Well, I feel like I should be saying “I decided to start some old school mahou shoujo anime today,” but after looking at the broadcast dates for Ojamajo Doremi, I realize just how inaccurate such a statement would be. The series definitely looks much older than 1999, but I don’t think I’ll hold that against it. Instead, it might be one more point into the pro column.
Ojamajo Doremi is a series I’ve known little about for a long time. Back in 2000, a friend of mine lived in Japan for a year, and sent me some Ojamajo Doremi chopsticks. Of course, I didn’t realize they were Ojamajo Doremi chopsticks until 5 years later, but in some way, the series has been with me for a long time. I know that 4Kids has produced an edited, English-dubbed series, and of course, I have no interest in such a thing. It took a little while, but I finally found some fansubs of the original series, and so I’m finally beginning.
I will admit to a fair amount of hesitation coming into the series. While I love mahou shoujo series like Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura, and Magic Knight Rayearth, recent shows like Pretty Cure have fallen completely flat for me. Quite honestly, I hate Pretty Cure, which is a shame, because I enjoyed the character designs and the end theme. However, Ojamajo Doremi has already squelched my fears pretty well. How? It actually has a creative way for Doremi to receive her magical abilities. That right there is key. Pretty Cure may have been parodying the genre, but if it wasn’t it was bad and uncreative. But Ojamajo Doremi really made the lead character seek out rather than stumble upon her powers. She shows no fear in using them, and lacks the hesitancy of characters like Sailor Moon or to an extent, Sakura. This is one big plus in the pro column.
The character designs are rather rough and cartoonish, and yet I feel they work. The Ojamajo Doremi characters certainly don’t look like anything else I’ve seen just yet (although there is a somewhat similar approach used in Princess Tutu), and I’ve certainly never seen an uglier mascot than this show has.
Sure, it starts out with the traditional crush scene, but it still manages to make a bit of a new path for itself in the first episode. There were no bad guys coming after Doremi when she used her magic. She used it because she thought it was cool and wanted to do so. She wasn’t fighting to save her life or a friends life, instead she was busy misinterpreting moments and using her magic to “fix” things, to rather disastrous results.
I’m only one episode in, but I feel I can rest assured that this won’t be another Pretty Cure, and for that I am grateful.
