Anne of Green Gables (Season 1)

Anne of Green Gables (1979) is a Japanese anime series you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Isao Takahata before he co-founded Studio Ghibli. The fifty-episode adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery's novel is still considered one of the most faithful on record.

Anne Shirley spent her childhood in an orphanage talking to trees and naming every corner of a world that never quite wanted her. At eleven, she is accidentally sent to Green Gables farm on Prince Edward Island — the Cuthbert siblings had asked for a boy to help with chores. What follows is not a story of a grateful orphan learning to behave. Anne arrives already fully herself, and the people around her are the ones who end up changed.

Takahata shot the landscapes of the island with an almost documentary patience — spring mud, summer light, the specific grey of a Maritime morning. Each of Anne's fifty episodes covers roughly a week of her life, from girlhood pranks to the harder choices at seventeen. Stream Anne of Green Gables online on iFILM.