Tales of Little Women

1987 television series

Tales of Little Women (愛の若草物語), also simply known as Little Women, is a Japanese animated television series adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's 1868 69 two volume novel Little Women, produced by Nippon Animation. It was first aired in 1987 (January–December) by the Fuji TV network. A sequel series, Little Women II: Jo's Boys, premiered in 1993.

The animated series is loosely derived from Part One and partly on the beginning of Part Two of the book, and introduces new material and characters. The series begins with the introduction of the March family happily living near Gettysburg (the nearby town of York in the English version), until one day during a picnic, Mr. March notices Confederate scouts at a riverbank. As an officer of the Union Army on leave with a broken arm, Mr. March hesitantly leaves his family to inform his superiors and to prepare for the upcoming battle. Meanwhile, his family endures the Confederate occupation and even helps an escaped slave named John from being forcibly recruited to fight for the Confederacy. Eventually, Union forces arrive and in the ensuing battle the March family home is destroyed and their investment (which had also been their savings) stolen. With no other options, the family leaves Gettysburg to Newcord, where they hope to be taken by an estranged aunt of father. Upon arriving in Newcord, they are coldly received by the old woman and even less so by David, an egotistical nephew who constantly asks for loans and antagonizes the family. Despite the reception, Aunt March allows the family to stay at home until they can get back on their feet. Determined to have a sense of normalcy and persevere their hardship, Meg finds work as a Governess while Jo alternates between being a companion to Aunt March and Author. During a sales pitch to sell a short story to a local newspaper, her work and her character are presumptuously criticized by Anthony, a local reporter. Upset and resolute, Jo throws herself into her writing ultimately earning the respect of Anthony and forms an amicable relationship. In time, the March family moves into a new home and the events that follow begin to reference the plot of the original novel: The 18th episode is based on Chapter 3 and follows the first part of the book. The storyline from Chapter 1 (Christmas 1863) begins in episode 21.

In addition to the town of Concord itself being renamed "Newcord" for the anime version (which carried over into the English dub), several characters also underwent name changes in this series. For example, the March parents, named Margaret and Robert in the original novel, are Mary and Frederic in this series, and Mr. Brooke is renamed from John to Carl in Japanese and some of the European dub versions (although the English dubbers changed his name back to John). Also, the March family's live in help, Hannah, is African American in this version instead of Irish and Caucasian, perhaps to draw more attention with Japanese viewers to the plight of black Americans in the 19th century.

Little Women aired on Fuji Television from 11 January 1987 to 27 December 1987 as part of Nippon Animation's World Masterpiece Theater. The series features contributions from several well known Studio Ghibli staffers, including co character designer Yoshifumi Kondo and animation director Atsuko Otani. The chief director was Nippon Animation/WMT veteran Fumio Kurokawa with storyboard duties handled by various other directors, and Akira Miyazaki is credited with scripting all 48 episodes. Kurokawa, Otani, and character designer and chief animation director Toshiki Yamazaki had all been involved in the previous WMT series Princess Sarah, as had Jo's voice actress, Eiko Yamada. The series was broadcast aired across Asia by the anime satellite television network, Animax. Little Women was first dubbed into English by Saban Entertainment and was broadcast across the United States by HBO in 1988 under the title Tales of Little Women, making it one of only three WMT serials to have been broadcast on television in the United States. From 2009 to 2017, the series aired in the United States on Smile of a Child and in the Philippines on DZOZ TV. Unusual for a Saban Entertainment dub of an anime series, the English dub version of Ai no Wakakusa Monogatari kept the original Japanese musical score by Kazuo Otani, although the theme songs were replaced with a new one by Haim Saban and Shuki Levy, who also composed some additional music for the series itself. The series has not yet been released on DVD in English, although a compilation of two episodes was released on VHS in the United States in 1992 as Little Women's Christmas Story. The full series was released in 2017 on Amazon Prime under the title Tales Of Little Women. The series has also achieved a high level of popularity in Europe, Israel, Iran, Türkiye, Arab World, and Latin America.