Les Misérables: Shōjo Cosette (レ・ミゼラブル 少女コゼット) is a Japanese anime series produced by Nippon Animation, and the first installment in the World Masterpiece Theater series in ten years after Remi, Nobody's Girl. It is an adaptation of Victor Hugo's classic 1862 novel Les Misérables, and the fourth anime adaptation of said novel (following two adaptations from the Japanese television program Manga Sekai Mukashi Banashi, and a 1979 TV film special produced by Toei Animation). It premiered across Japan on January 7, 2007, on Fuji TV's BS Fuji broadcast satellite network, and contains twenty-six episodes each season, for a total of fifty-two episodes. It also aired in Japan on Animax beginning in April 2007.

Plot

Set in nineteenth century-era France, the series begins with Cosette, a three-year-old girl, traveling with her mother Fantine, who is trying to find a job and a place to live, but have always been shunned away due to few employers hiring single mothers. When her mother is promised with the prosperity of working in the big city, Cosette is separated from her in the hopes a caretaker named Thénardier will watch over her while her mother earns some money, but this was a trick and the caretaker is a corrupt man who makes Cosette his indentured servant, or more precisely his slave. Then, the kind mayor—formerly a convict named Jean Valjean—of the town that Cosette makes her new home in, sees how winds of change are so detrimental for children and families, and decides to do something about it, but forces Cosette to go on the run to escape his returning, difficult past.

Characters and cast

Episodes

Staff

Theme songs

Reception

The anime was dubbed and broadcast in: