I first discovered this animation when I was 21 years old and even though I was an adult, I became hooked.
I was living in France at the time and I couldn't speak the language. When I watched television it was hard too, everything in French, even the English speaking movies would be dubbed French... So when we got a disk, I started to look for foreign channels, there were many German Channels and BBC World. Thank God I could understand some German, so when I wanted to watch a film or a series, at least I could understand something. Since there wasn't much else to watch, I tuned in to RTL and watched whatever they aired. Lady Oscar series was somewhere in it's first episodes. I missed the first ones, but I slowly understood the story line anyway. This animation brings up pleasant memories, I used to watch it with my firstborn playing in my lap, happy to finally hear a different language on TV than just French and actually understanding what they were saying! What struck me was, that the way this animation had been made, the way they told the story, you almost forgot after a few minutes that it was an animation! The script, the scenes are often almost like in real series. I think this is perhaps also one of the reasons I got hooked on it. Plus I love history.
Most of the historical events are true as seen in Lady Oscar. Even her family excisted. We see real historical events take place through the eyes of Lady Oscar and her other fictional friends (André, Rosalie).
It's about the last King and Queen of France. We don't just follow the life of Lady Oscar, but we watch Maria Antonia of Austria become Marie Antoinette of France. I've always had a special interest in the French, Russian and British history, (rumor has it that the other tragic queen, tsarina Alexandra had a portrait of Marie Antoinette hanging in one of her rooms, eerie when you think about both their endings!) so it was nice to watch it.
The animation is a must see for children, because it wakens the interest of children for history. In this animation they tell in short why Marie Antoinette made her mistakes, why the people of France did what they did, how the situation slowly escalated and it gives an idea of life just before and after the Revolution.
There is one thing though that bothers me a little bit. The main character is brought up as a boy by her father, because he was disappointed never to have a son. In the first episode you see her sisters, but later they are never mentioned again. Also, you meet her mother in a few episodes, but in later episodes, she isn't mentioned either.
Also, in real life in those days, nobody would have accepted this kind of behavior of a female, while a father might have raised a daughter as a son in his craziness, other people would never have accepted that female to fill the roles of males, while in the animation, she leads troops of men who actually follow her for example. Women had to fight for a right to even vote for themselves, let alone to do what Lady Oscar did! So, in that sense, of course, it's not correct. But then again, it's an animation and around half of it is supposed to be fictional, besides, it's good to see a female character this strong, even in an animation.
Of course it doesn't cover everything, but it's still very good and enough for young children. My children are 9 and 7 and at their ages, they still enjoyed this animation and understood a lot, though I had to explain them a lot of the background and the motivations of the characters involved.
It's not just an animation for enjoyment of children, but they actually learn something. From what I understand it has been made in the 70's. But still it's very watchable and I was actually quite surprised it was that old! I think it's superb and even as an adult I enjoyed it and now, many years later, I've bought all the episodes on DVD and loved watching it with my children, translating and telling them a bit about the history.
Perhaps some people will laugh at me, but I feel this animation is as suitable for an adult as it is for children.