- First off, it's wonderful. I don't even like anime that much. I usually don't find it aesthetically pleasing. However, as no one in Akage no Anne has green hair (yet :P), I'll let the look of it slide. Actually, the backgrounds are beautiful, and all the writing is in English. The attention to detail is really astonishing. After Marilla makes Anne new dresses, she gradually stops wearing her wincey dress from the orphan asylum. Once she breaks her slate over Gilbert's head, it's just a wooden frame with a few scant pieces of slate here and there. The other little girls have fancier dresses with puffed sleeves. I'm quite impressed with the effort that went into making this!
- Eleven-year-old Anne simultaneously breaks my heart and cracks me up. How she can be so hilarious and still say such sad things like, "I'm sure [my previous, neglectful guardians] meant to be good to me" is beyond my understanding.
- The subtitles are for the most part quite good, but sometimes they phrase things rather awkwardly. Maybe it's just a Japanese thing, but for the first three episodes or so Anne was constantly addressing Matthew and Marilla as "Aunty" and "Uncle," which is especially jarring considering they kept that bit about Marilla refusing to let Anne call her "Aunt Marilla" later on in. I'm just going to attribute that issue to cultural differences and move on, though.
- Not a huge fan of the voice acting, but I'll fully admit this is probably because I understand maybe five words of Japanese and the inflection just sounds really off to my Western ears. That's why there are subtitles, though!
- Gilbert is appropriately hunky. :D The strange thing is that this was made in 1979, more than five years before the Kevin Sullivan production, and Gilbert looks freakishly like an anime version of Jonathan Crombie. Observe:
- Not that I mind. Anne is my favorite, but like any respectable Anne of Green Gables fan, I love Gilbert. He's definitely one of my (many) literary boyfriends.
- Diana is perfect, although her hair makes me think of Princess Leia's Bespin do:
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| Full disclosure: I used to style my hair like this once a week in junior high. The reason I used to have waist-length hair was because I wanted to be like Leia in every way, including her righteous quasi-Scandinavian hairstyles. |
- More praise for Akage no Anne's attention to detail: Diana's little sister Minnie May is nearly always shown when Anne goes to Orchard Slope, in a great bit of subtle foreshadowing. Also, she and Diana have a very strong resemblance, as opposed to the little girl chosen to play Minnie May in the Sullivan films, who looked nothing like Schuyler Grant.
- Like I said before, this is nearly a word-perfect adaptation. I love the faithfulness to the novel. This is basically the treatment I want to be given to Harry Potter, although I could do without the anime.
- In short, I love it. I'm spending all my free time watching it, which is really a great way to move things along when there aren't a lot of people around Cville. Yay I'm a social recluse!
- Off to watch the next few episodes!
