Yes, it sounds like something from before the Rural Purge, which got rid of most TV shows about rural families for good reason. Most city dwellers wouldn't be interested in that sort of thing. I'm no different. I hear "western" or "rural" and I fall asleep. But I'm not going to go into that.
Yes, it's anime and since I grew up I find 90%+ of anime insufferably boring. But I'm not going to go into that.
Let's take it for what it is without making unnecessary comparisons or associations with its peers or compatriots.
Heidi, an orphan, is cared for by her aunt before the events of the story. One day her aunt gets a job in the big city and can't take care of Heidi anymore so she drops her off at her grandfather's hut in the Alps.
The man is practically a hermit living in self-imposed exile and by all appearances he is content enough with his solitary existence, even going so far as to try to stop Heidi's aunt from leaving her to intrude upon him. He carries some painful emotional burden - perhaps guilt, perhaps ponderous disappointment - we never really find out what it is exactly - and he is bitter and brusque to the point that everyone in his vicinity is afraid to interact with him.
Heidi comes into his life and the life of so many of these extremely detailed characters in this bas-relief of an animated production and something fascinating happens. Her boundless positivity, bravery, curiosity, love, and passion for even some of the most mundane details of life causes everyone to bend and warp slightly.
It's very subtle, but she has an undeniable gravitational pull upon all the other characters. No, the grandfather doesn't suddenly become a happy-g-lucky nice guy. No, the hungry street-smart urchin doesn't lose his interest in money all of a sudden. In short, the characters don't transform into different people, but they come to be coloured by the presence of Heidi. They come to be derailed from their unnecessary rigid and goal-centric ways of living. They are freed, at least while Heidi is around, from the shackles of the past or the future, of old wounds, of habits so old that their sources and original purposes have come to be forgotten. They come to a new understanding, a new theory of life. To live more like Heidi.
You'll find here some of the most touching scenes ever committed to television and masterful directing (apparently someone called this the director's "masterpiece" - I agree).
You'll also find a world of realistic characters that change and grow organically. You'll find neither villains nor angels among them - everyone has good and bad behaviors and characteristics.
It goes on a little too long. The Klara arc is weak and the proper ending is 10 or 20 episodes before the tail end of it. It as its flaws, but what works is, in my experience, unmatched among TV shows, and it's peerless when taken as a whole.
Note: I haven't read the original work, but they say it was criticized for glorifying the pastoral life and for pushing religion too strongly. This anime does away with that if that's the case. Religion plays a very tangential role in the story. It's also not really about the pastoral life but rather about how a person influences other people. It could have been set in a space ship, wouldn't have made a difference.
Honourable Mentions: The Hobbit (1977). The 2nd greatest movie of all time. Another film that was animated by the Japanese in the 70s. I think this one was directed by a US studio, but it's interesting to see two Japanese-animated heavy hitters in the same decade. Maybe things were just done better back then?
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