Ashinaga Ojisan

Based on a novel written a hundred years ago, about a young orphan girl who gets the chance to go to college by a mysterious benefactor, with the stipulation that she write him at least one letter each month.

To be honest, I was completely unfamiliar with the literary work, so I was going in to this short movie as if it was its own stand-alone work. At its heart, it's a "feel-good" story about a young girl who has a happy college life without many conflicts and ends up living happily ever after. As such, it can get ... pretty saccharine in parts, as she experiences the life of a high-society girl, coming from her humble origins.

Given that this is under an hour long, and it is adapting a longer literary work, of course you can tell there are parts that are cut out, and not covered in any detail. There are hints of a love rivalry that are never fleshed out, and her simple life in the orphanage is barely a few minutes at the start.

The artwork is fairly unsophisticated (even for the time it was produced, forty years ago), and the animation is similarly unimpressive. But if you are looking for a lightweight, shallow girl coming-of-age story, that's what you'll get.

I'm not sure if it was the awful English dub, the horrible animation, or the over sentimentality of the story that made this so painful to watch. Let's start with the dub: at times the words didn't match the mouth movements and all the voices managed to be incredibly annoying. The art was so bad, I know it was made 1979, but I've seen pretty decent animation from that decade. Know the sentiment, ugh, I just wanted to punch Judy and most of the other characters.

This TV special was based on the 1912 novel, "Daddy-Long-Legs" by Jean Webster. It follows most of the main ... points of story (which I must admit is better than any of the live-action versions I've seen), while also somehow barely resembling it. Toei Animation's "My Daddy-Long-Legs" is a much better adaptation of the story.

On a side note, why were some of the character's names changes? What was the point??