Category: Finished Series: Slice of Life/Drama

Every week I keep hoping for Anne NOT to go to school, and this episode listened to my prayers: it was an entire episode, dedicated to the Hammond family, and holy crap! Spoiler alert!

Hammond was bound to die, we all knew that. However, I didn’t think that the creators were going to be this fast with it! We’ve got eight episodes left. I really thought that the entire second half of this series would be spent on the Hammond family, in contrast with the Thomas Family, and that Hammond’s death, and Anne’s subsequent leaving of that family as the major climax. This episode gives my entire expectations for the rest of this series a whole new dimension.

Hammond’s death didn’t have the same impact as the Bert’s, but that’s only logical. He’s only had the screen-time of about four episodes, and really didn’t have the time to truly make an impact. And not to mention that his death was a bit cheesy. Did the creators really have to pull down these angelic lights for it? Nevertheless, this was a great episode that really gave a lot of depth for the Hammond family for as far as possible. We see how the couple fell in love, and how Mr. Hammond just kept working himself to death, in order to support his family.

The death scene also showed a fundamental difference with the Thomas family. One thing I really liked about that scene was the random passer-by: he immediately tried to do everything he could to try and save Mr. Hammond. That’s not something you see often in anime, is it? It really showed that Mr. Hammond is well liked in his town, completely the opposite of Bert, who people refused to help even when Noah was in trouble. You could call Mr. Hammond naive, but at the same time he strikes me as someone who didn’t want to give in to his illness: with his heart, he knew that he wouldn’t see his children grow up, and therefore did everything he could to ensure them a future as good as possible: he kept taking on large jobs to give his wife financial support, he searched for Anne to support his wife for after he dies. And in the meantime, he simply tries to forget about his problems by being nice, fantasizing like Anne and generally looking at the bright side of life.

But yeah, the problem is going to be: what will the rest of this series focus at? Anne is going to have to leave eventually, but how long will that take? We know that she and Mrs. Hammond don’t go well together, and I think that Mrs. Hammond will use that reason to send Anne to the orphanage. Still, I do think that the two of them are going to spend a few more episodes together.

I also really wonder what this series is going to do for its climax, and what this series is going to look like once Anne does arrive at the orphanage (which at the same time seems so close now). At this point, episodes in this series can either be really good or really dull, with nothing in between: at this point I’ve really lost my patience with this show’s cheesy episodic stories like what we saw in the previous two episodes. However, at the same time the themes of dysfunctional families have been fleshed out really well now, with the Hammond family to contrast with the Thomas family.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Well, I actually forgot to publish this post after I wrote it. That’s a headdesk-moment right there.

Obviously I’m not in the mood of writing everything all over again, but I do want to say that this episode confirmed my fears of the return of the cheese in this series. It wasn’t as bad as during the Marysville arc, but nevertheless the climaxes are getting formulaic at this point. This will probably continue for most of the rest of this series.

However, there is good news, because this series promises to end on a good note. This really is a series with its ups and downs, and we’re unfortunately currently in a down again.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

So, this was really the episode that would make or break this series: it was going to be the first episode of Anne, as she settled in the Hammond family, and visited her new school for the first time. The result is really a mixed bag, but I think that the creators are going to be able to make something out of it. At least, I don’t think that we’re going to get another repeat of the disaster of the Marysville arc.

First of all, Anne has grown again: she’s now ten years old, and you can see her development for the past three months that skipped: she has had no time to play around and be a kid, and really grown up in the meantime. But yeah, that brings us the the problems of continuity again: 10-year-old Anne is much more mature than 11-year-old Anne of Green Gables.

At a certain point in this episode, Anne also finds books of Shakespeare, and it’s actually very interesting to see her using these books and her own fantasy, in order to distract her from the reality she’s in. Like with the books she read in Marysville, she becomes entranced with them, especially because this time, she really has nobody to talk to. In Marysville, she at least had Johanna to talk to, Bert to relieve her worries to, and Noah, who she saw as her own brother because she had been raising him ever since he was born. But yeah, that brings us to continuity again: remember the beginning of Anne of Green Gables? Anne talked about a lot of girly things, but to my memory, she NEVER mentioned Shakespeare. This just again shows that there were a lot of red-haired Anne Shirleys walking around back in those days.

Now, as for the school. I absolutely loved the part in which the teacher was grading some tests by his students. That was really realistic. We didn’t actually get to see the students, because the schools were closed for summer break, but at least the teacher is much better than Henderson: he has this down-to-earth attitude towards teaching, and yet you can see why he decided to become a teacher in the first place.

Unfortunately on the other hand, the cheese is back. The drama in this episode was of the shallow kind again: Anne meets person, Anne talks to person and in the end the person completely changes into a different character because of the insights that Anne gave him. Especially the way in which the teacher said exactly what he learned and how it’s going to change his life just felt forced. I know that this is a kids’ show and all, but Porfy no Nagai Tabi faced the same problem, and that series again and again came up with great one-episode stories with plenty of well-written drama.

So yeah, overall this episode pretty much solidified as an inferior, though capable WMT-series, somewhat like Ie Naki Ko Remi (the 1997-version)’s sister-series. The two have a lot in common: both are spin-offs of utterly brilliant adaptations of literary works, but have drama that’s too shallow to really call themselves equal to the series they’re based on. And yet standalone, they’re pretty enjoyable. Remi had this with its excellent soundtrack (along with the best OP and ED of any WMT I’ve seen so far), strong lead and dark story about child-labour, while Anne did this with its dark attention to dysfunctional families, and a well-developed lead character Anne, who hardly resembles her original character.

Now that 2010 is getting closer and closer, I can only hope for an announcement of next year’s WMT-series to appear. Oh, I so hope that Nippon Animation is going to continue this franchise, despite its low popularity.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Another dark and haunting episode for this series. At this point, I’m really doubting how to exactly rate this series in the end: the Marysville arc was very annoying to sit through and contained lots and lots of stereotypes, and yet the Thomas Family was very well developed, and the Hammond-family also is promising to be a very engaging family for Anne to get caught up in. This series is definitely the worst of the new generation of WMTs, but how much worse than Porfy is it?

But yeah, the original Akage no Anne already hinted at it: raising large families is hard, and the Hammond family at this point just shows how hard this is when you have a dysfunctional family. The father seems like he has the financial resources to take care of his kids, but he has heart problems that prevent him from helping his wife when he returns home. His wife right now was in the middle of her pregnancy, so there was nobody who could keep the children in check this episode. It’s a very real problem that I’m sure a lot of families had back in the days in which this series took place.

This episode also introduces a new character, Miss Hagaty, who is the local medical specialist and helps the mother through her birth in this episode (I’ve got to look up their names some day), and she really strikes me as a very strong character with a lot of experience in these matters.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

I really like the World Masterpiece Theatre, but damn. There are times when it can be so goddamned cruel to its characters. It’s episodes like this that are heart-wrenching, simply because of what the characters have to go through. This was such a powerful episode, but oh my god… it was hard to watch Anne with the situation she’s been thrust in. So Bert is dead. He left a considerable debt behind due to his drinking problem. Johanna’s parents are willing to pay this debt, take care of her and her four children. Only Anne is left out of the picture and has to be put into an freaking orphanage. Okay, so there turns out to be a guy who’s willing to take Anne in. Johanna is then forced to give Anne over to a TOTAL STRANGER, who’s going to take care of her, provided that she takes care of his children. These children turn out to be two pairs of twins, two older sisters, and another baby that’s about to be born. Suddenly Anne’s life with the Thomas Family is starting to look like a goddamned walk in the park. I knew that this was going to happen because of Anne of Green Gables, but damn. Seeing it actually animated only shows how many tasks are put to such a young girl… The only bright side at this point is that the father looks like a nice guy compared to what a bastard Bert was, however that brings us to another problem: this guy is also going to die, isn’t he? On top of that, this episode definitively said goodbye to the Thomas family as well. In this episode, finally another reference to Elisa appeared. Seriously, I had totally forgotten about her, but she was the one who gave Anne a happy early childhood (see me talking about this for a character who only is 9 years old? How many others of Anne’s age have received this much depth already?) Something tells me that the new family is going to be fine. It’s going to be exactly what this series is good at, only much worse than the Thomas Family (who finally grew up, dammit!). I guess that it’s here that Anne goes to school, and with that I have absolutely no idea whether that’s going to turn out all-right or not. It should prove to be great slice of life, provided that the creators can get the characters for Anne’s classmates right, instead of making them into a bunch of stereotypes. And hey, the creators can’t create a worse teacher than Henderson at this point, can they? Rating: ** (Very hard to watch, but Excellent nonetheless)]]>