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Angel'sArcanum wrote:

Could someone like Discotek potentially put them out if they were willing?

Allow me to speak out of my ass for a while: I don't think there are many difficulties in licensing WMT anime, since from what I gather they were made by a single company. However, I do not belive Discotek will license and release them. While vocal, the ones who, right now, would enjoy the shows enough to buy them is very small. These are anime that basically you can't give away for free, looking at download numbers. I honestly don't think many would pay for them.

However, all is not lost. Flanders, Anne and Heidi have gotten bluray releases in Japan, so there MUST be some interest in those series.

DmonHiro wrote:

Angel'sArcanum wrote:

Could someone like Discotek potentially put them out if they were willing?

Allow me to speak out of my ass for a while: I don't think there are many difficulties in licensing WMT anime, since from what I gather they were made by a single company. However, I do not belive Discotek will license and release them. While vocal, the ones who, right now, would enjoy the shows enough to buy them is very small. These are anime that basically you can't give away for free, looking at download numbers. I honestly don't think many would pay for them.

However, all is not lost. Flanders and Heidi have gotten bluray releases in Japan, so there MUST be some interest in those series.

Which is a fair assumption, but taking into account some of the other stuff Discotek has licensed, I don't think it would be too extreme a gamble in comparison, heck, they could start with just like Anne and Heidi and market them by promoting Takahata's directorial role on them for example. I mean, there's Beelzebub, a 60 episode, incomplete Jump adaptation that's never gotten its manga over here, and from what others have told me, the anime soils the comic timing a fair bit. The old Gaiking is probably a lesser known Nagai title with a sizable 44 episode count, Fist is pretty huge (not sure how popular it is these days, but I nabbed all of it), whatever Karate Master (47 episodes) is, and Tenjo Tenge which is kind of notorious for how incomplete its anime is. I don't want to knock the shows too hard, if you like them, definitely support Discotek and go for it, but I get much riskier impressions from ones like those aforementioned compared to some WMT titles.

I forget if it's a part of WMT as well, but it would at least be nice to see Dezaki's Remi over here again, it came out at a point where I didn't buy DVDs unless they had dubs, and had a pretty quiet release it seems, but all my friends say it is one of anime's best, would love to see Discotek get that too if possible.

Last edited by Tenchi on Mon Oct 10, 2016 5:52 pm; edited 1 time in total

Primus wrote:

It always surprised/confused me that neither of the Anne of Green Gables adaptations wound up on Canadian television. Apparently the first one even get an English dub!

Didn't it air in French on Radio-Canada in the 1980s and/or 1990s?

Last edited by Afezeria on Mon Oct 10, 2016 5:51 pm; edited 1 time in total

Topgunguy wrote:

..

No respecting other's people taste when your preferable shows is no longer made? Those kind of shows you've mentioned actually had some story in them and people do liked it. You can always just rewatch or try finding those shows that you wanted instead of mocking other's interest. What's the point in agitating people that didn't do anything to you?

I grew up watching the Saban adaptations of Little Women and Tom Sawyer on HBO so I've always had a soft spot for the WMT - not only WMT, but the various other anime adaptations of Western kid-lit done by the same studio (Nippon Animation), like "Maya the Bee," "Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics" and the "Manxmouse" and "Peter of Placid Forest" TV specials that were aired on Nickelodeon. I was an unusual boy - never much into Voltron, Robotech, Star Blazers or the other shounen action series that formed the backbone of most other millennials' budding fandom. Sadly there just never seemed to be much of a market for it in English-speaking North America, even in Canada where anime like Candy Candy and Honeybee Hutch were regularly aired on Radio-Canada (French-language CBC) and other French language channels. (Mexico and the rest of Latin America are a different story.) Contrast that to the Philippines where Princess Sarah was so popular it spawned a domestically produced live-action remake. I guess it's telling that so many of the anime from my formative years of fandom are now showing on a Christian station (Little Women and Swiss Family Robinson along with Tatsunoko's Superbook and Flying House series of Bible stories).

I've always been impressed by the visuals in the WMT series, especially the ones from the '80s and later. Yes, the early ones from the '70s look rough, but by Princess Sarah and Little Women the attention to detail and fluidity in the movement in the animation is simply amazing. Swiss Family Robinson from '81 grabs attention for its eye-popping, colorful backgrounds as well. Given that, even after Miyazaki and Takahata left NA during/after Anne of Green Gables, there was still a lot of cross-pollination between Nippon Animation and the Miyazaki-Takahata core/Studio Ghibli in that era, that shouldn't be surprising. (Speaking of Anne, it's apparently a big reason Prince Edward Island gets a lot of Japanese tourists to this day - which makes the fact that it apparently never aired in Canada, at least not in English, all the more unbelievable.)

One WMT series that has been fansubbed in its entirety is Princess Sarah (via Licca Fansubs), which I've been getting into even though that series really takes the cake as far as suffering of the main character goes. But despite all the suffering, it's inspiring as well in the way Sara keeps her head held high and just stays herself. I think series like this might have some resonance for LGBT viewers and others who have been beat down or discriminated against simply because of who or what they are.

I think I've seen maybe one or two of these productions but not enough. But after hearing about how well this series has done it's deserving of getting a new lease on life. Maybe one day we'll see them streamed or put on DVD.

ChrisInMI80 wrote:

that series really takes the cake as far as suffering of the main character goes.

Oh my... While Princess Sarah does have a bt of suffering, it's mid-tier at best compares to some other WMT shows. Flanders, anyone?

Wow, they answered my question! And it couldn't be better. The way they closed the article is the absolute truth: "There's simply nobody left to watch shows like these." Yes, there's a few people that really care for them, but compared to the huge anime fandom that exists, they're nobody. No one cares about WMT anymore, and I assume more than 95% of the anime fandom doesn't even know of its existance. Fortunately, there's a few people that do and I believe they must be very grateful to be able to feel the experience that is watching them. I myself became a much better person after I started watching them, to myself and towards people who I really care. Anime fans nowadays will never know, will never FEEL the experience of watching a series that teaches you the most important values you can carry in your life.

The best aspect of these series is that they can deeply touch you, cause they're sensible and have characters you can relate to, since they go through stuff we had lived in our lives or something that really could happen to someone. You can feel exactly what they're feeling because it's portrayed in such a realistic way. You feel empathy for those characters to the point they you don't see them as simple characters - they become people close to you, whom you care and share the same feelings of hapinness, anxiety and sadness. Empathy. That's what is so fulfilling about the WMT series, the empathy that dominates you. I haven't watched every WMT series yet, but those and I did - and I hope many others I'll watch as well - are among the best and most valuable presents I ever got in my life, if not THE most.

I skimmed the thread and didn't see this mentioned.

Anne of Green Gables DID receive an English dub, which aired in South Africa for a bit (and was also legally available for streaming for a time on Youtube as well). The dub in itself was a bit of an oddity, because it sounded somewhat British in the characters accents. Peter Pan's anime was also dubbed by Saban, though the method of handling the anime was much more different than the other WMT Saban dubs and replaced the music, sound effects, and such (the other shows, to my knowledge, were dubbed uncut with the occasional music replacement, along with the op/ed being replaced, but were otherwise uncut, which was extremely unusual for Saban to do so at the time and even to this day). Essentially Peter Pan was handled more under their traditional handling of anime.

Some people say the Peter Pan anime aired in the US, but I could never find an exact source of it.

Also, as for the brief revival of WMT, I suspect Fuji TV had intended to broadcast it initially on the main network, as Fuji TV is listed as a producer for the first adaptation. The latter two, however, solely list Nippon Animation for the Production Committee. My guess is they couldn't find a sponsor and just decided to regulate it to their Satellite/Cable channel.

I've heard of World Masterpiece Theater, but never seen any of the shows before and don't intend on watching any of them due to my lack of interest in them. However, I'm glad that I now know why most of the shows were never exported to the US, as I was actually wondering about that from time to time.

WMT is a series I more respect than enjoy. I tried to watch Anne of Green Gables because I'm, well, Canadian, and it put me right to sleep. Damn faithful adaptation though.

To this day 3,000 Leagues in Search of Mother is among my top three favorite anime series of all time. Since I've literally never met anyone in person that's seen this show I've always felt privileged to even know of its existence.

ChibiGoku wrote:

Anne of Green Gables DID receive an English dub, which aired in South Africa for a bit (and was also legally available for streaming for a time on Youtube as well). The dub in itself was a bit of an oddity, because it sounded somewhat British in the characters accents.

From what I understand, those uploads were unfortunately not authorized and the account that had them up was deleted. I remember they had full credits though. If only someone had had the sense to note that information down.

I wouldn't mind Discotek or Viz Media licensing and/or Dubbing the WMT or, Let Crunchyroll Stream All of them.

Tenchi wrote:

Primus wrote:

It always surprised/confused me that neither of the Anne of Green Gables adaptations wound up on Canadian television. Apparently the first one even get an English dub!

Didn't it air in French on Radio-Canada in the 1980s and/or 1990s?

Apparently it started airing on Radio-Canada in 1989. That only makes the lack of its broadcast in English Canada even stranger!

Before Green Gables seems to have skipped Canada entirely, though.

Angel'sArcanum wrote:

Primus wrote:

It always surprised/confused me that neither of the Anne of Green Gables adaptations wound up on Canadian television. Apparently the first one even get an English dub!

Yeah, my thoughts exactly, like you'd figure the native country of the classic story being adapted would be able to license them easily, almost as if an obligation.

Especially since it's not like Anne is a story this country has forgotten.

Apparently English Canada did get at least one World Masterpiece show: The Bush Baby. I've never been able to confirm it myself, but assuming these aren't all the same person, it looks like the show ran on TVO and Access Alberta in the 90s. ANN's encyclopedia lists two regulars of the Montreal English VA scene as cast members. The novel's author lived in Canada, so why while it wasn't a headliner, I guess it made sense?

edit: I did some digging through the CRTC's database and found that Bush Baby was approved as Canadian content on June 14, 1993. I guess that dub actually happened.

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