(+) Let's see... The nice thing may be that the characters are goodies, the ambientation is positive... that you may actually cry if you're sensitive enough. It's okay for a relatively young kid that doesn't have anything to watch at the time. And, of course, because this is an adaptation from Pippi Longstocking's Swedish author: Astrid Lingdren.
(+) The characters design were okay, I liked them and reminded me of Ghibli's. Some music was nice like the 'Wolf's song'.
(-) Well, I noticed from the start that its pace is way too slow even for a 26-episode TV series. It doesn't offer anything exciting until episode 6 more or less. But then again, it slows down again. I'm not saying this is like a rollercoaster plot, because it isn't anything like that. It's just a dead plain straight line from a cardiograph that somewhat increases its pulse a little bit from time to time. Maybe a shorter tv series would have been more delighting.
(-) The 3D tech wasn't still great at the time. Even today is still hard to accept it apart from some few exceptions. The modelling in characters, such as baby Ronja has exactly the same body model as baby Mattis (her father, if you already forgot). The hair looks weird, etc. I liked Lovis characterization, by the way. She's like Pippi being a strong mum but still I needed her to get on a horse.
So why not many people have seen this? This didn't get that much advertisement, it wasn't directed by Miyazaki the father but his son and maybe because, as I said earlier, is too long. Ghibli is best for film and short tv series (I know that Miyazaki has done tv series in the past, but the rest of the studio isn't accustomed to do that and his son is not that good, sorry). And, the most important thing was, that some friend of mine that is a real Ghibli fan had to drop out this in the first chapter... It didn't appeal to him at all and I guess I was chill enough to be able to watch it till the end.
I found out there's actually a live-action movie adaptation for Ronja so find out about that and enjoy it. I think it's slightly better.
