Maya the Bee (TV series)
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Maya the Bee (みつばちマーヤの冒険, Mitsubachi Maaya no Boken or The Adventures of Maya the Honeybee) is an anime television series produced by Nippon Animation Company in Japan. The series consisted of 55 episodes and was originally telecast across Japan from April 1975 to April 1976 on the TV Asahi network (formerly NET). Based on the classic children's book by Waldemar Bonsels, the anime series has been rebroadcast numerous times in various different countries and languages since its premiere.
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[edit] Story
The story centers on Maya, an inquisitive, adventurous and somewhat flighty young honeybee, and her adventures in the forest around her. Sent by the Queen Bee to gather pollen for her hive, Maya proves herself so good at it that she exhausts the entire pollen supply around the hive and is sent in search of more. Along the way, the good-natured young bee makes many new friends and has many adventures with other insects and other forest creatures.
Maya's constant companion is a boy honeybee, Willi (a new character in the anime not present in the original novel), who is lazier than Maya and also something of a coward but still has a good heart. Maya and Willi are mentored by Flip (also known as Phillip in other languages), a wise, top-hatted grasshopper. Among Maya's other companions are Miss Cassandra, her teacher; Sidney the centipede; Alexander the wise, bespectacled mouse; Dr. Mulberry the snail; Kurt the dungbeetle; and Grimelda the spider.
[edit] International Distribution
An English-dubbed version of the series, produced by Saban Entertainment, was broadcast from 1990 to 1992 in the United States on the children's television channel Nickelodeon. Maya the Bee aired alongside other juvenile-targeted anime such as Adventures of the Little Koala, Noozles and The Littl' Bits as part of Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. block of programming for very young children.
In addition, the series enjoyed great popularity in Spanish in Latin America as La Abeja Maya, and in Italian as L'ape Maia. The series has also been released in Dutch (Maja de Bij), Finnish (Maija Mehiläinen), French (Maya l'Abeille), Polish (Pszczolka Maja), Bulgarian (Пчеличката Мая) and Arabic, among other languages.
Perhaps its greatest success has been in German-speaking territories; the German version, Die Biene Maja, has been a fixture on German television since its premiere in 1976. In Germany, Maya/Maja is among the five most recognized characters by children. A comic strip based on the TV series has been produced by the German editor Bastei Verlag and translated/published in lots of countries worldwide. It has been drawn alternately by the Studio Ortega (Barcelona) and the Atelier Roche (Munich), which also realized from 1976 amounts of illustrations for books and diverse merchandising items.
A second Maya the Bee anime, Shin Mitsubachi Maaya no Boken (The New Adventures of Maya the Honeybee), was made in 1979 by Nippon Animation with the animation studio Wako Production, using the same character designs and some of the same staff of the original series. The second series, which lasted for 52 episodes, did not premiere in Japan until October 1982, on TV Osaka, and aired through September 1983. Ten episodes from this series were added to the 55 episodes from the original for the U.S. broadcast run, bringing the total of Maya episodes aired on Nickelodeon in the U.S. to 65.
[edit] Staff
(Source: Anime News Network, The Anime Encyclopedia by Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy)
- Production: Zuiyo Eizo then Nippon Animation
- Series Directors: Hiroshi Saito, Mitsuo Kaminashi, Seiji Endo
- Script: Hikaru Sasa, Hitoshi Kanazawa
- Screenplay: Fumi Takahashi
- Character Designs: Susumu Shiraume
- Animation Directors: Susumu Shiraume, Takao Ogawa, Hayao Nobe
- Sound: Yasuhiro Koyama
- Theme Songs (performed by Cheetah and the Honeybee Choir, words and music by Seizo Ise):
- OP - Mitsubachi Maaya no Boken ("The Adventures of Maya the Honeybee")
- ED - Oyasumi Maaya ("Good Night, Maya")
[edit] Cast
- Maya: Michiko Nomura (Japanese), Pauline Little (English)
- Willi: Masako Nozawa (Japanese), Richard Dumont (English)
- Flip (Phillip): Ichiro Nagai (Japanese), A.J. Henderson (English)
- Miss Kassandra: Jane Woods (English)
- Grimelda: Anna MacCormack (English)
