Our heroine’s about to be sold into Mexican child slavery,
and that’s when the casual viewer begins to sit up and take notice, to realize
that the
girl’s cartoon Candy Candy is going to go way, way past frilly dresses, young
loves, and funny animal sidekicks. Located somewhere near the kitsch-intersection
of Mauve Decade tearjerker and 1970s anime, the struggles of Candice White
Adley conquered shoujo manga, became a Toei anime and a worldwide phenomenon,
and today are notable by the giant gaping hole its absence leaves in our pop
culture map.
Want a forgettable romantic comedy starring a generic smiling
tomboy and her charming pets? Go watch
Lun Lun the Flower Angel, you wuss.
Candy Candy is the real deal; a 100% tear-injected emotion-wringing pile-driving
machine that spares nothing in its drive to deliver repeated jack-hammer emotional
shocks to Candy.
But Candice White can take it. With a Shonen Magazine hero’s
sense of justice and the horseback-lasso skills of a dime novel Wild West
cowboy, Candy makes her own luck as she soldiers through an orphan’s life in
the American Midwest, the social pitfall-infested lifestyles of the
ultrawealthy, harsh British public school discipline, and the front lines of
nursing during the pain and loss of a world at war. Even though her heart is broken again and
again, a healing return to Pony’s Home puts her right and before you know it,
she’s back out in the world blazing her own trail.
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| my Candy Candy cel |
Author Kyoko Mizuki premiered Candy in a 1975 novel, shortly
thereafter teaming up with mangaka Yumiko Igarashi to serialize Candy Candy’s
adventures for several years in the venerable shojo monthly Nakayoshi. Mizuki and Igarashi teamed up again with Nakayoshi’s
Tim Tim Circus while Mizuki herself created kiddy comedy series Shampoo Oji in
2007. Igarashi’s post-Candy career includes the popular shojo series Lady
Georgie, some work on the Anne Of Green Gables manga, and creating the seminal
character
“Boo Boo” in the 1983 anime Crusher Joe.
Toei’s Candy Candy anime series would premiere in October of 1976, airing at 7pm Fridays on
NET
(now TV Asahi) for the next three years, and that’s when the Candy Candy
merchandise train really got up a good head of steam, creating a blizzard of
licensed goods for Japanese kids and
eventual headaches for everybody’s legal departments. But I’m getting ahead of the story. Candy Candy showed up right as
Europe was going crazy for Japanese cartoons and, as the girls’ counterpart to
popular super robot mayhem, proved successful in France, Italy, Spain, Russia,
China, Korea, the Arabic nations, Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Peru, Portugal,
Colombia, Costa Rica, the Netherlands, the Philippines, and Francophone Canada
via the
CBC. Echoing the changes inflicted on Japanese
anime by American localizers, some of the less fortunate characters in Candy wind
up “hospitalized” rather than “dead” in foreign versions. Sadly, the good old US wouldn’t get its Candy;
apart from one videocassette release via ZIV, Candy Candy would never appear in
her home country. Chances are the good citizens of
La
Porte Indiana have no idea their
most famous daughter is actually a Japanese manga character.
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| Candy Candy 33rpm story record w/ extra crayon |
Both
Candy and her future best friend Annie were abandoned as infants in a snowstorm
outside Pony’s Home orphanage somewhere near La Porte in the early part of the 20th century. When Annie is adopted, her wealthy new family
forbids any contact with the orphans, and young Candy’s heart suffers the first
of many shocks. Her sorrow is eased by the appearance of a mystery boy in a kilt
and bagpipes who charms Candy’s tears away and then vanishes, to be forever
remembered by Candy as “The Prince on the Hill.”
Candy’s
destiny would see her adopted into and buffeted by the social machinations of
the wealthy and powerful Adley clan. Brought into the venal Leagan branch of
the family, as a playmate for the spoiled Neil and Eliza, Candy is protected by
their noble cousins, Archie and Alistair Cornwall and the boy who strangely
reminds her of her hilltop prince, Anthony Brown. Hated by the jealous Eliza, the malicious Neil,
and their pretentious mother, Candy is saved from the Leagans’ ire when she’s
officially adopted by the Adley family’s secretive patriarch, Grandfather
William.
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| the spoiled rotten Neil and Eliza, who should die by leeching |
Reunited
with Annie, abused by Neil and Eliza, imperiled by the crazy inventions of
Alistair, and saved from drowning by the teenage hermit Albert, Candy’s budding
romance with Anthony is destroyed just as it begins, in the series’ first major
tragic turning point that shocked a generation of young fans. Heartbroken, the
children are sent to an exclusive English private school, and en route Candy
meets the rebellious young man who will soon become very important in
her life, the moody bad boy Terry. At
St. Pauls, Candy will again face the wrath of Eliza as well as the stern
discipline of an English public school, but even being unjustly locked in the
punishment tower can’t break her spirit.
 |
| Archie, Anthony, Alistair |
Terry
reveals his tender side one glorious summer in Scotland, but their relationship is sidelined by Eliza’s
jealousy, and when Terry quits school and returns to America to follow his theatrical dreams, Candy follows. She braves the Atlantic as a stowaway and survives a snowy death-march
back to Pony’s Home. Her newfound
determination to become a nurse finds her in the Merry Jane Nursing School, where the stern Merry Jane labels her a “dimwit”
and contempt positively radiates from her older fellow student Franny. The cataclysmic
European war brings the young nurses to St. Joanna Hospital in Chicago to learn advanced surgical nursing training –
where Albert, returning to the narrative as an amnesiac war refugee, needs
Candy’s skill to survive.
Terry’s
acting career takes off as he grabs the lead in Romeo & Juliet on Broadway,
and in spite of every plot contrivance, Candy and Terry reconnect. The
rekindled flames of the Candy-Terry romance are threatened by sabotage from
both Eliza and Susanna, Terry’s desperately lovesick costar. However, a tragic
accident with a heavy stage light that finally destroys everyone’s chance at
happiness, and the love triangle is demolished forever one snowy night in one
of the more impressive displays of passive-aggressive behavior seen in the
anime field, and only a healing retreat to Pony’s Home can help Candy recover.
 |
| a rare scene of Terry not smoking or drinking |
After
a car accident Albert’s memory returns, and he’s faced with a momentous
decision. A chance encounter on the
streets of Chicago between Candy and Neil sparks a long-suppressed
and possibly unbalanced desire. Candy has to deal with the repulsive attentions
of Neil, while Eliza schemes to cause Candy eternal misery – halted
at the last minute by the sudden appearance of the family’s patriarch, Candy’s
mysterious benefactor Grandfather William. Candy learns not only the identity
of Grandfather William but also the truth behind Candy’s first love, the
“Prince on the Hill” – just in time for the series to end.
 |
| Candy and Albert, living in sin |
Even
for 115 episodes that’s a lot of story to get through, and I’ve breezed past so
much – threatened by white slavers, Candy’s raccoon pet Kurin who was created
just for TV, defying customs by smuggling said raccoon into England, Candy’s
gender-bending waltz with Annie, the casual way Albert and Candy violate
profound social mores by sharing an apartment, Candy demonstrating the horrors
of mass warfare to a confused boy via a field of massacred cattle. We see fights
in bars, a clinic that treats humans and animals alike, alcoholism, urban
poverty, disease and death, crippled nurses returning from the Western front, and
the tragic end to the romance between Alistair and Candy’s school chum Patty. Even
the late-period “catch-up” story detour – to let the manga catch up with the
anime, so they’d end together – is filled with drama, pathos, and
cattle-stampede action.
 |
| French Candy book |
The anime series only occasionally matched Igarashi’s lovely
manga artwork, and vast liberties were taken in regards to the geography of
North America – there aren’t any mountain ranges in Indiana, and you can’t get
to Mexico in a day via carriage- but even the limited palette of mid 70s TV animation
can’t hide the power of Candy, whose reach was inescapable. If you’re a woman
of a certain age who was anywhere near a television in 1977-1980, you probably
watched Candy Candy, read the manga, or bought the toy purse or the play house
or the rack toys or saw the 1979 stage show starring Caroline Yoko… unless you
lived in the States.
Two
short Manga Matsuri films and a 1990 Toei OAV retold key story points, and the
third Mizuki novel carried the story further into the 20th century,
but for millions the television series remains the Candy canon. It’s an entertaining show for all, no matter your age,
ethnic background, or gender; the soap opera wizardry keeps you tuned in episode after episode to find out what fresh hell Candy will suffer next. I’m testament to this; I’m clearly so not the
target audience for this show, and yet here I am, a middle-aged guy
experiencing the confused stares of Mandarake clerks as I blunder through their
shojo section, protected only by the presence of my wife.
 |
| Neil has totally lost it |
Beloved by girls on four continents, debate still rages over
whether Candy should have ended up with Anthony, Terry, or Albert - Yumiko
Igarashi married Anthony’s voice actor Kazuhiko Inoue, for what it’s worth in
settling that controversy. Their son Namami Igarashi is a cross-dressing manga
artist, the more talented Ed Wood of the mangaka set.
 |
| Keep your candy in your Candy Purse |
 |
| Candy Candy Ping Pong set (?) |
The problem? Mizuki and
Igarashi shared the copyright on Candy Candy with Toei taking a side interest. However,
in the 1990s, Igarashi unilaterally started selling Candy merchandise,
prompting Mizuki to file suit against her. The Tokyo
district court awarded both Mizuki and Igarashi joint custody of Candy in 1999.
This didn’t stop Igarashi from legally challenging Toei’s TV stake in Candy,
the effects of which were to cause Toei to place a hold on both the original
show and any new Candy productions. With
a checkered past on both sides of the law – 200,000 bootleg Candy Candy
t-shirts were seized in 1979, and an attempt at selling Candy Candy puzzles in
2003 led to a 7.8 million yen judgment against the two management outfits who
commissioned their manufacture – it’s easy to see how corporate Japan would shy
away from the spunky orphan.
 |
| Candy matsuri mask in its natural environment |
This hasn’t stopped other
Candy-crazed countries from releasing their own questionably-legal Candy merchandise, and right now the
only way to see Candy Candy is through gray-market
DVD
sets with foreign dubs or iffy subtitles in three languages. Of course, here in
the new age Candy Candy can be seen in various languages on the YouTubes, but
streaming video is a convenient but temporary solution. Will this embargo ever be lifted? Will the three-way legal struggle ever be
resolved to allow Candy Candy to once again return to and from Pony’s Home, to
seek happiness and fulfillment wherever she can? One thing’s for sure; the
melodramatic journey of Candice White Adley is far from over.
special thanks to my Candy friends James, Neil, and Dylan, and of course the hardworking staff at Pony's Home, La Porte, Indiana.
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