Santa Goes to Japan!

Lyman Frank Baum was a busy boy. In addition to his 14 Oz books, he also wrote dozens of other stories, including The Life and Adventures
of Santa Claus, (which you can read for free!) Of course Japan has anime-ted it and called it 少年サンタの大冒険 which is pronounced as Shonen Santa no Daiboken and literally translates as The Adventures of Santa as a Boy.






The show ran as 24 half-hour episodes between 1996-04-06 and 1996-09-21. The cast consisted of:
Mifuyu Hiiragi as Claus
Hekiru Shiina as Blinky
Masato Yamanouchi as Santa Claus
Megumi Hayashibara as Mary
Mika Kanai as May
Fumihiko Tachiki as Ricky
Mie Suzuki as Marza
Naoki Tatsuta as Flossy
Nobuko Shinokura as Nishil
Rei Sakuma as Ion
Tomohiro Nishimura as Beezle
Urara Miura as Cathy
Urara Takano as Segra
You Inoue as Queen Zaraine
Yuji Ueda as Goozle


I'm in the process of tracking down the series, manga or soundtrack and if I get it, I can relay a few more details. If you're so inclined, you can order any of these soundtracks here, though it helps if you can read Japanese to do so.


The singer of the opening and closing themes was Takako Okamura, but I couldn't find her singing the themes.







So, here is the opening theme "いつも心に太陽を (Itsumo Kokoro ni Taiyou wo) as sung by U-ka Saegusa.



The closing theme is called, 愛という名の翼 (Kimi toiu na no tsubasa) but I couldn't find a copy of it either.

HOHOHO!

UPDATE: I've removed two of the pictures I had previously posted here, since I discovered that they belong to a different Santa series, not the Baum one.