Andersen Douwa: Ningyohime

This is one of the saddest, most beautiful, honest versions of The Little Mermaid I have ever seen. A childhood favourite, it left a very strong impression on me from the very first moment. An impression the grew with me, instead of fading away.

I have always found it interesting how true to life the story is in relation to how relationships might actually work in real life. Stories and fairy tales from this age have this habit of teaching us that 'one day our prince/princess will come and we will live happily ever after" - in this story, however, this is not what happens, ... but instead we are given a dose of another possible outcome. One of heartbreak and loss. And while I do believe is it an exaggerated over reaction, I always found it comforting to know at least one person was telling me a story with a real basis to it and not just some idealistic future where I work for nothing and receive everything for being good.

Another thing I loved about this anime was the music. It is very moving and fits very nicely. Also, the sound quality was good for this era. There was attention paid to background noises this world was made real to me as a result.

The art style used was popular at the time it was made, but also unique. The lines were especially clean and I like the rendering of the Sea Witch very much.

Overall, this is one of my most favourite anime of all time. While it might not be the most original story, or the greatest in any category, for me it will always be a 10.

When you hear the words The Little Mermaid, what comes to mind? You're probably thinking of Disney's 1989 animated movie, which is understandable since that's considered the most well known adaptation of the 1837 Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. The Little Mermaid is one of the most famous fairy tales in existence, and whether you really know about the story or not, you're very likely to have at least heard of it in some capacity, whether through the Disney movie, reading some illustrated version of the book somebody put out, or other means. But what many don't know is that the Disney movie isn't the ... only movie adaptation of the story, as there have been others that have tackled it before and since then, with one of them being an anime movie that Toei made in 1975, referred to as Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. For the sake of brevity I'm just gonna keep calling it The Little Mermaid. If you're thinking that this version is gonna be anything like the Disney movie, you're out of luck, as one thing this version has over the Disney version is that it remains true to the story's original tragic ending.

You won't find Ariel, Flounder, and Sebastian in this adaptation of The Little Mermaid. This one stars a blonde mermaid princess named Marina, who along with her dolphin friend Fritz, really wants to see the world beyond the water, as her older sisters are always telling her stories about it. But against her father's wishes, she and Fritz manage to ascend to the surface, where they find a ship in the middle of a bad storm. Marina manages to save one of the passengers, who turns out to be a prince named Fjord, but is made to flee before she can talk to him so she won't get caught by onlookers. Yearning to see him again, Marina decides to visit the Sea Witch and ask her for a way to live as a human. The Sea Witch gives her a potion that can turn her tail into human legs, but at the cost of her voice and can never become a mermaid again. Not only that, if the prince marries another girl, Marina will dissolve into sea foam and die. Marina manages to reunite with Fjord, but things don't exactly work out in Marina's favor.

Honestly, there's really no point in not mentioning that Marina dies in the end, as this movie makes no secret of the fact that it's more faithful to Andersen's original story, even down to the tragic ending. Hell, even Discotek's now out-of-print DVD release doesn't attempt to hide it! The fact that the mermaid dies in the end has been referenced in pretty much any media that makes homages to the story, even stuff like Puella Magi Madoka Magica. One other thing that differentiates this version from the Disney film is that the mermaids...don't wear bikinis. Yeah, the mermaids' chests are exposed, complete with uncensored though distant shots of their nipples, though their long hair covers them on occasion. It's not to the level of hentai or anything, but I can easily picture some parents finding this inappropriate to show their kids. Then again, the company that first dubbed this edited some shots, but even that wasn't enough.

From an animation standpoint, it's fairly obvious that this adaptation doesn't have anything close to the budget the Disney version had. This was a Toei movie made in 1975 after all, and it was made around the time Toei began making cheaper movies to rake in money easier. The character designs are rougher and more rustic and the actual motion can be a little stilted barring certain scenes. But that doesn't necessarily mean The Little Mermaid's animation is bad, per se, and it does have its own charm that also sets it apart from the Disney version. And that's also not to say that the animation can't be creative in its own right, because the waterlife have great designs and the hand-painted backgrounds are well made and do a masterful job at giving this particular movie a more cutthroat atmosphere to it. Oh, and the Sea Witch's design is great, too. Sure, she's no Ursula, but she doesn't need to be.

Speaking of the characters, the closest thing this movie has to a Flounder analogue is the dolphin named Fritz, who is Marina's friend, though Fritz technically came before Flounder's conception. I haven't seen the Disney movie in a while so I have no memories of Flounder or his personality, but I found Fritz to be fairly entertaining and fun, both as comic relief and as Marina's ally. Plus, Fritz is shown to be surprisingly badass for a character of his caliber. He gets to do a lot in this movie, from managing to fight off bad monsters to help Marina when she needs him. The other characters...they're admittedly kind of one-note, but they serve their roles well, even if they're not as active as the characters in Disney's adaptation. The only character I don't get is this cat named Gemmy, who for some reason conspires to kill Marina, and why they want to do so is never explained. Also, for some reason Gemmy is able to talk with humans and again, the movie never bothers to explain why. What even was the point of this character? Plus, Marina spends a good portion of her time as a damsel in distress and not really doing much. Again, I haven't seen Disney's The Little Mermaid in years, so I have very few memories of Ariel as a character, other than that Ariel is more headstrong and rebellious, so other than those qualities, I can't really comment on Marina as a character, as it's kind of pointless to compare her to Ariel.

And I will admit, there is one other thing that keeps me from loving the movie as a whole: The extremely rough voice acting. I'm not talking about the English dub which, while definitely a product of its time, is actually pretty good. I'm talking about the original Japanese voice acting. What do I mean? Their overall acting is fine, but several of the characters' voices either sound way too deep or way too shrill. Marina's voice is said to be beautiful and angelic, but Fumie Kashiyama's voice for her makes her sound really deep in a way that doesn't match Marina's design. On the other hand, Fritz's Japanese voice seems to be set to permanent loud, nasally shrill every time he talks. It's not the most annoying voice I've heard (Looking at you Misaki Kuno, Nichika Omori, Takeshi Kusao as Coco, and Eimi Naruse), but if you have sensitive hearing and can't stand certain noises, it'll get real grating real fast. It says a lot that I prefer the English dub voices over the Japanese voices by virtue of the fact that Marina and Fritz have voices that actually match their appearances and personalities and don't grate on my ears. But it's been a while since I've seen the dub, so for all I know, my opinion might change if I watch it again.

But I don't want to end this review on a negative note, so I will finish this off with one other thing that I did like about this adaptation: The soundtrack. It has plenty of harps, pianos, and wind instruments giving it all a slow, pleasant atmosphere, and the songs sung by the late great Kumiko Oosugi are given the right amount of wonder and whimsy. Now, this would be the part where I'd mention that The Little Mermaid is now available on DVD, and for a while, it was. Discotek Media put it out in 2015, but unfortunately, that release fell out of print. You can rent or buy the dubbed version off Amazon Prime if you have an account, but that's it as far as accessibility goes. I'm lucky I managed to buy my DVD copy when I did. Overall, Toei's adaptation of The Little Mermaid doesn't entirely hold up well under modern scrutiny, and some baffling narrative decisions and uncensored nudity make it hard to recommend to a casual view, but this is one of the more faithful versions of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, so if you're tired of Ariel, feel free to check this one out.

I watched this movie, because I heard it followed the original story much more than the Disney version. Which is true. Most of the time. But I don't remember anything about an evil cat in the original one. I didn't quite get that part. The story was not bad, but I did not like this strange cat part of it...
The art was okay, Normal for the time when the anime was made, I guess, but I definitely did not like it. I think Marina's sisters looked evil, and the grandmother looked extremely stupid. I am not too much into old anime art style, and this ... did not rise up higher then anything else, not to mention those weird effects...
I would have given the sound a score of one, if not for the fact that I did not hear the original Japanese version, and for the music that I did find kind of fitting sometimes. And which was actually quite pretty. If you ever watch this movie, do NOT watch it in English. Even if you usually do, please find a subbed version for this instead. I may have enjoyed this movie a lot more if the dub was not so horribly bad. It was annoying, emotionless, or wrong emotions were used, and many very very strange sounds left Marina's mouth. And I found it annoying that we could hear her thoughts. Her voicelessness would have been much more real, and would have seemed much more sad if she would truly have been voiceless, even towards the viewer. The other thing wrong with the sound was the music. The music was both good and bad. While it was pretty, and great for some scenes, such as in the last one, in other scenes, it was not fitting at all, and decreased the enjoyment a lot.
The characters were okay, nothing special about them. While I would hate poor marina in real life for her extremely kind and innocent nature, and would find her boring, in this specific anime, her personality was of great importance. So here it is not only acceptable, it's kinda good. All the others were forgettable to me, nothing unique in their personalities. The one who could stand out a little maybe, was the dolphin. He was pretty much a typical cute little sidekick, not a special one. He was cute and everything, but very boring too.
I did definitely not enjoy this anime. But I did not put 1 as a score for enjoyment, because I did enjoy most parts of the final scene.
All in all, this was an okay anime. NOT better than the Disney version. While some aspects of it were better, some were a lot worse. I don't really recommend this anime to you (especially not in English), unless you are okay with mediocre characters, unfitting music and old-anime art.