The Swiss Family Robinson: Flone of the Mysterious Island

The series is loosely based on the 1812 Swiss novel 'Der Schweizerische Robinson' by Johann David Wyss, but the character of Flone, a daughter, does not exist in the original novel, which only features four sons besides the parents.

Flone was likely created by Nippon Animation specifically to attract more female viewers, since the original novel had no daughters in the Robinson family.

The anime changes several character details from the novel: the eldest son 'Fritz' becomes 'Franz' (restored to Fritz in the English dub), Jack becomes a three-year-old instead of ten, and the parents' names shift, with the father's original name 'Ernst' being reused for a different character while the father is renamed after the novel's unnamed patriarch.

Unlike the original novel where the family spends ten years on the island, the anime compresses this to about one year, and unlike the book where only three characters leave the island by ship, in the anime the entire family departs together.

The story's time setting was postdated from the early 1800s to around the 1880s, evidenced by clothing styles and the appearance of the Sydney–Melbourne railway line, which was inaugurated in 1883, even though the original novel (published 1812) was set around 1800.

During production, a major internal split occurred at Nippon Animation, causing key staff members to leave for newly formed studios like Visual 80 and Pan Media; several of them, including character designer Shuichi Seki and layout artist Shunichi Sakai, moved to work on the concurrently produced series 'Meiken Jolie' at Visual 80.

Animation director Michiyo Sakurai left the production after episode 11 due to creative disagreements with the director, moving to Pan Media to work on 'Ninja Hattori-kun' instead, which caused frequent shortages of animation directors for this production.

Much of the background music was arranged from piano pieces by Edvard Grieg, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms, with nearly ten pieces from Grieg's 'Lyric Pieces' being used, though the reasoning behind these specific musical choices was never detailed even in the later soundtrack CD booklet.

An English dub titled simply 'Swiss Family Robinson' was produced by PMT, Ltd. and aired on The Family Channel in the U.S. in 1989, renaming Flone as 'Becca', Franz as 'Fritz', the dog John as 'Brewster', and TamTam as 'TomTom'.

For the American dub release, two scenes considered inappropriate for the target audience were removed: one showing Becca drinking wine and another showing her mother spanking her with a switch.

The series was used in a Japanese television commercial for Sharp's VHS video deck 'My Video VC-130EC', released in 1982 during the show's broadcast period.

The anime won the Agency for Cultural Affairs' award for Excellent Children's Television Film of 1981 in Japan.