Katri, Girl of the Meadows (牧場の少女カトリ, Makiba no Shōjo Katori) is an anime series based on the Finnish novel Paimen, piika ja emäntä (Shepherdess, Servant Girl and Hostess) by Auni Nuolivaara. The series was broadcast originally in Japan in 1984 as part of the children's anthology series World Masterpiece Theater, also known simply as "Meisaku" from Nippon Animation. The anthology had before and after produced a great variety of animated series based on different children's novels from around the world; among them were My Annette: Story of the Alps (1983) and Little Princess Sara (1985). In Europe, where World Masterpiece Theater series have found huge success, Katri, Girl of the Meadows made its way to different countries, including Spain, Italy, France, Netherlands, Germany, Iran and the Arabic-speaking world. Although it takes place there, the series has never been published or broadcast in Finland, and few Finns have ever heard of it.
The first and last episodes were broadcast English dubbed in the UK on Channel 4 as Little Girl on the Farm and Little Girl goes to School as part of 1987's Japanese Autumn season.
Contents
Plot
Set in Finland, the plot starts in 1911 when little Katri's mother leaves for Germany to work, leaving her daughter with her grandparents. At the beginning of the First World War in 1914, with Finland still under Russian rule, the inhabitants of these lands have had little or no news from the outside, and no one knows if Katri will see her mother again, whose money meanwhile stops arriving to the family. To make matters worse, things on Katri's grandparents' farm are not going well; the harvest had been a small one, their only cow had been killed by a bear and the family faces great monetary problems.