Candy Candy

Candy Candy (キャンディ・キャンディ, Kyandi Kyandi) 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 in a prose novel by famed Japanese writer Keiko Nagita under the pen name Kyoko Mizuki in April 1975. When Mizuki joined forces with manga artist Yumiko Igarashi, the Japanese magazine Nakayoshi became interested in Candy Candy. The series was serialized as a manga series in the magazine for four years and won the 1st Kodansha Manga Award for shōjo in 1977. The story was adapted into an anime series by Toei Animation. There are also four animated short films.

Plot
The Candy Candy manga provides a story in the shōjo genre. Candy is an abandoned baby taken in by the two women who run Pony's Home, an orphanage  near Lake Michigan around the beginning of the 20th century. She spends the first years of her life at the orphanage, to where she would often return to repose and decide her next course later on in life. When Annie, her best friend at the orphanage, is adopted, Candy runs outside crying. On Pony's Hill she meets briefly a boy who tells her she is more beautiful when she smiles. Candy retains fond memories of that boy and, not knowing his name, she names him "Prince on the Hill". His words to her will have great influence and importance in her life later on. When Candy turns 13, she is taken in by the Lagan family as a companion for their daughter Eliza and her brother Neil. There she also meets the boys of the Ardlay family. Anthony Brown, and the brothers Archibald (Archie) and Alistair (Stair) Cornwell. The boys become quite fond of the freckled girl who climbs the trees and throws the lasso like an expert. The Lagans treat Candy poorly and eventually she is made a servant girl. When she is accused of stealing jewellery from the mother in the house, she is send off to work in the Lagan family farm in Mexico, much to the dismay of the Ardlay boys. Candy is rescued from being sent to Mexico by Great Uncle William, the patriarch of the very wealthy Ardlay family and the owner of the Ardlay business empire. Great Uncle William Ardlay becomes Candy's adoptive father, but his identity remains a mystery until the end of the story. He is also the uncle of Anthony who becomes Candy's first love, and a relative of Anthony's cousins, Archie and Stair, as well as the Lagan children. During the adoption party for Candy, Anthony dies in a fox hunting accident when he is thrown off the horseback. The family is distraught by Anthony's death. Great Uncle William Ardlay decides to send Candy, Archie and Stear, and the Lagan children away to help them recover from the loss of their cousin. They travel to London to attend the prestigious St. Paul's College. There Candy becomes acquainted with the rebellious bad boy Terence (Terrius/Terry) Granchester. Terry is the illegitimate child of a British Duke, Richard Granchester, with an American Broadway actress, Eleanor Baker. Candy first sees him crying on New Year's Eve on board of Mauritania while they travelled to London. She does not have the best impression of the boy who was rude to her and teased her about her freckles, once Candy revealed she saw him crying. Terry is her second and grand, passionate love (in the words of the author Keiko Nagita/Kyoko Mizuki in the essays found on Misaki's website, "the great love that cannot bear fruit"). Circumstances in St. Paul's will divide the couple when Eliza Lagan schemes to have Candy expelled from St. Paul's by manipulating both her and Terry into a scandal.

After the scandal, Terry takes Candy's place as she was about to be expelled by the director of the school and he leaves St. Paul's instead to protect her reputation. Candy, however, when she finds out, she also decides to leave the school. Her deep wish is to see Terry again, but they will keep missing each other during a series of dramatic episodes. Both embark on their individual life journeys whilst in the United States. Candy studies nursing in Chicago around the time of World War I, and Terry pursues a career as a rising star actor on Broadway in New York. After they manage to fleetingly see each other in Chicago, they start corresponding. Susanna Marlowe, a young actress in the Stratford troupe, becomes attracted to Terry and believes she loves him. She tries her best to push Candy away from Terry's life by lying and stealing Candy's letters. Terry having secured his first leading role as Romeo in Romeo & Juliet, sends a one-way ticket to Candy to come and see him. During a rehearsal session, an accident occurres and Susanna saves Terry's life. She however, becomes disabled. Her injury destroyes her acting career. Her mother demands that Terry takes care of her for the rest of her life. Susanna knowing Terry loves Candy, she tries to kill herself during the Romeo & Juliet premiere. It is Candy who having gone to the hospital to face Susanna, saves the girl from falling from the roof of the hospital. Feeling responsible, Terry is torn between reuniting with Candy and his duty to care for Susanna. When Candy realises of the situation, she decides to leave Terry. They would never be happy together when Susanna's happiness meant that Terry should be with her. So Terry stays with Susanna, even though he loves Candy and does not love Susanna.

Candy returns to Chicago to continue her life. By chance, she had become the nurse and caretaker to Albert who had arrived in Chicago hospital, as a critically ill patient. Albert is a gentle traveller whom Candy knows from a young age when he had saved her from drowing. This young man appears and disappears from Candy's life all through the manga and anime story. In Chicago, having lost his memory after a bomb explosion whilst he was on board a train in Italy, Candy is trying her best to help him remember again. Albert ultimately regains his memory and reveals his true identity to Candy as the Great Uncle William Ardlay, the man who had adopted her. At the end of the story, Candy discovers that Albert is also that mysterious teenager boy she met when she was six years old, the Prince on the Hill. In Italy, however, the anime's ending was changed, and Candy and Terry meet again at a train station deciding to stay together.

In 2010 the novel "Candy Candy The Final Story" written by Mizuki using her real name Keiko Nagita is published. The novel contains two critical new additions. In her adult memoirs, narrated by a 30-something year old Candy living with her beloved at a house next to the Avon River banks, she let us know that a long time ago she had read on the newspaper about Susanna Marlowe's death. Candy receives a short letter from Terry, letting her know that nothing has changed for him. He signs it with his initials "T.G." The identity of Candy's beloved is not revealed in the text whilst the author has declared she left the text purposefully ambiguous. In addition, there is no clear indication whether Candy is married or not, employed or having children of her own. All the reader knows is that she is happy to be with the man she loves more than anyone else.

There were some plot and character differences between the manga and the anime:[citation needed] Candy's age was different for several events when she grew up at Pony's Home. In the manga, she was six or seven years old when she met her Prince of the Hill, but was ten in the anime. Her sidekick pet raccoon Kurin/Clint belonged solely to the anime version.

Novel
Kyoko Mizuki's (one of the pen names for Keiko Nagita) Candy Candy novel, consisting of three volumes, had piqued the interest of Candy Candy fans outside Japan for some years. This 3-book novel is only available in Japan (published in Japanese).

Of particular interest is the 3rd volume, which covers the period after the events chronicled in the manga and anime.[7] The novels have been translated in their entirety by Western fans. There was always speculation by her fans about Candy's romantic life but the translations confirmed that, true to her words, Kyoko Mizuki did not want Candy's story to be a romantic tale but a tale of growth from childhood to adulthood for young Candy. At the end of the third novel, Candy despite all the heartaches and adversities is still an optimistic, life-loving young woman.

In 2010, Kyoko Mizuki, under her real name Keiko Nagita, revised and published the "Candy Candy Final Story" (CCFS). CCFS was published in two volumes rather than three volumes as the earlier novels. She announced that this was her effort to tell the story as she always intended from the beginning, without the influence of the manga illustrator or the manga production team.[8] Most of the plot of the story remains the same. Changes were made mainly to details of descriptions to scenes. Mizuki also replaced the children hiragana form writing of the earlier novels with more mature kanji form of the writing, and made the style of CCFS more poetic. She did, however, add a few major new developments to CCFS. In CCFS, the reader finds about Susanna's death from a chronic illness years after Candy and Terry had separated. We also read about a short letter mailed to Candy from Terry where he declares that nothing has changed for him. In the CCFS, Candy's probable reply to this letter is not included. Terry's short letter closes the main body of the story. Then the novel proceeds with the Epilogue where a series of letters are exchanged between Candy and Albert. Candy includes a recollection of her (unsent) letter to Anthony where she reflects upon her life thus far.[citation needed] The book closes with the final scene where Candy, in her thirties and living in an unknown place near a river called Avon, greets her beloved as he enters their home. The man's name is never revealed, but Nagita said that she was satisfied knowing that Candy now lived a happy life with her loved one.

In 2015, the Italian publisher Kappalab obtained the copyright to publish CCFS in its entirety in Italian. The first volume was published in early 2015. The second volume was released in summer 2015.

In 2019, the French publisher Pika, published Candy Candy Final Story in French. The publication was celebrated in March 2019 with a personal appearance of Keiko Nagita herself at the Salon Du Livre Paris, the annual book exhibition which is considered one of Europe's most important cultural events. The author of Candy Candy met with fans and signed copies of the French edition of CC Final Story.

In 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Candy Candy Final Story was also published in Spanish by the Spanish publisher Arechi, among much excitment of the Spanish speaking Candy Candy fans. The Spanish edition is one book instead of two and has been the biggest commercial success since it has already been published three times.

Releases
Between 1998 and 2001, three lawsuits were settled between Kyoko Mizuki, Yumiko Igarashi and Toei Animation over the ownership of the Candy Candy copyrights. In the 2000s, Candy Candy episodes began to be sold on bootleg DVD format, as the legal lawsuits between the authors halted any production of licensed goods.[2] In 2005 and 2006, illegal/unlicensed Candy box sets began to appear. The first being from France, included the French and Japanese dialogue. Two Korean box sets are now out of stock, they include the Japanese and Korean dialogue, and Korean subtitles. 20 discs altogether are divided into two box sets and available from HanBooks and Sensasian. Prior to the release, illegal/unlicensed Spanish DVD sets with poor audio and video were widely available on eBay. The illegal/unlicensed DVD set is issued in both Mandarin and Japanese with Chinese, English and Korean subtitles. On January 8, 2007, Chile A newspaper Las Últimas Noticias began issuing illegal/unlicensed DVDs of Candy Candy with its issues every Monday, with plans to continue to do so until all 115 episodes were released. In 2008, an illegal/unlicensed 115-episode DVD set was released in Taiwan.