The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1986 TV series) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1986 TV series) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, known in Japan as , is a Japanese anime television series adaptation based on four of the original Oz books by L. Frank Baum. In Japan, the series aired on TV Tokyo from 1986 to 1987. It consists of 52 episodes, which explain other parts of the Oz stories, including the events that happened after Dorothy returned home. In 1987, HBO purchased the rights to the series and dubbed it into English. Production for the English version was done by the Canadian studio Cookie Jar Group (known
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was exposed to many people, so the inspiration for the story could have been taken from many different aspects of his life. In the introduction to the story, Baum writes that "it aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out." This is one of the explanations that he gives for the inspiration for "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". Baum, a former salesman of china, wrote in chapter 20 about china that had sprung to life. The original illustrator of the novel, W. W. Denslow, could