is a shōjo

manga Manga ( Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is ...

Hideko Mizuno is one of the first successful female Japanese shōjo manga artists. She was an assistant of Osamu Tezuka staying in Tokiwa-sō. She made her professional debut in 1955 with ''Akakke Kōma Pony'', a Western story with a tomboy heroine. She b ...

first published in 1968 and made into a 29-episode

anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...

television series in 1981 by

Kokusai Eiga-sha , also known as Movie International Company Ltd. (MIC), was a former Japanese animation production company known for the '' J9 Series''. It was originally established in 1974 by Tsubota as Shigezu Ukuda founded as a video distribution company. It ...

(Movie International Company, Ltd.). The anime was released in the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

in 1984 as ''Honey Honey''. It was also broadcast in various European countries and in Latin America.

Story

The story begins in the city of

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

in 1907, as the city holds a lavish birthday celebration for its beloved Princess Flora. The princess entertains a variety of suitors from around the world who have come to propose marriage. Also on hand for the celebration is Phoenix, a handsome, suave jewel thief who has his eye on stealing the princess's precious gemstone, the "Smile of the Amazon," which the princess wears as a ring. Phoenix remarks that Flora, though renowned worldwide for her great beauty, wouldn't be nearly as beautiful without her ring. Furious at the insult, Princess Flora then drops the ring holding her gemstone into a cooked fish and throws it out the window, to the shock of everyone present. Meanwhile, a young teenaged orphan named Honey Honey is working as a waitress. Her pet cat and constant companion, Lily, spies the fish that the princess threw out the window and proceeds to eat the entire fish, thus swallowing the ring. Since Princess Flora has declared that whichever of her suitors successfully returns the ring to her shall become her husband, the princess's suitors and Phoenix immediately fan out all over the city pursuing Lily and her owner, Honey Honey. Phoenix catches up with Honey and Lily and helps them hide from their pursuers. Honey proceeds to tell the handsome jewel thief the story of how she was orphaned and brought up in a convent, and of how she befriended Lily, who, like her, was abandoned. Phoenix then tries to persuade Honey to sell Lily to him, but Honey, who is still unaware that Lily has swallowed the princess's ring, furiously refuses (after driving Phoenix's initial offer of a million dollars up to ''ten'' million dollars, and then coming to her senses) and immediately flees. Honey and Lily hide in the basket of a hot-air balloon, which soon lifts off with Phoenix and Princess Flora's suitors still in hot pursuit. Thus begins an adventure in which Honey and Lily are pursued by Phoenix, Princess Flora, and her suitors to various cities around the world, including

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London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

Monte Carlo Monte Carlo (; ; french: Monte-Carlo , or colloquially ''Monte-Carl'' ; lij, Munte Carlu ; ) is officially an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco, specifically the ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino is ...

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, and

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. Along the way, Honey falls in love with Phoenix and tries to keep Lily out of the clutches of the selfish, vain princess. Eventually, Flora's ring is removed from Lily's body, but this is not the end of the story. The series concludes with the discovery that Honey Honey is in fact Flora's younger sister, a princess of a very tiny Prussian country whose name is actually Priscilla. When she was captured by a nomadic people, who force young women to run bare feet over a pit of hot coals to see if any one of them have revealed a tattoo of a rose on her foot, Honey Honey turned out to have that tattoo that they were searching for so long. Honey Honey is captured by the evil Slag, a man who caused her kingdom to be destroyed after going through an agonizing defeat. Slag takes Honey Honey into his castle within the Siberian wastelands. Honey Honey manages to escape with help from Phoenix, after he somehow managed to help a mystical alien with a flying saucer (which sort of explains the

tunguska event The Tunguska event (occasionally also called the Tunguska incident) was an approximately 12- megaton explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia, on the morning of June 3 ...

in 1908). Sometime later Honey Honey is reunited with her father, who is working as a gardener for some Russian aristocrats in Moscow. Honey Honey, her father and Phoenix escape, but they are sold into slavery at Constantinopole. Honey Honey is bought by an Indian Sultan who is obsessed with magic tricks. Honey Honey gets her hands onto the Sultan's magic carpet, which she uses to fly into Japan and Los Angeles and finally to the show's climax in New York. At New York Princess Flora, her suitors, Phoenix and Honey Honey's father have managed to get into the city as well. The final episode also involves King Kong to be shown in the series, after it captures Princess Flora when it manages to break free from the show held by the Princess' suitors. Honey Honey manages to save Flora from King Kong by using her kind heart and sympathy. Honey Honey finally learns why everyone wanted Lily, and makes peace with Flora after their sisterhood is revealed at New York in the final episode. Honey Honey also marries Phoenix (the son of the nomadic tribe's leader, actually). Also in the end of the final episode, Princess Flora tosses the ring from the window a second time. Her servants start to chase a small dog, who swallowed the ring this time, by accident. However, they don't know that the ring was actually a fake.

Anime distribution

The anime version of ''Honey Honey'', produced by

(Movie International Company) and animated by

Toei Animation () is a Japanese animation studio primarily controlled by its namesake Toei Company. It has produced numerous series, including ''Sally the Witch,'' '' GeGeGe no Kitarō,'' '' Mazinger Z'', '' Galaxy Express 999'', '' Cutie Honey'', '' Dr. Slu ...

's Korean division, lasted 29 half-hour episodes and was broadcast in Tokyo on

Fuji TV JOCX-DTV (channel 8), branded as and colloquially known as CX, is a Japanese television station based in Odaiba, Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Owned and operated by the it is the key station of the Fuji News Network (FNN) and the Fuji Network S ...

and on affiliated stations KTV in Osaka and

Hokkaido Cultural Broadcasting is a TV station affiliated with Fuji News Network (FNN) and Fuji Network System (FNS) serving in Hokkaido, Japan, headquartered in Sapporo, established in 1971. Through its Hakodate translator, UHB functions as the default FNN affiliate for m ...

Saturdays at 18:00 local time from October 1981 to May 1982. As the show was scheduled in non-network air time, other stations in the Fuji (CX) network were not obligated to carry it, and in other markets the show aired in different time slots or on non-Fuji affiliated stations.

Minori Matsushima was a Japanese actress, voice actress and narrator that worked for Aoni Production. She was most known for the roles of Candice White Adley (''Candy Candy''), Hiyoko Isu (''The Song of Tentomushi''), Alexandria Meat (''Kinnikuman''), Sayaka Y ...

( Sayaka Yumi in '' Mazinger Z'' and Candice in ''

Candy Candy is a Japanese series created by Kyoko Mizuki. The main character, Candice "Candy" White Ardley is a blonde girl with freckles, large emerald green eyes and long hair, worn in pigtails with bows. ''Candy Candy'' first appeared as a man ...

'') provided the voice of Honey Honey,

Fuyumi Shiraishi was a Japanese actress, voice actress and narrator. Career Fuyumi was previously affiliated with Aoni Production and after she left Aoni and joined Ken Production founded by the late Kenji Utsumi until the time of her death. Death Shiraishi di ...

( Mirai Yashima in ''

Mobile Suit Gundam , also known as ''First Gundam'', ''Gundam 0079'' or simply ''Gundam '79'', is an anime television series, produced and animated by Nippon Sunrise. Created and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, it premiered in Japan on Nagoya Broadcastin ...

'') voiced Princess Flora, and Phoenix was voiced by

Makio Inoue Makio may refer to: * Makio, grind used in Aggressive Inline Skating * ''MakiO'', the yearbook of Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, ...

Masaki Tsuji is a Japanese anime screenwriter, mystery writer, manga author, travel critic, essayist, professor as well as mystery fiction novels writer. Tsuji was most active in the business from the 1960s through the 1980s, and worked as a script writer on ...

, previously a writer for the unrelated '' Cutie Honey'' and numerous other works (anime and otherwise), was the series' head writer, and Takeshi Shirado, a Toei veteran whose credits included ''Cutie Honey'', ''Mazinger Z'', ''Devilman'' and ''

Space Battleship Yamato is a Japanese science fiction anime series produced and written by Yoshinobu Nishizaki, directed by manga artist Leiji Matsumoto, and produced by Academy Productions. The series aired in Yomiuri TV from October 6, 1974 to March 30, 1975, ...

'', served as series director. Youko Seri, a pop singer who was popular throughout Asia at the time (particularly in China), sang the series' opening and ending themes. The anime aired in the same Saturday-evening time slot as several popular

Super Sentai is a Japanese superhero team metaseries and media franchise consisting of television series and films produced by Toei Company, and Bandai, and aired by TV Asahi ("Sentai" is the Japanese word for "task force" or "fighting squadron"). The ...

shows, and achieved low ratings as a result; thus, the series was canceled early, and several manga storylines, including one in which Honey Honey visits

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywoo ...

, did not appear in the anime. However, the TV series would later achieve a fair amount of success in Europe and Latin America (although many of the character names were changed in the non-English dubs; i.e., Honey Honey is ''Pollen'' in French, ''Fiorellino'' in the first Italian dub, ''Favos de Mel'' in Portuguese, and ''Silvia'' in Spanish). Dubbed into English by Sound International Corporation, with distribution by Modern Programs International, the anime series aired, uncut, in the United States on the CBN Cable Network (later known as The Family Channel) in 1984 and was also partially released on home video by Sony.

Enoki Films was a Japanese studio based in the Enoki Building in Shinjuku, Tokyo.Company Profile
. Enoki Films U ...

U.S. currently holds the American license to the anime series.

Anime staff

* Original Story ** Hideko Mizuno * Executive Producer ** Juzo Tsubota * Chief Directors ** Takeshi Shirato, Yoshikata Nitta * Episode Directors ** Takeshi Shirato, Minoru Hamada, Shoichi Yasumura, Hiromi Yamamoto, Yoshikata Nitta, Kozo Takagaki, Hiromichi Matano, Kazuya Miyazaki, Eikichi Kojika * Script **

Shun'ichi Yukimuro Shun'ichi Yukimuro (雪室俊一 ''Yukimuro Shun'ichi'', born January 11, 1941, in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan) is a veteran screenwriter for anime television series. Yukimuro has had a career spanning four decades and written over 3,000 anime tele ...

, Toyohiro Ando, Naoko Miyake * Character Designs ** Kozo Masanobe * Animation Directors ** Takeshi Shirato, Akira Daikuhara, Akira Shinoda, Joji Kikuchi, Eiji Uemura, Hiroshi Iino, Nobumichi Kawamura * Art Director ** Yoshiyuki Yamamoto * Music ** Akihiro Komori * Theme Song ** OP- ''Hāto wa Ōsuwagi'', ED- ''Niji ni Shōjo'', performed by Youko Seri * Production **

(Movie International Co., Ltd.) /

/ Fuji TV

References

External links