50 episode drama? Isao Takahata worked on it? Aired as part of the World Masterpiece Theater block? Sign me up! 'Flanders no Inu' (A Dog of Flanders) is a 1975 TV anime directed by Yoshio Kurada. The show is adapted from a 1872 novel titled 'A Dog of Flanders,' and the plot follows our main character Nello, who lives together with his grandfather, as they both earn their living selling milk. Most episodes consist of Nello interacting with the various adults and children who lives in the same town as him. The show usually has a very light hearted tone, but often gets very serious, but luckily it never seems to cross the line into melodramatic.
The show has a great way of using subtelty to show the emotions of the characters, however the narrator will often just straight up explain the characters feelings later in the episode, completely removing any sense of subtelty that was there in the first place. For example, in one of the early episodes, Nello's grandfather is pressured into paying three francs to a man for the dog that Nello has. However, his grandfather is poor, and therefore has to pay it in monthly installments. In order to not worry Nello about his financial situation, he doesn't tell him about it, and instead just says that it's no longer an issue and that everything is fine. You can really feel the emotion the characters are expressing through the voice acting. And yet, at the end of the episode, the narrator decides to just straight up say it. This really annoys me. If I recall correctly, neither 'Akage no Anne' nor 'Haha wo Tazunete Sanzenri' had a narrator that would explicitly state the emotions that the characters were feeling. In the case of these two aformentioned shows, the narrator would only talk during the next episode previews, which works way better.
As is to be expected from a World Masterpiece Theater show from this era, the background art is absolutely gorgeous, and can definitely be considered the highlight in terms of the production. That's not to downplay the voice acting though, as while Alois has an extremely high pitched and squeaky, it is still really adorable. Nello himself is fine, and that's what I'd say for all the other performances really, except for Alois' dad, who actually does a really great job. They sound like what you'd expect them to sound like. The animation is limited, but the overall visual aesthethic more than makes up for it in my opinion. One thing worth mentioning is the subtitles I watched it with. I don't know what fansubbing group did this because its not listed in the episode and I watched it on an unrelated site, but my goodness are they an absolute abomination in terms of translation. A lot of the time, lines aren't even translated, and it feels so stiff to read. They remind me a lot of the 'Haha wo Tazunete Sanzenri' fansubs, and it woudn't suprise me if it were the same team of people. They're horrible and I hate it. I can't comment on the accuracy of the translation, as I don't know Japanese, what I do know how to speak, however, is English. And the point of a translation is more than just direct one for one accuracy. This traslation is painful to read at times. At least the subtitles themselves look fine (mostly), but the actual translation? Burn it with fire.
The last twenty episodes of the show are a slight improvement in comparison to the rest of it, thankfully. The narrator doesn't feel as intrusive, but many of the problems still remain. The adult characters are unreasonable assholes a lot of the time, and the ending is... weird. I don't want to go too in-depth on it, but these adult characters have been making life as difficult as possible for Nello during the course of the entire series, and then they just want me to forgive them? These people, with tons of money, large houses and riches? Who actively tried to use him as a scapegoat multiple times, and harassed him? It's difficult to feel as if the adults actually become good people. During all of it though, the soundtrack was a big positive. I'll always be of the opinion that 'Lucky Star' has one of the best soundtracks in anime, simply because it's so memorable. Most slice of life anime have forgettable soundtracks and background music that is so un-intrusive it might as well not be there at all, but 'Lucky Star' has background music that you'l remember forever. And 'Flanders no Inu' does that as well, having some background music that you can listen to and think: "oh yeah, this is from that show." This is all a big positive. The more subtle aspects of it are very good, in particular the character development. There's a character who's name I can't remember, but during the early parts of the show, they're shown to not really have any friends and an overprotective dad. He occasionally tends to blame Nello for things he hasn't done. However later in the series, they're shown to actually be a good friend to Nello, the only thing that separeted them was his dad just being a prick.
All in all, it is a really enjoyable show. While it initally places a very large focus on the relationship between Patrasche and Nello, it quickly moves away from that, and Patrasche's role ends up just being that of a cute dog which occasionally accompanies Nello. The main star of the show is indeed Nello himself, and his relationship with his best friend and love interest Aloise is front and center, with most of the conflict in the series stemming from this. The show does occasionally seem to indulge in a "all adults are stupid" way of thinking, although it never goes too far with it, as Nello's grandpa always seems to be a good guy, and there is one child character who occasionally acts nefariously. The ending is also completely unexpected, and I won't spoil it here, but it certainly is something. Good or bad? I don't know, let's just say that the transition from it to the ED doesn't really work. The show is really enjoyable, although the use of the narrator does make it less so. The production is all good and while the emotional crux of the series isn't as strong as it could be, it does a fine job either way, heightening during the ending. If you're already into this type of show, give it a watch. If not, then just watch 'Akage no Anne' instead. The show has interested me in checking out the other anime adaptations, and I'll probably read the original novel sometime. Good show.
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