is a Japanese anime based on the Swedish children's book of the same name. It is about Ronja, the only child of a bandit chief, who grows up among a clan of robbers living in a castle in the woodlands of early-Medieval Scandinavia. When Ronja grows old enough she ventures into the forest, exploring and discovering its wonders and dangers like the mystical creatures that dwell there. She learns to live in the forest through her own strength, with the occasional rescue by her parents. Ronja's life begins to change, however, when she happens upon a boy her own age named Birk, who turns out to be the son of the rival clan chief.

Characters

* * * * aka Birk Borkason * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Episode list

Production

The anime is a

cel-shaded Cel shading or toon shading is a type of non-photorealistic rendering designed to make 3D computer graphics appear to be flat by using less shading color instead of a Color gradient, shade gradient or tints and shades. A cel shader is often us ...

television series, based on the novel '' Ronia, the Robber's Daughter'' (''Ronja Rövardotter'') written by

Astrid Lindgren Astrid Anna Emilia Lindgren (; ; 14 November 1907 – 28 January 2002) was a Swedish writer of fiction and screenplays. She is best known for several children's book series, featuring Pippi Longstocking, Emil i Lönneberga, Emil of Lönneberga, ...

. Produced by

Polygon Pictures is a Japanese 3DCG animation studio. History Polygon has animated a wide variety of content, from commercials for Shiseido featuring the studio's original penguin characters , to the 3D CG anime television series ''Digital Tokoro-san'' and ...

Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation studio based in Koganei, Tokyo."Studio Ghibli Collection - Madman Entertainment". ''Studio Ghibli Collection - Madman Entertainment''. Retrieved 2020-12-14. It has a strong presence in the animation industry and has exp ...

NHK , also known by its Romanization of Japanese, romanized initialism NHK, is a Japanese public broadcasting, public broadcaster. It is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television licence, television license fee. NHK ope ...

Enterprises and

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, the series is directed and storyboarded by Gorō Miyazaki, with Hiroyuki Kawasaki handling series composition and writing the scripts,

Katsuya Kondō is a Japanese mangaka, manga artist, character designer, animator and animation director. He is best known for his character design work on the Studio Ghibli films ''Kiki's Delivery Service'' and ''Ocean Waves (film), Ocean Waves'', as well as t ...

designing the characters, Toshio Suzuki providing the title logo and Satoshi Takebe composing the music. Miyazaki stated that "''Ronja, the Robber's Daughter'' is not only a story about a young girl growing into adulthood, but also a story of love, growth, and the bond between parent and child and their friends", also saying that the series can be enjoyed by everyone, from children to adults. Kazuyoshi Saito wrote, produced and performed all the instruments on "Player" for Mari Natsuki to sing as the ending theme song. It is Studio Ghibli's first television series. UK-based distributor Serious Lunch has acquired the worldwide distribution rights, except for Japan and Scandinavia. It sought English-language broadcasters and brought the series to potential backers at the 2015

Annecy International Animated Film Festival The Annecy International Animation Film Festival (, officially abbreviated in English as the Annecy Festival, or simply Annecy) was created in 1960 and takes place at the beginning of June in the town of Annecy, France. Initially occurring ever ...

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

began streaming the series on its

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service on January 27, 2017.

GKIDS GKIDS is an American film and television distributor owned by Toho International. Based in New York City, GKIDS releases mostly international animated films and television series to North American audiences, as well as American films by indepe ...

released the series in the United States on August 20, 2019 (distributed by

Shout! Factory Shout! Factory, LLC, doing business as Shout! Studios (formerly doing business as Shout! Factory, its current legal name), is an American home video and music distributor founded in 2002 as Retropolis Entertainment. Its video releases, issued i ...

), and additional licenses were sold in China (UYoung Media) and Taiwan (PTS). The English dub is narrated by

Gillian Anderson Gillian Leigh Anderson ( ; born August 9, 1968) is an American actress, writer, and activist. She is best known for her roles as FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in the sci-fi series ''The X-Files'' (1993–2002; 2016–2018), Lily Bart in the dr ...

. The

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

also produced a

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic (, ; Endonym and exonym, endonym: ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a member of the Goidelic language, Goidelic branch of Celtic, Scottish Gaelic, alongs ...

dub of the series - "Ronia, Nighean a' Mhèirlich" - which was broadcast on the

BBC Alba BBC Alba is a Scottish Gaelic-language free-to-air public broadcast television channel jointly owned by the BBC and MG Alba. The channel was launched on 19 September 2008 and is on-air for up to seven hours a day. The name ' is the Scottish Gae ...

channel and available on its

iPlayer BBC iPlayer (stylised as iPLAYER or BBC iPLAYER) is a video on demand service from the BBC. The service is available Over-the-top media service, over-the-top on a wide range of devices, including Mobile phone, mobile phones and Tablet computer ...

service in 2022/23.

Reception

Critical reception of ''Ronja, the Robber's Daughter'' was mostly positive. The series was praised in reviews by

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

Collider A collider is a type of particle accelerator that brings two opposing particle beams together such that the particles collide. Compared to other particle accelerators in which the moving particles collide with a stationary matter target, collid ...

The Daily Dot ''The Daily Dot'' is a digital media company covering the culture of the Internet and the World Wide Web. It was founded by Nicholas White in 2011, and is headquartered in Austin, Texas. The site, conceived as the Internet's "hometown newsp ...

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

, iDigitalTimes, Starburst,

Mir Fantastiki ''Mir Fantastiki'' (), officially abbreviated as ''MirF'', is a Russian monthly science fiction and fantasy magazine. The name also refers to the website run by the magazine, Mirf.ru. ''Mir Fantastiki'' literally translates from Russian as ''Wor ...

, among others. Meanwhile, Swedish journalist Yukiko Duke, The Onion's ''

The A.V. Club ''The A.V. Club'' is an online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was created in ...

'' and

Polygon In geometry, a polygon () is a plane figure made up of line segments connected to form a closed polygonal chain. The segments of a closed polygonal chain are called its '' edges'' or ''sides''. The points where two edges meet are the polygon ...

published negative reviews. The show was praised for its visual beauty and being faithful to the original novel, but criticized for slow pacing.

Awards

, - , 2015 , rowspan=2, ''Ronja, The Robber's Daughter'' ,

Asian Television Awards The Asian Television Awards, founded in 1996, is an appreciation to recognize and reward programming and production excellence in the Asian television industry. Held every December, it comprises 56 categories across news, documentaries and curre ...

— Best 2D Animated Programme , , - , 2016 ,

International Emmy Awards The International Emmy Awards, or International Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the television industry. Bestowed by the New York–based International Academy of Television Arts and Sc ...

— Kids: Animation , , -

References

External links

*
Polygon Pictures site
* * {{Portal bar, Anime and manga, Studio Ghibli, Fantasy, Japan 2014 anime television series debuts 2015 Japanese television series endings Animated series based on novels Fantasy anime and manga Japanese children's animated fantasy television series Japanese computer-animated television series NHK original programming Polygon Pictures Television series set in Scandinavia Television series about families Television shows based on children's books Television shows based on works by Astrid Lindgren Fiction about theft