Anne of Green Gables (found English dub of anime series; 1980s)

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Anne of green gables dub.jpg

Title card.

Status: Lost


Anne of Green Gables (also known as Akage no An and Red-haired Anne) is an anime adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery's 1908 novel of the same name. The series, produced by Nippon Animation, aired for 50 episodes on Fuji TV between January and December 1979, as part of the company's historic World Masterpiece Theatre franchise. Notably, the series was directed and written by Isao Takahata, co-founder of Studio Ghibli and director of such films like Grave of the Fireflies and Tales of Princess Kaguya. His more well known Ghibli co-founder, Hayao Miyazaki, also worked on the series.

Despite the character's constant presence in Canadian pop culture and the quality of talent behind it, this series was never officially released in English North America (a French-Canadian dub by Cinelume in Montreal, Quebec ran on Radio-Canada in the 80s). Speculation has a legal agreement between Montgomery's estate and Canadian production company Sullivan Entertainment, who produced their own live action and animated Anne adaptations, preventing its distribution in North America, despite the novel itself being in public domain.[1]

Nevertheless, various dubbed adaptations aired around the world, including an English dub that aired in the Philippines on JET TV around 1998.[2] It's not known who produced the dub or if it was exclusive to the Asian region, but in 2015 it was uploaded onto Youtube.[3] Unfortunately, the channel it was hosted on was terminated due to copyright violations.[4] There have been no known home video releases of the English production and outside of the opening theme song (which it shared with the German/French/Italian/Spanish versions) no clips of it have resurfaced.[5]

References