Perrine Monogatari

The original novel Nobody's Girl was the spiritual successor to Nobody's Boy, and viewers of their respective anime series will find similarities as well. They are both fairly long series (51 and 53 episodes) from the 1970s, and have the same basic plots: heartwarming (sort of) orphan ends up going on a journey to find lost family and happiness. These often fun and cheerful shows are also full of tragedy and sadness (Remi more so than Perrine), and have honestly lovable characters that even those far older than the target audience will enjoy. 

In one story, there is a girl traveling with her mother in order to reach her grandfather, in the other, a girl is looking with her grandfather for her mother. The direction of travel is north. The journey is not always easy, and hardships need to be overcome. This usually succeeds due to effort and the assistance of other characters. However, in both stories, the protagonist also suffers a bitter loss, which cannot be prevented by effort or other people. If you want to see a kid on the hard road to happiness, both titles may be for you.  

These 2 shows have quite some similarities. A nice kid lives with his/her loving parents. But the parents die one after the other. Finally, the protagonist gets to live with the rich grandfather. The old man is a harsh person, who tends to exploit his workers. Initially, the protagonist has a tough time with the old man, but little by little, the grandchild gets accepted and changes the grandfather for the better... If you like this kind of story, both series may make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. 

There's a lot of similarities between those two, in both anime protagonists are very kind, clever, spiritually strong, tenacious young girls with good upbringing but at one moment appearing to have a lot of hardship to struggle with on their life path. In the second half of both anime both girls are living very near to the persons who eventually will help them to resolve all of their trouble but couldn't take what is theirs for the time being, because of the different reasons though. Also there are some minor but pretty interesting similarities, for example Perrine while living in France knows English language very good and that helps her a lot on her path, the same goes for Sara but in reversed fashion, while being in England she knows French language well. Also the both characters were initially raised in India. And of course it would be unwise not to mention that these both series are done by Nippon Animation and part of the World Masterpiece Theater staple, and thus they both are based on pieces of classical European children's fiction. But it also implies similar art style, voice acting, music and storytelling style. read more 

While any two World Masterpiece Theater series could be fairly compared, Perrine and Porfy happen to be two of the closest to each other in a myriad of ways. Both incorporate a strong theme of travel, which shares many specific elements that would descend into spoiler territory if described further. Both are very slowly paced; much of the early action is episodic to the point where many viewers find both series dull. Finally, despite being made over thirty years apart from each other, their art styles are quite similar, with rather flat characters and extra attention to background detail.