Anne of Green Gables

This is part of the World Masterpiece Theater Production History series. You can read the previous entry here

This article was co-written with Toadette

Anne of Green Gables is one of the most popular works in the World Masterpiece Theater series, both in Japan and in the English-speaking sphere. According to many of those who have seen it, it may even qualify for the title of best anime of all time. It also represents a historical turning point: it is the first entry in the time slot that was now officially called “World Masterpiece Theater”, instead of “Calpis Children’s Theater” (1975-1977) or “Calpis Family Theater” (1978). And yet, it is perhaps the most imperfect among Isao Takahata’s three shows for Zuiyo Video/Nippon Animation, and by far one of the most difficult productions that the director, studio and all the artists involved had known. This latter, darker aspect of Anne appears to be at best underdiscussed, or at worst completely unknown, in English-speaking circles. While providing a detailed commentary and analysis of the show as well as its place in anime history and Isao Takahata’s career, this article also aims to raise awareness and shed light on those somber moments.

Adapting Anne

A discussion of Anne’s animated version must start with the original work, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s novel Anne of Green Gables. This is especially important here as, unlike most other WMT entries (with the exception of A Dog of Flanders), the source work was already extremely famous in Japan when the anime was produced – something which probably explains its immediate and enduring popularity. Anne was introduced in Japan by Canadian missionaries in the early 20th century and first translated by a Japanese alumnus of a Canadian school: Hanako Muraoka translated the novel during the war and released Akage no An (Red-Haired Anne) in 1952. An instant success, it was integrated into Japan’s national junior high curriculum in 1953. As had been the case with A Dog of Flanders, Anne resonated with the living conditions and aspirations of children in post-war Japan. According to literary critic Yoshiko Akamatsu,

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Japanese were struggling to live their impoverished lives in communities in which, like Avonlea, everyone knew everyone else. […] Since the Japanese value silence, children were not allowed to talk freely in the presence of adults. The talkative Anne became a new heroine symbolizing the democratic world after the war.”

As important as it was, Muraoka’s translation was also a very personal take on Montgomery’s novel. First, she made a series of changes to the plot, omitting many important moments in the later chapters, such as Marilla telling Anne that she loves her as her own flesh and blood for the first time, or downplaying Gilbert’s sacrifice to resign his post at Avonlea school. As Michael B. Pass states, “Muraoka, in short, plays up Anne’s archetypically ‘feminine virtues’ of modesty and self-sacrifice while downplaying the same traits in her male counterpart.” These narrative and thematic changes were the signs of a wider stylistical adaptation: through her presentation of the characters and the specific language she used, Muraoka rooted Akage no An in the genre of prewar shôjo literature – novels and short stories aimed at teenage girls and published in magazines, whose tropes, aesthetic and publishing system formed the roots of postwar shôjo manga.

By the late 70s, Anne’s image as a “girls’ book” was deeply entrenched in Japan. It is especially how Isao Takahata himself thought of the novel when he was first approached: “Before I was asked to adapt it, I didn’t know anything about Anne of Green Gables. Of course, I had seen copies of Hanako Muraoka’s translations lined up in bookstores and I knew that it was popular, but unfortunately, I didn’t care for girls’ novels.” Even after reading it, Takahata thought that Anne would be too difficult to adapt, stating in a memo that it was “a fascinating novel about the daily life of a chatty teenage girl, but it is full of dialogue, lacking in dramatic developments and narrative shifts, and therefore not suitable for an animation project.”

However, Takahata had already refused to direct The Story of Perrine in 1978, and as a result his credit in Nippon had probably run out. He would have to grind his teeth and adapt Anne anyways – which ended up being a good match as, upon further analysis, the novel grew on the director who came to find it fascinating and a positive challenge to take on. Such a reaction coming from Takahata is especially interesting, because it doesn’t appear to have been shared by many of the main members of the staff who already knew the original novel, and probably agreed to join the production because it was Anne more than anything else. This was notably the case of art director Masahiro Ioka, character designer Yoshifumi Kondô, and his wife, cel painter Hiroko Kondô.

Besides Takahata, there was another person who wasn’t familiar with Anne and didn’t really like it: that was Hayao Miyazaki. Takahata recalled the reaction of “a member of the main staff” whose first words after reading the novels were, “this really isn’t cute, is it?” – very probably Miyazaki. Still, he was engaged on the show as layout artist, background designer, and animator for the opening sequence, and he agreed to put up with it – for the first 15 episodes, at least.

Miyazaki’s involvement in Anne of Green Gables and his subsequent departure from the show mid-production is perhaps one of the most controversial topics related to his development as a director and his relationship with Isao Takahata. Indeed, by leaving Anne, Miyazaki definitely declared his independence from his friend and mentor and went on to direct his first feature and popular success, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro. To untie the messy knot of the two men’s complex history, we need to answer two questions: why did Miyazaki, having just debuted as series director on Future Boy Conan, join Anne in the first place? And why did he leave?

In a 1992 interview, Takahata claimed that, much to his surprise at the time, Miyazaki himself offered to join Anne:

To be honest, I did not expect Miya-san to do layouts again after Conan. Or rather, I thought that it wouldn’t be strange if he refused to join. However, he was the one to say he’d do it. Of course, there was the fact that I had helped him out on Conan, but I didn’t feel like asking him to come back to do layouts. In that sense, you might say I took advantage of him. But since he was the one to make the offer, of course I agreed to have him on.”

Takahata’s surprise is understandable, as Miyazaki was indeed getting tired of only doing layouts. He expressed this feeling in multiple interviews made throughout the early 80s, saying, for example, that,

With [Conan], I really recalled why I had wanted to work on cartoon movies. It would be overstating it to say that I returned to my point of origin, but I had lost sight of my own themes after Marco was over. I felt I was back to square one.”

If Miyazaki indeed joined before he was asked to, he therefore did so out of a sense of obligation. Without Takahata’s assistance on Conan (who took up the charge of drawing some storyboards, directing episodes, and possibly helping out with the script between episodes 7 and 13), the show would have completely collapsed. Moreover, with Yôichi Kotabe gone from Nippon, Miyazaki perhaps felt that Takahata needed to be supported by at least one familiar face. But this sense of obligation quickly vanished as Miyazaki became increasingly uncomfortable with the way Anne was headed. After 15 episodes, he finally gave up and left the production.

For many years, it has been believed that the reason Miyazaki left Anne (and, with it, studio Nippon Animation) was to take up the role of director on The Castle of Cagliostro. This recounting of the events comes from Yasuo Otsuka’s memoirs, which tell how Otsuka mentioned an upcoming Lupin movie to Miyazaki, who left Anne in order to take up the implicit offer to direct it. However, in a 2015 interview (relayed by Seiji Kanô), Miyazaki himself stated that there had been a misunderstanding: when Otsuka first mentioned the Cagliostro project, he was already on his way out and had lots of free time. Interested by what Otsuka had told him, Miyazaki instinctively began producing drafts of the titular castle, and only then did he get back in touch with Otsuka to say that, if it was alright, he could direct the movie. This alternative sequence of events is supported by the chronology of both works: Anne #15 aired on April 15, 1979 whereas Miyazaki joined Cagliostro in May (according to Otsuka) and delivered his final script for Cagliostro on June 10 (following a production report published in Animage). By early May at least, Miyazaki was still in Nippon: per an interview in the volume of the magazine Animation for that month, he was still meant to direct a movie version of Future Boy Conan. But his opposition to making a recap (he wanted the whole show to be shown in theaters, or a sequel to be produced) further encouraged him to leave Nippon. In any case, there was approximately one month between the time Miyazaki left Anne and when he joined Cagliostro.

This then brings us to ask the following question a second time: why did Miyazaki leave Anne? The simple answer is that he didn’t like it. But in order to understand this, it is necessary to stop in some detail on the evolution of the relationship between Miyazaki and Takahata and of their respective artistic visions.

Given what Miyazaki said about his own work in the early 80s, it is clear that Takahata’s way of doing things did not sit well with him. First, as we will see, Anne was an extremely faithful adaptation of the original work. This was in complete opposition with Miyazaki’s own approach, which consisted of only taking the source material as a general starting point. He explained this when discussing Conan:

If you’re dealing with a work with such a high level of perfection that it requires a very strict interpretation, then you’re better off not trying to turn it into an animated series in the first place. It’s probably better to think of the original story as just the trigger for the ideas in the animated series. I think of the project plan as simply being a vessel; figuring out what to put into the vessel is part of my job.”

Then, there was the issue of the work being adapted: Anne is very uneventful and dialogue-heavy. After some initial resistance, Takahata saw the potential in that challenge, and directed the adaptation in two complementary ways: sober staging and delicate, detailed animation. These two aspects were what Takahata deemed necessary to capture the essence of “everyday life” as it was portrayed in Montgomery’s novel. But in Conan, Miyazaki had adopted a completely different philosophy, one that favored very expressive, exaggerated motion, that he himself called “maddeningly busy”. On Anne, the contradiction between these two approaches came to a head, and the two men often fought as Takahata’s storyboards and Miyazaki’s layouts expressed completely different intentions. Animator and close friend of Miyazaki’s Yôko Gomi recounted some of these troubles:

Finally, Anne’s character was clearly not suited to Miyazaki. One of the key elements of Miyazaki’s own “world” that was starting to emerge in those years was his representation of young girls; and Anne did not fit this very rigorous template. This becomes instantly apparent if we compare her to Lana and Clarisse, the first two “Miyazaki girls”.

Unlike them, Anne is not cute; on the contrary, she is meant to be rather homely at first and it is not her appearance that makes her likable to the viewer. This absence of physical cuteness is complemented by a rather unruly personality, as Anne is constantly led by her imagination and impulses – not something she shares with the passive Lana and Clarisse, or even more mature and rational femmes fatales such as Monsley and Fujiko. The resulting relationship this creates with the audience is also completely different: we are meant to either empathize with or laugh at Anne, but never do we want to protect her like Miyazaki wants us to with his female characters. We can also see this through the fact that Anne is no damsel in distress, and that there is absolutely no masculine perspective in either the novel or the anime. On the other hand, it wasn’t until Nausicaä that Miyazaki was able to portray a girl who stands on her own, without the viewer seeing through the gaze of the male protagonist. Anne’s fight with Gilbert and her enduring resentment are the kind of negative feelings that Miyazaki would have never dreamed of including in one of his pure, angelic characters. Even the final reconciliation between the two may have seemed insufficient for Miyazaki, who was already unhappy at the way Fiolina was portrayed in Marco:

I hate the fact that in Marco, for example, we had Marco and Fiolina run to each other but not embrace. Marco’s mother and Fiolina hug one another, so why shouldn’t Marco and Fiolina? While doing the layouts, I kept thinking that they should hold each other tightly, and it seemed even more suggestive to have them holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes. I didn’t want to stop them from moving, however, so I found myself with no choice but to make them hold hands and twirl about. […] Why not make a real love story?”

This mention of Marco and the pre-Conan works is relevant to us here, because Anne was not just an anti-Fiolina: she was also an anti-Heidi. Heidi is an eternal, timeless child who does not age and always manages to cheer up the people around her. In Takahata’s own words, she was “an idealized image that reflected the desire of adults for children to be this way”. Anne, on the other hand, grows up and matures, both physically and psychologically; she may not always be endearing, and sometimes resists the will of adults. Takahata embraced this, explaining that his daughter had the same age as Anne at the beginning of the story and that he understood her behavior. But for Miyazaki, who still held strong to his own image of how girls should be, a character such as Anne must have been impossible to accept.

Preproduction

To sum up, in 1979, Miyazaki was finally starting to find his identity as a creator, and this identity contradicted Takahata’s in many ways. Doing layouts on Anne was not just a “waste” of his talents on a job he didn’t want to do anymore: it also meant going against his own developing creative vision. But Miyazaki’s contribution to Anne goes beyond those 15 episodes and the disorder caused by him leaving mid-production, which we’ll touch on later. He was also the one to introduce two of the show’s key staff members: Yoshifumi Kondô, who first worked with Nippon on Conan, and Masahiro Ioka, who was directly contacted by Miyazaki so that he would join Anne.

Anne was Kondô’s first contribution to the WMT, and the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with Nippon: he would do key animation on Tom Sawyer (1980) and Pollyanna (1986), and then character designs on Little Women (1987). Born in 1950, Kondô met Yasuo Otsuka in 1968 and was, thanks to his introduction, among the generation of alumni of studio A Production that hadn’t come from Tôei. This group, taught by Yasuo Otsuka, Tsutomu Shibayama and Osamu Kobayashi, would also count among its ranks Yûzô Aoki and Toshiyuki Honda. While Aoki developed a dramatic and idiosyncratic style that blossomed on the Lupin series, Kondô quickly revealed himself to be a genius in comedy animation and produced his first masterpieces on Tokyo Movie/A Pro comedies such as The Gutsy Frog, Hajime Ningen Gyatorz and Ganso Tensai Bakabon. It is then, as they were spending some time in A Pro, that Kondô first worked with Takahata and Miyazaki on the two Panda Kopanda shorts.

Fast-forward to late 1976, as A Production separated itself from Tokyo Movie and rebranded as Shin-Ei Animation. As we discussed in the piece dedicated to Rascal the Raccoon, Shin-Ei’s first non-outsourced work was a short film titled Sôgen no Ko Tenguri, which reunited multiple generations of Yasuo Otsuka students: notably, Hayao Miyazaki, Reiko Okuyama and Yôichi Kotabe from the Tôei days, and Aoki and Kondô from the A Pro period. Following this, Kondô’s last work in Shin-Ei would be on one of the 4 segments the studio created for Group TAC’s Manga Ijin Monogatari in the earliest stages of its production (before the show’s chief director Masakazu Higuchi had even been appointed, and months before it began airing in late November 1977): what would ultimately be aired as #28A, about Abraham Lincoln. This apparently minor work on which Kondô did designs and animation is more important than it appears. Heavily influenced by Osamu Dezaki (no doubt due to the background art by Shichirô Kobayashi and direction by Shigetsugu Yoshida), it may have begun to orient Kondô towards a different representation of bodies, more adult and realistic.

Following this, Kondô left Shin-Ei and joined his master Otsuka to work on Future Boy Conan as a freelancer. His animation work on the first few episodes is by far the best in the show, with lifelike, fun movement and an impressive ability to create emotion through deformation in the most dramatic moments. His last credit on Conan is on episode 7 (the first Takahata episode) which aired on May 23, 1978. He would return, but uncredited, on episodes 15 and 19. Takahata was busy with his own Conan episodes until late June (Takahata’s episode 13 aired on July 4th, and he wouldn’t be back on Conan until episode 20), but Kondô is said to have joined Nippon in earnest on June 20: this was probably the moment he officially entered Anne’s staff.

Then, between July 22nd and 31st, 1978, Takahata and Kondô, alongside producers Junzô Nakajima and Shigeo Endô (also producers on Conan), left for Prince Edward’s Island. It seems that at this point, Masahiro Ioka had already been appointed as art director and Miyazaki had already volunteered to do the layouts. But they were both busy (Ioka, as we may recall, was hard at work on Perrine) and unable to join the location scouting. For them as well as for their own reference, those that had been able to go to Canada took many pictures, notes and sketches of their impressions: Takahata and Kondô made floor plans of the Green Gables house in Cavendish, while Nakajima even brought back some soil to Japan so that Ioka could appreciate and perfectly reproduce its peculiar red color. At the time, the Green Gables site was already dedicated to Lucy Maud Montgomery and her work, but it hadn’t yet been turned into a complete reconstitution of Anne’s setting as it is now. Most of the references for late-19th-century tools, clothes and houses were therefore taken from the nearby Orwell Corner Historic Village.

However, Takahata viewed Anne differently: as mentioned earlier, he perceived the character’s association with the shôjo style as a negative element. For this reason, he refused to use Muraoka’s translation as a basis for his adaptation, but instead turned to a more modern and faithful one, Taeko Kamiyama’s 1973 Akage no An – much to the discontent of Kondô and other fans in the staff who were used to Muraoka’s version. Takahata then oriented Kondô in another direction: he encouraged him to use a young Mia Farrow’s performance in the 1964 soap opera Peyton Place as reference in order to produce a thinner, less manga-inspired Anne. Through a process of trial-and-error, Kondô progressively changed Anne’s haircut, gave her a bigger mouth, smaller eyes and erased the eyelashes, widened her brow and thinned out her chin so that her face would have a specific 8 shape, and finally added the unique triangular shadows around her nose. Anne’s design must have been particularly challenging: not meant to look appealing at first, she had to grow beautiful in a believable and seamless manner. 

This was an unprecedented issue in the history of animation since, as a rule, animated characters do not age. But Kondô managed to pull it off superbly, attesting to his genius as character designer. And it wasn’t just an artistic challenge: it was also a physical one. Indeed, for the evolution in not just Anne’s, but in every character’s design to feel natural, the drawings would have to maintain absolute consistency throughout the entire series. In other words, the weight on Kondô’s shoulders as the series’ animation director was extremely heavy.

It is possible to make out three steps in the evolution of Anne’s design throughout the series. For the first 10-or-so episodes, she was drawn according to a single, initial model: small and scrawny, with a large head and big forehead. Then, she progressively changed, getting slightly taller and fatter every episode. Her oversized head stopped standing out as much as it did initially, and her freckles disappeared. Her expressions change as well, getting less exaggerated as she grows. This is the most gradual change, that the viewer would barely notice without all the flashbacks reminding us of what Anne looked like at first. And finally, on episode 37, there is a major and noticeable change in appearance, as we switch to a teenage Anne: she is now tall and beautiful, her hair a slightly different color (auburn rather than bright orange) and put back with a brown headband.

Anne’s character was not Kondô’s only achievement. Gilbert was also a typical Kondô design, of the kind that Miyazaki or Kotabe would have never thought of: tall and slender, he was full of the nervous energy characteristic of Kondô’s early animation. Moreover, unlike Miyazaki and Kotabe, Kondô tended to add lines, sometimes of the kind that would be difficult to draw and move such as Marilla’s wrinkles. While clearly inscribing itself in the Otsuka lineage of design, Kondô’s work still feels fresh and perhaps more appealing than that of his predecessors on the WMT.

While we don’t have a precise chronology for the designing process, it is surely during this time that all the non-animation staff was assembled. For the music, producer Junzô Nakajima used his relations within Columbia Records to get modern formal music composer Akira Miyoshi on Anne, which would be his only anime credit. However, Miyoshi was too busy to do it all himself and only composed the opening and ending as well as two insert songs. He left one of his students, Kurôdô Môri, in charge of composing the actual soundtrack. Miyoshi’s opening theme was the most striking, a lush orchestral piece that left as much room to Ritsuko Owada’s singing as to the instrumentation. It had a sense of energy and density that no other previous WMT opening had ever enjoyed, and worked in a perfect duo with the fluid, dreamlike movement of Hayao Miyazaki’s animation for the opening sequence.

As for the voice actors, the cast was particularly original as it was half veterans and half newcomers. Indeed, this was the very first anime role of Eiko Yamada, Anne’s actress. Against the opinion of the rest of the staff, Takahata specifically chose her, probably for her unique, almost annoying at times, high-pitched voice – and perhaps the fact that her inexperience was a perfect fit for Anne’s constant overacting. It turned out to be a good decision, and Yamada would go on to be a regular actor on later WMT series. Similarly, Diana’s actress Gara Takashima had until then only voiced minor characters in mecha series. On the other hand, Matthew’s Ryûji Saikachi had been a voice actor since the beginning of TV animation in Japan. Finally, while it was the first (and only) anime work of Marilla’s Fumie Kitahara, she had already had some experience in dubbing foreign films and TV series. Unlike the animators and background artists, who had to bear Takahata’s inflexibility, the atmosphere during the recordings seems to have been quite good. Veteran recording director Yasuo Urakami was appreciated by the cast, and, alongside Ryûji Saikachi, he personally coached Eiko Yamada to help her grow as a performer.

Finally, we have the scriptwriters. Although we find many writers coming from outside the anime or TV industries on previous WMT entries, Anne pushed that to an unprecedented level: of the 9 writers credited (besides Takahata himself), 4 had never worked on anime or TV before, and 2 (Shigeki Chiba and Seijirô Kamiyama) were live-action film directors. Moreover, Takahata himself exercised an almost complete control on the writing process: there was no series composition credit, and the director was sole scriptwriter on 3 episodes and co-credited on 33 others. As we will see, Takahata’s insistence to oversee every step of the creative process would prove fatal for Anne’s entire production.

Production

As just mentioned, things were more difficult for the staff in charge of the visuals; this is where we get into the darker aspects of Anne’s production. The main problem was in the schedule, and the fact that Takahata’s regular A team of animators was busy on another show – Future Boy Conan. Because its own production was in such a state of disorder, the artists who were on it were unable to work on Conan and Anne at the same time. The result was that Anne’s background setting, layout and animation work – that is, actual production – could hardly begin in earnest before Conan ended, that is on November 31, 1978. The staff had just one month to prepare for a show that would start airing on January 7, 1979.

Admittedly, scripts and storyboards had probably already been prepared by Takahata himself for at least the first 5 episodes which he wrote, storyboarded and directed. But even most of the background art could not proceed without the layouts, especially because of a joint decision by Miyazaki and art director Masahiro Ioka that they probably regretted during most of the course of the show: namely, to include wallpapers. Indeed, if one looks at interior scenes in previous WMT series, the walls are blank and without any decoration which, as a result, makes them particularly boring – this is especially the case in Perrine’s last few episodes, for example. 

In order to avoid this in a series which would contain many such interior scenes, the background designer and art director decided to adorn the walls of Green Gables and other houses with wallpapers. This was a great step forward in order to make Anne’s settings more realistic and simply entertaining, but it also put an even greater weight on the layout and background art: it meant that artists had to consider the perspective and camera angle to a degree that they hadn’t before when painting the backgrounds. This difficulty would influence the storyboarding, which favored simple perspectives and shots longer than usual – a length which, in turn, increased the strain on the photography staff.

In any case, the relationship between Takahata and Ioka quickly became conflictual. The director believed that most of the show’s success would be based on its background art. For this reason, he left most of the animation supervision to Kondô and did not ask for many retakes from the animators, instead directing his full attention to the backgrounds. Never satisfied with the results, he constantly asked for changes, which Ioka had to make in an increasingly short time as the production advanced and the schedule deteriorated: producer Junzô Nakajima mentions that Ioka sometimes had to revise backgrounds in under 15 minutes before they were sent to the photography studio. On a more positive note, background artist Shigeo Nishihara recalled how this constant tension pushed Ioka to keep improving his art:

Before we started working on the backgrounds, there were always meetings between Takahata and Ioka. In those meetings, Takahata was very scrupulous and since he couldn’t draw, his orders were very abstract.

We received a lot of instructions, and it looks like Ioka had a tough time. However, he wasn’t the type of person to just do things as he was told. On the contrary, when the director told him something, he wouldn’t just follow the instructions but instead returned with something that was even better.”

Takahata behaved in very much the same way with the writers. Wanting to exercise complete control on the scripts, he closely supervised and rewrote everything that was submitted to him. Seijirô Koyama recounted his impression of the director during the production in these words:

Director Takahata was a very strict man. When the script was finished, I brought it to him for meetings, but he’d absolutely never accept it the first time. We would go through two or three drafts each time. Some scripts were even rejected four times. But the remarks were very detailed. Takahata would sit silent in front of the script I had written and think for a while. And then suddenly he’d say something and I would immediately understand what he wanted.”

Such behavior on Takahata’s part could only have fatal consequences. The script is one of the very first parts in an episode’s production process; if it is completed late, the schedule for the entire episode goes off the rails. And since Anne had just one animation team and no rotations except for the background artists, when one episode was delayed, it was the show as a whole that suffered. As a result, Anne’s production collapsed at an unprecedented speed.

As we will see later on, the animation on the first 12 episodes was extremely strong; on the first 6 especially, it reached levels of detail that no other TV or even theatrical production had ever been able to accomplish. But this quickly took a heavy toll, as the preview for episode 14 indicates: it is entirely composed of stills or reused images from episode 13. In other words, a mere three months after Anne started airing, the episodes were already being made week-to-week with no buffer time between each. Things only got worse from there, as the number of still shots increased and, in episode 15, one sequence was animated without in-betweens.

It is precisely at this point that Miyazaki left Anne. Aside from his distaste for the show, he had perhaps seen that the ship was sinking and preferred abandoning it before things became even worse. And they did, partly because of this decision. First, Miyazaki took some of Anne’s best animators with him, who would join Cagliostro’s production: Oh! Production’s Kazuhide Tomonaga was the first to leave after episode 12 (initially for Galaxy Express 999, but he was possibly encouraged by Miyazaki not to rejoin Anne), while Masako Shinohara left on episode 26 (thus allowing us to date quite precisely the beginning of Cagliostro‘s animation work). Then, there was the issue of finding someone to take up the charge of layouts. Episodes 16 and 17 had no one credited, but it was finally WMT veteran and oldtime Zuiyo collaborator Michiyo Sakurai who was chosen. While the work was essentially the same, the credit was different: Miyazaki’s title was “scene setting/screen composition” (場面設定/画面構成) while Sakurai’s was just “scene composition” (場面構成). This wasn’t her first time on the position, but the pressure must have been huge. It didn’t help that Sakurai had been ill and receiving treatment at home for many months; in spite of her condition, she joined Anne as animator on episode 5, and was then assigned to layouts. In a 1983 interview, she summed up her experience with the following words:

I had to do the layout for each episode [around 300 sheets] in less than a week. I was kept on the same rotation as Perrine… I was so exhausted, I just slept and drew…”

Sakurai’s arrival worked as a buffer for some time, but even that was short-lived. Many times, the cels and backgrounds were delivered late to the photography studio, and the voice actors had to do their recording without anything other than the storyboard because the rest just wasn’t there. Completed episodes arrived at the TV station at the last minute, or sometimes not at all: episode broadcasts were delayed twice. Once was between episodes 16 and 17, on April 29, and the other time was between episodes 33 and 34, on September 2. 

As all of this happened, the show itself looked increasingly worse: coloring and photography mistakes increased, flashbacks and stills multiplied, and sequences without in-betweens became common. The first of those were apparently caused by the coloring subcontractor – Studio Robin – going on holiday mid-show and doing their work on some episodes in a rush. Perhaps this was just bad luck, but also yet another sign of the show’s disorganization: a properly planned production would have been able to anticipate this, or at least not be affected too much by it. In this case, it only accelerated the ongoing collapse. By the time of the dismal episode 39, the show’s absolute lowest point, it seemed that there was no salvation for Anne anymore.

And yet, somehow, the production held and even improved in the late episodes. That was probably thanks to the superhuman efforts of three people: Yoshifumi Kondô, Michiyo Sakurai, and Masahiro Ioka. As the animation deteriorated, the importance of the background art increased: not only did it take more importance for the viewer’s gaze, which was no longer attracted by the movement, but the storyboards also included more shots of the backgrounds without any characters in order to lighten the load of the animators. Despite the pressure, the quality of the backgrounds never decreased. Similarly, the layouts remained excellent, and never does it seem that Sakurai’s work was unable to keep up with the storyboards in any way: shot compositions remain appealing and the staging consistent (though it seems that her layouts got less and less detailed as the production went on). 

As for the individual drawings, they never go off-model even once. This might have been the ultimate line that Takahata and Kondô absolutely refused to cross: if the drawings lost their consistency, it would be the end. The miraculous result of this extreme mindset was that, even as the animation reached rock-bottom, the quality of the drawings – especially of the closeups – skyrocketed to unprecedented levels in the late episodes. But even that had a cost: at some point at the end of the production, Kondô was affected by a life-threatening lung disease. Producer Junzô Nakajima begged him to get hospitalized, but Kondô refused: aware that, without him there, Anne would be over, he kept working while receiving palliative treatment at home.

This is how things went at the higher levels. We can only imagine how they were for the rest of the staff. In a 1992 interview, Oh Pro animators Kôichi Murata and Toshitsugu Saida went as far as to call Anne the hardest production in their entire careers. We have less direct testimonies and anecdotes (perhaps for the better), but a look at the credits gives some ideas.

As mentioned, Anne suffered from many departures by key members of the staff: Miyazaki himself, Kazuhide Tomonaga, Masako Shinohara, but also Nobuo Tomizawa (who only worked on the first 6 episodes) or Shun’ichi Sakai (only present on 4 early episodes before being reassigned to the subpar Bannertail the Squirrel), while some WMT veterans such as Toshiyasu Okada and Yukiyoshi Hane were totally absent, working instead on Bannertail before leaving Nippon altogether. In other words, the ace team that had been formed on Heidi and carried Takahata and Miyazaki’s works until Conan was disintegrating. Only the two core members of Oh Pro, Kôichi Murata and Toshitsugu Saida, remained on Anne and managed the incredible feat of staying on the show throughout its entire run (with some small exceptions for Saida).

In order to replace the artists who left, producers and production assistants had to go look for new animators. The situation was dire as, according to producer Junzô Nakajima’s testimony, many artists who were asked to join refused, scared by the rumors which had already begun circulating about the state of the production. As a result, many of those who agreed had never worked on the WMT or with Nippon beforehand. For example, within Oh Pro, Tomonaga (himself new to the WMT) was replaced by a much younger artist who had until then been a member of Kazuo Komatsubara’s team, Noriko Gotô. But some of the most surprising and elusive figures are probably Yutaka Oka and Mitsuo Kimura. 

The first is someone we actually know a bit about, but what’s surprising is to find him here. Oka was a member of a certain Studio Look close to the Mushi circles: they worked on Ashita no Joe, Kunimatsu-sama no Otoridai, and Nobody’s Boy Remi, as well as two episodes of New Moomin and several later Vicky the Viking episodes. They therefore had some connection with Zuiyo/Nippon, but their work was generally subpar: they were probably not considered a particularly precious or essential collaborator. To have anyone associated with them on a series as ambitious as Anne is probably a sign of the desperation the producers were in. This remark probably also applies to Mitsuo Kimura. He, too, had had some involvement with Nippon’s origins since he was the character designer of TCJ’s Sasuke in 1968. However, there is absolutely no record of him between this date and 1979. It seems that he turned to illustration for anime novelizations or picture books. It is through this channel that he seems to have established a connection with Nippon, as he illustrated some Perrine and then Anne books. Anne also seems to have been his return to animation – perhaps one forced by the circumstances.

It is also necessary to discuss storyboarders. During Anne, Takahata was deserted not only by Miyazaki and various animators, but also by two of his closest collaborators since Heidi: Yoshiyuki Tomino and Seiji Okuda. Tomino only contributed 6 storyboards between episodes 8 and 18 and then left, becoming busy with a certain mecha series named Mobile Suit Gundam. As for Okuda, he remained until episode 26, but contributed only to 6 episodes. Like Yukiyoshi Hane, he seems to have preferred working on low-profile series such as Bannertail and Little El Cid no Bôken over staying with Takahata.

The most visible result of that was the formation of a team of 4 storyboarders with very different levels of expertise. The most experienced among them, Shigeo Koshi, had already co-directed two WMT series, Rascal and Perrine. The three others, Kazuyoshi Yokota, Kôzô Kusuba, and Ken’ichi Baba (?), had all been assistant episode directors on previous Zuiyo/Nippon series (Yokota in particular went back to Heidi), who were suddenly promoted full-time to storyboards on Anne. It is apparent that this was a promotion in name only: on many of the episodes that they storyboarded, these men are also credited on assistant episode direction. This also applied to Koshi, who was demoted for the occasion. Given what else we know about Anne’s production, the meaning of those strange credits is clear: there was nobody else available, and so the producers just grabbed anybody who could remotely do the job.

But, whoever was credited, it seems that most of the storyboards were actually made by Takahata, who probably did extensive corrections and retakes. This must have been particularly hard for the three assistant directors: while Yokota and Baba (who had worked on Marco) were used to working with Takahata, their subordinate position and the fact that they were ultimately just stand-ins for more experienced storyboarders made them extremely vulnerable to the director’s bullying. Even if they left the show midway through or weren’t taken into account, people like Miyazaki, Ioka and Kondô had enough prestige and experience to oppose Takahata or to simply express their opinions. It wasn’t the case for the newly-appointed storyboarders, who likely had to bear the brunt of their superior’s destructive perfectionism.

As a last note on Anne’s production and its collapse, it must be understood that it was completely different from that of previous WMT series. Heidi and Marco had the quality of their animation decrease with time, but that was a normal and foreseeable outcome, while Flanders, Rascal and Perrine had long spells of simply boring animation, the result of poor planning or simply underinvestment on the animators’ part. On the other hand, Anne is the only one worthy of the word “collapse”: things happened very fast and they went very far. It wasn’t just a case of the show moving less, or less well; it just stopped moving, or moved in ways that are simply sad to see.

But the most essential difference is that, unlike all the previous WMT series, the collapse had a direct impact on the show’s overall structure and narrative. For starters, the delayed broadcast of two episodes meant that Anne’s overall run would be of only 50 episodes, which meant that some material had to be cut off. Moreover, the script of many individual episodes probably had to be changed mid-way through: an increasing amount of runtime was occupied by flashbacks or simply narration over stills rather than “real”, fully-animated and acted events. Of course, such sudden modifications could only trouble the scriptwriting and storyboarding processes, thus delaying the production and affecting the story even more in a neverending vicious cycle. Many elements, such as the relationship between Anne and Jerry Buote, or Anne’s first visit to Charlottetown, feel like they could have occupied a full episode, and are in the end only shown through allusive shots or narration. But, from another perspective, it could be said that these constraints help tighten the show’s thematic construction, as the multiplication of flashbacks highlights the passage of time and Anne’s growth.

Analysis

In spite of the horrifying conditions of its production and the uneven, to say the least, nature of its animation, Anne of Green Gables stands as one of the most consistently well-written-and-directed anime of all time. As brutal as they might have been, Takahata’s perfectionism and authoritarian methods worked to some extent: the end result was a beautiful and touching work. Here, we will try to elucidate what the means were that made Anne what it was and helped it stand even as the production crumbled.

As far as we can tell from Takahata’s own testimony, his initial perspective was essentially a literary one, in that it was mostly preoccupied with questions of writing and perspective: from whose point of view was the story told, and to whom was the viewer supposed to relate? Against the image conveyed by Muraoka’s translation of Anne of Green Gables as a girls’ novel, the director quickly realized that the greatness of Montgomery’s work lay in its openness to different readings and projections. A young girl would relate to Anne, whereas Takahata himself, the father of an 11-year-old girl, felt closer to Marilla. As in the novel, it would be through this interplay that the anime’s narration and tone would develop:

Anne is a girl entering puberty, and the relationship she has with Marilla is very close to that of a parent and their child. [Unlike in Heidi and Marco,] this is not the idealized image that adults have. This is what the book is about, and if you’re unable to understand it, then it’s completely devoid of interest. What I mean is that, when Anne says something, girls her age will feel the same way and say ‘she’s right, she’s right!’. That’s the consciousness they have of their everyday lives. But that’s not all: the book is also written so that any parent who has a child of Anne’s age can completely relate to Marilla’s point of view. Things like ‘What nonsense! Clothes just need to be practical’ are words that every parent has had in mind (and I don’t want to be mean to Anne by saying this). Thanks to this, the reader may start laughing without even realizing it.

This means that we couldn’t just stick to the protagonist’s point of view, as we had done so far. If we had done that, we would have lost the humor. In fact, if I may be so bold, I believe that my greatest achievement may have been to immediately realize that Anne of Green Gables is a novel with a sense of humor.

Anne’s point of view is represented, but we do not see the world from her eyes: rather, Anne of Green Gables appropriately and equally portrays the positions of different people living and coexisting in the same world. I had done as much as I could in that direction before, but this time I made an extra effort to step back in order to apprehend people, things and situations more objectively.

If things are depicted in such a way, the viewer can adopt Anne’s position, but they can also adopt Marilla’s position. Or they can enjoy the human drama from the outside. If you take multiple perspectives, you can see the same things in many different ways.”

As we see from the quote above, Takahata considered that the “interplay” of perspectives gave rise to two related, but very different, concepts. One just happened to be a characteristic of Montgomery’s style: humor. The other was a key tenet of Takahata’s aesthetic and would remain so for the rest of his career: it is the idea of objective representation.

Here, objectivity does not necessarily mean “realism” – although Anne very much reintroduces the anthropologically and historically realistic depiction of material and social life initiated in Heidi and Marco. Rather, it means that the narration and representation of events does not adopt any one limited point of view and instead endeavors to show things from a distant, all-encompassing perspective. So, in Anne’s case, this means that the viewer is not meant to empathize with either Anne or Marilla – they may do so if they wish, but such identification will never be definitive. Instead, things will be constructed in such a way that the viewer’s identification may oscillate between each character, and even possibly that the viewer may in the end reject identification altogether. 

This match between the two artists’ approaches is what led Takahata to scrupulously adapt Montgomery’s novel: aside from slight changes in structure on some episodes and the addition of a few original events, the anime transposes every line of dialogue uttered by the characters. Even the titles of most episodes are directly taken from the titles of the novel’s chapters. Takahata explained it himself in the following way:

I relied on the strengths of the original more than I ever had before. In that sense, I’ve also never been that close to an original work. Of course, I added and deleted some lines of dialogue as I was composing the story, but even then, the principle I followed was to write things as Anne would have said them. And if I had to cut lines, I tried my best to avoid summarizing the story or changing the style.”

One of the many tools that were used to create this double sense of objectivity and humor was the presence of a narrator. The choice of a male voice was already a clear rejection of Anne’s image as a girls’ novel and what that entailed: the narration would not be the voice of Montgomery or Muraoka or any female presence that would create a specific feminine atmosphere. Moreover, Takahata explained that he selected actor Michiyo Hazama because his voice sounded slightly ironic, and therefore perfectly embodied the sense of distance and humor that he wanted to create.

It can be questioned to what degree Takahata’s analysis is correct. It is perfectly valid for the first two thirds of the show, when Anne is still young and commits comical mishaps one after the other. But it feels like Takahata gives too much weight to that part, without leaving room to the rest of the show, which adopts quite different narrative strategies. Indeed, Anne grows older and wiser and progressively becomes an ideal young woman – beautiful, intelligent and with a strong sense of duty. The humor therefore disappears, and is replaced by an amazing dramatic intensity in the last episodes. There, the balance between cold objectivity and the viewer’s affection for (rather than identification to) Anne, whom they have seen grow, becomes difficult to maintain. This is visible through the changing role of the narration, which loses its distance to support the drama and become the viewer’s entry into Anne’s psyche.

If things happened this way, it is also a direct result of the production, yet another example of how its troubles directly affected the narration: the initial plan was to keep entering into Anne’s imagination by visual means as it had been the case in the early episodes, but this was quickly impossible to sustain. As a result, the direction and overall visuals of the second half are far simpler and more sober than at the beginning, leading many among both critics and staff to talk about a “documentary” turn. Such a qualification is rather misattributed, in that it ignores that the material reconstitution of daily life was already a key element of the early episodes and the fact that Anne is not as “live-action oriented” as many say, but it does highlight how the show was ultimately carried by its storyboarding and writing during its last, painful arcs.

This isn’t to say that Anne of Green Gables is visually poor or uninteresting; on the contrary, it is a fascinatingly rich and superbly beautiful work in almost everything but the animation. And the animation itself, in the early episodes, should figure among some of the most illustrious examples of character acting ever created.

According to Takahata, one of the distinguishing features of Montgomery’s novel was that it was dialogue-heavy. This put large constraints on the adaptation work: unlike in Heidi and Marco, you couldn’t have the protagonist running around all the time, since the activities Anne performed were far more mundane and involved more talking. Think of it like Heidi’s Frankfurt arc, but at the scale of an entire show. In terms of animation, the solution that Takahata and Kondô found was therefore to change the focus of the motion: it wouldn’t be the entire body as it dynamically moves in space, but just the face and its expressions. This was a tough challenge, as nuanced animation of facial expressions was (and still is to some degree) something Japanese animation – especially TV anime – found extremely difficult to pull off for both technical (lack of time) and artistic (lack of habit) reasons. More generally, it went against one of anime’s aesthetic premises, which is generally speaking that things should be exaggerated in order to compensate for a certain “lack” of movement in other areas.

At first glance, Kondô was perhaps not the best person to spearhead such a demanding and radical approach. His style, inherited from Yasuo Otsuka, consisted precisely of multiplying and exaggerating movements to create believable but unrealistic expressions based on body energies and physical forces. For that reason, he was perfectly at ease in Conan, which was the culmination of that philosophy. On Anne, he was asked to orient the animation towards a more hardline form of realism, that would try to reproduce the “real” movements of human beings not through energies or forces, but as a series of changing, embodied emotions and feelings. In short, the goal was to go back to the original meaning of the expression “character acting” and reject conventionalized and/or stylized performance. This line would remain the core element of his and Takahata’s collaboration, which would reach its climax on Grave of the Fireflies 9 years later.

As we will see in the episode highlights, Kondô’s original Otsuka-inspired sensibility resurfaced, but never to the point of conflicting with Anne‘s overall approach. That is perhaps partly because he could rely on the presence of, among others, Oh Pro’s Toshitsugu Saida, who had arguably begun moving in that direction in his work on the first episode of Marco. There, he had managed to depict emotions such as foreboding anticipation, anger and grief in an incredibly lifelike manner. But Anne was even more difficult, as the emotions depicted were far more subtle – Anne’s fleeting bursts of joy, frustration or sadness, or her mannerisms such as sighing or resting her head on her hand – and the animators were required to keep them so during an entire show, and not just one particularly intense episode. With expectations being so high, it is no wonder that the production collapsed. But the episodes that did meet those expectations – the first 6 – have not lost anything of their subtlety, beauty and ability to convey Anne’s feelings as she lives them.

As mentioned multiple times, Anne wasn’t just carried by its animation, but also by its setting and art direction. There, too, Takahata’s testimony is precious in that it informs us about how he directed Masahiro Ioka in order to fit a specific vision. Unlike other art directors of the time such as Shichirô Kobayashi or even Takamura Mukuo, Ioka’s style is generally understood to be realistic: as Anne exemplifies, it is extremely detailed and endeavors to reproduce the shapes, colors and physical presence of objects. Takahata appreciated that side of Ioka’s art, but also oriented him in another direction: indeed, he wanted to use the background art as a “decorative” element.

At first, Ioka said he wanted to create a maiden-like atmosphere. I agreed with him, and so what I asked him to do was to produce such maiden-like art, that is something with a certain kind of decorative quality.

Generally speaking, most decorative paintings feel flat. But as flat as they may be, they can be extremely realistic as paintings. For instance, Rinpa school paintings depict each flower and blade of grass very realistically. But if you consider the image as a whole, it is very decorative. Here, the “decorative nature” doesn’t mean that everything is processed at the designing stage, but rather that multiple realistic elements are accumulated one by one, with the overall effect being the destruction of the sense of space. […] 

This is what we had to do in this film. And it doesn’t only apply to the art, but also to the characters, the tools and everything that was included into the animation. I believe that the characters created by Kondô are also essentially decorative.

This being said, what exactly did Ioka do? He used color to depict nature. Rather than light and shadow, he did this by using subtly overlapped layers of color. The reason is that, while it may be easy to create a sense of space with light and shadow, you have to tarnish the colors by using black for the shadows. By doing so, it is possible to create volume, but in return the decorative dimension is lost. For that reason, rather than abandoning spatiality and realism, you must create them with color. The layouts should firmly establish a sense of space, but not emphasize the volume of each individual object through shadows. Painting the shadows only using color: that is what Ioka did.”

This long quote is very interesting, because it reveals both Takahata’s general approach (striking a balance between “realism” and “decorative qualities”) and the specificity of Ioka’s art (the use of color). We may extend this by exploring the artistic references cited by Takahata and used by Ioka: 17th century Japanese Rinpa school painting, late 19th century Nihonga painting, and Art Nouveau aesthetics. The last two are especially interesting, because they are contemporary with Anne’s chronological setting, but also with the early developments of the shôjo literature the novel was understood to be a part of in Japan. The Art Nouveau inspiration in particular is used to evoke shôjo aesthetics: for example, in the first episode, each one of the main characters is presented through a still shot and highlighted by a floral frame. A functional equivalent to Osamu Dezaki’s “postcard memories”, it seems directly borrowed from shôjo manga paneling and the way it freezes narrative and chronological time in spectacularly “decorative” panels.

However, as we have already seen and discussed, it was very difficult, if not outright impossible for Takahata to admit that Anne could be categorized as a shôjo work. This explains why he systematically refers to “legitimate” artistic inspirations such as the Rinpa school or Alphonse Mucha and why even the most shôjo-esque elements in the anime ultimately feel more Art Nouveau. In other words, there was a conscious move on Takahata’s part to take a shôjo work, rid it of all its shôjo elements and rebuild it from functionally equivalent but symbolically very different inspirations. Such a move would recur in Takahata’s career with Only Yesterday and josei manga, but also in Kondô’s own Whisper of the Heart.

Besides Takahata’s avowed distaste for “girls’ novels”, there was perhaps also a fundamental incompatibility between his style and shôjo aesthetics – one that he decided to push as far as possible in Anne. Indeed, having finally found the perfect vessel to develop his ideas on objective representation, Takahata also oriented his direction in a style more austere than he ever had. This was a result of an already oft-cited element, the fact that Anne was “dialogue-heavy”. Following the decision to keep as much dialogue in, the direction had to make do with scenes in which characters did nothing but talk. Most anime directors would probably have found ways to make creative, original and entertaining compositions. But Takahata left this to the art direction while the storyboards remained as simple as possible. Most of the time, the camera always adopts the same few angles. For example, the carriage scenes of episodes 1 and 4 mostly use 3 types of shots: a frontal one showing both characters, one talking (most often Anne) and the other listening; one showing Anne from three-quarters with a slightly tilted-down angle; and one showing the driver of the cart from the profile or three-quarters.

In any other show, such direction would have quickly gotten boring. But it is a testament to the quality of the writing – both Montgomery’s and Takahata’s – and to every other visual element: the strength of the drawings, and that of the art direction. Indeed, we now understand Miyazaki and Ioka’s decision to include wallpaper inside houses: without this perfectly “decorative” element, many of the dialogue scenes would have felt too long or uninteresting. Moreover, as just indicated, this created a sense of contrast: the extreme simplicity of the direction in day-to-day moments served as the opposite of the lush background art and of the more expressionist, almost fantastical views we have of Anne’s inner world throughout the series.

As a general conclusion, there is no doubt that Anne of Green Gables is one of Isao Takahata’s masterpieces, not only on its own but also in the way it anticipates the director’s later works – notably Only Yesterday’s exploration of time, memory, imagination, family and life in rural communities. It is also by far one of the best entries in the WMT in virtually every aspect, even as it was probably one of the worst productions in the program’s history. And this is an element that we absolutely must not forget, for at least two reasons.

The first is because Anne’s production had immediate consequences in Takahata’s career. Following the multiple “desertions” we discussed here and over the course of multiple articles of this series – first Toshiyasu Okada and Yôichi Kotabe, and then Hayao Miyazaki, Yukiyoshi Hane, and Masako Shinohara – it became clear that the number of people willing to collaborate with Takahata was dwindling. Probably frustrated and angry at how Anne ended up and aware of both this and the fact that the WMT’s production model only favored such collapses, the director took the first occasion he found to leave Nippon and go freelance: that would be Yasuo Otsuka’s offer to adapt the manga Chie the Brat in studio Telecom Animation Film.

The other is that many of the events that happened during Anne’s production – a sick Michiyo Sakurai being called back to work, or Yoshifumi Kondô putting his own life at risk in order to keep the show going – serve as dark indicators of things that were to come: namely, the early and tragical deaths of Masahiro Ioka (in 1985, at 44) and Yoshifumi Kondô (in 1998, at 47). Of course, Anne cannot be held directly responsible for the later deaths of two of its staff members. But it must serve as a warning and a reminder of the nature of the anime industry – one where overwork and abuse are daily occurrences, and in which the realization of creative vision may often put one’s health, or even life, at risk.

Episode highlights

Episode 1 

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), uncredited

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobuo Tomizawa (富沢信雄), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Kazuhide Tomonaga (友永和秀)

Background Art: Studio Aqua, Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫)

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Production Assistance: 照井清文

When discussing Anne of Green Gables, it is very hard to isolate even just one episode among the first six. Indeed, they share such a strong narrative, thematic and visual unity that even Takahata, so averse to recap movies, agreed to make a compilation of these first six in the 2010 movie The Road to Green Gables. But as the director himself noted, there was barely any editing involved in that process: these episodes follow each other so easily that putting them back-to-back almost seemed like a natural move. That is because they follow, in utmost detail, the course of only two days. While anime was already famous for its ability to stretch out time and slow it down to the extreme, these six episodes function as a sort of opening statement, an illustration of the show’s dedication to portray daily life in its most mundane aspects. Indeed, the goal here wasn’t to slow down time in order to follow characters’ subjectivity and create room for long internal monologues; rather, it was an attempt to remain as close as possible to the rhythm of objective time and study how characters evolve through it.

Within this group, the opening episode is perhaps the one in which “time” is the most powerfully expressed and felt, as most of it is spent waiting. Along with Anne, we have to wait half the episode for Matthew to arrive at the station and take her along; and then we have to wait all the other half to arrive at Green Gables, anticipating a revelation that doesn’t come – that Anne is not the boy the Cuthberts asked for. This sense of suspense was specifically built by Takahata as one of the few major deviations from the book: the first chapter of Montgomery’s novel, titled “Mrs. Rachel Lynde is Surprised”, announces Anne’s upcoming arrival from the perspective of Mrs. Lynde, Marilla’s good friend. While we do see Rachel in the anime, her presence remains secondary: what is to come is announced by the narrator, whose role here is a direct expression of the “objectivity” Takahata sought to obtain. The goal here was to remove any subjective perspective in the first episode, to show Anne, Matthew (and later Marilla in episode 2) entirely from the outside, as well as to create anticipation, as the viewer keeps waiting for Matthew to say something that he never does. This, too, partakes in the objectivity: Anne is immediately endearing, but the viewer knows something that she doesn’t and is never quite able to share her happiness because of that.

If Anne is so quickly likable, this is not only because of her charming dialogue, directly taken from Montgomery. The animation, of course, plays a major part. The extremely painstaking animation of facial expressions in the early episodes has already been discussed, but it deserves to be mentioned once again here. For this first episode, Kondô himself contributed by animating Anne waiting for Matthew at the station, one of many quiet but extremely relatable moments. The A part, which seems to have been animated by the Nippon-affiliated freelancers, is also remarkable for the carriage animation: these are complex objects with lots of line and pulled by a horse, a notably difficult animal to draw. And yet, as Matthew arrives and leaves with Anne, the perspectives are flawlessly maintained and the carriage moves with perfect fluidity. Then, we move on to Oh Pro’s B part  and Anne’s endless monologue, superbly carried by the nuanced and lively animation of her expressions. As for Matthew, the fact that he almost doesn’t speak is compensated by the extremely expressive acting, that manages to use exaggeration without ever deforming shapes or straying away from the rigorous constraints imposed by the model.

But, of course, the episode’s climax is Kazuhide Tomonaga’s sequence as Anne first discovers the White Way of Delight. Mentioned by many members of the staff, it is also one of the moments that sticks the most with viewers, an unexpected epiphany that suddenly makes us enter into Anne’s inner world. It is, of course, an incredible animation performance: the amount of detail and the density of the motion are awe-inspiring. This was recognized by other members of the staff, notably Miyazaki, who reportedly annotated his layout for that scene with these words: “What is most needed for this scene is perseverance”.

Besides Tomonaga’s amazing work, it is a good example of the show’s capacity to use every single aspect of its audiovisual language to create expression: in perfect synchronization with the escalating music, the image transitions from the lush background art to the animation, bringing us for a short but intense time into a world of pure emotion.

Episode 4

Screenwriting: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), uncredited

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobuo Tomizawa (富沢信雄), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Kazuhide Tomonaga (友永和秀)

Background Art: Studio Aqua, 石橋健一

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Background Art Assistance: Nizô Yamamoto (山本二三)

Production Assistance: 星出和彦

Episode 4 is constructed in clear parallel to episode 1: most of it is similarly spent on a carriage and leading us towards a fateful event (will Marilla send Anne back to the orphanage?) that in the end only takes place in the next episode. Once again, it provides the viewer with a direct experience of time through suspense and delay, but also a series of more complex devices. The first one is, of course, flashbacks as Anne recounts the story of her life to Marilla. Past and present freely mingle in a way similar to how Anne’s imagination and tales seem to invade the “reality” of the show. However, the visual presentation keeps us from any confusion here: the flashbacks are drawn in a rougher style and colored in brown hues evoking old photographs. Said drawing style is also remarkably close to Miyazaki’s, perhaps indicating that both Kondô and Takahata had the animators stick close to his layouts just this once to let him shine for at least one episode.

Another remarkable element in this episode, exceptional at the scale of the entire show, is the use of silence and stillness. Indeed, at the end of the A part, we get a scene that is remarkably close to some moments in Neon Genesis Evangelion: her feelings hurt, Anne suddenly leaves Marilla’s carriage to brood in a field. And then, there is a series of long, silent, still shots – including one that lasts no less than 20 seconds – of Marilla looking at Anne in the distance. Finally, Anne comes back and both characters say sorry to each other. Regardless of whether this scene had any influence on Hideaki Anno, its functions are very similar to multiple moments in Evangelion, the most famous being the “elevator scene”: first, it gives the viewer a direct feeling of time as it passes, completely divorced from any narrative urgency. But more importantly, such moments illustrate how the direction completely refuses to  engage with the characters’ interiority, rejecting techniques such as interior monologue, forcing the viewer to engage with it themselves. This specific scene is but the most striking example of a wider strategy adopted by Takahata in Marilla’s portrayal in episodes 4 and 5: while we do see her thinking, we never know what precisely she is thinking about, making her decision to keep Anne in episode 5 a surprise.

Episode 9

Screenwriting: Seijirô Kôyama (神山征二郎)

Storyboard: Yoshiyuki Tomino (とみの喜幸)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Michiyo Sakurai (桜井美知代),  Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Kazuhide Tomonaga (友永和秀), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Background Art: 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Background Art Assistance: Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎)

Production Assistance: 小泉正二

This is a decisive episode, featuring the encounter between the two “bosom friends” Anne and Diana. By this point, the viewer is rather well-acquainted with Anne, and the introduction of a new character allows us to get some more perspective. Indeed, as a character, Diana is extremely different: her design is small and round and her clothes bright, while her voice is deep and far more pleasant to hear than Anne’s. And that Diana would even agree to become Anne’s friend is not a given: narratively, we are warned that her mother is herself quite a character, but there is also the fact that Diana never quite enters into Anne’s world. What is remarkable, then, is that this isn’t conveyed through the dialogue, but the animation: Diana’s expressions are far less varied and less “animated” than Anne’s, and during most of this episode and the next, she maintains an amused and curious face, as if eager to see what strange things her new friend will come up with. Not only is this contrast a great way to highlight the virtuosity of the animation, but it is yet another example of the direction’s “objectivity”: Anne clearly never notices this and doesn’t even really care – she just wants a playmate. But things are not only shown through Anne’s point of view, and the fact that we keep seeing Diana’s reactions allows us to keep a sense of critical distance.

But we do get into Anne’s perspective at some points, such as when Diana first appears surrounded by a stylized floral frame, or when both girls make a vow of eternal friendship. The second moment especially shows that Anne is not completely meant to be looked at ironically: however melodramatic her actions may be, the show partakes in that melodrama and accompanies it with a dedicated insert song. For some reason, Takahata seems to have been the only WMT director to really know how to use insert songs: in most other entries, they are all forced in the last few episodes, as if the staff hadn’t had the opportunity to record them earlier or simply forgot about them. Takahata’s shows, on the other hand, integrate them far more naturally into the narrative: in Anne’s case, the songs become yet another manner for the viewer to enter the protagonist’s inner world.

Episodes 11-12

This couple of episodes is yet another great example of Takahata’s directing philosophy and the way he transposed Montgomery’s writing. Anne is accused of having stolen or lost Marilla’s brooch and refuses to admit it until the beginning of episode 12 (yet another instance of extremely slow pacing). But, later in that episode, we learn that Anne’s confession was completely made up. During an episode and a half, the viewer is led to believe alongside Marilla that Anne has indeed taken the brooch, and there are no indications whatsoever that she may be innocent. So far, the anime’s storytelling faithfully follows the novel’s. But it also doubles down on it during Anne’s confession, as we see her playing with the brooch and imagining herself a princess in what we believe is a flashback. Here, the show plays on the viewer’s awareness that Anne’s imaginings are fictional: as viewers, we believe that the presentation of the facts is fake (Anne isn’t a princess), but still trust the truth of the facts themselves (Anne has taken and lost the brooch). There is an elaborate play on the images and the viewer’s trust in them that only animation could create. And then, when the truth is revealed, we realize that we’ve been played to an even bigger degree than Marilla as, unlike her, we have a direct access to the images within Anne’s mind – but not necessarily to the intentions behind them. In light of the anime’s general aesthetic project, this calls into question the status of these images: we should approach them with the same distance as we do the rest of the show and its interactions, lest we believe that what we see of Anne’s psyche is a complete picture of what Anne thinks. In other words, just as it makes us believe that we have a direct access to Anne’s mind, the show reveals that we do not and that Anne as a character is too complex for us to completely understand her.

Besides this lesson in writing and character psychology, episode 12 in particular stands out for its “documentary” approach, that is its recreation of material life in late 19th century Prince Edward’s Island. The picnic scene at the end of the B part features multiple painstakingly reproduced objects of the time, such as a gramophone or tools for making ice-cream.

Episode 13

Screenwriting: Seijirô Kôyama (神山征二郎), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Seiji Okuda (奥田誠治)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Michiyo Sakurai (桜井美知代),  Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Shun’ichi Sakai (坂井俊一), Yutaka Oka (岡豊)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Background Art Assistance: Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎)

Production Assistance: 小泉正二

This episode particularly stands out because it is the only one, before the production’s collapse, to showcase an animation philosophy different from the hardline realism of the early part. Indeed, this episode feels like a return to an Otsuka-inspired style of animation, either because Miyazaki’s layouts weren’t as corrected, or because Kondô decided to take a break and favor slightly exaggerated movement. Perhaps this was also a result of the quickly-deteriorating conditions, as this step back also meant using lower framerates and expressive posing rather than fluid and detailed animation. 

The best example of that is the long interaction between Anne and her newfound school friends Ruby and Jane, and the acting performance by Anne that follows: the dramatic expressions, deformed faces, stiff poses and motion and, more generally, Anne’s overacting feel like pure Kondô. In this episode and the next, we see multiple small signs of this shift and of Miyazaki’s influence: this is especially the case in all the background characters during the school scenes, children playing and fooling around. But this evolution was soon repressed by Takahata himself as well as the collapse: in episode 14, the famous scene of Anne hitting Gilbert with a slate is shown almost only through stills. One can legitimately question whether this scene would have been fully animated and presented otherwise had the conditions of the production been better.

Episode 19

Screenwriting: 高野丈邦

Storyboard: Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Toshiko Nakagawa (中川とし子)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登), 渋谷早苗

Background Art Assistance: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Production Assistance: 照井清文

Episode 19, the second one made with Michiyo Sakurai’s layouts, is another episode showcasing what could have been: this time, how much Sakurai’s Anne differed from both Miyazki’s and Kondô’s. All staff members who left a testimony or interview congratulated Sakurai for taking on such a difficult job, but it is Yôko Gomi who goes in the most detail, noting that “Sakurai’s layouts left a strong impression and included angles that Miyazaki would have never used. I believe that the quiet world of Anne’s second part owes a great deal to Sakurai’s contribution”.

This change is visible in this episode through slight modifications made to Anne’s face and expressions, which become slightly rounder. More generally, the animation seems to strike a middle ground between the extreme nuance of the early episodes and the more cartoony movement of episode 13. Finally, we can note a particular attention to Anne and Diana’s behavior as young girls who just like to have fun – the scene of them dressing up and playing with their hair and clothes at the end of the A part is a prime example. Sakurai is often discussed alongside this specific moment, with it being argued that, as a woman, she would have paid special attention to things such as clothing, hair styling, accessories and so on. This is probably a bit too simple an explanation, but the fact is that these are all elements that Miyazaki would have never paid attention to had he been not forced to, and Sakurai’s contributions (alongside those of other female animators such as Masako Shinohara, Toshiko Nakagawa and Noriko Gotô) were essential in this respect.

Sadly, not all is positive in this episode. Indeed, it is one of the first to feature bits of animation without in-betweens, and it is clear that time and resources had to be allocated more carefully: some scenes do not move at all, while others, possibly the more important ones, move more and generally better.

Episode 29

Screenwriting, Storyboard, Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Animation: Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代), Toshiko Nakagawa (中川とし子)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登), Mitsuo Kimura (木村光雄)

Background Art Assistance: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: 稲見邦宏

Among the many elements that make Anne stand out on a visual level is its representation of light, in both the background art and animation. As discussed above, a lot of it relied on Masahiro Ioka’s technique and his ability to create light and color without using contrasts. This episode, which takes place in winter, is a good example: the winter lights are beautifully represented, never feeling cold but instead creating a peculiar sense of radiance and warmth as the low sun is reflected on snow, produces long shadows and creates superb hues in the slightly clouded sky. The animation could not perfectly follow, as the characters themselves project no shadows on the ground. However, as we will also see in future episodes, light effects on characters’ bodies were painstakingly depicted, as undulating lines were added on their faces to create a sense of volume, illustrating the care put to the origin and direction of each light source. However, this isn’t a purely realistic representation of light: it is rather a “decorative” one, another expression of Takahata’s intent to not use shadows, as the outlines of characters’ bodies are often highlighted by brighter colors rather than proper shadows.

This episode is also remarkable for the amount of time it dedicates to one of Anne’s imaginings, and specifically a story of her own invention, told to Diana throughout the second half. There is a specific amount of detail put into the coloring of the characters of Anne’s story, who all wear heavy make-up, and their round, rich designs are one of the clearest illustrations of the Art Nouveau aesthetic. Its cartoony and exaggerated animation, on the other hand, seems less borrowed from Kondô’s own sensibility and the Otsuka style than meant to evoke silent film and its own exaggerated performances. The ridiculously romantic story and its over-the-top presentation are also probably meant to evoke the shôjo style, but here again we see that Takahata did not take it seriously: Anne’s tale is sappy and artificial, clearly meant to be laughed at. 

Episode 31

Screenwriting: Yoshihisa Araki (荒木芳久), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Hiroshi Saitô (斉藤博)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Yutaka Oka (岡豊), 高崎勝夫, Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登)

Background Art Assistance: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Production Assistance: 宮下勇治

This episode showcases yet another variation on the multiple visual inspirations used to convey Anne’s imagination. This time, it seems to be 19th-century painting and illustrations dedicated to representing the Arthurian tale, as Anne and her friends re-enact the story of the poem “Lancelot and Elaine” by English romantic poet Alfred Tennyson. More specifically, the curved linework and the aestheticized designs seem to try to reproduce something like engraving and the faux-medieval aesthetic appreciated by the Pre-Raphaelites and English academic painting of the late 19th century.

Of course, things don’t go well as there is a hole in the boat used by Anne, causing her to nearly drown. The animation of the entire episode, whether it is Anne and friends engrossed in their play, the girls in panic as they believe Anne is dead, or Anne herself trying to avoid getting drowned, is dominated by Kondô’s sensibility and its tendency to slightly exaggerate the movement. It works every time, creating a sense of cartoony exaggeration or urgency and danger every time it needs to. These feelings are not just conveyed by the motion, but also by the drawings and facial expressions which are, also, always a bit too dramatic just as they should.

Besides its visual strengths – this is probably one of the best-animated episodes in the middle part of the series – episode 31 also represents a major event in Anne’s life and in the show. On one hand, after she has risked death, our protagonist suddenly matures and decides to put some reins on her imagination – which, in the touching last scene, Matthew asks her to not completely forsake. It is also the moment when Anne makes one of her most impacting choices, that of refusing to forgive Gilbert Blythe for mocking her red hair years earlier. The scene where Gilbert desperately asks for forgiveness and Anne, on the verge of giving it, suddenly refuses, is simply heartbreaking – and carried by nuanced character animation and extremely strong drawings that almost replicate the level of the early episodes. It is a turning point in the show, a decision that Anne keeps regretting in the later course of the story. We will have to wait until the very last moments of the ultimate episode for this situation to be corrected and for Anne and Gilbert to finally talk to each other and become the friends they were always meant to be.

Episode 39

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), 寺田由紀子, 菅谷智男, 竹本周明

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子) 

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博), Satoshi Matsudaira (松平聡), 小林恵一

Assistant Episode Direction: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Production Assistance: Shun’ichi Kosao (小竿俊一)

These episode highlights are usually dedicated to discussing the high points of a series, but it is sometimes necessary to mention those that stand out in a bad way. Such is the case of episode 39, the absolute lowest point of the show, illustrated by the excerpt above. As discussed previously, it is not in the individual drawings that Anne’s collapse comes through: the layouts and animation direction remained incredibly consistent. But when the drawings are made to move and associated with sound, everything seems to crumble, as in the scene above. The sound and image are completely off, and even the mouth-flaps are out of touch, while the images and “animation” lost all sense of continuity and succession. Clearly, here, it is not just an issue of not having the time to properly in-between some sections: the schedule was so off that even the key animation couldn’t be completed, and so the animators probably just copied the layouts as they were and sent that to the tracing and coloring staff.

Not all the episode is like that; but it remains consistently sad to see. For example, we may cite the last shots of the A part, where Marilla laying an exhausted Anne to bed is only shown in awkward, prolonged stills that were clearly not meant to reproduce the effect discussed for episode 4. Such moments are even more painful to watch when one realizes that Takahata and Kondô persevered in their perfectionism, even in such conditions: not only do the drawings remain strong, but the characters keep blinking in most shots, an effort that appears completely absurd and counterproductive when the lip flapping was unable to keep up.

Yet another tragic aspect of this situation is that this is, in narrative terms, a central episode: the one where Anne receives the results of the entrance exam for the Queen’s Academy. All sense of tension in the A part, and joy in the B part, is completely lost because of nonexistent animation, or awkward shots that all seem to last a few seconds more than they should, probably an ultimate and desperate attempt to produce a full episode when the staff was clearly unable to do so.

Episode 40

Screenwriting: Yoshihisa Araki (荒木芳久), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Animation: 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Noriko Moritomo (森友典子), 岩崎聖江

Jun’ichi Hashimoto (橋本淳一), 佐藤勝, 小山匠

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登), Masahiro Kase (加瀬政広), 飯岡真理子

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: 稲見邦宏

Production Assistance: 宮下勇治

How does a show keep going on when its production has seemingly collapsed beyond any possible repair? This episode and the few that follow seem to provide an answer to that question – but a desperate one: keep going on at any cost, maintain the standard as high and the pressure as heavy as possible. Episode 40 was probably conceived as an occasion for the animators to rest however little they could: it doesn’t move and doesn’t try to – a short break that episodes 41 and 42 would put an end to, with yet more attempts (some even successful) to bring the animation back to its initial level of excellence. But of course, this had a cost that Michiyo Sakurai, Yoshifumi Kondô and the coloring staff had to bear.

Episode 40 is basically about splendor: Anne and friends go to the White Sands hotel, where they come into contact with the high and wealthy society of Prince Edward’s Island. Beautiful dresses and sparkling jewels abound in every shot. As a result, the amount of lines in any given cut skyrockets compared to usual episodes, and with it Sakurai and Kondô’s workload, as they had to design, draw and supervise it all. Moreover, the electrical lights in the hotel and their reflections on precious fabrics and jewels create an atmosphere unique for the show – in other words, new challenges for the coloring staff. The results are beautiful and the episode has a rare feeling of warmth and luxury – but we can only imagine what the staff had to suffer for it to look so good.

Episode 47

Screenwriting: Yoshihisa Araki (荒木芳久), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Animation: 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), 寺田由紀子, 菅谷智男, 竹本周明, Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代), Noriko Moritomo (森友典子)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

菅谷智男

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博), Satoshi Matsudaira (松平聡), 小林恵一

Production Assistance: 小竿俊一

This episode, which follows Matthew’s death and his funeral, opens Anne of Green Gables’ final dramatic climax. But in spite of its intensity, it manages to keep any melodramatic excess at bay and stands as an ultimate example of the show’s “objective” storytelling. Indeed, as soon as Matthew dies, Mrs. Lynde completely takes hold of Green Gables and oversees the entire funeral. All of Avonlea, as well as members of the Cuthbert family we had never seen before, take part and grieve over the dead Matthew. During most of the episode, it is on them and on Marilla that the direction focuses – never on Anne. She is constantly called for one task or another and, during the funeral ceremony, is always shown in the back or hidden among the crowd; without the narration which tells us of her feelings in an impersonal and cold tone, we may almost forget her presence at some moments. It is only in the last five minutes that Anne is finally allowed to grieve, first on her own and then with Marilla, in one of the show’s most intense and touching scenes.

Such a way to structure the narrative can be understood in two manners. On the one hand, the decision to treat the Avonlea population as a collective and dedicate most of the screentime to it is, as mentioned, a good example of the objectivity and sociological dimension Takahata sought. On the other hand, the extreme delay of the emotional climax only makes it stronger in the end, and illustrates that the director remained a master of dramatic storytelling. With this being said, we now understand that objectivity and drama aren’t that contradictory: they in fact support each other quite naturally, as both elements serve to ground and flesh out characters, making them feel more real and, in turn, their emotions stronger. So, in this episode, making it impossible for Anne’s feeling to be shown and expressed until the very end is not just a narrative or aesthetic strategy – more fundamentally, it is an incredibly relatable portrayal of grief and the time it takes for the reality of a loved one’s death to truly hit.

Bibliography

Many thanks to Seiji Kanô for sharing so much of his invaluable research on Twitter

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Chiba, Kaori ed. THE世界名作劇場 (The World Masterpiece Theater). 日本アニメーション. 2015. From the Nippon Animation Exhibition.

Dhanowa, Meriel. “Animating Anne: How Akage No Anne Recreates L.M. Montgomery’s Vision Through a Visual Medium.” Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies, November 23, 2020. https://journaloflmmontgomerystudies.ca/vision-forum/animating-anne.

Gomi, Yôko. “アニメーション思い出がたり［五味洋子］ その105　1979年の思い出” (Animation Memories N°105: Memories from 1979). WEBアニメスタイル. 15/11/04. http://www.style.fm/as/05_column/gomi/gomi105.shtml.

Miyazaki, Hayao. Starting Point (1979-1996). Translated by Beth Carry and Frederik L. Schodt. Studio Ghibli Library. VIZ Media. 2009.

Nakajima, Junzô. “スケジュールは酷かったけれど、幸運に恵まれた作品” (Although He Schedule Was Terrible, It Was a Blessed Production). 映画『赤毛のアン グリーンゲーブルズへの道』公式サイト, 2010. https://www.ghibli-museum.jp/anne/kataru/nakajima/.

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Pass, Michael B. “Red Hair in a Global World: A Japanese History of Anne of Green Gables and Prince Edward Island.” Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies, March 17, 2021. https://journaloflmmontgomerystudies.ca/vistas/Pass/Red-Hair-In-A-Global-World.

Shamoon, Deborah M. Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girl’s Culture in Japan. University of Hawaii Press. 2012.

Suzuki, Katsuo, Saitô Chikashi, and Tsutsui Ryoko eds. 高畑勲展－日本のアニメーションに遺したもの (Isao Takahata – A Legend in Japanese Animation Exhibition Catalogue). 東京国立近代美術館, NHK プロモーション. 2019. From the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art Exhibition.

Suzuki, Toshio ed. 「赤毛のアン」や「ハイジ」にいた風景 – 井岡雅宏画集 (Landscapes from “Anne of Green Gables” and “Heidi” – Masahiro Ioka Art Collection). ジブリTHE ARTシリーズ. 徳間書店, スタジオジブリ. 2001.

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Credits transcription

Original Work: Lucy Maud Montgomery

Production & Planning: Nippon Animation

Executive Producer: Kôichi Motohashi (本橋浩一)

Production Manager: Mitsuru Takakuwa (高桑充)

Planning: Shôji Satô (佐藤昭司)

Producers in charge: Junzô Nakajima (中島順三), Shigeo Endô (遠藤重夫)

Production desk: Sôjirô Masuko (増子相二郎)

Work: Fuji TV, Nippon Animation

Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Music: Kurôdo Môri (毛利蔵人)

Animation Direction, Character design: Yoshifumi Kondô (近藤喜文)

Scene setting, Screen composition: Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎駿) [#01-#15]

Scene composition: Michiyo Sakurai (桜井美知代) [#18-#50]

Art direction: Masahiro Ioka (井岡雅宏)

Photographic direction: Keishichi Kuroki (黒木敬七)

Recording direction: Yasuo Urakami (浦上靖夫)

In-between direction: Hidemi Maeda (前田英美)

Color Design: Michiyo Yasuda (保田道世)

#01 

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), uncredited

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobuo Tomizawa (富沢信雄), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Kazuhide Tomonaga (友永和秀)

Background Art: Studio Aqua, Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫)

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Production Assistance: 照井清文

#02

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), uncredited

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobuo Tomizawa (富沢信雄), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Kazuhide Tomonaga (友永和秀)

Background Art: Studio Aqua, 石橋健一

Assistant Episode Direction: 竹内孝二

#03

Screenwriting: 磯村愛子, Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), uncredited

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobuo Tomizawa (富沢信雄), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Kazuhide Tomonaga (友永和秀)

Background Art: Studio Aqua, Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫)

Assistant Episode Direction: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Background Art Assistance: Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎)

Production Assistance: 照井清文

#04

Screenwriting: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), uncredited

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobuo Tomizawa (富沢信雄), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Kazuhide Tomonaga (友永和秀)

Background Art: Studio Aqua, 石橋健一

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Background Art Assistance: Nizô Yamamoto (山本二三)

Production Assistance: 星出和彦

#05

Screenwriting: Seijirô Kôyama (神山征二郎)

Storyboard: Fumio Ikeno (池野文雄)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobuo Tomizawa (富沢信雄), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Shun’ichi Sakai (坂井俊一), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Michiyo Sakurai (桜井美知代)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Kazuhide Tomonaga (友永和秀)

Background Art: 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Background Art Assistance: Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎)

Production Assistance: 小泉正二

#06

Screenwriting: 磯村愛子, Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Fumio Ikeno (池野文雄)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Michiyo Sakurai (桜井美知代), Nobuo Tomizawa (富沢信雄), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Kazuhide Tomonaga (友永和秀), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Background Art: Studio Aqua, Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Production Assistance: 竹内孝二

#07

Screenwriting: Seijirô Kôyama (神山征二郎)

Storyboard: Seiji Okuda (奥田誠治)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Michiyo Sakurai (桜井美知代), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Shun’ichi Sakai (坂井俊一),  Yutaka Oka (岡豊)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Kazuhide Tomonaga (友永和秀), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Background Art: 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Background Art Assistance: Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎)

Production Assistance: 照井清文

#08

Screenwriting: Seijirô Kôyama (神山征二郎), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Yoshiyuki Tomino (とみの喜幸)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Michiyo Sakurai (桜井美知代),  Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Kazuhide Tomonaga (友永和秀), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Background Art: Studio Aqua, 石橋健一

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Background Art Assistance: 加藤富恵, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫)

Production Assistance: 星出和彦

#09

Screenwriting: Seijirô Kôyama (神山征二郎)

Storyboard: Yoshiyuki Tomino (とみの喜幸)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Michiyo Sakurai (桜井美知代),  Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Kazuhide Tomonaga (友永和秀), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Background Art: 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Background Art Assistance: Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎)

Production Assistance: 小泉正二

#10

Screenwriting: Seijirô Kôyama (神山征二郎), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三), Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Michiyo Sakurai (桜井美知代), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Kazuhide Tomonaga (友永和秀), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Background Art: Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Production Assistance: 竹内孝二

#11

Screenwriting: Seijirô Kôyama (神山征二郎)

Storyboard: Seiji Okuda (奥田誠治)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Michiyo Sakurai (桜井美知代), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Kazuhide Tomonaga (友永和秀), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Background Art Assistance: Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎)

Production Assistance: 照井清文

#12

Screenwriting: Seijirô Kôyama (神山征二郎), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Yoshiyuki Tomino (とみの喜幸)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Michiyo Sakurai (桜井美知代),  Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Kazuhide Tomonaga (友永和秀), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Background Art: Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Production Assistance: 高砂克己

#13

Screenwriting: Seijirô Kôyama (神山征二郎), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Seiji Okuda (奥田誠治)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Michiyo Sakurai (桜井美知代),  Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Shun’ichi Sakai (坂井俊一), Yutaka Oka (岡豊)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Background Art Assistance: Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎)

Production Assistance: 小泉正二

#14

Screenwriting: 神山魁三 (Misspelling of Seijirô Kôyama?)

Storyboard: Seiji Okuda (奥田誠治)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Michiyo Sakurai (桜井美知代),  Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Shun’ichi Sakai (坂井俊一), Yutaka Oka (岡豊)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Production Assistance: 竹内孝二

#15

Screenwriting: Seijirô Kôyama (神山征二郎)

Storyboard: Yoshiyuki Tomino (とみの喜幸)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Michiyo Sakurai (桜井美知代),  Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Kazuo Ushikoshi (牛越和夫)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代), 穐山曻

Background Art Assistance: Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎)

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Production Assistance: 照井清文

#16

Screenwriting: 高野丈邦

Storyboard: Seiji Okuda (奥田誠治)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Michiyo Sakurai (桜井美知代),  Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Toshiko Nakagawa (中川とし子)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Kôshin Yonekawa (米川功真), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登), Mitsuo Kimura (木村光雄)

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Production Assistance: 高砂克己

#17

Screenwriting: Seijirô Kôyama (神山征二郎), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Yoshiyuki Tomino (とみの喜幸)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Yoshihige Kosako (古佐小吉重 credited as 古佐小喜重), Yôichi Mieno (三重野要一)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子) 

Jun’ichi Hashimoto (橋本淳一)

Background Art Assistance: Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎)

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Production Assistance: 小泉正二

#18

Screenwriting: Seijirô Kôyama (神山征二郎), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Yoshiyuki Tomino (とみの喜幸)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), 高崎勝夫, Kazuo Ushikoshi (牛越和夫)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登), 穐山曻, Mitsuo Kimura (木村光雄)

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Production Assistance: 竹内孝二

#19

Screenwriting: 高野丈邦

Storyboard: Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Toshiko Nakagawa (中川とし子)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登), 渋谷早苗

Background Art Assistance: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Production Assistance: 照井清文

#20

Screenwriting: 高野丈邦, Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Masaru Satô (佐藤勝)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Kazuo Ushikoshi (牛越和夫)

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Production Assistance: 高砂克己

#21

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹)

Storyboard: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), 高崎勝夫, Takumi Koyama (古山匠), Masaru Satô (佐藤勝)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

岩崎聖子

Background Art Assistance: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Production Assistance: 小泉正二

#22

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹)

Storyboard: Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Toshiko Nakagawa (中川とし子)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子) 

渋谷早苗

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Production Assistance:竹内孝二

#23

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), 高崎勝夫, Kazuo Ushikoshi (牛越和夫)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子), Noboru Takano (高野登)

穐山曻, Mitsuo Kimura (木村光雄)

Background Art Assistance: Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎)

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Production Assistance: 照井清文

#24

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹)

Storyboard: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), 高崎勝夫, Takumi Koyama (古山匠), Masaru Satô (佐藤勝)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

岩崎聖子

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Production Assistance: 高砂克己, Shun’ichi Kosao (小竿俊一)

#25

Screenwriting: 高野丈邦, Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範),  Jun’ichi Hashimoto (橋本淳一)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Yôichi Mieno (三重野要一)

Background Art Assistance: Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎)

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Production Assistance: 小泉正二

#26

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Seiji Okuda (奥田誠治)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masako Shinohara (篠原征子), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Masaru Satô (佐藤勝)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Kazuo Ushikoshi (牛越和夫)

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat.  Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Production Assistance: 竹内孝二

#27

Screenwriting: 高野丈邦, Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Kazuo Ushikoshi (牛越和夫), Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Jun’ichi Hashimoto (橋本淳一)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Yôichi Mieno (三重野要一)

Background Art Assistance: Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎), Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Production Assistance: 宮下勇治

#28

Screenwriting: 高野丈邦, Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Hiroyoshi Mitsunobu (光延博愛)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), 高崎勝夫, Hirokazu Ishino (石之博和), Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登)

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat.  Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Production Assistance: Shun’ichi Kosao (小竿俊一)

#29

Screenwriting, Storyboard, Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Animation: Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代), Toshiko Nakagawa (中川とし子)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登), Mitsuo Kimura (木村光雄)

Background Art Assistance: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: 稲見邦宏

Production Assistance: 小泉正二

#30

Screenwriting: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), 高野丈邦

Storyboard: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Nobumasa Shinkawa (新川信正), Yutaka Oka (岡豊), 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代), Toshiko Nakagawa (中川とし子)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登), Mitsuo Kimura (木村光雄)

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat.  Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Production Assistance: 竹内孝二

#31

Screenwriting: Yoshihisa Araki (荒木芳久), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Hiroshi Saitô (斉藤博)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Yutaka Oka (岡豊), 高崎勝夫, Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登)

Background Art Assistance: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), Taisaburô Abe (阿部泰三郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博)

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Production Assistance: 宮下勇治

#32

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Yutaka Oka (岡豊), 高崎勝夫, Hirokazu Ishino (石之博和), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登)

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Production Assistance: 高砂克己, Shun’ichi Kosao (小竿俊一)

#33

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Animation: Yutaka Oka (岡豊), 高崎勝夫, Hirokazu Ishino (石之博和), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登)

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博), Satoshi Matsudaira (松平聡), 小林恵一

Assistant Episode Direction: 稲見邦宏

Production Assistance: 小泉正二

#34

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Yutaka Oka (岡豊), 高崎勝夫, 飯岡真理子, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登)

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Production Assistance: 竹内孝二

#35

Screenwriting: Yoshihisa Araki (荒木芳久), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: Masaru Satô (佐藤勝), 高崎勝夫, 飯岡真理子, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子) 

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博), Satoshi Matsudaira (松平聡), 小林恵一

Assistant Episode Direction: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Production Assistance: Shun’ichi Kosao (小竿俊一)

#36

Screenwriting: 高野丈邦, Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Animation: 穐山曻, Mitsuo Kimura (木村光雄),  飯岡真理子, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Takumi Koyama (古山匠), Masahiro Kase (加瀬政広)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

岩崎聖子

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: 稲見邦宏

Production Assistance: 宮下勇治

#37

Screenwriting: 高野丈邦, Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Storyboard: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), 寺田由紀子, 菅谷智男, 竹本周明

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博), Satoshi Matsudaira (松平聡), 小林恵一

Assistant Episode Direction: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Production Assistance: 高砂克己

#38

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: 馬場健一

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Noriko Moritomo (森友典子), 岩崎聖江

Jun’ichi Hashimoto (橋本淳一), 佐藤勝, 小山匠

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登), Masahiro Kase (加瀬政広), 飯岡真理子

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: 馬場健一

Production Assistance: 竹内孝二

#39

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), 寺田由紀子, 菅谷智男, 竹本周明

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子) 

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博), Satoshi Matsudaira (松平聡), 小林恵一

Assistant Episode Direction: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Production Assistance: Shun’ichi Kosao (小竿俊一)

#40

Screenwriting: Yoshihisa Araki (荒木芳久), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

toryboard: Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Animation: 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Noriko Moritomo (森友典子), 岩崎聖江

Jun’ichi Hashimoto (橋本淳一), 佐藤勝, 小山匠

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Noboru Takano (高野登), Masahiro Kase (加瀬政広), 飯岡真理子

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: 稲見邦宏

Production Assistance: 宮下勇治

#41

Screenwriting: Yoshihisa Araki (荒木芳久), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三

Animation: 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Hirokazu Ishino (石之博和),Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代), Masaru Satô (佐藤勝)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Jun’ichi Hashimoto (橋本淳一)

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博), Satoshi Matsudaira (松平聡), 小林恵一

Assistant Episode Direction: 稲見邦宏

Production Assistance: 高砂克己

#42

Screenwriting: Yoshihisa Araki (荒木芳久), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: 馬場健一

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), 馬場健一

Animation: 高崎勝夫, Hirokazu Ishino (石之博和), Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代)

Noriko Moritomo (森友典子), 寺田由紀子, 竹本周明

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

菅谷智男, 飯岡真理子

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博), Satoshi Matsudaira (松平聡), 小林恵一

Production Assistance: 竹内孝次

#43

Screenwriting: Seijirô Kôyama (神山征二郎), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Animation: 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Noriko Moritomo (森友典子), 岩崎聖江

Jun’ichi Hashimoto (橋本淳一), 佐藤勝, 小山匠

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子), Noboru Takano (高野登)

Masahiro Kase (加瀬政広), 飯岡真理子

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Production Assistance: Shun’ichi Kosao (小竿俊一)

#44

Screenwriting: Seijirô Kôyama (神山征二郎), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Animation: 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), 寺田由紀子, 竹本周明, Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代), Noriko Moritomo (森友典子)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

菅谷智男

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Production Assistance: 宮下勇治

#45

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹), 白石なな子

Storyboard: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Animation: 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), 寺田由紀子, 竹本周明, Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代), Noriko Moritomo (森友典子)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

菅谷智男

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博), Satoshi Matsudaira (松平聡), 小林恵一

Assistant Episode Direction: 稲見邦宏

Production Assistance: 高砂克己

#46

Screenwriting: Shigeki Chiba (千葉茂樹), 白石なな子

Storyboard: 馬場健一

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), 馬場健一

Animation: 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Hirokazu Ishino (石之博和), Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代), Noriko Moritomo (森友典子), 佐藤勝

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), 

Noboru Takano (高野登), Jun’ichi Hashimoto (橋本淳一)

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Production Assistance: 竹内孝次

#47

Screenwriting: Yoshihisa Araki (荒木芳久), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), Shigeo Koshi (腰繁男)

Animation: 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), 寺田由紀子, 菅谷智男, 竹本周明, Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代), Noriko Moritomo (森友典子)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

菅谷智男

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博), Satoshi Matsudaira (松平聡), 小林恵一

Production Assistance: 小竿俊一

#48

Screenwriting: Yoshihisa Araki (荒木芳久), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Kazuyoshi Yokota (横田和善)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), 横田和善

Animation: 竹本周明, 寺田由紀子, 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代), Noriko Moritomo (森友典子)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Masaru Satô (佐藤勝)

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Assistant Episode Direction: 稲見邦宏

Production Assistance: 宮下勇治

#49

Screenwriting: Yoshihisa Araki (荒木芳久), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), Kôzô Kusuba (楠葉宏三)

Animation: 竹本周明, 寺田由紀子, 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代), Noriko Moritomo (森友典子)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

Masaru Satô (佐藤勝)

Background Art: Toshirô Nozaki (野崎俊郎), 菅原聖二, Yukihiro Yokoyama (横山幸博), Satoshi Matsudaira (松平聡), 小林恵一

Assistant Episode Direction: 稲見邦宏

Production Assistance: 高砂克己

#50

Screenwriting: Yoshihisa Araki (荒木芳久), Isao Takahata (高畑勲)

Storyboard: 馬場健一

Episode Direction: Isao Takahata (高畑勲), 馬場健一

Animation: 高崎勝夫, Hidenori Oshima (大島秀範), 寺田由紀子, 竹本周明, Natsuyo Yasuda (保田夏代), Noriko Moritomo (森友典子)

Oh! Production, feat. Kôichi Murata (村田耕一), Toshitsugu Saida (才田俊次), Noboru Takano (高野登), Noriko Gotô (後藤紀子)

菅谷智男

Background Art: Studio Aqua feat. Shigeo Nishihara (西原繁夫) (spelled as 西原繁男), 石橋健一, Kazuhiko Tamari (玉利和彦), 加藤富恵

Production Assistance: 竹内孝次