbye, tries to run after the carriage but is just too far behind. Horace then walks up to her with the message that the baby is coming.

Bert went to call the local midwife, so it’s up to Anne to take care of Anne. Anne immediately snaps out of her gloom and focuses on getting hot water and getting the boys out of the way, while commenting on how painful it looks. Anne helps massage Johanna’s back a bit, but it doesn’t really help ease the pain. Bert meanwhile is in bad luck because the midwife happened to be on a trip, and so she can’t make it in time for the baby to be born. This means that Anne has to be the one to help deliver the baby. When the baby is halfway out, Anne comments on how it has a blue colour, and so Johanna screams at her to get the baby out.

Bert arrives just too late, and Anne meanwhile is crying because of the things that she was forced to do. It’s a boy, by the way. The next morning, Bert gives Anne the opportunity to name the new baby, and so Anne walks away exhausted. She talks a bit to her reflection in one of the cupboards and then comes up with the new name: Maya (or however you spell it, it was really hard for me to make out how to actually spell it), and the episode ends.

So oh my god, where to start? I know that I talked down on this series when it first started, but with this episode it definitely earned its title as World Masterpiece Theatre. Sure, it was a bit convenient for Johanna to give birth right after Elisa left, but this really caught me unexpectedly. We’re all busy with the sadness that someone important is leaving Anne’s life, and then suddenly there are much more important things to worry about: delivering that damned baby. Especially considering how it so easily could have gone wrong. It really is such a task for such a young girl to just pull that baby out of a woman, and really it could have gone horribly wrong if she didn’t. That birth-scene and especially the aftermath was more emotionally powerful than anything I have seen thus far in this season.

And Bert! I know that the guy is a lazy bum. I know that he is a horrible father and husband and slacks off too much. And yet I love his character and how it’s getting fleshed out. Now that he’s found a job, we really can see a different side of his. That one of a cold, lazy and useless, but caring father. The way he completely lost his cool when he was waiting for the midwife to show up really shows that he cares about his family, even though he doesn’t often show this, and the way in which he understood that Elisa was off worse if she were to stay with him was really surprisingly mature for a guy who hits his wife.

What’s also interesting is that sudden parallel with Kaze no Shoujo Emily that popped up in this scene. That really was surprisingly similar to the time in which Teddy went away to London for a few years and Emily missed the chance to say goodbye to him because of her own stubbornness. But in this case, it’s pretty sad because with this, Anne has really lost her best friend and it really doesn’t look like they’re going to be living together again. Now, Anne really doesn’t have anyone to confide into and is just going to be taking care of the young boys until the inevitable happens and she’ll be forced to leave her aunt.

And another thing I really liked about this episode is that Anne really behaved like a little girl in it, especially during the first half in which she does nothing but pouting because she’s unhappy, and how she refuses to listen to anyone. The whole thing with Elisa leaving was done surprisingly subtle, with just the right amount of angst in it.

Rating: **** (Fantastic)
So many things come together in this episode; an incredible emotional ride from start to finish.

While at first sight yet another cheesy episode about a cheesy love story surrounding Elisa, it soon turned into a very insightful episode that really showed some different sides of the characters. It forced especially Elisa to really think about the situation she’s in. Thus far, she’s been a bit too similar of a Mary Sue, but this episode removed just about every aspect of that nasty brat in her and turned her into a really flawed character, and a typical teenager.

The episode starts as we see how Bert has finally landed himself a job helping out at a local farm. Anne has been counting the days since it happened (10) and is really happy to see that he stopped drinking and hitting his wife. Elisa meanwhile has been invited to a local party given by the Emerson family, and her classmates fangirl over Roger, and how Elisa is so poor and all. Roger however, looks to be really serious with her, and actually ends up proposing to her for marriage.

It turns out that Roger has to go to London for a job the next year, and he wants to have Elisa next to him, which is why he’s proposing to her so early. At the party, Roger hopes to hear Elisa’s final answer. When she arrives at home, she tells all about it to Anne, who obviously gets all happy about her, though Elisa still is really embarrassed.

It soon becomes clear that Elisa too is in love with Roger, and Anne really encourages her to go along with Roger to London… and that’s the point where Anne gets sad when she realizes that that means that she’ll be separating from Elisa, though Elisa quickly tells her that she can go with the two of them: Roger is a nice guy, so she thinks that he’ll definitely understand the situation and take Anne along… yeah.

That night, the two of them are still fantasizing about how good they’re going to have it in London. Elise never really liked being in her household, and she grew up as someone who just did the right things because it means that she was doing the right things. It turns out that Elisa once had a best friend (Katie Morris), but got separated from her somehow (couldn’t exactly pick up why), and that’s why she’s so burnt on not being separated from Anne.

Things however don’t go as planned when Elisa tells the news to her parents. Surprisingly, Isabella has no problems with letting her daughter go, but she’s not willing to let Anne leave in the hands of two inexperienced teenagers, not to mention that it’s going to really increase her workload. Especially when her new baby comes, nobody is going to be able to take care of her if Anne’s gone. She outright refuses this to Elisa.

The next week, Elisa’s dress arrives and she gets ready to go to the party. Anne still doesn’t know that she can’t go to London, and Elisa is still in lots of doubts over the marriage. Roger in the meantime has his own problems with his parents, because his father doesn’t have much faith in one of Bert’s children. Roger however has made his decision, and has to promise to his father to make the job he’s assigned to do in London succeed no matter what.

When Elisa arrives at the party, a lot of people whisper behind her back, not expecting such a poor girl to show up in a full dress. She dances with Roger for a while, and a while later when they’re alone, Roger asks for Elisa’s answer. Elisa says yes, though then she tells him about how she wanted to take Anne with her, but her mother wouldn’t let her. Roger suddenly gets very surprised when he finds this out, and when Elisa asks him whether he’ll take her with them, he declines: he likes Anne, but she isn’t Elisa’s child. It’s not going to be easy to live in London, so taking a child with them is not going to work. Elisa gets upset and runs away.

When Elisa gets back home, she knocks on Bert’s door (god, I nearly forgot that that guy was supposed to be a father) and wants to talk about what happened. Anne happens to see this, and overhears how Elise tells him that Anne can’t go with them, and the episode ends with Bert, saying the wisest thing that he’s ever said in this series: that she should go to London and leave Anne behind.

So yeah, this series doesn’t have the epic storyline of Les Miserables, the refreshing storytelling of Porfy, the realism of Anne of Green Gables or the atmosphere of Kaze no Shoujo Emily, when compared to these masterpieces it doesn’t have anything that really stands out, but it does have one thing: a great cast of characters. I really wanted to push Elisa in the face when she begged Roger to take Anne with her. Don’t get me wrong: I really like Anne myself, but that unrealistic thinking of her really got me: here she is, she has the chance for a great future, despite being poor she has the chance for a great future and a very nice husband… only to ruin it because she can’t leave her five-year-old friend.

And the thing is that with this type of series, I actually have no idea whether it’s the type of series that likes to keep its lead characters together, or whether it’s going to allow Elisa to move away. It’s definitely going to be interesting to see Elisa gone now, because that’s basically going to remove Anne’s only friend, and that means that she’s only going to retreat into that fantasy world of her even more, and the series is probably going to take a turn for the dark.

Rating: ** (Excellent)

Short Synopsis: Anne gets invited into the house of a rich family.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Oh, how I loved this episode. Everything about and surrounding Anne in this episode was just pure pwnage. I really have to admit, I didn’t expect this episode to end the way it did. And to think that it wasn’t an important episode at all.

The episode starts with Anne trying to read a book that Elisa gave her. While “A lot of Flowers blooms on the hill” isn’t exactly perfect English, Anne gets fascinated with some of the words she already knows, like ‘Flowers’ (which seem to return quite a few times in the book), ‘princess’ and ‘magic’. When Anne asks to Elisa whether she can read in front of her that afternoon again, but then Elisa says that she needs to return the book that day. Johanna then barges in, yelling at Anne that she needs to continue with her chores.

A bit later, Elisa asks her mother whether it’d be okay to send Anne to school a bit, but Johanna obviously doesn’t allow this, since that way there’ll be nobody to take over all of the chores that Anne needs to do. When Elisa proposes to at least buy a book for her, Johanna really start yelling. Since they have barely enough money for bread and milk, it’s virtually impossible to buy books for Anne.

Johanna then asks Elisa a favor, since that day it’s her day off. Apparently, Johanna is running late with some payments to a store owned by a certain Richard, so she asks her daughter to asks for a bit more time. In exchange, she asks for permission to take Anne with her, even though she can’t buy anything. It turns out that Elisa is very scared of Richard, and especially his daughters, and decided to take Anne with her for moral support.

When they arrive at the store, it becomes clear that the situation is quite bad, since Richard is already waiting for his payment for three months. Anne meanwhile doesn’t seem to notice this at all and happily starts exploring the store, and she finds one particular book by Robert Browning that catches her attention, and starts imagining how wonderful the story inside it might have been for it to have such a ‘beautiful’ cover.

Richard then interrupts her and takes the book away, saying that it’s way too complicated of a book for someone like Anne to read, which fuels Anne’s imagination even more: after all, that book must be way too good to be read by a simple poor red-haired girl as herself. After that, a rich-looking boy and his mother arrive at the store, and they seem to be the Emerson-family. When the boy (Roger, apparently) talks to Anne, she immediately starts rambling on and on, especially when she learns that the whole reason Roger came to the store was to buy that wonderful book by Robert Browning. This catches the attention of Roger’s mother, and she suggests that it might be interesting for Anne to play a bit with her sick daughter Mary.

And so, Elisa returns home with the message that Anne is visiting a rich household, and this gets Johanna all worried of course: what if something were to happen? They’d be the target of gossip for weeks. It’s gotten her so stressed that she even prays to God, even though she usually says that God isn’t there for poor people (quite a contrast with the Cuthberts, who didn’t have any money problems and were so serious about their religion).

Inside the carriage to the house, Roger explains that Mary’s private tutor suggested to buy that book by Robert Browning to help her education. Anne gets a bit upset when he finds out that she doesn’t know what a private tutor is, so he explains, and asks whether Anne is going to school as well. She then says that since she’s an orphan, she’s not allowed to go to school, but Roger quickly tells her that that’s not really true.

When they arrive near the house, Anne gets really surprised at how huge it is. When they arrive at Mary’s room, she has hidden herself under her sheets. Roger introduces Anne, and then leaves, since he has other stuff to do. Anne quickly starts talking about all sorts of stuff, but it then turns out that Mary is a typical spoiled brat and had no interest in the book to begin with. When Anne tells her that she’d really love to have that book, she teases her by never allowing her to hand it over, despite her lack of interest in it, and she too makes a comment to Anne’s hairstyle.

But really, Mary is a typical brat. It turns out that her whole sickness has just been faked, and instead of studying she’d rather be doing stuff she shouldn’t. This time, she looks around in her mother’s room, puts on her jewelry, make-up and dresses while dragging Anne along. while looking really horrible, at the same time the two have a bit of fun playing together (and Anne ends up with lots of make-up scribblings on her face).

By surprise, Mary’s mother returns earlier than expected because she was worried about her daughter, and so Mary and Anne rush in order to get all of the jewelry and dresses back into place and get rid of their make-up. They forgot one necklace, though, and so Mary’s mother comes in to check up on what happened. Mary sets up a lie of being ill and all, though Anne finds it really hard to tell a lie, so Mary just tries to distract attention from her by mentioning how she was reading Anne from the book she got, and how Anne loved it.

Unfortunately for Mary, her mother buys the lie a bit too well, and now suggests offers the same book to Anne. Mary tries to say something back, only to discover that she forgot to put off a ring and so she has to keep quiet. When Anne gets back, Johanna is rather annoyed that Anne returned with a book, but Anne doesn’t care and drifts into her own world again.

Really, I love being proven wrong by a show this way. I admit, I might have been a bit too harsh on this series after the first few episodes, but this was mostly to not get my expectations up too high. What I feared was for this series to act out just like Kemono no Souja Erin: with a dramatic climax and predictable plot during every single episode, it was just way too dramatic. I was so expecting Anne to get found out and create a scandal for the family she’s in because of the second episode that seemed to suggest that this show would take up the same direction. That’s why it’s so great for episodes like this to balance things out a bit, where things don’t take the most dramatic turn possible.

But yeah, I might have been a bit unfair to this series, comparing it to Porfy no Nagai Tabi. I may have taken this a bit for granted while the show was airing, but Porfy really was an exceptionally well written series. No other series could have simply shown one character walking around for an entire episode while hardly meeting anyone, and yet it worked so well. With Porfy no Nagai Tabi (and a few other WMT-series as well) things usually didn’t take a turn for the worst, but when they did, you’d know that Porfy was screwed really badly and you hardly ever knew could see it coming. Konnichiwa Anne is not such a series, and instead the focus is much more on the characters, rather than the storytelling. In a way, much like Kaze no Shoujo Emily.

And really, the nostalgic value of this episode was immense. Hiding under the sheets when you’re feeling down; trying out stuff you’re not supposed to when your parents are out. Ah, how it brings back memories. ^^;

Short Synopsis: Anne gets ‘distracted’ when she accompanies Bert as he sets out to find a job.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
This episode took away a lot of my doubts for this series. So yeah, it’s going to be less realistic than such epics as Anne of Green Gables, Perrine or Porfy, but the writers do have a great feel for the characters. This episode was SO typical of Anne.

The episode starts out as Anne is wondering what her parents would have looked like (there were no pictures back then, were there? And even if there were, Anne’s aunt doesn’t look like the type to save these pictures), as she starts talking to Rokimba (that’s how I’ll spell that cat’s name for now) about how her parents would live in a small house, and have a romantic moment together as Walter suggests Anne’s name to his wife, holding a small Anne in her arms. In the meantime, Rokimba walks away without Anne even noticing, and so she gets made fun of again by Horace and Edward.

At that point, Joanne starts getting impatient and calls Anne back. Without realizing that Anne’s already there, she starts talking about how Walter also used to be like Anne, and how he always had these wings on his back with which he’d fly away in his own world. Being the kid she is, when Anne hears this she takes this literally, and now she genuinely believes that her father had wings on his back. ^^;

Bertha (Anne’s mother) meanwhile was calm and quiet, and always read books after Anne was born. We also learn that Joanne decided not to tell Anne about her parents because it’ll just be unnecessary information. Anne is just there to help her out, and remembering her parents doesn’t fit in that picture and it looks like she also doesn’t like remembering the days of her childhood either. It’s too late though, because Anne is already thinking of lots of possible romantic scenarios in which her father might have played with his ‘wings’.

Joanne then proceeds to wake up and yell at Bert because he was supposed to look out for a job that day again, while all he does is sleep. When he readies his carriage, Joanne sends Anne along with him because it’s obvious that he’s going to end up just drinking away otherwise. The scene in which they rode in the carriage reminds me of the start of Anne of Green Gables, in which Anne was also rambling on and on towards Matthew.

Bert then tells her that he might not have met Walter, but he did know that he once was a teacher (and here we have another reason why Anne would end up liking studying so much), and how he taught at a cute little school in a forest (or that was what it sounded like, I might have missed the exact name for it), which of course gets Anne fired up even more.

When Bert arrives at the office that’s supposed to give him a chance for a job, he finds out that the one he was supposed to was away. He then runs into his friend and they run off to start drinking, and so he orders Anne to stay where she is until he gets back. Anne then sees that as a chance to explore the town a bit in order to find the school at which Walter used to teach. She asks random passers-by for directions, but quickly gets distracted by other pretty things and she gets lost.

She then runs into someone who was a good acquaintance of Bertha and who we’re probably going to see again in a few episodes. This time though, she simply gives Anne directions to where she needs to go to and she does find the house in the end. Johanna meanwhile is not exactly pleased with how both Bert and Anne haven’t turned up, she’s tired and has a headache, but she has to work hard since Bert refuses to get a job. She then notes how she doesn’t like to think back to the past out of jealousy: Bertha and Walter were a very happy couple together, and yet she ended up with an idiot as Bert. It pains her to think back at how happy she could have ended up.

When Anne finally gets back, it’s already dark, but Bert is still waiting for her at that point. He doesn’t scold her, but just tells her to get on the carriage (obviously she’s scolded plenty enough by Johanna).

It’s interesting how people like Bert and Johanna completely shatter the boundaries of good and evil, and this again is typical of nearly all WMT-series (apart from Ie Naki Ko Remi, of course). While it’s easy to simply call Bert pure evil, he’s simply someone who hates his own wife. He’s still an ass because he refuses to help her out, but at the same time he doesn’t antagonize Anne and actually seems to like her. But since neither Johanna nor Bert is willing to make up and get along, the gap between the two of them is only going to grow bigger, and this is probably going to end up with the two of them separating, causing Anne to move into a next family in which she’s going to get even more busy.

In the meantime, the bit about Anne taking Johanna’s proverb felt really nostalgic. When I was a kid I also used to take proverbs way too seriously. Anne really feels like a real little girl at times like these.

It’s also awesome to see that it’s been less than three weeks and we already have a fansub! I posted the link at the shoutbox, and it would be completely awesome if this Underwater group would persist until the end.

Short Synopsis: Anne wonders where her name came from.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Boy, am I glad to see this one back! As for the summary: I’ll try to be accurate, but there is a lot of dialogue in this series, so there might be a few mistakes here and there.

The episode starts as Anne is hanging out the laundry to dry. Elisa returns from school early since she only had classes in the morning, and while she hoped that she’d be able to help Anne with the dishes, she arrived just too late for that. Anne believes that a kind grandmother called “wind” is going to take care of drying up the clothes (reminds me of “kaze no obaa-san” from Kaze no Shoujo emily ^^;).

Then they start talking about the cat, who Anne named “Brownie”, since it just refuses to listen to its name. While Anne wonders about giving it a better name, Eliza shows Anne a book, and she starts reading it in front of Anne (since Anne obviously loves stories like this). Anne then tries to give the cat the name of one of the characters in the story, but Elisa says that it might be better to name someone after someone in your family. Elisa’s name was given to her by her mother, and Horace and Edward got their names from their father, who apparently was so glad that boys were born into the family. This prompts Anne to wondering who it was that gave her name to her. Elisa doesn’t know, since she already was called “Ann” (apparently, it never was written down in front of her). Anne finds that name a bit too simple.

During their little talk, though, the two of them forgot time a bit, and have to rush in to get the laundry cleaned up. Inside though, the atmosphere is like that of a chicken farm: Horace and Edward are bickering as always and the little baby whose name I can’t seem to remember is crying. At that time, Elisa’s mother comes in and is angry at all of the ruckus that’s going on in front of her (not to mention all of the laundry that hasn’t been folded yet). Anne instead starts talking about how she changed the name of the cat to “Rockingba” (please don’t ask me how to spell that one…), but the mood completely crashes when the father comes in and he starts yelling at his wife because she doesn’t have dinner ready for him yet.

As it turns out, he has been drinking again, even though he’s out of a job and is relying on his wife to get money. When she stars yelling at him how there’s no money left, he smashes open a box of different ornaments and just tells her to sell those things if there isn’t any money anyway, and he walks off again. One of the other things in that box was a blanket that Anne was wrapped in when she arrived at the family. Elisa’s mother tells her how much Anne looked like her mother, and she also tells that she named Elise after her own mother for the same reason. Before Anne can ask where her own name came from, the baby starts crying again.

The next day, Anne of course fantasizes how it must have been for her mother to create said blanket, and she even gives it a name (“Mother’s Blanket”) before she’s called out to do the laundry again. Horace and Edward meanwhile are bored and decide to go out and play with the blanket. Anne catches them running off in the direction of a wild river and it starts raining. When Anne tries to stop them, they lose their balance and drop the blanket near the river-bank. When Anne tries to catch it, she slips and falls into the river. Horace tries to rescue her but he falls in too. Edward runs off to warn his parents.

When Anne and Horace finally are out of the river, they’re soaked and have no idea where they are, but thankfully they didn’t drift off for too long and are easily found. Horace starts crying and runs to his mother, while his mother got the wrong idea from Edward and thinks that it was Anne who pushed both of them into the river and so she gets really angry at Anne. When she finds out the truth later, she decides to tell Anne where her name came from: her father Walter gave it to her as well. I believe that it was named after a Queen of England that once lived, and that’s when she also learns that her name is spelled “Anne”, instead of “Ann”.

In any case, watching this series for me is going to be a matter of managing expectations, because this show has to fill some very large shoes. In the graphics department, it has to live up to the talents of Hayao Miyazaki who took care of the lay-out of the first episodes of Anne of Green Gables, and at the same time it also has the bad luck that it aired just after Porfy no Nagai Tabi, which had the most awesome background art. Konnichiwa Anne has none of them, and instead creates a style of graphics that’s much more simple, like the approach that was used in Les Miserables. In the music department, this series goes for a soundtrack that’s much more trying to blend in to the atmosphere, but it doesn’t make as much impact as the soundtrack of Porfy or Les Miserables did (although it is interesting to notice that the soundtrack is composed by those who did Jigoku Shoujo Mitsuganae, perhaps in the future it’ll get more interesting).

In terms of realism, there are other really big names that this show has to live up to: Isao Takahata and Tomomi Mochizuki: two of the best, if not the best directors when it comes to realism, and Lucy Maud Montgomery who wrote the original Anne of Green Gables novels (and also those of Kaze no Shoujo Emily). Konnichiwa Anne doesn’t have such a stellar director: Katsuyoshi Yatabe, whose work includes a hentai yaoi involving under-aged boys… yeah.

But on the other hand, looking at production staff in such a shallow way is such an inaccurate way in order to gauge the quality of a series. My favourite example is the director of The Third: the guy put down a really magnificent series… only to direct Penguin no Mondai afterwards. Or take Kaze no Shoujo Emily (another adaptation from Lucy Maud Montgomery): after doing this series of pure awesomeness, the director is now happily producing the crap that is Gokujou! Mecha Mote Iinchou, and I’m hoping for this to be the same with Konnichiwa Anne.

This episode really showed that this isn’t going to be among the best of the World Masterpiece Theatre: that fall into the river wasn’t needed. If you look at the other shows of the franchise like Porfy and Les Miserables at this stage, you can see that the drama was only caused by the characters clashing against each other, not these random disasters that happen a bit too conveniently, not to mention that there’s enough clash between the characters to keep this series going.

Having said that, though: I do love this series. There’s one thing that it stays absolutely true to, and that is Anne’s character. Even the lesser WMTs as Ie Naki Ko Remi had rock-solid characters, and there is no way that Konnichiwa Anne is going to be any different, and what this episode did such a wonderful job at is emphasizing how Anne’s name is so important to her, because it’s something that relates her to her parents. This show isn’t going to be the epitome of realism, but it’s still going to be an incredibly charming series. and with that, I guess that it’s also a bit more accessible than usual: if you can stomach the little kids, then there’s always something going on this time. Compare that to Porfy, which pretty much eliminated most of the viewer because hardly anything significantly dramatic happened in the first twelve episodes (which of course also had it’s charms, but it’s obviously not for everyone).