Anpanman: Apple Boy and Everyone's Hope Review

 

Tubi has finally started streaming Anpanman with the movie Apple Boy and Everyone's Hope (very special thanks to Twitter user @VedsaGolfer for bringing this to my attention). I've been waiting for an official North American English release of the franchise in some form for over 10 years, so I was pretty excited to watch the movie. 

The plot is basically about Anpanman and his friends helping the guest star character Apple Boy find his apple balloon and a magical apple seed so that the latter can get back to his homeland and help restore it after the evil Witchteria infects it with her dark magic. Along the way, Apple Boy learns the importance of teamwork, friendship, and courage through Anpanman and his friends.

I find the movie's overall presentation very enjoyable. The plot is cheerful and warm, and the animation is incredible. The music is okay; not one of my favorites, but it gets the job done. 

The English dub is pretty good. The voice actors did a good job of capturing the characters' personalities. Hearing Ghia Burns and Jason Kesser's takes on Anpanman and Baikinman respectively put a smile on my face. There is a couple of issues I have with the dub. The voice acting sounds a little bit stilted, especially with the pronunciation of various Japanese-sounding names. The audio also sounds a little bit echoey, which I found distracting. However, I'm just glad to finally hear the characters talking in English. Thankfully, there are proper dub credits, which are showcased after the Japanese credits. 

Since Anpanman is aimed at very little kids, as well as the Americanization of many North American English dubs of kids anime, I assumed that the dub was going to change most (if not all) of the original Japanese names. Surprisingly, most of them were retained. Only a few were changed, such as Shokupanman to Bread Head Man, Dokin-chan to Dokeen, and Horrorman shortened to Horror. 

Overall, Anpanman: Apple Boy and Everyone's Hope is pretty good, and I'm planning on watching the other 9 movies when those drop on Tubi. I really hope these movies succeed so that we could get more Anpanman content in English, such as the long-running TV series.