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2007-01-04

Movie Night - Anne of Green Gables, Ep. 1

(Update: This video has since been removed from Youtube.  Sorry.)

Such a long wait between movies! Oy, froynlayvin! Make with the nice! Pretty please! Nice layy-dee!!

Sorry. It's a bit easy to jump into Jerry Lewis mode, what with the Simpsons and Animaniacs roaming about. Anyway, I've been telling myself to hurry up and upload more episodes of Future Boy Conan, but I haven't been able to find the time (it takes a couple hours or more). Instead, thanks mainly to the immediate post below, I think we should sit down and watch the first episode of Anne of Green Gables.

Despite the fact that Maude Montgomery's children's novel is widely beloved by generations, and despite the highly popular television series from Canada, Isao Takahata's 1979 World Masterpiece Theatre production of Anne remains largely unknown. Perhaps this is just due to anime's relative obscurity, or perhaps this is because the anime crowd here in the States is much more interested in ogling naked chicks, giant robots, and endless explosions. For whatever reasons, the 70's classic animations from Japan remain unknown on these shores.

I'd say it's time to change that. An excellent fansub copy of Anne has been available online for several years, and you'll see that I include the links here on the blog. If you've missed the opportinity to watch this masterful series, then I encourage you to do so now.

This really is the definitive Anne, for far more reasons than I'd be able to summarize here. I had schemed a year or so ago to put Anne of Green Gables on DVD (entire fan-made, of course) with audio commentaries on most of the episodes. That plan fell through when I discovered how many DVD players can't run blank discs (DVD-R, DVD+R). But, at least we can watch some episodes here, and I do have the podcast project coming up.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In all fairness, can't one enjoy boobs, guns, robots and explosions in addition to Anne of Green Gables? Sometimes I feel like watching something mindless and violent, sometimes I feel like watching something quaint and character-driven. Thanks a lot for posting these, my grandmother was a big fan of Anne of Green Gables and she would have liked this (eh, except for reading the subtitles).

Chris Sobieniak said...

I guess I beg to differ from the previous poster, but I actually prefer a little more out of my anime experience than the usual eye candy and fan service.

After having seen this episode, I think I'm hoooked!

This is exactly the kind of thing I wouldn't mind watching as long as I can relate to the story well, and I STILL haven't watched the live-action series nor read the book! Of course I tend to favor most of what Nippon Animation has released over the past few decades since they have a better grasp in adapting these stories to anime.

From the looks of it, a French version was dubbed as well, so perhaps that managed to get seen up in Quebec if possible, though it's rather a shame hardly many of Nippon Animation's finest work got the English treatment down here. This is the sort of material that would work best on channels like PBS or such if there had been an interest in showing literary-based cartoons in the 80's (without having to produce it themselves by importing instead).

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