Category: Finished Series: Slice of Life/Drama

With this episode, I understand a bit more what’s wrong with this series: Marysville. Every single character introduced in the Marysville arc is dull, cliche and boring, and that’s why the previous episode was especially bad, because it was entirely centred around one of these characters. The Thomas family however, is a different story. They are the ones who make this series. With this, Anne has also shown that she doesn’t have the strength to carry this series on its own, and she really needs the Thomas family for this to make the series complete.

So, this episode starts during a lunch-break, in which Mildred is showing off her huge box of lunch. Anne’s lunch is small, so Randolf offers her a bit of his, but she declines. Mildred then mentions that for the upcoming pick nick she’s going to have an even bigger lunch. Anne obviously wants to join the picnic, but for that she needed to have donated to the church like everyone else has.

So, the question becomes how to get money in order to go to the picnic. Randolf comes with the idea of trying to search in a crow’s nest, but Anne thinks that it’s a better idea to ask Johanna. Johanna however, has just had a bad day because the well is giving trouble. She obviously declines giving money, since she believes that God isn’t there for the penniless.

Horace and Edward meanwhile are fascinated by a local tortoise salesman. When Bert gets back, he smells like tobacco again and Johanna scolds him again. He then comes with the news that he’s managed to get a promotion (or something similar that’s going to give them a bit of extra money), and his salary is going to triple in the process. Anne and Johanna are obviously elated when they learn of the news. They spend the dinner trying to figure out what they’re going to do with the money. When Bert asks Anne what she wants to do, she obviously answers that she wants to go to the picnic. This results into a fight between him and Johanna, who believes it to be a waste of money. Dinner ends with all four kids sitting outside because they kept yelling. At that point, Anne mentions how perhaps they can get stuff from crows nests.

A bit later, Johanna comes outside with the news that Bert has promised to stop smoking so that she can go to the picnic. Anne obviously is elated when she finds out. That evening Anne and Johanna spend a bit of time talking on how Johanna has never been on a picnic, and how she’s forgotten by now whether or not she ever wanted to go. Bert meanwhile gets the “brilliant” idea to wager the money he got in horse races.

The next day, Anne prepares to go to the picnic while Bert tells her that he’s going to bring her to the church, as he himself was planning to go to the horse races. Johanna however overhears him, and the two of them start fighting as usual. They get interrupted by Horace and Edward, who are stuck in one of the trees. Apparently they thought that crows really kept expensive things in their nests, but when they started climbing they got too scared and fell off. Bert manages to save them, but he hurts his shoulder in the process. He is okay in the end, but he can’t lift heavy things for a week. Yeah, that’s going to help with his work.

Everyone is down, aside from Anne, who still starts fantasizing about going to the picnic, but she quickly stops when Horace and Edward start crying about their tortoise. Bert then just shrugs everything off, and promises Johanna that he’s going to work hard to make up for the work he missed, and even for Johanna’s part. The family then spends the rest of the day picnicking at their own location, since Bert doesn’t need to go to work anyway. Anne then gets to see the sea for the first time and the episode ends.

The Marysville arc has been quite boring, though. It’s much lighter, but in most WMT series the slice of life parts are just as interesting to watch, but thanks to those brats at school it’s getting a bit tedious to watch. Still, in this episode we finally got a bit more foreshadowing of what’s going to happen in the future, and I just hope that once Anne moves to her second family, the annoying brats are going away too. I’d really wish to believe that, but the fact that they’re in the ED while Elisa wasn’t does worry me a bit.
Rating: * (Good)
Finally the focus is back at the Thomas family.

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

Seriously, can this show get any more adorable? This episode was so incredibly charming, even though it was about a bunch of characters that have yet to be introduced beforehand. The children in this episode were portrayed really life-like. Well, I guess that that’s the World Masterpiece Theatre for you. ^^;

Anyway, this episode starts with a regular day at school, in which Mildred is showing off a brooch with angels that she got from her birthday. Anne stays away from them, but she of course is interested in the angel-story, but when Randolf notices her looking she looks away again. Mildred wonders if Anne is interested in the brooch as well, but Anne answers that while angels tend to grant wishes, they’ll never grant wishes to liars (a nudge to what happened in the previous episode).

During class, Anne actually did better than Mildred (for her grade, anyway), which rather pisses Mildred off. A girl then arrives at the classroom, whose name is Sadi. Her house seems to be poor, and she too apparently has had to stay home to take care of it. Because of this, Anne becomes interested, and sits down next to her during the afternoon break, and starts telling about Elisa and Katie Morris.

Sadi then reveals that she has a number of younger siblings, and the reason why she has been away is because her mother is sick: her father is dead (you have to love how Anne rejoices when she finds this out, having discovered someone who is similar to herself, even though it’s about such a touchy subject), and since her mother has been taking care of the family and making the money, her becoming sick has put them into a bit of trouble.

Anne, still fascinated by the angels, asks her what she wishes for if angels were able to grant wishes. She herself wishes for new ribbons in her hair, since she’s gotten bored of her old ones. Sadi of course answers that she wishes that her mother would get better soon. Meanwhile Mildred is setting everyone up against Anne, and they come up with a plan to frame Anne: Randolf was supposed to put Mildred’s brooch inside Anne’s bag, so that they could blame her for taking it. Obviously the plan goes wrong because Randolf mistakes Anne’s bag for that of Sadi.

At the end of the classes, Anne notices how the brooch is in Sadi’s bag, but at first she’s too afraid to say something. That’s why she follows Sadi to her house. Sadi then comes out of the house and notices Anne, and then tells her about the brooch. It turns out that Sadi never knew of anything, and Anne informs her that it’s Mildred’s.

A while later, they start talking about the brooch with the angels on it along with Sadi’s younger sister and brother, and when the two of them find out that angels are supposed to grant wishes, they wish for their mother not to go to heaven. Apparently, their mother’s condition is much worse than previously thought, because one of the kids overheard her mother say that she’d join her husband soon, that evening earlier.

They then drop by their mother, along with Anne, who gets all shy when the mother gives her a compliment on her looks. When she is about to get up to do the chores, Anne and the other children instead insist on doing the chores themselves, so that she can rest. Afterwards, Sadi gets more and more worried about her mother’s condition, and how she can’t believe that her mother is hiding a serious illness from them. Since they don’t have any income, they also don’t have any money to call a doctor. The children suggest soup with milk, which is supposed to help (hey, they’re 3 years old…), but even for that they don’t have any money. Anne suggests collecting a type of flower, which is supposed to help according to Eggman. In the meantime, Sadi’s mother suddenly gets out of bed and starts doing the chores like there’s nothing wrong.

After a very touching moment in which the children seem to give up all hope because they can’t find that particular flower, they return home… and find out that it’s all been one big misunderstanding. All their mother had was a simple cold. When they overheard her talking that evening, she simply was talking about how she remodelled some of her late husband’s clothes to fit their children, so that it’d be like they’re always with him.

Anne stays until it’s nearly dark, after which they say goodbye but not before giving Anne a new set of pink ribbons,

This really was a mean episode. It was so sad, with especially superb voice-acting from Sadi’s little brother and sister, who really sounded like a bunch of sad children, only for everything to be a simple misunderstanding that was blown out of proportions by these simple kids’ minds. Stories around misunderstandings are often a bit lame, but this time it was the complete opposite, and this episode became so incredibly adorable because of it.

There’s one thing that doesn’t quite sit well with me, though, and it has to do with the continuity with the original Anne of Green Gables. I mean, how often has Anne been praised for her looks by now? It becomes harder and harder to imagine how this would have caused her to start yelling at Gilbert Blythe like that when he first pranked her. But then again, around that age she indeed should have started to get into puberty, so I think that that was the major cause of it.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
A light but downright adorable episode.

Well, there you have it: Anne’s first day at school, or 20 minutes of Anne making a fool of herself in front of her classmates. While in the original series, she was quiet in classes, she obviously didn’t have those restraints as a six-year-old. This episode was really embarrassing to watch at times, but really: it’s typical of Anne to do such a thing.

As this is one of these episodes in which Anne rambles on and on, I’m not going to translate every sentence she says, but I’m just going to summarize the main points, in an attempt to retain my sanity. The episode starts with Anne’s first day at school. She gets ready for school while at the same time trying to take care of the kids, but she’s too excited to really care about it. Horace and Edward don’t seem to be going to school as well, on a side-note.

Johanna gives Anne her lunch (an apple and two cookies). A walk to school takes about one hours, but Anne doesn’t seem to mind. When she arrives at the school, she immediately starts comparing the most popular girl to a pretty doll (yeah), after which she gets called by Henderson, her teacher, who is all excited to see her. When it’s time for Anne to introduce herself, her classmates obviously make fun of her because of her incredibly long-winded introduction-speech, and how she’s never been to school before that point (and her red hair, of course). The first class is spelling, and Anne shows that she already knows how to write down the alphabet (courtesy of Elisa).

The popular girl’s name turns out to be Mildred, whose father seems to be the mayor of Marysville. They try to annoy Anne during the break, but Anne is too busy with the new things she learned. They then try to give her a bit of a tip of how she could use Randolf(another kid in the class)’s dictionary if she ran into a word that she doesn’t know. So obviously, they pick up Randolf’s dictionary and Anne gets blamed in the end for taking it.

At the end of the lessons, it turns out that the next day history is going to be the subject (unfortunately, Anne can’t come to school that day), and the day after that is going to be a test. Because it’s Anne’s first day at school, she doesn’t have to take it, but she still takes the test seriously. Especially when Mildred pops up and tells her that the test is going to be about India’s history (instead of a simple spelling test). She gives Anne an incredibly complex book to study (which Anne obviously can’t understand).

So Anne ends up asking Eggman’s help with India’s history, and she spends the next few days trying to understand it. Unfortunately, in the meantime Noah gets sick and so Anne alternates between studying and trying to take care of Noah. So at the day of the test, she of course gets really surprised when she prepared for something completely different. Anne’s classmates are doing so-so (especially Randolf screws up), and when Anne gets her turn to try she also fails to spell “chocolate”. Mildred of course jumps in to correctly spell it, and Anne feels pretty down.

The next test is calculating, and like expected Anne has a lot of trouble with the answers (just like the majority of her class aside from Mildred, by the way). Mildred gets asked to write down the answers on the blackboard, though Anne then notices that she made a mistake (100 x 0 = 1000). Everyone in class was so convinced that Mildred could never make a mistake like that, so they didn’t even notice the mistake she made. Anne in the meantime comes with an anecdote she picked up from Eggman when she was studying India to explain why Mildred’s answer was wrong.

Because of that, Anne gets to tell the class a bit about the things she learned about India and the episode ends.

Well, that’s the World Masterpiece Theatre for you. I remember how Anne of Green Gables devoted an entire episode of Anne and her best friend, playing mother and father in the woods. It’s obviously that those things are nowhere near my interests… but it’s so incredibly charming.

And yet it’s episodes like this that really remind me why the World Masterpiece Theatre series is so awesome. There are so few series that have as detailed and colorful characters as they show here. They may be boring at times, but these anime really showed me what a wonderful genre slice of life can be.

I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t miss Porfy or Les Miserables: both two brilliant series with some incredibly well fleshed out and developed characters, and both really were unique anime. Konnichiwa Anne in return doesn’t have that overarching plot that these two had: it simply tells the story of an overly energetic and talkative girl called Anne. And yet it shows that even with that, the WMT-series can be awesome.

I’m really curious what the creators have in store for episode 13. In Porfy and Les Miserables, it both was the episode that really set the bigger plot in motion: Porfy had its earthquake, while in Les Miserables it was the point in which Jean picked up Cosette. Obviously such a thing isn’t going to happen here, but I still wonder whether the creators here have some sort of climax planned. If they have, then this episode showed no signs of it.

One issue I did have with this episode was that the animation looked off at times. Faces were more distorted than usual, it seemed. I also believe that Anne suddenly learning a lot about India was a bit overplayed, but it definitely remained charming in the end.
Rating: * (Good)
A rather uncomfortable episode about Anne making a fool of herself in her first day at school, but that’s what storytelling is: evoking emotions from the viewer.

Oh, how I love the World Masterpiece Theatre. They never have a clear distinction between good and evil; just people who live their lives. Johanna… you can’t call her on the good side, but neither can she be labelled as a villain. This episode again was much lighter compared to before the move to Marysville, but again it was a really heart-warming one.

The episode starts as Anne drops by on Eggman again, and she brings him the book by Robert Browing that she got a few episodes back. Apparently, a bit of time has passed since the previous episode, because Anne already knows how to read a few more words words, and Robert shows her where they are in the book. They talk a bit about the book, and what the feelings of the author Robert Browning could have been. Eggman then says how he likes winter, as it covers the things he doesn’t want to see with snow.

Anne then notices a bunch of paintings that Eggman made. They are all unfinished, but that was Eggman’s intentions: when something is finished, it’s done, and over, and he doesn’t like that. Anne then notices a picture of presumably Eggman’s daughter, and he quickly turns it away and changes the subject to his own name: Robert Johnson.

Obviously, Anne returns very late and she gets scolded by Johanna for being so. Because Anne ruined the brush, she has to clean the potatoes by hand,, which is rather nasty with the cold water. The next day Johanna takes Anne out to town so that she can watch the carriage while she goes shopping. While she waits, Anne notices a shop full of new brushes, though she quickly gives up on these hopes because they cost money.

Her attention then falls on a man and a woman who are bickering with each other. The woman turns out to be a new teacher and quite the feminist, while the man doesn’t want to believe that women can be studying. The woman meanwhile passionately tries to convince him how women can contribute to society, and she starts quoting her favourite author: Robert Browning. Obviously, Anne also joins in at that point, but she quickly gets taken away by an angry Johanna. The teacher however tries to call her back, though by calling her red-haired she gets a very angry look from Anne.

The teacher however says that her hair looks really good. And then she asks whether she heard that line at school, but Anne answers that Eggman told her it, and how he’s been teaching her all kinds of words. As Johanna is standing right next to her, she finally realizes why Anne has been staying so long with this Eggman. The teacher then realizes that Anne isn’t going to school, and offers her to join the class that she’s about to teach. Johanna however then quickly pulls her out of it, saying that Anne is needed to do the housework. Who is going to do all her chores if Anne’s going to school every day? Johanna then quickly takes Anne away. Especially since she ruined that brush, there is no way that Anne is going to school.

That evening though, school still is on Anne’s mind, and she imagines how wonderful it must be. Bert meanwhile quietly says that Johanna perhaps could let Anne go to school, but Johanna says that since they’re a poor family, but you can see that she’s not entirely sure about her decision. The next day Anne again heads off to Eggman, and she talks about how perhaps when she gets her aunt a new brush, she’ll get to study at school. Eggman then proposes that Anne should give Johanna a brush as a present, though Anne says that she needs money for that. Eggman however offers to let her work for the money needed to buy the brush.

the next couple of days Anne works hard until she receives enough money. She hasn’t told Johanna about it, though Johanna overhears her talking to Rokimba once (still unsure of how to spell that name…). When she has enough money, Eggman offers to drive her to the shop that sells brushes. So Anne goes to the shop and buys the brush, and she’s very proud of it since it’s the first thing she bought with money that she earned herself. The teacher from before then shows up, and Anne (obviously elated) tells her about how she earned her first bits of money. Eggman then shows an entirely different side of himself, and suddenly gets very reserved and leaves pretty quickly, enforcing the rumours about how he is a bit of a strange guy.

When Anne gets back, Johanna yells at her for being back so late, but Anne then shows her the brush. Johanna however says that she isn’t going to let Anne go to school… in the winter. In the winter, there is just too much that Anne needs to help out with, though when spring comes, Johanna offered to let Anne go to school. The episode closes off as a very happy Anne runs outside and starts uttering some random lines again.

This episode really shows the start of what’s going to become Anne’s quest for knowledge, and this episode also showed that even though women were starting to take up studying, there were still enough people who didn’t see the use in that and just laughed off the idea of a female teacher, though it’s interesting how at the Green Gables farm, there hardly was any mention of it, but that’s probably because that takes place among some richer families, rather than the poorer environments in which Anne grew up in her first ten years.

One thing I didn’t like that much in this episode was the lack of subtlety in which Eggman’s character is handled. He’s really doing wonders for Anne, but it really is a bit too obvious that he lost his daughter to some reason and is a social outcast. The teacher of Kaze no Shoujo Emily was much better.

Rating: * (Good)
Heart-warming episode about Anne’s wishes to go to school