Why has one of the most loved souls ever disappeared from television and streaming platforms?

For many of those who grew up in the 1980s, *Candy Candy* was not just a cartoon, but a cultural phenomenon capable of exciting millions of spectators. Yet, for many years, reporting the series on the small screen or distributing it officially became extremely complicated.

The reason has nothing to do with the success of the work, but with a long and difficult legal battle between its two creators.

On one side there was Kyoko Mizuki, author of the story. On the other Yumiko Igarashi, illustrator who gave a face to the characters of the manga. Together they created an extraordinary success, but over time, the relationship was recorded due to the management of rights and commercial exploitation of the brand.

The dispute ended in the Japanese courts and dragged itself for years. In 2001, the Supreme Court of Japan established that the two were co-authors of the work and that neither of them could use it commercially without the consent of the other.

The ruling clarified the ownership of rights, but did not bring peace.

The absence of an agreement between the two authors has made it extremely difficult to authorize new editions, complete manga reprints, anime remakes or an international distribution on modern streaming platforms. The marketing of merchandising has also remained strongly limited.

For this reason *Candy Candy* has become one of the most emblematic cases in the history of Japanese publishing: a beloved work that continues to live in the memory of fans, but remains blocked by one of the disputes on the longest and most complex copyright of the industry.

It is the demonstration that, sometimes, the fate of a masterpiece is not decided by the audience or the audience, but by what happens far from the spotlights, in the courtrooms.