Heidi - Kindheit in den Bergen

It is really not possible to limit a work of such purity by a rating, but for all practical purposes "Heidi" deserves at least a 10 on IMDb's scale, in my opinion.

The animation is so realistically done that we not only feel for all the characters, human and otherwise, but also live, grow, smile and cry with them. And the storytelling is at once engaging, visceral, harrowing, redeeming and deeply poignant. Every frame has some subliminal emotional content that draws us deeper into the narrative.

On a personal note, "Heidi" was by a far margin the best show I enjoyed in my childhood, not just because of the fantasies it weaved but also how intensely they were interweaved with all the harshness of reality. While that may not be necessarily the ideal content for children, the feeling of emancipation at the end of it all still rings true with me.

Johanna Spyri probably could not have asked for a better visual translation of her story.

I loved this cartoon when I watched it as a child in Europe and now I felt very happy to find it on youtube and watch it all over again.

Heidi is a beautiful story about a little girl that lives with her grandfather in the Swiss Alps. We get to see her adventures in the mountains and outside of them.

Created by a Japanese anime director it is amazing how beautifully he portrayed the culture and the landscapes. I loved the drawings of the alps an the animals. He made an amazing job to show the atmosphere of the location that makes one just want to go there and one can feel the happiness and beauty of it.

The episodes in Frankfurt are the worst ones. They are sad and Heidi seems not as smart as she always does. But this sure has a reason as those episodes portray the sad time.

Lovely cartoon that all kids would love and their parents would enjoy with them

I watched this series when I was a kid and I really liked it. I used to see it along with robotech/macross and other anime series, but this one still makes me feel happy just to remember those old days. I used to like Heidi because I used to spend a lot time(most of my free time) on the mountains when I was a kid. The dubbing they did on the version of heidi I watched was very good and if you think that subtitles are the only way to see any manga, you're wrong. I have seen too many mistakes on subtitles from big budget movies to indi movies. At least a good dubbing like the ones they do for Latin American countries have fewer errors and sound great.

PS. I'm buying this series for my daughter and I'm sure it will be better than any American cartoon now running.

It's funny to see that Heidi, coming from the now very praised genius of Ghibli (Isao Takahata and, everyone guesses, some touches of Miyazaki) was so extremely successful in Europe and it is relatively unknown to American audiences, the ones most fascinated with Miyazaki. The story of an orphan girl who must live with her grandfather in the mountains, and how she is able to make a new life with a nearly unbeatable optimism, is told by Takahata in a style that could be Ozu on drawings. The same kind of character observation, the same kind of very long pauses between facts, and something that really surprises me, a very observatory storytelling, something that is very rare in animated series. It's extremely emotional too, but not being excessively emphatic on that. It's just an admirable animated series, very unique, and very classic, something that amazes me that had such success in Spain, Italy and Germany.

There is nostalgia in everything this show represents. The nostalgia of being a kid with not a worry in the world, of living in the countryside among the animals and breathing the fresh mountain air, of riding the proverbial rollercoaster of emotions with every small joy or sadness that life brings. I loved this show when I was 8 years old, and I love it even more now I am 26. What has changed is my understanding and appreciation of the motives of the full cast of very realistic characters. In India growing up, this was a cartoon I would wait to watch with my two brothers (we weren't pushed into watching it by a girl, as some might assume) every day. Growing up, I was glad to come by this show which was very different from the usual stories with pre-conceived good-vs-evil moral commentary. As an adult I realize that every child (boy or girl) must watch this show because it teaches lessons in kindness and enjoying the simple pleasures in life that one wouldn't necessarily learn in school or from their parents. In that way, it is more complex than the cartoons kids are usually exposed to. Although I watched the English dub when I was a kid, I'm watching the original Japanese version now and I've learnt enough Japanese to comfortably understand it even without subtitles :D As others have said of this show, it has brought me to tears on a number of occasions. I don't know if it's because of said nostalgia of my childhood, when I was living with my grandparents who I miss to this day. It could be because everything this show does is perfect -- the stories, the characters, the music. I recently watched Heidi with my mother (she is going on 56 years old now) and she couldn't help but cry on several occasions, despite having never watched the show before. A true reflection of the ability of this show to cross boundaries. 10/10