Dear Candy Candy fans overseas,
When I write a blog post about Candy Candy, I sometimes get e-mails from fellow fans in Europe, the United States, and Latin America.
I’m always touched when I read these e-mails, so today I’d like to write to all Candy Candy fans overseas.
If you’re an international Candy Candy fan, have you read the Candy Candy manga that was serialised in the monthly magazine Nakayoshi starting in 1975?
Unfortunately, the magazine is currently out of print and difficult to obtain, so I’m afraid international fans may only know the anime version of Candy Candy and the novel The Final Story.
This worries me because Terry in the manga and the novel The Final Story is a different character, as if he were a different person. His words, actions, and demeanour are completely different. Not only Terry but also the other characters and settings are different. Similarly, the anime and manga also differ.
A court ruled that Ms.Nagita, as author, holds the copyright of Candy Candy. However, there are many fans in Japan who believe that the work doesn’t belong solely to Ms.Nagita.
In other words, Japanese fans love Candy Candy because of both Nagita’s story and Igarashi’s illustrations.
In the Candy Candy manga, Ms.Nagita wrote the story, which Ms.Igarashi, through her drawings, adapted into the characters’ dialogues and fine nuances.
To use an analogy, it was Ms. Keiko Nagita who gave birth to the baby, and Ms. Yumiko Igarashi who raised her. If one were to ask, ‘Who are the baby’s parents?’ the baby might be Ms.Nagita’s in terms of DNA, but since Ms.Igarashi raised the baby, it bears only a half resemblance to Ms.Nagita.
So I feel you have to read the Candy Candy manga to understand the whole story. (The anime was mainly created by a TV station.)
Candy Candy in Nakayoshi at that time was influenced not only by Ms.Nagita and Ms.Igarashi but also by the wishes of the editorial department, various circumstances related to the serialisation, and the ideas of the two Candy Candy editors and other people.
I’m of the generation that read the manga as they were published, bought the monthly magazine Nakayoshi, and watched the anime. I still have a number of those items, including the manga books, Nakayoshi Children’s magazines(newspaper) from that time, several illustrated books, and the Japanese and Italian versions of The Final Story. I also have several other books containing interviews with Nagita and Igarashi.
There are admirers of Ms.Nagita in Japan for whom The Final Story is her definitive work. Some of these admirers consider the setting of The Final Story to be the only correct one and wonder, ‘In the story, who is “that person”?’
The Candy Candy manga we’ve come to love was a huge hit in the 1970s, and after the 2010 court case to settle the copyright dispute, Ms.Nagita published her novel The Final Story.
The Final Story wasn’t a massive hit; but before it, there was the Candy Candy manga, which was.
So The Final Story and Ms.Nagita aren’t the only keys to Candy Candy.
Also, we mustn’t forget that Candy Candy is a fictional story. Ms.Nagita was loath to divulge the name of ‘that person’ because she wanted each fan to be able to see their own ‘that person’ beloved of Candy in their mind’s eye. Fans can decide for themselves whether Candy lives in Terry’s or Albert’s house.
Ms.Nagita is a wise woman. She knows that she wouldn’t be doing the fans a favour if she, the author of the original story, were now to reveal the identity of ‘that person’ with whom Candy is in love.
So I feel there’s no need for fans to fight with each other or to point to some of Ms.Nagita’s words or something written somewhere else and insist on who ‘that person’ is as if it’s beyond doubt. It’s also not my intention to start a heated battle between fans.
What I urge international fans to do is to read the Candy Candy manga.
If you do, you’ll understand what lies behind Ms.Nagita’s writing The Final Story. If you understand that, you’ll see there’s no need for fans to fight so much over who ‘that person’ is, and you’ll love Candy Candy even more.
The manga Terry is the best. Of course, for me, ‘that person’ with whom Candy lives in England is Terry.
海外のキャンディキャンディファンの方からメールをいただくので、今回私の思いを英文にしました💕(テリィにちなんで？イギリス英語で書いたつもりです🤣)
にほんブログ村
