Summary

Anne of Green Gables is one of the most popular novels among Japanese youth.
Having gotten multiple anime adaptations almost 50 years back, the new anime Anne Shirley allows for a comparison of how anime has artistically developed over the decades as a medium.
1979's Anne of Green Gables and 2025's Anne Shirley take different stylistic approaches while both keeping the heart and sincerity of L.M. Montgomery's original novel.

It’s hard to deny that anime has risen to be one of the world’s most influential forms of media, with its visuals and storytelling charming audiences in every corner of the globe. That said, the medium has a long and often unsung relationship with other media, with adaptations of manga, light novels, and non-Japanese media adaptations playing a major role in the development of what stories ultimately make it from the animator’s desk to the screens of fans everywhere.

Anne of Green Gables, a 1908 novel by L.M. Montgomery, tells the story of a charmingly imaginative orphan who comes to live with an elderly farming couple on the idyllic countryside of Prince Edward Island. Known for its endearing characterizations and universal themes of childhood wonder and friendship the novel has been an international bestseller for generations, becoming a beloved children’s novel in Japan. The perennial popularity of the book, with its theme of imagination and enjoying life's simple pleasures amongst a gorgeous setting, have allowed it to become one of the few works of media that have received not one, but multiple anime adaptations through the years. The style of these adaptations, almost 50 years apart, reveals a lot about how the style and production of anime have changed across generations of Japanese animation.

1979’s Anne of Green Gables

World Masterpiece Theater and Early Anime Adaptations of Classic Literature

World Masterpiece Theater was an ambitious anime anthology that began in the 1960s and ran for decades on Japanese public television, adapting well-known international novels as a form of educational entertainment for Japan’s young audiences. Because the 1970s were still a relatively early period of Japanese television, TV anime series of this time were very heavily influenced by their respective networks’ need to fill scheduling time.

This need to fill large quantities of airtime allowed Anne of Green Gables, the first and among the most well-known of World Masterpiece Theater’s adaptations broadcast on Japan’s Fuji TV, to be a long-running and faithful adaptation of its source material. World Masterpiece Theater was an important stepping stone for Studio Ghibli legends Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, so this long-running classic of televised anime, based in turn on a classic of world literature, naturally commands a fair bit of respect. And the entire series is free to watch on YouTube.

The 1970s series gives a great deal of its runtime to dialogue, with episodes gradually taking their time to flesh out the relationships of Anne, the Cuthberts, and those in their lives. While this doesn’t necessarily have the same kind of pacing you’d expect from anime produced in the streaming era, it portrays the depth of the source material that lets the characters’ simple charms shine through.

Some of Anne’s imagination is brought to life in the opening and closing songs, but the episodes themselves are often grounded in the Victorian mannerisms and imaginative ideals of Anne’s conversations. The cel-shaded animation and lower aspect ratio certainly date the series to the earlier days of Japanese television, but that aesthetic has plenty of vintage charm.

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By Juliet Childers

What Anne Shirley Brings to Anne of Green Gables

The Charm of Anne for a New Generation

Broadcast on the educational block of Japan's NHK television station and simulcast on Crunchyroll for global audiences, 2025’s Anne Shirley is a charming update to its 1979 predecessor. The series is broadcast on Japan’s NHK-E educational block, following in the same footsteps of World Masterpiece Theater in trying to bring iconic literature out through engaging entertainment. One unifying thread between Anne Shirley and Anne of Green Gables is being able to boast of the involvement of some of the top talent working in anime today.

The OP animation for Anne Shirley is directed by Naoko Yamada, whose work on the Sound! Euphonium franchise and her recent hit anime feature The Colors Within have made her one of the biggest rising talents in anime. Yamada's ability to draw out the emotional psyches of her young protagonists as seen in projects like The Colors Within, she is a natural fit for Anne Shirley's style of presenting the titular character's flights of imagination through bright, often humorous visual sequences.

If Anne Shirley is "better" than its 1970s predecessor is an easy enough question to ask, but a bit harder to answer in conventional terms. The two adaptations vary quite a bit in when they were made and how they were meant to be watched. While Anne Shirley isn’t as immediately faithful an adaptation as the 1970s Anne of Green Gables due to its shorter episode counts and more condensed story beats, it succeeds in bringing out the charm of the characters for the modern sensibilities of Japanese youth. Making acclaimed literature available and exciting was the goal of both series, and both in turn are reflections of a great story that has continued to capture the hearts of young audiences in Japan and across the world.