TV
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz known in Japan as Oz no Mahōtsukai (オズの魔法使い, Ozu no Mahōtsukai?) is an anime adaption based on four of the original Oz books by L. Frank Baum which ran on the Japanese network TV Tokyo from October 6, 1986–September 28, 1987. It consists of 52 episodes, which explain other parts of the Oz stories, including the events after Dorothy first left Oz.
In 1987, HBO purchased the rights to the series and dubbed it into English. Production for the English version was done by the Canadian studio Cinar. Actress Margot Kidder was hired as narrator, and the Canadian band The Parachute Club provided songs for the series, which aired as a mini-series. Interestingly, this English version attempted to completely occlude the show's Japanese origins, going so far as to remove all Japanese names and studios from the credits and to credit key aspects of the animation to Westerners, which applied primarily to the CGI opening sequence.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is split into four parts, or story arcs, each loosely based on different Oz books originally written by L. Frank Baum. The first story arc (episodes 1 to 17) is an adaptation of the first Oz book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It follows the adventures of Dorothy, an orphan girl living out in the gray prairies of Kansas with her aunt Em, her uncle Henry and her dog Toto. One day, After Em and Henry go out and leave Dorothy and Toto alone, a tornado appears and tears the farm-house from the ground and takes it to the Land of Oz. The second story arc (episodes 18 to 30) is an adaptation of the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz. The third story arc of the series (episodes 31 to 41) is an adaptation of the third Oz book, Ozma of Oz. The fourth and final story arc of the series (episodes 42 to 52) is an adaptation of the sixth Oz book, The Emerald City of Oz.
