Crystal Tokyo Anime Blog

     Candy Candy  is a very popular shojo anime from 1976, and the Candy Candy  anime is still loved by many people to this very day. The anime series is based on a series of novels first published in 1975 by Kyoko Mizuki. Later Mizuki  joined forces with manga artist Yumiko Igarashi  to create the Candy Candy manga that ran from 1975 to 1979, and the Manga is collected in nine volumes. The anime ran from 1976 to 1979 for a total of 115 episodes. The anime has been translated into many languages, and televised in many countries. A legal dispute between Mizuki  and Iganashi  has left the series in limbo, resulting in most Candy Candy stuff offered for sale today to be counterfeit.

     Here  is the scoop on Episode one, so enjoy. The anime starts off in the middle of winter at a small church orphanage located just south of lake Michigan, and the orphanage is called Pony Home. The orphanage is ran by two kindly nuns named Sister Pony and Sister Lane. One cold winter night the sisters find two abandoned infant girls in the snow, the first girl is left with a note naming her Annie, and the second girl is left with no note or name. The only possession left with the second girl is a doll called Candy, so Sister Lane names her Candy after the doll, and they give her the last name of White after the snow they found her in.

     The series then jumps forward six years where Candy and Annie seam to be growing up into kind and sweet young girls. At this point, Annie is shown to be a quiet and sensitive girl, and Candy is shown to be a tomboy type with a strong sense of justice, and fairness. Candy and Annie have become as close as any sisters could ever be. Candy and Annie often pretend to be bad in order to avoid being adopted and separated, and Candy even states she wants to be with Annie forever. 

     The series than jumps forward two more years to Candy and Annie’s tenth birthday. Candy seems content and unembarrassed about her situation, but Annie gives some hint that she’s not quite happy with things as they are. It is announced that in the spring Tom will be adopted by rich farmers, and Candy and Tom get into a tussle over Tom calling Candy a tomboy. The next day Candy and Tom get into another fight and Candy loses badly, and Candy asks Tom when he got so strong. Tom tells her he’s always been that way, and he just didn’t want to hurt a nice girl like her (almost like a reverse His and Her Circumstances moment). At the end of the episode Tom gets adopted leading to a tear filled parting from Pony Home. Later, when Candy and Annie wish Tom a final farewell, Annie breaks down in tears telling Candy that she wants a kind father and mother too. Well, that’s all for episode one. Below are some screen shots.

     Well episode one of Candy Candy  sets up the entire basic plot of the series, sweet and lovable kids looking to be adopted by kind parents. In Candy we see the traits that are present in many of today’s modern shojo heroines. She is tough but very caring, she thinks of other before she thinks of herself, and she has a strong sense of justice and honor. I can think of many modern shojo anime girls with those exact same traits, Sora from Kaleido Star,  Sakura from CCS  and Tsubasa,  Usagi  from Sailor Moon,  Nagisa  from Pretty Cure Max Heart, and girls from many other anime series.

     Now I will start to do a comparison between Candy Candy (1976), and Daddy Long Legs (1990). Both series feature a main female character whom was abandoned at birth, and in both series Candy and Judy seem are the heart and soul of their orphanages. Both girls have a tomboy like nature, can climb trees like a monkey, and know how to use a rope. Both girls also had a great deal of responsibility in  looking after the younger children, and both girl lack a knowledge of how a proper young lady should behave. Now the differences between the two series, first of all Candy wants to stay at Pony Home, and Judy wanted to get the hell out. In Candy Candy  the orphanage is a kind and loving place with a loving staff, and in Daddy Long Legs  the orphanage is dark, depressing, and lonely place. In CC  the children are well feed and clothed, and in DLL  the children were hungry and dressed in rag like clothes. Candy is forthright and unashamed of her orphanage upbringing, but Judy is ashamed of her orphanage upbringing. Well, That’s all for now, if you want to watch two great examples of the shojo genre watch Candy Candy  or Daddy Long Legs.  

     Daddy Long Legs 6  starts off with Judy getting ready for the first day of classes. She gets in trouble again for climbing on the school’s roof to watch an airplane flying by. When Judy attends her English class she ends up embarrassing herself with her lack of knowledge about authors. Her lack of knowledge is so great that the other students laugh at her and the professor thinks the she’s making fun of him, so she gets tossed out into the hall. After the class Sallie realizes that Judy didn’t know the author, so she takes Judy to the library, and Judy is amazed at seeing all the books. Judy checks out a lot of books as study material, and then she practically reads all night long.

     In the next English class the students are assigned a writing project, they must write an essay about their family life. At lunch Julia and Sallie talk about their essay topics while Judy is very quite, then Julia asks Judy if she’s going to write about her huge mansion? Judy writes Daddy a letter knowing in her heart he won’t reply asking him for some personal information she can use in her essay, but she receives no reply to her letter. At the last minute, Judy writes her essay and shades the truth enough to hide her orphanage upbringing from the teacher and other students. When she reads her essay to the class, she gets praise by the professor and her fellow students for the essay’s quality. In the end she writes daddy confessing her lies, telling him it may seem like a small thing to him but to her it’s a big deal. Well that’s all for episode 6.

     Well episode 6 sets up a lot of the issues that Judy will have to deal with throughout the entire series. First of all, Judy’s poor education at the orphanage hurts her in many ways, especially in the social graces area. Her lack of proper literary knowledge really shows, but the imagination necessary to survive such a bleak environment helps her with her writing. Secondly and most importantly is the issue of her perceived self worth and self esteem, Judy is afraid to admit she’s an orphan, an abandoned child.

     This issue has been seen many times in anime. In NGE  Shinji views himself as weak and worthless, those feelings render him unable to properly engage other people, in other words one can not truly love another unless one loves themselves first. Also this issue is one of the major plot lines in the Twelve Kingdoms  anime, in that anime Youko is unable to become a complete person until she is able deal with her lack of self esteem and character weaknesses, at that point she is able to deal with the world in proper manner. As Daddy Long Legs progresses we will have to see if Judy will gain the maturity and self confidence to tell the world who she really is and let them chose whether to accept her or not.