 What is now Nippon Animation is descended from Zuiyo Eizo (Zuiyo Enterprises), an animation studio that produced several popular series in the early and mid-1970s, including 1974's "Heidi, Girl of the Alps", an adaptation of Johanna Spyri's popular children's book "Heidi".The "Heidi" anime was enormously popular in Japan (and later in Europe, and the feature-length edit of the TV series saw a U.S. VHS release in 1985).Zuiyo Eizo soon found itself in financial trouble because of the high production costs of a series (presumably "Maya the Bee") it was attempting to sell to the European market.