Princess Sarah(小公女セーラ Purinsesu Sēra) is a 1985 Japanese anime series produced by Nippon Animation which was based on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel, A Little Princess.
The anime originally premiered as part of Nippon’s World Masterpiece Theater, and was later broadcast by Animax in Japan and several other countries, especially in Southeast Asia, where an English dub was aired. Princess Sarah was also translated into several languages, including French, Italian, German, Arabic, Tagalog and Spanish.
Plot
Directed by Fumio Kurokawa, the series was made to be faithful to the original source material, doing away with the artistic liberties introduced with the 1939 Shirley Temple film, although it spanned 46 episodes and introduced new scenarios and characters exclusive to the anime. As mentioned earlier, the premise remains the same, with nine-year old Sara Crewe attending a boarding school run by Miss Minchin. Things seemed well during her stay, but Minchin hid a sense of disdain at the girl; she would pretentiously praise Sara due to his father’s social status. When Sara’s father went bankrupt and died from fever, Minchin used it as a leverage against Sara and mistreated her by any means possible. In spite of this Sara took it as an inspiration for her to stay positive, persevere and overcome her trials.
Reception
Princess Sarah gained a following especially in Saudi Arabia and the Philippines, mostly due to its educational premise and social message. At the time when the series was first released, some have speculated that it, especially with Minchin and Lavinia’s behaviour towards Sara, alluded to numerious bullying incidents in Japan, which was a contentious issue in the country during the 1980s, though director Fumio Kurokawa stated that the series was not necessarily about bullying and any parallels between the incidents and the show were merely coincidental.
In Saudi it was shown in Arabic and aired in various stations across the country, while in the early 1990s Philippine media conglomerate ABS-CBN aired a Tagalog-dubbed, or in local parlance, “Tagalized”, version of the series under the title Sarah, Ang Munting Prinsesa. The latter was so widely received that it spawned two locally-produced adaptations of Burnett’s novel, one a 1995 feature length film shot on location in Scotland[1], and a 2007 fantasy-drama serial starring child actress Sharlene San Pedro.[2]
Online presence
Princess Sarah Image Macros
In September 2014 a series of exploitable image macros using stills from the anime circulated on Facebook, Tumblr and other social sites, and spawned a fan page[3] dedicated to the meme, which has gained over 100,000 likes as of October 2014.
The macros either depict her as having a strange obsession with potatoes, similar to Senyora Santibañez and her preference for corned beef, or in a random, off-character or at times explicit context ala-60s Spiderman, usually with modern popular cultural references such as iPhones and local jokes thrown in the mix.
Footnotes
[1]Child actress Sharlene San Pedro gives life to “Princess Sarah”