This one works on you slowly, the way a long walk does. It is Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop with the debt collectors at the door, and the show never lets you forget that the adult in the story is the one who broke it: Mr. Trent owes money he cannot repay, so a child packs up her life and leaves London on foot. Twenty-six episodes of roads, weather, strangers and small kindnesses, and almost nothing that could be called spectacle. What the anime adds is a destination Dickens never gave her, a mother somewhere out in Great Britain, and that thin thread of hope is the only thing keeping either of them upright. If you grew up on the wandering-child shows of this era, you already know the feeling: the grandfather leaning on Nell, and Nell letting him.

Nell is a young girl who lives in London with her grandfather, Mr Trent, who runs a shop there. When he cannot repay money he borrowed, the two of them have to run away together. They decide to look for Nell's mother, who lives somewhere in Great Britain. The story is drawn from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens, and this 26-episode adventure series from 1979 follows their wandering search.