Heidi, Girl of the Alps

Heidi, Girl of the Alps (Japanese: アルプスの少女ハイジ, Hepburn: Arupusu no Shōjo Haiji) is an anime television series produced by Zuiyo Eizo and is based on the novel Heidi's Years of Wandering and Learning by Johanna Spyri (1880). It was directed by Isao Takahata and features contributions by numerous other anime filmmakers, including Yoichi Kotabe (character design, animation director), Toyoo Ashida (co-character design, animation director), Yoshiyuki Tomino (storyboard, screenplay), and Hayao Miyazaki (scene design, layout, screenplay).

Heidi is the 6th and final entry in Calpis Comic Theater, a precursor of the World Masterpiece Theater series, based on classic tales from the Western world. The animation studio responsible for Heidi, Zuiyo Enterprise, would split in 1975 into Nippon Animation Company, Ltd. (which employed the anime's production staff and continued with the World Masterpiece Theater franchise) and Zuiyo Company, Ltd., which retained the rights (and debt) to the Heidi TV series. The feature-length film edit of the TV series, released in March 1979, was engineered completely by Zuiyo, with no additional involvement from Nippon Animation, Takahata or Miyazaki. Zuiyo also re-edited the series in two OVA released in 1996.