Scans_Daily

Growing up in rural Minnesota in the 1960s, and not being one bit athletic, my entertainment options were...limited. So I learned to love reading old books and magazines, whatever comic books happened to be at a garage sale, and when our already ancient TV was actually working, whatever station the reception could bring in.

I don't really remember most of the early morning cartoons of the time--stuff like Johnny Quest was by far the exception to the general dismalness of children's TV animation. But I remember being blown away by the few episodes I managed to catch of a very unusual show.



It had a girl (dressed as a boy) as the hero! Heck, it had a girl dressing as a boy. And people died! Things being what they were, I never saw more than a handful of episodes, and nothing of the ending (but then most US cartoon series of the time didn't have endings as such either.)

It was not until many years later when I joined anime fandom that I discovered the true nature of what I had been watching, and the rest of the story.

For reference: The basic outline of the premise goes as follows. Tink, a mischievous young angel, causes a soul about to be born to have two "hearts", a male and a female heart. He's exiled from Heaven until he can retrieve the "wrong" heart from the child.

Meanwhile, in the fairytale kingdom of Silverland, a child is born to the queen. It's biologically female, but due to circumstances that differ between versions, the public is told that Prince Sapphire is a boy. Duke Duralumin, whose son by a relative of the king would otherwise be in line for the throne, is suspicious but can prove nothing.

Skip ahead fifteen years, and Tink is finally able to trace his target to Silverland, while Duke Duralumin and his lackey step up their attempts to prove Sapphire's a girl and thus ineligible to rule.

While the anime has never been legally put out on DVD in the US, there is now a lovely two-volume set of the manga available in English.

( Sadly, being in a thick book makes the scanning process less successful. )

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