Watching
autumn slowly turn into winter here in central Germany, I got to thinking about
Tōei Dōga’s delightful children’s
anime Twelve Months (森は生きている/
Mori wa Ikiteiru, 1980) and managed
to track it down as an
extra on a DVD release of The Wild
Swans (白鳥の王子, 1977). It is wonderful
to watch with children under the age of 10 because it is a reasonable length
(about an hour long), has beautiful depictions of the forest and its wildlife, features
great music, and teaches good moral lessons (it pays to be kind / greedy people
will have their comeuppance). The
strongest element of this adaptation are the character designs by Osamu Tezuka.
Twelve Months tells the parallel stories
of two young girls of the same age, one poor and one rich. Anja (Shinobu
Otake) is an orphaned girl who lives in near poverty in rural Russia with
her nasty stepmother and her equally unpleasant stepsister. Her family forces her to do most of the hard
labour of the house such as collecting wood from the forest for their fire. Anja’s story crosses paths with that of the
spoiled young Tsarina (Ai Kanzaki)
when she encounters an elderly soldier in the forest in late December. He helps Anja collect firewood, and she
returns the favour by helping the soldier find the perfect fir tree for the
Tsarina, who wants to decorate it in time for New Year’s Eve.
Next, the
Tsarina, who thinks that the whole world must revolve around her desires, gets
it into her head that she wants snow drops for her New Year’s decorations. Unheeding
of the fact that it is the wrong season for such flowers, the Tsarina sends out
a proclamation informing her subjects that if one of them can bring her a
basketful of snow drops she will reward them with a basketful of gold. Anja’s greedy stepmother and stepsister
desperately want the gold, and force Anja to go out alone into a blizzard in
search of snow drops. Just as it seems
that she is about to freeze to death in the forest, Anja encounters the spirits
of the twelve months around a campfire. Because
they have witnessed her kindness to the forest animals, they offer to help her
as long as she promises never to tell anyone where she got the snow drops. Keeping this secret will prove very hard due
to the insatiable desires of the Tsarina.
Needless to say, as it is a fairy tale, the story resolves itself with
everyone getting what they deserve.
The
animation belongs to a series of fairy tale adaptations made by Tōei Dōga in
the late 1970s and early 1980s. The series was called Sekai Meisaku Dōwa (世界名作童話), which has been variously
translated as World Children's Classics and World Masterpiece Fairy Tales in
English. The series included The Wild Swans (1977), Thumbelina (1978), Swan Lake (1981), and Aladdin
and the Magic Lamp (1982). Twelve Months, also known as “The Forest Lives” / “The Forest That Lives” (direct
translation of Japanese title), was
adapted from the Samuil Marshak’s Russian
fairy tale of the same name by Kimio
Yabuki, Ikoku Oyabu and Tomoe Takashi. Yugo
Serikawa was the chief director, with Kimio
Yabuki and Tesuo Imazawa acting
as co-directors. The animation was
co-produced with the Moscow studio Soyuzmultfilm,
who had themselves produced an acclaimed cel animation of Twelve Months in 1956 with the legendary “Patriarch of Soviet
animation” Ivan Ivanov-Vano at the
helm.
The
animation was done in Japan, but the music was composed by Vladimir Krivtsov and performed by the Leningrad
Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of A. S. Dmitriev. Incidental music
was also provided by Shunsuke Kikuchi. The theme song Don’t Cry (泣かないわ/Nakanaiwa) is
sung by Yoshiko Mari. The song was not composed for the film but
had been a hit for Junko Sakurada in
1976 with lyrics by Yū Aku and music
by Kōichi Morita.
For this
review, I watched the German dub of the film, Anja und die vier Jahreszeiten (Anja
and the Four Seasons), which was adapted by Andrea Wagner of ZDF, who did the
German text for many anime films and series of the 70s and 80s from Vicky the Viking (1974-5) to The Wonderful Tales of Nils (1980-1) and
Alice in Wonderland (1983-4). The theme song has also been beautifully
adapted, but instead of singing about restraining one’s tears, the uncredited singer
sings about the four seasons. I have
searched high and low to find out who sings the song but have only found German
message boards of people asking in vain about where they can buy the song. It seems it was never released on CD. If any of my German readers recognize the singer, do
let me know. Here are the lyrics of the
German theme song with my translations in square brackets:
Wolken
ziehen
Die
Bäume werden grün
Blumen
blühen
Es
ist Frühling
[Clouds
drift by / the trees become green / flowers blossom / it is springtime]
Jahreszeiten
wir danken für diese schöne Zeit
Jahreszeiten
wir danken für diese schöne Zeit
[Dear Seasons,
we thank you for this lovely time of year x2]
Sonnenschein
erhellt
Mit
goldenem Licht die Welt
Wenn
es heiß wird
dann
ist Sommer
[The sun
shines / with golden light upon the world / When the heat comes / it is summer]
Jahreszeiten
wir danken für diese schöne Zeit
Jahreszeiten
wir danken für diese schöne Zeit
Ohne
euch wäre unsere Welt nie so zauberhaft und schön
Ohne
euch hätten wir die Welt nie in voller Pracht gesehen
[Without
you, our world would not be so magical and beautiful /
Without you,
we would never have seen the world in all its splendour]
Wälder
glühen
Im
bunten Farbenkleid
Vögel
ziehen
Es ist Herbstzeit
[The forest
glows / in its colourful robes / birds fly by / it is autumn]
Jahreszeiten wir danken für diese schöne Zeit
Jahreszeiten wir danken für diese schöne Zeit
Leise fällt der Schnee
Und färbt die Erde weiß
Schnee und Eis
Bringt der Winter
[The snow falls softly / and colours the earth in white / snow and ice / bring the winter]
Jahreszeiten wir danken für diese schöne Zeit
Jahreszeiten wir danken für diese schöne Zeit
Ohne euch wäre unsere Welt nie so zauberhaft und schön
Ohne euch hätten wir die Welt nie in voller Pracht gesehen
Nur der Wechsel
Im Ablauf der Natur
Lässt uns glücklich sein
Und an der Welt uns freuen
[Only the changes / brought by Mother Nature / bring us such happiness / and such joy to be alive]
The German cast for Anja und die vier Jahreszeiten is not yet on Anime News Network, and were a bit tricky to find so I also cite them here:
Walter Reichelt (ältester Soldat / Elder Soldier)
Madeleine Stolze (Anja)
Gernot Duda (Februar / February)
Inez Günther (Natascha /Stepsister)
Horst Sachtleben (Professor)
Ursula Mellin (Stiefmutter / Stepmother)
Michaela Geuer (Zarin)
