Sunday, July 20, 2008

have some candy

Straight from the Miss Pony Orphan's Home to you, it's Candy Candy! One of the most popular shojo manga characters to ever bat her dinner-plate-sized eyeballs at dreamy boys on several continents, this adorable orphan emerged from the early 20th century Michigan woods with a pet raccoon and a impish desire to cause trouble.





The manga by Kyoko Mizuki and Yumiko Igarashi was originally serialized in Nakayoshi (home of Princess Knight and Sailor Moon). Toei Animation Company animated a CANDY CANDY television series that ran for 115 episodes from 1976 until '79. The show was broadcast in Argentina, Italy, Hong Kong, France, Puerto Rico, Africa, Southeast Asia, Canada, et cetera; and garnered a fanbase of soap-opera loving fans throughout the world. A dispute between Mizuki and Igarashi put the rights of the series into question for years, meaning one thing; no new CANDY CANDY.





CANDY CANDY's blend of exotic Western locales, the frilly shojo visual motifs of ribbons, curls, and flowers, and a melodramatic storyline that involves doomed romances, sabotaged romances, class-barrier-defying romances, and the First World War, remains popular even without legitimate releases. The memories of millions of worldwide fans and the interest of American shojo fans, themselves denied a childhood of CANDY CANDY merchandise, will no doubt keep this show firmly lodged in the frontal lobe of the collective unconscious.





In America, CANDY CANDY got all of one home video release in the early 80s from ZIV International, the folks who brought us English-language versions of the Toei series Captain Future, the "Take To The Sky" Captain Harlock, Angel, and Fables of The Green Forest. Dubbing was by Jim "Force Five" Terry. Reports of CANDY CANDY being broadcast on American television have yet to be verified.





(additional crayon added by the original owner)

Help us increase the CANDY CANDY quotient by enjoying the contents of this red-vinyl 33 rpm single! Side A is the opening and ending theme to the CANDY CANDY anime TV series, and Side B is an amusing story involving Candy, her pal, and some rich kids. Even if you don't speak Japanese, you can enjoy the powerful stereo separation that still survives in spite of the pops and crackles. Keep seeking happiness, Candy!


-Dave Merrill

Thanks for reading Let's Anime! If you enjoyed it and want to show your appreciation for what we do here as part of the Mister Kitty Dot Org world, please consider joining our Patreon!

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello!! I found a new TOP 10 list on the internet with videos of the "10 best anime movies and series OF ALL THE TIME" and i wanted to share with you! The best thing it that we can watch each one of them. I´m totally crazy about anime and i thought it amazing BUT i don´t agree with the first position. Check it out and tell me what you think.


http://www.weshow.com/top10/en/animation/top-10-best-anime-movies-and-series-of-all-time

d.merrill said...

This reminds me of the time I was on an anime panel at a SF convention, and somebody in the audience asked us what our top 3 favorite anime movies were. The panelists all thought about it and gave our answers, and then the audience member proceeded to give us a lecture on what HIS top three anime movie were, one of which was a TV series, one was an original video, and one was an American TV series.

This linked "top ten" list is a list of titles voted on by some kind of Japanese media festival, and is all over the map, with no criteria for 'best'. I think this list has more to do with what they could obtain video of than anything else.

Unknown said...

Dude's a bot poster.

d.merrill said...

I AM A ROBOT

BEEDLE BOOP

DOES NOT COMPUTE


BOOP BEEP BOOP BOOP

Unknown said...

Consensus among Japanese women is that the manga ruled and something about the anime didn't click. Weird, but that's what I hear. - PM

Anonymous said...

I remember watching Candy Candy in Puerto Rico in the early 80's.

It was the show that made me fall in love with shojo anime.

A peculiarity was that it was a japanese-animated show featuring angloamerian characters speaking spanish with a thick argentinian accent.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
d.c. said...

Supposedly it was shown in Hawaii years ago on the Japanese TV station there...in English...supposedly.

I seen the first 20 something episodes in Japanese with subtitles and thats as close to being able to understand it you can get if you just understand English (like me)

I also have seen the French and Spanish dubs - Couldn't understand either one but the French was better to me.