Do you like orphans? Do you like Nuns? Do you like singing? Well you were in luck in 1991 as House Foods World Masterpiece Theatre adapted Maria von Trapp’s memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.

Now, I’ve never read that book, and don’t think I’ve seen The Sound of Music. Certainly not as an adult at least. It feels like what I know about the story I know only through cultural osmosis. So I’ve not really got much to judge this adaptation against.

Likewise, I don’t think I’ve seen an entire World Masterpiece Theatre series. Certainly, I’ve seen bits here and there, I think the last one I dipped into would have been the Story of Perrine. But not enough to say where this looks to stand in the oeuvre. Someone else will have to be judge of whether this is good or bad WMT.

What I will say is this. Nuns must be fun to animate.

The animation is certainly fine for TV animation early on, with Maria in her Austrian tomboy get up and exploring Salzburg, but once the nuns appear then we start to get some fun movement. The solid black robes allows for interesting clothing movement without getting bogged down in the detail of folds and rumples. Nuns are like living shadow puppets.

With just a face and a shape the animators get across a lot of different personalities with little effort. The faces are of course designed by Shuichi Seki. Seki’s early designs were on shows adapting western properties, Vicky the Viking and Little Lulu. The aforementioned Perrine was his first WMT design work.  From then his open, slightly bean shaped faces became the look of WMT. More recently he did the character design for the Gokyoudai Monogatari TV show.

Unusually for a WMT show, the plucky orphan here is an adult. Actually when I think about it, it’s fairly unusual for pop culture as a whole. The good thing is that because of that, despite annoying all the other nuns, Maria doesn’t come off as too cloying. The ending theme not so much with it’s alternating HAPPY FAMILY SCENE / MISERY approach.

The other thing that struck me was some of the establishing location shots seem to linger unnecessarily long. Then I realised that is animation as travelogue. These background paintings are actually pretty accurate depictions of actual real life locations. Locations that were thousands of miles away from the intended audience. So let them soak it in.

While it’s nicely made for a TV anime, the main thing that is tempting me back is the promise of the opening sequence that the mascot animal of the show is a full grown cow. I am curious as to how they plan to make that work, if indeed they do.

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Another World Masterpiece Theatre show. This time it's 1979, and it's another one directed by Isao Takahata (Grave of The Fireflies), with some input from some fella called Hayao Miyazaki. It's my understanding that this is considered the best adaptation of the novels, due to it having the room to cover a lot in it's 50 episodes. But seeing as I'm totally unfamiliar with the books or any of the adaptations, beyond putting the Kevin Sullivan (not the Dungeon of Doom one!) adaptations on the Videolog database.

However I do know this. It's Ophantainment! Which is a word, that yes, I invented.

Anne of Green Gables – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Anne Shirley is a skinny, red-haired, freckled orphan who is mistakenly sent to live with shy, elderly bachelor, Matthew Cuthbert, and his prim spinster sister, Marilla Cuthbert. They live together in the fictional town of Avonlea, situated on the charming, scenic north shore of Canada's Prince Edward Island, and had submitted a request to adopt a young boy who could work on the family farm.

The good news is that it has been fansubbed. And that torrents still have seeds.

Now I can't actually find a clip of just the opening so instead you are going to get the first episode!

Next bit:

And the last bit:

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It's World Masterpiece Theatre time again! This time based on the autobiographical novel Rascal by Sterling North.

Nippon Animation : Catalogue:

Sterling North is a tender-hearted boy, who loves animals very much. One day Sterling finds a baby raccoon in the woods. He names the raccoon ‘Rascal’ and takes it home, where the baby raccoon becomes Sterling’s constant companion. Rascal grows up very well. Everything seems to be going well, but one day Rascal gets a taste for sweet corn and begins to raid the neighbors’ corn gardens during the night. Sterling realizes that it is truly difficult for men and wild animals to coexist in the same place. One day a misfortune befalls Sterling’s family. His father’s ranches are entirely destroyed by a heavy rainstorm. Sterling must go to Milwaukee to attend junior high school. Rascal is now a young adult. Sterling decides to return Rascal to his natural life in the woods. Sterling goes to a lake with Rascal in his canoe and sets him free in the woods. Next day he leaves town alone on a train bound for Milwaukee.

Looks like it had a German, Spanish and Italian release, but nothing in English. Accoding to Anime News Network, Hayao Miyazaki did key animation for a number of the episodes. Gojefferson.com has a lot of information on Rascal, with some nice shots of art and merchandise from the show. Go take a look, it's a fascinating page as it approaches the show from the point of view of the book and the area it is set rather than from an interest in simply animation. And it really gets over how popular the story is.

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Yet more World Masterpiece Theatre! This time from 1976, and based on a small part of Edmondo De Amicis' novel Heart.

3000 Leagues in Search of Mother – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

During a depression in the year 1881 in Genoa, Italy, Marco's mother goes to Argentina to work as domestic. However, his mother's letters stop coming after an indication that she is sick. 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother details Marco's journey to find his mother.

The show is notable for being directed by Isao Takahata (Grave of The Fireflies, Only Yesterday). Good news is some of it has been fansubbed by Live-eviL. Bad news is there aren't any seeds for it at the moment. Maybe with Yawara licensed, they'll return to the show.

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More World Masterpiece Theatre, this time from 1985 and based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

A Little Princess Sara – Introduction:

Sara Crewe has lived in two worlds. One world, a dream-land where your wishes are read from your lips, the other, a hard life in terrible poverty after losing all the wealth at a single blow where something to eat and shelter are the most important things in life. (In fact they were before but it is quite easy to overlook this fact, is it not?) But as long as she keeps her imagination, inner strength and good friends, there is still hope.

That website will tell you more that you possibly need to know about the series and the story, so go check it out. The only other nugget I can offer is that it is one of the shows that Animax have produced an English dub for the Asian market.

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1978 entry from World Masterpiece Theatre, Nippon Animation's series of (mainly Western) literary adaptations. Perrine Monogatari is an adaptation of Hector Malot's “En Famille” (aka Nobody's Girl).

Like most 19th century entertainments, it's about an orphan.

Seeing that another studio (TMS) had adapted Sans Famille, the predecesor of this novel, in 1977, you have to wonder if this was made in reaction to that. There would be a WMT version of Sans Famille 2 decades later. One which apparantly murdered the original story (changing the gender of the main character) and with it's early cancellation, it effectively put the long running series to death.

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