Candy Candy originated from a shojo manga by Kyoko Mizuki and Yumiko Igarashi published in 1974. It was soon be picked up for television as anime, which runs up to 115 episodes (not to mention several ovas/movies). The manga itself continued until 1982 (8 years in total -- not the longest running manga, but it`s very close).

Candy Candy movie summarized the classical TV series but with different ending and conclusion (happy ending). There are many important scenes and moments from TV series that got deleted. Also a very sloppy and quick characters introduction were used in this movie, which will confuse a lot of people who have not watch the TV series nor read the manga yet.