Review of the Oh My Anne Mobile Game

Last month, I received a notification that the "Oh My Anne" mobile game was available to download for iOS, and I decided to check it out and review the game.

This new mobile app was announced back in December 2022. The game is based on L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. After the game's soft launch, it was released more widely this spring.

You can view the lovely "Oh My Anne" trailer here:

The game's trailer begins with Anne looking for her daughter Rilla Blythe. Rilla is holding a dandelion puffball. When Anne asks Rilla what she is doing, Rilla uses sign language to explain that she is making a wish to the "dandelion fairy" to be less of a burden to her mother. Anne is shocked at Rilla's fears and reassures Rilla that she is not a burden. Anne explains that when she was young, she was just like Rilla and that the unconditional love she received at Green Gables changed her life. Rilla asks to hear more about the story of Green Gables. Anne tells her to make a wish to the dandelion fairy to hear the story.



Anne counts to three and Rilla makes her wish and blows. A dandelion seed flies through the air and across time to the door of Green Gables where a young Anne Shirley turns around.



The mobile game begins with this same sweet trailer. I found it touching and surprising that Rilla was deaf and had fears that she was a burden to Anne considering that Rilla was not deaf in L.M. Montgomery's stories.

After the trailer, you begin the gameplay. Each day when you log in to the game, you receive a reward for your attendance.



In episode 1, Anne encounters Green Gables with Matthew.



According to the game's storyline, Marilla was injured when she fell off her rocking chair, so Green Gables is quite dusty. Anne aims to help by cleaning and re-decorating Green Gables with new furniture. She's just entered the house and hasn't even met Marilla yet, so her behavior is quite forward and a bit odd.



You can play various matching games to earn coins and dandelion fairy points. These coins and points allow you to redecorate and move forward in the gameplay.



In this matching game, Anne Shirley is being chased by an angry bee.



The game is free-to-play, but there are additional locked features and rewards for players who purchase in-game virtual goods for microtransactions with real money. These features include special photos and dresses for Anne.



The dialogue for the game is a bit amusing. At times, Anne is even more dramatic in the game than in L.M. Montgomery's stories.



Overall, the game is good for passing time if you enjoy matching puzzle games and decorating games. The animation scenes are playful, and Anne is very expressive. I'm not quite sure where the storyline is going as Anne discovers more about Green Gables and Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. I think younger players might find the game more enjoyable than older ones (like me).

I hope that the animators who created the trailer will make an animated Anne of Green Gables film in the future. I was intrigued at the relationship between Anne and Rilla, the fact that Rilla was deaf, and the use of sign language in the trailer. I'd love to see how they would continue Anne and Rilla's storyline in a novel way.

Have you played the "Oh My Anne" mobile game? What did you think of it?

Spring Song by L. M. Montgomery

Spring Song
by L.M. Montgomery

O gypsy winds that pipe and sing
In budding boughs of beech,
I know I hear the laugh of spring
In all your silver speech.

O little mists that hide and curl
In hollows wild and green,
I know you will come in gauze and pearl
To wait upon your queen.

O little seed of mellow earth
Where rain and sunshine kiss,
I know the quivering joy of birth
Throbs in your chrysalis.

O Hope, you blossom on my way
Like violet from the clod,
And Love makes rosy all the grey
When spring comes back from God.

Poem published in Verse and Reverse by Members of the Toronto Women's Press Club (1922).

Image Credit:
Illustration of Violets by Louis-Aimé Martin in Nouveau langage des fleurs, ou, Parterre de flore : contenant le symbole et le langage des fleurs, leur histoire et leur origine mythologique, ainsi que les plus jolis vers composés a ce sujet (1832). From Biodiversity Heritage Library. Public Domain.

Created February 19, 2002. Re-posted online March 21, 2021. Last updated October 8, 2022.
© worldofanneshirley.com

Looking for Anne (2009)

Looking for Anne (2009) is a film that tells an original story that was inspired by L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. The contemporary tale follows the journey of Anri, a seventeen-year-old Japanese woman, who visits Prince Edward Island for three weeks. Anri arrives in Canada on a personal quest to search for her recently deceased grandmother's first love. The man was a Canadian soldier that her grandmother met at the end of World War II, and he gave her a copy of Anne of Green Gables. Beyond this, all Anri knows is that the man lived near a lighthouse.

The press kit for the film describes it as follows:

"Looking for Anne" presents an entirely original story inspired by the book "Anne of Green Gables" of the Canadian writer, Lucy Maud Montgomery. It tells how this single book, and the friendships that build around it, can change the life of people beyond time and space...

Looking for Anne starred Honoka Ishibashi as Anri and was directed by Takako Miyahira. The film's cast also included Daniel Pilon, Rosanna Zanbon, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Johnny Sa, Mahiru Konno, Ai Takabe and Tarek Ghader. The film is 105 minutes in length, and it was produced by Zuno Films and was distributed by Filmoption International Inc.

Director Takako Miyahira first read Anne of Green Gables as an adult. In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Miyahira states, "The first time I read the book, I thought, Why did I miss this precious book? I should have read it earlier!" She felt compelled to make a film about the power of the Anne of Green Gables. Miyahira goes on to say, "Now in the world, people are confused with so many values about happiness or aiming for success. Anne of Green Gables teaches how to find happiness,"

In 2009, Looking for Anne received awards for Best Film and Best Director at the Singapore Asian First Film Festival. It had a wide theatrical run in Japan.


References:
CBC News. (2009, December 7). Anne film wins at Asian festival. Retrieved from: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/anne-film-wins-at-asian-festival-1.817665

Dixon, Guy. (2010, December 1). Anne of Green Gables' eternal life in Japan. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved from: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/anne-of-green-gables-eternal-life-in-japan/article1316455/

Looking for Anne Press Kit (2009). Retrieved from: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5bb117fe8dfc8ced93a929ee/t/5c9106a8eb39312d6e39b65d/1553008311339/Looking+for+Anne+-+Press+Kit+ENG.pdf

Image credit:
Official film poster for Looking for Anne © Filmoption International Inc.

Official Websites:
Looking for Anne (Filmoption International Inc.)
Looking for Anne Trailer

Created April 19, 2009. Last updated April 26, 2024.
© worldofanneshirley.com

Biography of L.M. Montgomery

Lucy Maud (L.M.) Montgomery was born in Clifton, Prince Edward Island, Canada on November 30, 1874. During her lifetime, she wrote 22 novels and short story collections, a volume of poetry, a book on courageous women (with Marian Keith and M.B. McKinley), an autobiography, a life's worth of journals (of 5,000 pages), 450 poems, and over 500 short stories. Of these literary contributions, she is best known for giving Canadians (and the world) a beloved literary heroine named Anne of Green Gables, an imaginative, short-tempered, loving, red-headed orphan in search of a home.

L.M. Montgomery's mother died in her early youth when she was just 21 months old, and her father left her in the care of her stern maternal grandparents. Montgomery's refuge from loneliness was in her imagination, much like many of the heroines she would later create. She was a storyteller from her early youth. In her autobiography, The Alpine Path, Montgomery writes:

"I cannot remember the time when I was not writing, or when I did not mean to be an author. To write has always been my central purpose around which every effort and hope and ambition of my life has grouped itself."

In 1889, L.M. Montgomery lived for a short time with her father in Alberta, Canada. During her stay there, Montgomery published her first poem in a local newspaper at the age of 15. Montgomery soon returned to Prince Edward Island to finish her schooling. After completing college, she worked briefly as a journalist, and then she began to teach. In spite of having a tumultuous love life during this period, Montgomery's writing never quelled. She published many short stories and poems during this time.

After her grandfather's death in 1898, L.M. Montgomery returned home to live with her grandmother. In 1902, she began a lifelong correspondence with Ephraim Weber, a man with literary ambitions. In 1903, she began writing to a second pen-pal, George Boyd Macmillan of Scotland.

In 1906, L.M. Montgomery became engaged to Ewen MacDonald, who was studying to be a minister. Montgomery was unable to leave her grandmother, so their engagement was extended until her grandmother's death in 1911. During this period, Montgomery began work on Anne of Green Gables, which was published in 1908 to popular acclaim. A sequel was demanded immediately, and Montgomery wrote Anne of Avonlea.

In 1909, L.M. Montgomery began work on what she considered her favorite book, The Story Girl. It was published in 1911. That same year, Montgomery and MacDonald finally married. The couple honeymooned in England and Scotland, and when they returned to Canada, it was not to P.E.I., but to Leaskdale, Ontario. Ewen had accepted a position there as a minister. Although Montgomery now had new responsibilities as a minister's wife, she was determined to continue her writing.

L.M. Montgomery was strained by World War I and an increasingly bad relationship with her first publisher, which resulted in a lengthy legal battle. Both she and her husband faced depression. In spite of all this, Montgomery continued her daily writing, producing further stories on Anne as well as many others, including the Emily and Pat series and The Blue Castle. By the late 1930s, Montgomery's personal troubles, illness, and depression overwhelmed her. Even her journal writing failed to console her, and the advent of World War II was a further blow to her depressed spirits. She died on April 24, 1942, after months of not writing to her pen-friends or in her journals. L.M. Montgomery was buried in Cavendish, P.E.I.

During her lifetime, L.M. Montgomery received a number of international awards for her writing. She was honored as a Fellow of the British Royal Society of Arts (1923), a Companion of the Order of the British Empire, and a member of the Literary and Artistic Institute of France (1935). Today, Montgomery's legacy lives on in the expanding critical re-evaluations of her works, in the translations of her books to scores of languages, in the adaptations of her stories for film, television, and stage, and in the sustained appeal of her stories worldwide.


References for Biography:
Montgomery, L.M. The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career. Markham: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1997.

Parry, Caroline. "L. M. Montgomery: A Biography." in Anne of the Island. Montgomery, L. M. New York: Bantam Books, 1998.

Waterston, Elizabeth. "Lucy Maud Montgomery: 1874–1942." L. M. Montgomery: An Assessment. Ed. John Robert Sorfleet. Guelph: Canadian Children's Press, 1976. 9–28.

Image Credit:
Photograph of L.M. Montgomery from the cover of her autobiography The Alpine Path republished by Fitzhenry & Whiteside in 1997.

Created July 16, 1999. Last updated April 18, 2024.
© worldofanneshirley.com