YMMV / Candy♡Candy

• Adaptation Displacement: Many didn't know Candy♡Candy was originally a series of novels.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Just how much does Eliza actually believe her own spiel about how Candy creates trouble wherever she goes and was responsible for Anthony's death and Terry leaving for America? Has she actually convinced herself that Candy is the true Problem Child and that everything bad that befalls her is her fault rather than Eliza's own? Or is she faking her grief over such events while really only fixated on tormenting Candy to make her life miserable For the Evulz and is just making an excuse for why she does so to say in front of others? She doesn't end up looking good either way, but it's left ambiguous enough that it's hard to determine if she has a legitimate mental illness/personality disorder or if she's just a Jerkass for no real reason. Episode 45 and Episode 50 in particular gives strong support to the former interpretation, but Eliza's appearances since then make the latter interpretation look more likely.
  • Many allege that Archie only dated Annie out of pity, since from day one he never showed any interest in her and was smitten with Candy instead. Volume 2 of Candy Candy: The Final Story seems to support this interpretation.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • The Regan family, mainly Neil and Eliza and their Hate Sink status. Some viewers find them to be Love to Hate characters and good antagonists for the series while others just flat out despise them in a way they can't even have fun with, as they feel like their perpetually two-dimensional portrayal and constant cruel bullying of Candy drags the show down. And while no one can deny that they're unlikable characters, a few might find them almost Unintentionally Sympathetic due to being the products of a spoiling, enabling upbringing by their mother yet get positioned as being evil within the story despite being little more than bratty children who, unless pushed to doing worse, usually resort to simple cruel pranks.
  • Susanna Marlowe, who many fans hate for coming between the Candy/Terry romance. On the other hand, many fans think she is a respectable character in her own right as she didn't try to come between them on purpose and was the victim of a pushy Stage Mom.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Neil frames Candy for something she didn't do, and as a result she gets sent to Mexico.
• Broken Base: When Candy Candy: The Final Story was released in Latin America, many Latino fans did NOT like it because of the ambiguous ending, preferring that it wrap up the plot threads left open in the anime (such as Terry's disappearance). Others thought it was a solid ending, and the debate of whether it's a satisfying conclusion or not has long plagued the internet.
• Common Knowledge: Many people who have never thoroughly seen the show (or hear about it from word of mouth) think it's about Candy "obsessing over boys" and endless Love Triangle drama.
• Designated Hero: Candy when she agrees to hide Charles. While it's understandable why she sympathized with him (he had mental issues), that doesn't change the fact that he committed identity fraud and beat up his own mother. Not to mention, since she aided him she can be legally punished by the U.S. penal system for accessory. We're also supposed to hate Eliza for calling the cops on him, but instead she comes off as the Only Sane Woman.
• Die for Our Ship: Susanna Marlowe is clingy, but she still doesn't deserve half the utter shit that fandom throws at her. Specially considering that she saved Terry's life and lost her leg and her acting career for it and that she actually told Terry to go after Candy a while after this. It was Terry who chose to stay by Susanna's side, and yet no one remembers it while blaming and slutshaming Susanna. And that when Terry was pressured into marrying Susanna, this came from Susanna's mother and not from Susanna herself.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Lady!!, which is often accused of plagiarising Candy Candy. However, Lady takes a different turn with the plot threads and also has a more serious tone. Some fans allege Lady is a better version of Candy Candy, since it lacks many of the criticsms (such as the extended love triangle and the terrible ending), as well as the drama of the Russells losing their wealth. Not helping matters is that in many parts of the world, Lady was introduced first (mainly the Middle East and Italy), leading them to accuse Candy of being the ripoff.
  • Even worse, in South Korea when the Lady!! movie was released, the Korean dub studio realized how similar it was to Candy♡Candy, and decided to change the name of the movie to Lady Candy (캔디레디). They also changed protagonist Lynn's name to Candy, believing that it would help the series sell more (See here). This led to many Koreans confusing Lady as part of Candy.
  • Wanna make things even more confusing? One of the reasons Nagita and Igarashi had a legal fight was because Igarashi tried to publish merchandise under the name Lady Lady!
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • The Italian fans hated the Bittersweet Ending so much that they forced the Italian editors to make them a sort-of Gecko Ending where Candy and Terry got together again.
  • And the French broadcasters just didn't want Anthony to die. The French dub said that he "fell from his horse and lost the use of his legs". And disappeared. Two of the episodes were edited later to fix the problem, but elements of the fake story remained in some other episodes.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Latin American fans take to calling Candy "Tarzán pecosa" (Freckled Tarzan).
  • Look up any YouTube clip of Susanna Marlowe. You'll find Spanish-speaking fans calling her "Gusana Marlowe" ("Gusana" is Spanish for "worm")
• Friendly Fandoms: Despite the Fandom Rivalry between the two series, many fans of Candy♡Candy also adore Lady!! because of their similarites and dub Candy it's "progenitor". Even their respective authors, Keiko Nagita and Yōko Hanabusa, are friends and co-wrote a manga together, Premier Muguet.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Has it's own page.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Many fans wanted Susanna to be killed off for coming between Candy/Terry. Candy Candy: The Final Story reveals that she actually did die (of illness), as her obituary is mentioned in a newspaper Candy reads.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Terry. His issues are pretty severe and understandable, but he brings a lot of misery on himself. And sometimes he makes Candy suffer a lot, too.
  • Eliza and Neil had their moments of this early on, being the products of a toxic, spoiling, and enabling upbringing by their mother that turned them into bratty children with no understanding of how to socialize with anyone outside their class (for Eliza it's most evident during the St. Paul Boarding School arc), but this ultimately fizzled out in favor of keeping them straight-up Jerkasses instead. Neil seemed to be becoming one again when he discovered he had feelings for Candy, but NOPE, he's still a raging asshole.
  • Louisa as well. One can't help but feel for her in Episode 50 when she's recalled from school and breaks down in sobs, feeling like she was unable to become a true lady like she felt pressured to become.
• Mainstream Obscurity: One of the most game-changing shojos of all time, yet its lack of a proper English dub and old age has resulted in this. Nowadays it takes word of mouth for its popularity to spread.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Give my daughter's leg back!"^ExplanationSusanna Marlowe's mom says this after she breaks her leg. Many people found this line hilarious because of how absurd it sounded
  • In Latin America/Mexico, there's a common saying "Candy sufría más que cualquier heroína de telenovela mexicana" (Candy suffers more than lead heroines in Mexican telenovelas) because of how much endless melodrama there is.
  • "CELOS"
• Moe: One of the earliest examples of this trope. Candy combines her sweetness with Heartwarming Orphan and The Pollyanna.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Neil's Scarpia Ultimatum to Candy; and just as we were led to think there might be some hope for him. And specially considering that after said ultimatum, he insists that he loves Candy more than anything. Uhm, Neil, things don't work that way.
  • Eliza has several moments of dog kicking, but her worst actions are framing Candy and Terry to get Candy expelled from St. Paul School (though Candy and Terry's gullibility did them no favors there), threatening to send a hospital bill she's fined Candy with to Pony's Home (where she knows the people there aren't wealthy enough) should Candy not get enough money to pay the fine in time, and scheming with her mother Ruth to get Candy's reputation smeared because after she takes the amnesiac Albert into her household. Geez, what a spoiled little bitch.
  • Ruth also crosses the line by getting the hospital Candy works at to fire her or she'll have their funding cut.
• Periphery Demographic: A girls show that Latin American boys were more than willing to watch.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: The cat fights, scuffles and screaming matches between Candy/Terry and Candy/Albert shippers subsist to this very day.
• Squick:
  • A friend of Candy's is pushed by his father to get married at 17. That's odd enough but not AS terrible... until you see that the "bride" is a girl who is very clearly under 10. Candy says it's strange, the little girl was shown to be uncomfortable, and the father ended up admitting it's not right.
  • It may also be a case of Artistic License – History - even with the Values Dissonance about rich people marrying younger than the standard, it's still too ridiculously young.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Anthony's death.
  • Stear's death
  • "Separation on a snowy day" (A.K.A the episode that definitely sinks the relationship between Candy and Terry) is this for many viewers. It's so well done that even those who don't ship Candy x Terry are moved.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring:
  • More than one watcher/reader ended up getting tired of all the relentless, neverending, borderline ridiculous melodrama surrounding Candy's life and ended up dropping the series. One of the biggest examples of this is when after pages and pages of abuse, we see Neil potentially reforming. Until nope! He's a bastard all along.
  • Additionally, there's also the fact that Eliza never changes over the course of the anime and continues being an over-the-top Hate Sink, with Candy always the more gullible to fall for her schemes. Whereas in the novel Eliza eventually gets bored of the schtick and fades out of Candy's life.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Charlie Sanders in episodes 81 and 82. We're meant to feel for him and view him as a Jerkass Woobie, but the fact that he's hiding from the law and gets Candy to harbor him in his hospital room thanks to having faked being Terry, his constant belligerence, his willingness to want to commit murder (even if his targets to be would be Asshole Victims), and the reveal that he physically assaulted his own mother before leaving her do a lot to negate any sympathy viewers could feel for him.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Candy White Ardley and her best friend Annie Brighton are being mocked for being adopted children. To a modern Western audience this would come off as odd at best and downright cruel at worst. However, when you consider the time period of the show and the fact that it comes from Japan, where adoption, even now, is not looked on favorably by some, the ridicule becomes more understandable.
  • Neil's Villainous Crush on Candy which is revealed in the last leg of the series. Many Westerners were squicked out about it because Candy was adopted as his sister.
• Values Resonance: A shoujo manga from The '70s that isn't necessarily centered ONLY on romance and tells people that they can be whatever they want to be in life, as long as they work hard for it? While the latter theme is not entirely new, it might seem more reminiscent of a modern work.

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