Candy Candy – Anime Queen and language teacher

Thought I would write a little about Candy Candy. Candy Candy was originally drawn as a Manga series (cartoon book in black and white) in Japan. It was then turned in anime (coloured cartoons in Japan). It was translated into Italian, Spanish and French.

I watched the anime series when I was aged 13-15 during my school holidays in Italy. It was pretty much like a soap. The Italians, Spanish and French imported loads of Japanese anime during this period – including Remi, Luna, Marco Polo, L’appemaia, Belfy & Lilibet and of course all the robot ones (Daltanious, Astroganga, Transformers). Only Transformers and the later things like Pokemon and Gormiti seem to have made it through to the UK. It seems a shame that some of the more story based ones were never translated (I have got one english video of the first episode of candy candy in american english – but I don’t think the whole series was translated).

There are 100′s of episodes following the story of Candy candy – a pollyanna tomboy type figure who winks and giggles her way through a series of catastrophes . At the start she is left outside an orphanage in a basket in the US. She is looked after by a nun and another mother figure and has a whole selection of adventures.

She loses her first love the extremely blond “Anthony” – although I never quite discovered what happened to him – clearly my Italian was not up to it at that point. In the background there is a very rich family called the “Granthams” but one never quite works out what part they play in her life until the end 100 of episodes later.

At age 11 she started to going to boarding school in the UK. She spends holidays in Scotland.  At this point she has a love interest called “Terence” with swishing dark hair. They have a first “kiss” and then she slaps him … all good stuff. The boys seem to have a seperate school but they meet in the dark of night in the stables. But are caught and one or other of them is expelled. Can’t quite remember what happened next – I remember a traumatic scene where Candy is locked up!

Anyhow she then goes back to the States and trains to be a nurse during the 1st world war. Terence meanwhile is becoming a famous actor. There is gallons more trauma and finally they end up together!

I used to audio record episodes and listen to them on my walkman when I was at boarding school myself. Since my fathers family is Scottish, I was at boarding school and my parents then moved to the US – I guess I had a large number of touch points with this story. Amazing how a story thought up by a Japanese artist translated into a western setting … my siblings and mum were all hooked.  Candy had a great can do attitude which we all loved! It was amusing but also dramatic. Way ahead in terms of plot of scooby doo or other simplistic bash-em-up cartoons we were fed in the UK.

I managed to get hold of the whole series via ebay in Spanish -my Spanish is somewhat better than my Italian these days. Was horrified to see how much sobbing went on in every episode but also a great deal of humour! Funny revisiting such an intense childhood memory. Would like to get hold of the original Manga at some point – although perhaps not in Japanese.

I have to recommend anime watching as a great way to learn a languages. Although my Italian is not amazing it does kick in when I need it and the vocabulary is definitely there. It has certainly helped my Castellano (:

               

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