When it comes to providing international animated content for children and family audiences, the BBC has just made a big step towards fostering an early appreciation in anime among its youngest viewers.
In a recent press release posted to Anime News Network, the BBC has announced that it has acquired the rights to the CGI-animated Studio Ghibli co-production Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter for showing on its preschool-focused children’s network CBeebies.
Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter follows the titular character Ronja, who goes on a variety of episodic adventures inspired by a fanciful reading of Scandinavian folklore, inspired by the 1981 fantasy novella by Swedish author Astrid Lindgred. Directed by Ghibli legend Goro Miyazaki (son of studio co-founder and director Hayao Miyazaki), Ronja the Robber’s Daughter was both Studio Ghibli’s first long-form foray into serialized animation and an early attempt to adopt CGI animation.
The series set the stage for Ghibli’s first CGI feature Earwig and the Witch in 2020, also directed by Goro, which received praise for its offbeat humor as well as hesitation regarding Ghibli’s movement towards CGI away from the hand-drawn feel of its earlier productions.
Originally produced in 2014 as a co-production between Studio Ghibli and Polygon Pictures, the cel-shaded CGI anime series consists of 26 episodes, winning an Emmy for Best Children’s Animation for its English-language dub in 2016. In the United States and Canada, the series was available on Amazon Prime Video by GKIDS and Shout Factory for a time, although currently it’s available on pay-per-view platforms like Vudu and Google Play.
The BBC’s acquisition of Ronja for CBeebies is also inclusive of its Gaelic-language service, BBC Alba. A BBC Alba showing of Ronja would also be in line with that division’s previous goals of showing high-end animated content in the less-common Gaelic language, which has already been seen in those Gaelic-dubbed broadcasts of films like the Irish animated feature Song of the Sea. Whether providing imaginative stories for its youngest audiences or providing high-end animated content accessible in a less common language, this news shows that the BBC continues to show interest in international animation and anime.