Heidi, Girl of the alps

This Saturday, I thought I’d turn the clock back to a time 15 years ago. Every Saturday and Sunday, I used to tune into Cartoon Network to watch “Heidi” between 1pm-2pm. Heidi marked a very special memory for me. Heidi told the story of a little girl who found so much joy in the simple things – a green meadow, a breath of fresh air, and the beauty of nature. To this day, I love walking on grass, do my best to appreciate nature and enjoy the breath of fresh air. Heidi has a lot to do with all of this and many other quirks revolving nature. Her journey taught me not to take the smell of fresh air for granted.

I’ve searched online for the English version of the show many times since. As I was did this again a few days ago, I stumbled on the Wikipedia page of the show. While I knew it was a dubbed version of a Japanese anime cartoon, I learnt 2 interesting things. First, Heidi is touted as one of the major reasons for Japanese tourists visiting the Swiss alps. The second was an interesting snippet –

The entire series has been re-dubbed into English on two separate occasions — first in the late 1970s, when the series was shown in the Philippines, and again in 2001 for broadcast in India on Cartoon Network. Although this dub was done by the animation studio for airing in India, they never included the English audio on subsequent DVD releases. Interestingly, none of the DVD releases around the world have English subtitles on them either.

For some reason, the English version seems to be lost. In my searches, I stumbled on many others who’d seen the show on Cartoon Network asking about the show. I found the Japanese version with the English subtitles – it is definitely not the same. The dub was fantastic and Heidi’s voice still strikes a chord somewhere deep inside.

As I write this, I hope the English version will be found at some point. It was a beautiful show and is one I hope kids all over the world will get to enjoy and learn from. I certainly did.

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