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Anne of Green Gables Novels Get New Anime by Answer Studio Next Spring

A website opened on Wednesday to announce the television anime Anne Shirley, an adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery's classic Anne of Green Gables novel series. The new anime will premiere in April 2025 on NHK's E-Tele channel. Answer Studio is in charge of animation production.

The first novel is set in the late 19th century in the fictional town of Avonlea in Prince Edward, Canada, where an 11-year-old orphan girl named Anne Shirley is sent by mistake to middle-aged siblings Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. The siblings originally intended to adopt a boy to help them on their farm. The novel tells of Anne's adventures in school and within the town.

The anime adaptation will depict Anne's growth from a girl to a woman, through her bond with the siblings Matthew and Marilla, her friendship with Diana, and her romance with Gilbert. (Some of these story elements appear in Montgomery's later sequel novels.)

Japanese novelist and translator Hanako Muraoka translated the Anne of Green Gables novel to Japanese with the title Akage no Anne in 1952.

The original novel first inspired a television anime series in Japan in 1979. Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, Pom Poko) directed the series, a few years before he and Hayao Miyazaki would found Studio Ghibli. In fact, Miyazaki (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Spirited Away, Ponyo) worked on the layout and designs for the first 15 episodes, and future Ghibli director Yoshifumi Kondō (Whisper of the Heart) designed the characters and oversaw the animation production of the series.

A compilation film of the 1979 series premiered in Japan in 2010.

Takahata had personally supervised a compilation of six episodes from the television series in 1989. However, the resulting compilation film did not receive an official release at the time. The Mitaka no Mori Ghibli Museum Library label is releasing the film as part of its collection of international animation classics.

Nippon Animation produced the Before Green Gables prequel television series in 2009.

Sources: Anne Shirley anime's website, Comic Natalie