Version française

• Series length: 41 episodes
• Director: KURODA Yoshio
• Music: WATANABE Toshiyuki
• Original novel: "Peter and Wendy" by Sir James Matthew Barrie
• Episodes list (German)

Story:

Everybody knows the story of Peter Pan, the boy who never grows up. The series is divided into two parts: in the first one, Peter, Wendy and their friends are confronted with Captain Hook. The second half isn't based on the novel, but completely new: it relates their fight against evil Sinistra sorceress.

I haven't seen this series, but I can already tell you it has little to do with the WMT! It takes place in a fantasy world, and tells an adventure story instead of showing "normal" characters in their daily life. The anime only bears little resemblance with J.M.Barrie's novel, and the second half is completely original: once again this sounds like a revolution. Last of all, the character design is nothing, but really nothing like the earlier WMT's ones (except perhaps Wendy's face). If I hadn't read it, I would never have guessed this series was a meisaku! It would seem that Nippon Animation first wanted to make a more traditional character design, but finally changed it for "popularity reasons". They were probably wrong: many hardly bear these caricatured drawings, Captain Hook's rectangular face, these mouths which take up the whole faces of some characters. We are far from the sharp and realistic style we were used to...

The decline of the WMT, which had IMO begun in 1988, is confirmed by Peter Pan. I don't say the series is bad (I haven't really seen it), but it shows a change in Fuji TV's (and NA's ?) policy: it's short, and goes against all what had been done so far.

LINKS:

• Izumi's site: a nice Japanese site, made by a big fan of the series. You'll find there a presentation of the story, a description of the fantasy world where it takes place, everything about the production staff...
• The original novel is available on FireBlade Cofeehouse' web site. You'll also find J.M.Barrie's other works about Peter Pan.
• Kathy Li's site: a huge site about J.M.Barrie, including information about him and his works. The internet reference on the topic.

Peter Pan in France and Canada:

As far as I can remember, the series has been shown on France 3. I've also heard it had been broadcasted on the paying channel Canal+. It was finally shown in Canada around 1990, but the 3 or 4 last episodes were cut. Note that the music of the French version has been completly re-made by the duo Haim Saban & Shuki Levy.

Peter Pan in Germany

The series has been broadcasted on RTL, RTL2, Kinder Kanal (last time was from March to April 98), and ARD (1998), and on some local channels like N3 (spring 2000). The German beginning uses the music of the Japanese one's, but the lyrics have been cut.

Peter Pan in Great Britain

The series was shown on the satellite network "The Children's Channel" a few years ago. Some cassettes have also been released. In my knowledge, it's the only WMT that has had an "official" English version; but it has gone unoticed.

Opening date: May 4, 1998 - last update: March 11, 2001