Guys, you all know by now that I love the World Masterpiece Theater, or at the very least, Japanese anime adaptations of Western children's literature. I've already gone on about how much I love Anne of Green Gables in my multiple reviews of the books and the 1979 anime...and I swear to God, the second I read that there was going to be a new Anne of Green Gables anime, simply titled Anne Shirley, I just about screamed. Seriously, was ANYONE expecting this to happen in the year 2025?! I sure wasn't! But boy, was I happy to check it out! I'm always down for more Anne of Green Gables, even if I had a feeling it wasn't going to reach the highs of the 1979 anime. But then I heard that not only was Anne Shirley going to be 24 episodes long, it was going to cover not just the first book, but the next two books, Anne of Avonlea and Anne Of The Island. I admit, I grew worried that the producers for this were going to compress three books into a format that wasn't going to work for it. Anne of Green Gables is a story that absolutely needs room to breathe, and the 1979 anime understood this to a T, which is why it's so beloved across the world. My fears would prove to be validated now that the show is complete. Don't get me wrong, I still really like Anne Shirley as a show, and compared to all the bad isekai slop that gets churned out, I'll gladly recommend Anne Shirley to anyone who'll listen...but the decision to compress three books into 24 episodes is the show's biggest flaw, not just in what it leaves out in the adaptation process, but the speed through which it covers the content and the results that came from doing so.

The story centers on two adult siblings, Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, who live in a farm on the beautiful Prince Edward Island in the late 1800s. Matthew is getting on in years, so they decide to adopt a boy from an orphanage to have him help around the farm. Yeah, this was apparently a common practice in late 19th century Canada. But a miscommunication has them wind up with a girl, instead, and this girl—Anne Shirley—isn't any ordinary child. She's an outgoing, talkative, energetic red haired kid who loves to imagine things and is a romantic idealist despite the bad life she had up to this point. Although Marilla and Matthew do their best to bring her up, they can't contain her wild energy, and Anne finds herself in a variety of situations, like making friends, dealing with boys, learning things in school, wishing she could follow current fashion trends despite Marilla's distaste for anything extravagant and fashionable, and so on. One thing's for sure: Avonlea won't be the same with her around, and maybe this will prove to be a good thing for everyone involved.

For anyone interested, episodes 1-10 cover Anne of Green Gables, episodes 11-15 cover Anne of Avonlea, and episodes 16-24 cover Anne Of The Island. I do own and have read the latter two books in the series, but it's been years since I've read them. Now, there will be a lot of comparisons to the 1979 anime, and I hate to make comparisons to it because that series and Anne Shirley are two very different adaptations with different approaches to the books, so it's inevitable that there will be differences between the two. I don't even think Anne Shirley is a bad series, if my rating hopefully gives any indication. But in order to help you understand Anne Shirley's issues, comparisons to the 1979 will have to come up in order to illustrate the things that the 1979 anime succeeded in and Anne Shirley fell short in. One of those issues being, of course, the pacing. Yeah, in its attempts to cover three books in a 24 episode run, Anne Shirley speed runs through the books' content like a race car in the Formula One. Whereas the 1979 anime adapted one chapter per episode, Anne Shirley opted to have a single episode cover four whole chapters each, and because of this approach, it often feels like it doesn't leave itself any time to settle down and let things breathe. This is unfortunately the show's biggest problem, and this single issue's effects are completely entrenched in everything about the series.

Because the producers want to cover three books instead of one, of course there's going to be a lot that has to be cut out. Some stuff, I didn't mind being cut out, such as Anne spanking a student during her tenure as a teacher and a lot of the religious elements, because these days religion isn't a big deal as it used to be, but there are whole chapters, events and even characters that are completely left out to the point where their absence causes huge plot holes that make no sense if you haven't already read the book. For example, Mrs. Allan, a minister's wife, is established to have become friends with Anne at some point in Anne Shirley, with the series even briefly referencing the event where they become friends in question. But here's the thing: Both the book and 1979 anime actually show how this happens, i.e. the liniment cake incident, where Anne bakes a cake for Mrs. Allan for a tea party but accidentally put liniment in it because she had a cold, and the two bond over the silly mistake. But because Anne Shirley reduces the liniment cake incident to just a throwaway footnote, any interactions Anne and Mrs. Allan have make absolutely no sense because the series chose to leave out the chapter that explains how they became friends, so in the actual series, it feels odd that Anne is somehow friends with some random minister's wife with no explanation whatsoever. The series even leaves out important characters like Diana's Aunt Josephine, who becomes one of Anne's biggest supporters and confidants.

The series' accelerated pacing also hurts the characters and how they develop. One of the reasons the 1979 anime is so beloved is because it absolutely made optimal use of its 50 episode run time. The staff for that show understood that Anne of Green Gables is a series that cannot be rushed, and deliberately chose to make it a leisurely, down-to-earth, quiet series that prided itself on its atmosphere, ambience, and making you feel like you were living right alongside Anne and her friends in Avonlea, growing up alongside them and observing their growth. Yes, modern audiences might see it as boring nowadays, but in my opinion, slow pacing doesn't always equal poor quality, and I hate that it feels like producers are treating children like they need constant stimulation and instant gratification like Cocomelon. What happened to teaching kids patience and appreciation of atmosphere? Because the 1979 anime took its time and allowed everything to happen organically, we got to watch the characters grow and develop in a way that felt natural and real, and their development is the series' biggest highlight. The 1979 series made sure to have everything leave an impact, impatient watchers be damned. Anne Shirley wants to achieve this as well, but in its desire to cover three books under a 24 episode run time, it has to completely bum rush through adapting whatever chapters it feels like, making the characters' development, growth, and relationships not feel as organic or impactful. That's not to say the series is bad at showing the characters actually changing and developing over the course of the series. Considering all the slop we get nowadays, Anne Shirley is pretty much top tier compared to stuff like Solo Leveling or all the crap isekai that care more about hype, sakuga, and indulging power fantasies than having three-dimensional characters to care about. On its own, Anne Shirley's problems don't necessarily make it an inherently bad show, far from it, as it still understands what its about. But when you compare how the 1979 series adapted Anne of Green Gables, the cracks are more easily noticeable. Actually, it seems like this is a persistent problem for all anime series these days, where a short episode run completely cripples a show's ability to flesh out its characters and story in a way that can actually leave an impact. Remember when series that were 24-52 episodes long were commonplace, and people knew how to use the time they were given? Because I do!!

There are also some original additions to Anne Shirley that weren't in both the 1979 anime or the books, many of which flat out make absolutely no sense. For one, an early episode has Anne claim that she's never seen a map before, and no, I don't mean a map of Avonlea in general, I mean maps in general. I checked both the sub and dub, and both refer to Anne not knowing about maps in general. I know Anne was established to have had very little education, but she was never so stupid that she hadn't seen a map in her entire life! Is the show trying to make her seem dumb? Because she isn't! Even Before Green Gables got this right, both the book and anime! Plus, not long after that, upon starting school, Anne becomes head of the class right away, whereas in the book, she wasn't interested in being so until after she accidentally got Diana drunk. In that same vein, Anne says Gilbert is her rival before the whole carrots incident, but in the book she doesn't see him as a rival until she starts studying for Queens Academy. One episode has Anne openly lament that Mrs. Hammond, one of her foster parents, didn't teach her how to swim, but neither the books, 1979 anime, or Before Green Gables have anything like this, and it had always been established that Anne's foster parents only ever used her as free labor or an unpaid babysitter to raise their children. I know I shouldn't be harping on all these little changes and differences, but having read the books and seen the various anime adaptations, it's hard not to point them out! Also, what is it with this anime and weasels/ermines? Seriously, in almost every scene, there's a weasel or ermine in the background, even in the opening. It makes me wonder if someone on staff wanted to give Anne a cute little weasel pet like with Romeo in Romeo's Blue Skies, but the producers told them no and they decided to get revenge by shoving them into every possible scene they could. I really want to know the story behind whoever decided to put weasels into the anime.

Yes, Anne Shirley is a very flawed anime in terms of the method behind its adaptation process, but there is a lot that is good about it, and I'm not gonna go through this review without praising the things it does manage to do well. One of those things is the soundtrack. I admit, I've been a fan of Michiru Oshima for years, and she's done the soundtracks for a shit ton of stuff I grew up on. Nabari no Ou, My Sister Momoko, the live-action Sailor Moon series, Snow White With The Red Hair, Ride Your Wave, the Haikara-san movies, Fancy Lala, and so on. She's been in the game for years and she's still going strong even after all this time. You can't tell me she doesn't do a great job with whatever she's given, and her work on Anne Shirley is no different. It almost reminds me of Yasuharu Takanashi's soundtrack for Konnichiwa Anne: Before Green Gables, filling it with Canadian fiddles, energetic flutes and clarinets, and other instruments I can't quite identify right off. The opening by Tota is an absolute banger that I can listen to for hours, and the ending song is nice and relaxing. Oh, did I mention the animation and storyboarding for both were done by Naoko Yamada? Not even joking.

Speaking of the animation, I just know people are going to compare the animation from this to the 1979 anime. The 1979 anime opted for a soft, muted, earthy color palette, only going against that during scenes where Anne's imagination goes into overdrive, but it still managed to look amazing even for the time period. There aren't even any exaggerated cartoony faces during comedy moments, because the World Masterpiece Theater in general always prioritized realism over exaggeration. There's really no replacing hand painted cels and watercolor backgrounds. Anne Shirley opts for a much brighter, vivid, more saturated pastel style, and the character designs reflect that, even throwing in some cartoony facial expressions now and again. The animation in general, while not as strong as the 1979 anime IMHO, does manage to capture the old-timey Canadian idyllic wilderness pretty well and it still manages to look beautiful with its usage of color, and be mostly accurate to the time period. I am a little mixed on the character designs. Some characters look fine, such as Anne (Though why did they make her eyes blue? They need to be green!), the Cuthberts, Rachel, Diana, Ruby, and so on, I have to question why they made Gilbert's hair look reddish pink. Like...why? Maybe the producers thought it looked like a reddish brown, but it looks just as red as Anne's hair, and wouldn't it be hypocritical of him to make fun of Anne's hair when his own is a similar shade? At least the 1979 anime gave him dark hair! I also don't like that Jane's face looks really square and Josie comes dangerously close to an unflattering fat person stereotype.

For all my gripes about how fast the story moves and speed runs the characters' development, compared to most anime these days, Anne Shirley is still leagues above them in terms of actually understanding how character development works. None of the characters remain static throughout the series, and Anne Shirley covers a period of 11 or so years of time, and like with the 1979 anime, we see these characters change, grow, and evolve throughout their lives. The show is flawed, yes, but it has good intentions, and it still manages to understand why people love Anne as a character. Her growth from an energetic but mischievous little girl to a more mature young woman who retains her usual whimsy and zeal for life, navigating life's different paths and all the growing pains that come with it, still manage to carry the entire series extremely well. All of the characters have different sides to them that you can't really sum up in just one sentence, and they all feel like people you've met in your life. I admit, I cried like an absolute bitch at one character's death late in the series, even if we never got to see much of her. Even new characters like Stella, Prissy, and Philippa brought a lot of energy and charm to the series and never feel like just stereotypes. That said, Davy is a little brat and I hate him. I hated him in the book and the show did nothing to change my feelings about him here.

But you're probably wondering, considering that I generally prefer the 1979 anime over this, would I recommend Anne Shirley at all? Honestly...yes. I won't deny that it's a flawed adaptation of LM Montgomery's book, and the first 10 episodes feel like Anne of Green Gables made for the TikTok crowd, or made under Netflix restrictions. But I still enjoyed my time with Anne Shirley, and if this can open the door to bringing back anime adaptations of Western literature, then I am totally okay with that. On its own, its a fine series that still manages to convey what Anne of Green Gables as a whole is about without compromising what makes it good, and again, compared to all the crappy wish fulfillment isekai and bad ecchi series that get churned out every season that exist solely to cater to the lowest common denominator, I would gladly watch Anne Shirley any day of the week, even if I like the 1979 anime more. Actually, I have an idea: My recommendation to anyone interested in watching an anime of Anne of Green Gables at all would be to watch all 50 episodes of the 1979 anime, and then watch Anne Shirley starting from episode 11, that way you can experience both series in a way that lets you get to know the characters without having to deal with the latter's pacing issues in regards to the first 10 episodes of its adaptation. Yeah, the transition from slow paced 70s anime to faster paced, brightly colored version with different character designs may be jarring, sure, but hey, you do you. Or if you don't want to bother with the 1979 anime, you can watch Anne Shirley if you don't want to sit through 50 episodes, or just don't have the time. For all my gripes about Anne Shirley, it's still a reasonably good show that understands its source material and how timeless it is, and gives me hope that the anime industry can remember its early roots and what its truly capable of. Wow, I think this might be my longest review ever.