Il mago di Oz

I suppose, provocative represents the fair term to define this faithful to book animation series , offering to young viewer more than he knows from book and compensanting, in not bad manner, the minus of 1939 adaptation.

It is charming and good pledge for virtues of animation for reflect the atmosphere, tension, emotions and humor of book. And, sure, the colors, The Emerald City being the simple example.

Sure, easy ( and tempting ) to be critic about few scenes but, as many animations ( and films ) , it is a honest invitation for young audience to discover, later, the univers of novel and, maybe, the artistic film. And it makes its job in beautiful measure.

This is a 1986 animated series of Dorothy's adventures in the land of Oz. The "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" is much bigger than the famous 1939 movie, When Dorothy returns to Oz after killing the Wicked Witch of the West, that is just the beginning. The TV anime series is based on all of the books about the land of Oz and Dorothy's further adventures.

The series is entertaining, the animation is lovely and sometimes the stories are tense. The Emerald City is just like a gorgeous fortified crystal. Please don't judge this until you've watched it. This is a real treasure.

This is one of those shows I loved as a child in the 1980's, that I had no idea was actually anime. It's always a gamble revisiting shows beloved as a child as many won't hold any appeal to you as an adult, but I found a lot to enjoy in this series. The first of the four story arcs is the same as that in the 1939 Oz film, but the later three are from different Oz books, with various changes. Things really take off in arcs three and four with the introduction of the Gnome King.

The Canadian English dub has variable performances, but Morgan Hallet as Dorothy has the sweetest, loveliest voice. And the music in the English version has an undeniable nostalgic attraction, as upon hearing it I'm immediately taken back to childhood. The original Japanese version with English subtitles is sadly not available, but there are a couple of full episodes on YouTube (on Discotek's channel) and as usual for 80's anime dubs, plenty of dialogue was added to the English version.

After watching the 1939 movie based on the Wizard of Oz line of books and noticing some cracks in it that prevented me to enjoy it at maximum (particularly because it seemed the storyline was more suited to a animated treatment than a live-action one) I thougth of giving this anime series a try. And what happened? That I was bored to death immediately by a storyline more interested in enuclating how many times Dorothy sleeps and by how much the character are all idiotic beyond belief, not just the canonically brainless one but all of them. It's also very wordy and repetitious, with descriptions on how the tinman needs to be oiled in every sigle part of his body to start moving again, which is complete nonsense and probably due to the producers of this anime sticking so closely to the source material that they emulated Frank L. Baum's writing 1:1. If this is how the books are, me thinks I'll avoid them for the rest of my life with ease. Avoid with no remorse whatsoever.

This show must have left a deeper imprint in my younger self than I thought, as I remembered a lot of the characters which appeared in the final arc of this show.

So I did a rewatch of this using the Japanese version. I couldn't find a version with my native language which aired on tv so many decades ago, but I guess this way I get to see how it was originally made.

It holds up pretty well, better than a lot of other 80s cartoons. It's still very much an animation aimed at kids though, but one you wouldn't mind watching along as an adult.

The first arc is pretty much the story we all know when talking about the Wizard of Oz, it's the middle and last arcs which expand on the story which was completely new to me. Basically blew my mind as a kid, "say what, the story didn't end where it ends in the movie?!"

It's a fun cartoon for kids, and as far as kids' cartoons go, this is one of the better ones.