World Masterpieces Part 2: The Elusive English Dubs for Tom Sawyer, Swiss Family Robinson, Katri, and A Little Princess

 

Let’s dive into the next four entries in Nippon Animation’s World Masterpiece Theater series. Keep in mind that, since not every entry received an English dub, I will not be covering all of the different book adaptations that they made. Sadly, many entries have no English dub or even a hint that an English dub ever existed.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1980) 

This series uses plot elements from both The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), but mainly focuses on the first book. This is one of World Masterpiece Theater’s less tragic stories and has a more relaxing vibe until near the finale.

Of all the anime dubs discussed so far, this is the most readily available both in the past and now. This series was dubbed by Saban International and aired on the U.S. cable channel HBO in 1988. Celebrity Home Entertainment released several episodes on VHS under their Just For Kids label. Don't let the “All New” they attached to the title fool you. As of this writing, the series is available to watch on Tubi in the US for free. 

I don’t know how this series managed to escape the rights issues surrounding most of the dubs produced by Saban. Other Saban dubs like Grimm’s Fairy Tale Theater and Mon Colle Knights have been rescued and rereleased, but many more are still languishing in obscurity.

 

As would be expected for a Saban release, the music for the English dub was handled by Haim Saban and Shuki Levy. 

 

Nippon’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer only touched upon story elements from the sequel novel.  An earlier adaptation of Huck Finn called Huckleberry no Bōken (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)  already existed, made by Group TAC in 1976. This version was also picked up by Saban International in 1991, most likely intended to air on the Fox Kids Network. Only the first five episodes of this dub are available to watch thanks to a Jetix-branded DVD release in the UK by Maximum Entertainment Ltd.

 

This time, Shuki Levy and Kussa Maachi handled the music for the dub, with Noam Kaniel also being credited on the theme song. The English theme sounds a bit like the folksong Wabash Cannonball. Saban International usually replaced not only the opening and ending themes of a show but also the background music. One reason this was done was so the company could get licensing rights to the music. It is strange to hear some of the same background music in Huck Finn as in Tom Sawyer. This show's pacing is completely different and less relaxed. Tom Sawyer themes don’t quite work.

I don’t recommend watching this anime immediately after The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The animation quality of Tom Sawyer makes Huck Finn look like a shabby, stilted mess. This is a result of the Huck Finn series being produced in the mid-70s, but also a testament to Nippon hiring excellent animators at the time. Hayao Miyazaki even worked on a few, including scene design for the first fifteen episodes of Anne of Green Gables. The series does keep in some of the darker elements of the Huck Finn novel, including Huck being held captive by his father.

There may also be a compilation film dub of this anime, which was made in the early 1980s and aired on the Canadian cable service CBN in 1984. 

Another version of the story is Huckleberry Finn Monogatari (The Story of Huck Finn), aka Huck and Tom's Mississippi Adventure. This second anime version of the story was originally produced by Enoki Films and TV Tokyo in 1994. The dub is from 1996 and appears to have been handled by Enoki Films USA, Inc., rather than Saban. However, Enoki Films USA, Inc. often did work with Saban. The film was released on home video by the budget DVD distributor Digiview Entertainment in 2006.

 Click here to hear the theme song. 

Enoki Films USA, Inc. is now defunct, but the Enoki Films Japanese website has English listings for this anime as The Adventures of Huck Finn with both a movie version and a full series version listed. There is no guarantee, but perhaps they had a full dub of this show and no one picked it up for distribution.  It is a long shot though.

The theme song is by Bullets. Which was the name Mark Mercury went by when creating music for English Dubs at the time. I talk more about his career in the article on Captain Future.

Strangely enough, the second series of Huck Finn seems to have the plot line from 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother. The slave boy Jim must reach his mother, who is sick. By doing so, he gives her the strength to get a life-saving operation.

Swiss Family Robinson: Flone of the Mysterious Island (1981)

 

The Swiss Family Robinson was adapted from the novel by Johann David Wyss and released in 1981. The story takes several liberties with the original, changing characters' names, ages, and giving the family a young daughter named Flo for the story to center around. The main story of a family that is shipwrecked on an island and has to learn to survive is here. Like the book, the island is not a real place and has wildlife that would not normally live together. 

 

The entire series was dubbed by PMT, Ltd in 1989 and aired on The Family Channel in the US. This one is actually easy to find and has been available on Amazon Prime and Tubi. Some VHS tapes were released by Charlot Video as The Adventures of the Swiss Family Robinson back in the day. These episodes do appear to be the same as the fully dubbed series. 

 

The English opening theme, with its light-hearted tropical marimba, is by Ron Krueger. There is not much else to say about this one. Go check it out while you still can.

Katri, Girl of the Meadows (1984)

Now onto something much more obscure. Katri is based on a novel from Finland that translates to The Shepherd, the Servant Girl, and the Hostess, written by Auni Nuolivaara. The story takes place in 1911 in Finland. Katri's mother goes to Germany to work and leaves her with her grandparents on their farm. The farm isn’t doing well, and Katri decides to earn money by working on a neighboring farm. This is a coming-of-age story that follows both Katri and the country of Finland through this difficult time in history. 

According to the website Film Forever, the first and last episodes of Katri, Girl of the Meadows were broadcast in the UK on Channel Four in 1987. They went by the names Little Girl on the Farm and Little Girl Goes to School. The synopsis changes Kaatri’s name to Katoli, which is the name of the character used in the Spanish dub.  The Wikipedia article says this dub broadcast was a part of the Japanese Autumn season, whatever that means.

I can’t find any other information on this one. Hopefully, these episodes actually exist and can be found. 

A Little Princess Sara or Princess Sarah (1985)

The anime A Little Princess Sara (Princess Sarah) from 1985 is based on the classic and well-loved novel A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, so you would think the series would have been picked up and dubbed into English for a Western audience. Well, it wasn’t. The story about a young girl who goes from prize pupil to orphaned drudge, surviving cruelty through the use of imaginative thinking, has been made into several films in the US and UK, so you would think an animated series would do well in those markets. 

This series was only picked up for an English dub in East Asia by the channel Animax. Because Animax English dubs rarely get physical media releases, A Little Princess Sarah is completely lost at the moment. It shouldn’t be impossible for a media distributor in the US, Canada, UK, or Australia to license and release it, though. Some of Animax’s English dubs have received official releases in those countries, such as Card Captor Sakura and Fancy Lala. If this dub is of decent quality, it is possible that a company like Discotek or Shout Factory might make it available.

And there you have it. Another set of World Masterpiece Theater English dubs. Like the previous article, I will update this one if I find out more information. Till then, check out the previous article “World Masterpieces Part 1: The Elusive English Dubs for Heidi, A Dog of Flanders, and Anne of Green Gables” and look forward to Part 3. 

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