Tom Sawyer no Bouken

This anime is beautiful and touchs your heart, it's simple and innocent but also fun, the friendship between Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn is pure and adventurous.

This anime feels a lot like a "Akage no Anne" male version, but more exciting and with a mysterious villain called Injun Joe. The bad guy of the anime makes few appearances but when he does, it means something and leaves the viewer intrigued. Injun Joe is truly one of the most underrated villains in anime history. His appearances in some of the last 12 episodes of the anime, makes the show enter a new type of quality.

Set in the United States of the 19th century, this anime shows us the life of a rather naughty boy: Tom Sawyer and his companions and friends. Tom lives with his brother (in the book he mentions that he is a stepbrother) and his aunt Polly. Tom is very lazy boy, mischievous and always a headache for his aunt and his school teacher who will not hesitate to punish him ... with beatings.

Tom prefers to be free, to play near the river with his best friend, Huckleberry Finn, who lives an enviable freedom for other children. His mother died long ago and his father, ... a drunkard, practically abandoned him. Tom likes adventures and he will always be looking for a way to have them. For example, one day he had the idea of being pirates and living on an abandoned island in the river


For a few days he lived there with Huck and another friend of both. Since no one was notified of this adventure, the days passed and even the adults believed they were dead. On the day of his funeral they appeared at church out of nowhere.

Mark Twain, the original author of this story, drew a bit from his experiences as a child near the Mississippi River. So, this can be quite interesting for kids , because was a time where there was no tv, phones ore ven electricity.


This anime, created by Nippon Animation, brought us 39 funny episodes. It is part of the Word Masterpiece Theater collection. The animation is quite good, 30 years later this can be considered good, well done and fluent.

Anime does not feel sorry for dealing with certain topics, even if the matter is heavily made up. In other words, there is a chapter dedicated to those people who want to be free. You know, tanned people who, because of the historical context of this story, well ... they weren't free. This isn’t a story about freedom. Is only an anime about a boy and his adventures with friends.

Tom Sawyer is very likely one of the pearl of the Nippon Animation Studio. This studio is mainly known for the “World Masterpiece Theater”: under this label, there are many animes which are all based on a classic western novel.
In this case, the anime takes its source from the classic 19th century novel of the American writer Mark Twain/Sam Clemens. in the same vein than others 80s animes, it was widely broadcast on many European TV channels (Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain…) with a significant success: millions of kids have watched it at that time…I was one of them ^_^

The scene takes place in ... a town close to the Mississippi river in the 19th century USA, and we followed the fantastic adventure of the young Tom Sawyer and his friends.

The art and animation are very satisfactory for an anime of this generation. Like other Nippon animation anime, the general work is less “Manga style” than usual (no blue hair or galaxy like eyes), very likely to stick more with its literary source.

The target audience is obviously the children. All the ingredients that will make a child dream of marvelous adventures are gathered here.

The strength of this anime is the very naturalistic aspect of all the environments and the plausibility of the personality of each character (children or adults) making this anime quite realistic from a western standpoint and it will surely awake the little child who sleep in everyone of us.

The music by its funny aspects and the use of traditional instruments match perfectly the action and the astuteness of our young hero.

Like many others eighties anime, The French Dubbing is once more very professional and has involved a wise choice of voice actors (especially Francette Vernillat whose voice fit perfectly Tom Sawyer). Unfortunately I never get the chance to hear the dubbing in other languages. Maybe some of you can tell us…

Overall, this anime will entice positively a young audience by the inner nature of Tom Sawyer and his adventures but will raise interest among older viewers by its naturalistic aspects as well…Let’s play the pirate on the Mississippi!