Category: Finished Series: Slice of Life/Drama

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).