Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am eager to return to Anne of Green Gables, a shimmering jewel of a show, and one that has been thoroughly brightening my weekly schedule. I say this in spite of the show’s last two episodes serving as a delicate lesson in heartbreak; even when Anne is down in the dumps, her personality remains vibrant and idiosyncratic, making for delightful company. Meanwhile, the world around Anne is painted in a dazzling array of colors, with distant towers and forested alleyways promising adventure around every turn. With one of anime’s greatest appreciators of pastoral beauty at the helm, Anne of Green Gables illustrates the beauty and allure of the natural world like few features I’ve witnessed – and most of those also in Takahata’s oeuvre.

For this episode, Takahata will actually be stepping back a bit, as we’re moving into the first episode he didn’t personally script and storyboard. This episode’s scriptwriter Seijiro Koyama is a regular on Anne, but otherwise only worked on the Tom Sawyer masterpiece adaptation. On the other hand, storyboarder Fumio Ikeno is a masterpiece theater mainstay, having boarded or directed on over a dozen of the block’s properties. Let’s see how Takahata’s collaborators illustrate this generous production, as we return to Anne of Green Gables!

Episode 5

This time in Things I Like About Anne’s First Thirty Seconds, I am appreciating the tonal effect of this musical trill and book cover, before we even get into the OP. Anne is setting itself apart from the hustle and bustle of your other television shows; it is Anne Reading Time now, and thus instead of abruptly transitioning right into the show, and therefore establishing an inherent sense of continuity between what is before and after, Anne deliberately puts a moment of pause for reflection right at the start

I promise I’ll run out of things to ramble about here eventually, but I’m pretty sure next time I’ll be talking about horse animation, so you’ll have to forgive me

I don’t like winter in general, but I do like winter as conveyed in this one brief cut here, the quintessential “dashing through the snow” situation. As a kid who grew up in New England, the old homes around me were littered with artifacts celebrating winter as it was experienced around the turn of the twentieth century

“Marilla Makes Up Her Mind.” This show’s pacing is so confident, and I adore it for that. There’s no rush to dive into any larger upcoming conflicts, no insecurity about spending time getting to know these characters. And it never feels “slow,” because none of its time feels wasted. Every moment with Anne teaches us more about her or draws us deeper into her world, while every moment focused on the countryside is a beautiful aesthetic gift, which simultaneously enhances our feeling of connection with this place. Many narratives feel like they’re uncertain they’re worthy of the audience’s time – like they have to rush to get to the exciting stuff, because otherwise you’ll lose the audience’s attention. Anne respects its audience enough to trust they can appreciate human lives proceeding at their own pace, accompanied by all of this production’s aesthetic delights. There’s little that irks me more than a narrative assuming its audience has no attention span

Speaking of testing their audience’s attention span, let’s, uh, get to the episode proper

The pair arrive at last! I like how these chickens out front provide a sense of life and energy to both this home and these cuts

We get more chicken sakuga as Mrs. Spencer shoos them away

Mrs. Spencer seems to be the youngest adult we’ve met, with an unlined face more like Anne’s

We see a younger girl, Lily, already happily adapted to life with Mrs. Spencer. Her laughter amplifies the awkward tension of the moment, as Anne bites back her tears and Marilla attempts to explain the situation

“Robert sent word by his daughter Nancy that you wanted a girl.” Damnit, Nancy! Knew you were involved in this somehow

Anne’s pleading look as Marilla mentions the asylum is heartbreaking. Seems she secretly was holding out hope that she might change Marilla’s mind

Spencer mentions that Mrs. Blewett is looking to take in a girl, but Marilla isn’t so impressed by this Blewett character

The life Spencer describes feels perfectly akin to the life Anne suffered through before, where she’s forced to be the unpaid maid for someone else’s children, until that family inevitably abandons her. Marilla surely knows this, and when she glances at Anne, Anne is wearing her most desperate “save me from this” face. So much interpersonal drama exchanged without a word!

And there’s Mrs. Blewett herself, here to force the issue right this second. Anne never extends things unnecessarily, only with tonal or dramatic purpose

Another quick look exchanged between our two, Anne once again pleading her case without a word. I love how quickly these two have come to understand each other

Every single element of Mrs. Blewett’s design emphasizes what a dark and dreary future she’d provide for Anne. Her outfit is composed of dull, dark greys and browns, and her face is a sickly sallow color, drawn up in a perpetual severe frown, with an angry bloodshot tint to her eyes. She assesses Anne like you might a cattle at the market, checking her teeth and the clearness of her eyes

Both Marilla and Spencer are a little taken aback by what a grouchy old witch Blewett is

“I don’t know, but the wiry ones are best after all. I like her strong character, too.” Yep, Anne is basically just a new horse she’s purchasing

Once again, Anne’s feelings are always clear in her expression shifts. She hoped being silent and unresponsive would dissuade Blewett, and is newly shocked when Blewett announces she’ll take her

Seeing Anne’s despair, Marilla is at last moved to act. Save her, Marilla!

“I didn’t say we weren’t keeping her. I only came here to see how the mistake was made.” Marilla is such a stickler of a person that this is actually pretty convincing

Lovely illustration of Anne regaining her hope, as her expression slowly rises into pure joy, and then is complemented by a wreath of yellow roses. Anne’s happiness inspires her imagination; as she returns to hope, the world blooms with cheerful flowers around her

Once again, so much drama contained purely in their shifting expressions. Anne is basically bubbling over with joy and gratitude, but Marilla is mostly just aggravated it all came to this. The contrast of Anne respectfully beaming next to her, unsure of what to say, is charming

Anne’s fundamental movements are enlivened by her happiness; as she walks back to the couch, there’s a joyful swing in her step, leading into another flower-drenched reverie. This is one of the things animation is the very best at: conveying a character’s emotional state visually, using fantastical embellishments to portray the world as they feel it to be. Animation is a terrific medium for magical realism, but unfortunately, its general employment as a medium for children or adolescents means we rarely get to see its full potential applied to more mature or reserved storytelling. Shows like this or The Eccentric Family (or Takahata’s films, for that matter) demonstrate just how suited animation is towards fantasy-tinged stories for all audiences

Flowers rush past the carriage’s rolling wheels, as seabirds soar and cry overhead. The overall sequence presents a profound sense of freedom and forward movement, evoking Anne’s mental sense of exhalation and relief after holding her breath all day

After just savoring all this happiness for a bit, Anne realizes Marilla didn’t explicitly say yes, and ponders how to confirm her situation. Once again, we can easily follow Anne’s feelings purely through her expression shifts, with this production’s generous, purposeful character acting gracefully replacing the novel’s internal monologue

“She looks like a gimlet!” Marilla is actually amused by this insult, but controls herself before actually laughing

Oh my god, has Matthew just been standing in their driveway all day waiting for them? Marilla’s right, the man has no sense

As ever, the expressions are clear and various; Matthew quickly cycles through joy and then relief, before realizing he’s supposed to be busy working

Anne swiftly busies herself saying hello again to the trees and flowers

Once again, the arrival of late afternoon heralds an all-new set of colors and backgrounds, with the setting sun bathing everything in a golden light, accenting their base colors in a new way. As a story so enraptured with the beauty of the natural world, Anne of Green Gables understands that any given piece of scenery is not one consistent tapestry; it is an ever-changing creation, a vision that remakes itself with the days and seasons. It’s certainly not an easy production task to offer such a diversity of paintings for every single background, but the merits are clear to see

“I wouldn’t give a dog I liked to that Blewett woman!” Matthew has some Opinions about Blewett

Matthew’s silent smile of victory as Marilla relents is so good. What a delightfully childish weirdo he is

Marilla claims she’ll “teach Anne to be a proper girl.” I look forward to seeing her try

They’ve got books! A wonderful, wordless scene of Matthew proudly showing off their storybooks, and Anne immediately reading one back to him

Aw, it was just a dream. Well, I’m sure we’ll get there

Anne was never taught to say prayer before bed. Predictably, what religious education she did receive, she mostly found notable for its often beautiful prose

“I’m afraid you are a very bad young girl.” “You’d find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair”

“People who have to look after twins can’t be expected to say their prayers.” Anne just laying into Marilla here, throwing haymaker after haymaker

Predictably, Anne has plenty of notes on the process of saying your prayers

Love the detail of Marilla briefly starting an actual night prayer, then feeling self-conscious and just saying “well, you’ll figure it out”

“Please let me stay at Green Gables, and please let me be good-looking when I grow up.” Oh my god Anne

And Done

This show is just far too delightful, all told. I don’t even have room to store all this delight; I hit my delightfulness capacity somewhere around the fourteen minute mark, and didn’t even know what to do with the delight of hearing Anne cheerfully, sacrilegiously explain her perspective on night prayers. I mentioned at the start that this show is wonderful even when Anne is unhappy, but this episode swiftly demonstrated how much more she brings to the production when she’s in bright spirits, and lifting up the whole world alongside her. Energetic, personality-rich character acting, exuberant splashes of magical realism, and an upbeat Anne extolling her uniquely strange worldview; who could ask for more?

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