Category: Finished Series: Slice of Life/Drama

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.