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Heidi, Girl of the Alps (アルプスの少女ハイジ, Arupusu no Shōjo Haiji) is a 1974 anime series by Zuiyo Enterprises based on the Swiss 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 luminaries, 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 one of several World Masterpiece Theater titles produced around the "classical children's literature period" (1974–1997), based on classic tales from the Western world. The animation studio responsible for Heidi, Zuiyo Enterprises, 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 movie edit of the TV series, released in March 1979, was engineered completely by Zuiyo, with no additional involvement from Nippon Animation, Takahata or Miyazaki.