Heidi

I will never forget watching this program as a child in Costa Rica in the late 70's. At the time we lived near the Pacific coast, in the jungle surrounding a banana plantation, and it was very difficult to get a TV signal. Only one channel came in, and only for a few hours a day. With my younger brother and sister, we would play the soundtrack LP of songs in Spanish over and over. For the last episode the signal that day was very poor, so my parents drove us to the beach, near Limon, and we watched on a tiny battery-powered black-and-white TV which at the time must have been the latest in technology, especially in such a place. Recently, after all these years I heard a clip of the opening music over the web and wept for hours... I will be the happiest guy the day I can get this show on DVD, especially the Spanish-dubbed version.

This TV series was one of the first anime hits in Argentina that crossed all barriers of age and gender. Extremely sweet and gentle, Heidi has a charm that both girls, parents and even boys love (but they'll never admit to it, of course). Heidi is such a pure girl that is impossible to ignore its charm. This TV series marks one of the earliest collaborations of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. By now, you can already see the genius of both. Looking back at these 52 episodes after their successful carreers, it is interesting to see many of their themes and leit motifs appearing in Heidi that would later also surface in later works (young heroines, love for country life, lazy and silent dogs, etc). Sadly, the TV series does not seem to have been published for later generations so the only way to watch it is likely thru some old fan subs. Technically, Heidi is also very impressive to see even today. The traditional use of shadowing in anime is instead replaced by a more flat look but a bigger emphasis put in animation. Looking at it today, animation buffs will be amazed at how good the animation of Heidi was for its time, the traditionally tight budgets of TV production and the length of the series.

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

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

This japan animated TV-series was an incredible social phenomenon in Spain.All the people in my country cried with the adventures of this charming girl in the 70's.It success was so strong that it caused that the television network that emitted it repeated a chapter by popular demand