Anpanman: Apple Boy and Everyone's Hope

Yanase left a sketch about apple farmers

Takashi Yanase died of heart failure in Tokyo on October 13, 2013. He was 94. The next Anpanman theatrical film still had a July 5, 2014 date. latestnetflix.com's read is that On February 6, what would have been his 95th birthday, staff and cast held a Thank You event and confirmed the picture would open.NTV producer Toshio Nakatani also said the television series would continue.,

They showed a message and a sketch Yanase had written in September. He said a newspaper series had moved him. Villagers had shifted to stock farming. Then the Great East Japan Earthquake and the nuclear accident scattered them from a contaminated home. They were trying to rebuild. "I made nostalgia and the reconstruction of a homeland as the themes of this new film," he wrote. He chose an apple because the image is beautiful and because northeastern Japan has many apple farmers. Apple Boy, Ringo Boya, comes back to restore a poisoned apple village.

That is the movie Netflix files as Anpanman: Apple Boy and Everyone's Hope. Jun Kawagoe directed. Shoji Yonemura wrote the screenplay. TMS Entertainment and the Anpanman Project produced it. Tokyo Theatres distributed it. One listing puts the runtime at 45 minutes. Another puts it at 48. TMS bills it as the 26th theatrical entry. Anime News Network later called it the first Anpanman film after Yanase's death. Wikipedia records the same dedication.,,

Keiko Toda stayed as Anpanman, the role she has held since 1988. After Yanase died, she told reporters the country had lost a guiding post. Ryusei Nakao stayed as Baikinman. The guest booking is Mao Inoue as Apple Boy. TMS lists her as a voice guest. Comedy performer Keisuke Okada of Masuda Okada voiced the witch Majora. Inoue was already a live-action name. Putting her in a short kids picture is how you get parents who do not otherwise buy Anpanman tickets. The old Rotten Tomatoes stub treated that credit dump as the whole story.,,

The English-language afterlife is the second trail. In April 2021, Tubi said it would stream ten Anpanman films with English and Latin Spanish dubs in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico. Apple Boy and Everyone's Hope was the first title on the service. Ghia Burns voiced Anpanman in English. Jason Michael Kesser voiced Baikinman. Macias Group handled that pass. Anime News Network later noted the same film as the door into a 2021 catalog dump.

A later English mix recorded at Igloo Music reached Netflix with new songs. Mary Kate Wiles is Apple Boy in that version. Ell took Anpanman. None of that was on the 2014 Japanese poster. Wikipedia also logs an opening weekend of 71.5 million yen, citing Film Business Asia. Do not confuse that figure with a worldwide haul. The production gossip that actually exists is Yanase's last written theme, Inoue's guest credit, and a streaming catalog that used this short as the first English door.,