By Andrew Osmond.
Searching for Magical Doremi is an anime about three ladies and their friendship. Unusually for a “friendship” anime, the characters are all previous faculty age, getting into into the world of labor and severe relationships, and but the magic from their childhoods continues to be with them. They’re introduced collectively by their shared love of a “magic woman” TV anime that they noticed as children, which nonetheless has classes to show them.
There’s Mire, combating battles together with her workplace rivals in a Tokyo buying and selling firm. There’s Sora, a trainee trainer who’s having uncertainties about her profession path. Lastly, there’s Reika, a freelancer whose treasured earnings are being wolfed up by a deadbeat boyfriend. Reika’s turning 20, Sora’s 22 and Mire’s 27, so there’s an automated sense of hierarchy between them (and Reika and Sore are awed by Mire’s firm CV, although Mire dismisses it).
The movie begins with every of the characters feeling down, and opting to cheer themselves up by going to have a look at a home in Kamakura (a historic metropolis close to Tokyo). The home impressed one of many settings of their favorite anime, Ojamajo Doremi. That’s the place they meet and immediately hit it off, resolving to take a vacation collectively.
The movie follows their travels and travails. For instance, Reika nonetheless misses her father, who she as soon as adored however who left her and her mum when she was nonetheless a baby. A telling element: Reika fell for her hopeless boyfriend as a result of his smile reminds her of her dad. Frictions come up between the ladies over time – for instance, Mire is Japanese however she grew up in America, and tends to talk extra bluntly than her companions.
For all of the cuteness of the animation, and the large allure of the characters, this isn’t only a feelgood anime. The ladies have actual issues and regrets; crucially, some aren’t solved within the movie, and should be lived with and realized from. However every of the characters is resolutely supported by their pals; at totally different instances, two of the trio unite to carry the third. One of many greatest moments of battle is between the oldest and youngest characters, Mire and Reika, and but they appear actually alike in that second, as susceptible as youngsters.
Searching for Magical Doremi is a singular anime movie, but it’s a part of a franchise. The informal viewer would possibly assume that Ojamajo Doremi is simply an imaginary “anime in an anime,” like Gekigangar 3 in Nadesico. In reality, Doremi was an actual anime sequence for ladies that began in 1999 and ran 4 years and about 200 episodes. Two of the final instalments have been directed by a rising younger animator, Mamoru Hosoda.
The present’s title modified over time – as an illustration, the final 51 episodes have been referred to as Ojemi Doremi Dokkan! But it surely at all times saved the identical characters, not like the later Precure magic woman franchise which switches the characters yearly to maintain children on board. Doremi’s lead trio – Doremi, Hazuki and Aiko – are referenced within the new movie, with every of the ladies having a distinct woman as her favorite.
Each Searching for Magical Doremi and the unique Doremi have been animated by Japan’s largest anime studio, Toei Animation. Toei launched magic ladies to anime, in 1966’s Sally the Witch. That was adopted by many later Toei sequence similar to 1969’s Ako-chan’s Secret (from an older manga than Sally) and, finally, Sailor Moon from 1992. Though Sailor Moon was a youngsters’s present, it was clearly made for older viewers than many magic woman sequence, together with Doremi and the franchise that began after it, Toei’s Precure.
In 2013, I interviewed Hidenori Oyama, who was then the Senior Director at Toei Animation. He talked about Precure, saying the women who watch it might be as younger as 3. “We make Precure in order that 3-year-old ladies can perceive it. Once they get to round 8, that’s what we name the commencement age once they cease watching it, as a result of they discover it too infantile. So yearly the story and characters change; we’re trying to get new 3 year-old ladies as an viewers.”
It appears seemingly the TV Doremi was made for a barely totally different age-bracket than Precure. As famous above, the present’s characters didn’t change yearly. The characters in Doremi are elementary schoolers, however the sequence was by no means simply fantasy. A retrospective on the Wave Movement Cannon web site factors up how one of many leads, Aiko, has divorced dad and mom, and this isn’t proven as melodramatically tragic however only a unhappy truth of life. It’s no shock that in Searching for Magical Doremi, Aiko is the favorite character of a lady who additionally has divorced dad and mom, who sees herself in Aiko on display.
Notably, the ladies within the movie all love the Ojamajo sequence with out being in “fandom.” They don’t write doujinshi or fan fiction; they don’t cosplay; they by no means go to a conference. It’s arduous to think about an American or British movie or sequence having a personality who loves a fantastical present with out having an enormous assortment of merch of their bed room.
I used to be attempting to think about a Western franchise that’s had an instalment like Searching for Magical Doremi. The very best I may give you was “Love and Monsters,” a 2006 episode of Physician Who with David Tennant, that was a horrendously patronising spoof of the present’s fandom. In comparison with that, the Doremi movie is immeasurably broader-minded, to the purpose you could take pleasure in it totally with out understanding there’s a franchise past it.
Really, a much better comparability is the Ghibli movie Kiki’s Supply Service, directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Magic does exist in Kiki’s world, and she or he’s youthful than the characters in Searching for Magical Doremi. But it surely’s one other movie that takes the magic woman style and places it within the grown-up world, of labor and tedium and uncertainty about what you’re meant to do along with your life.
Trying For Magical Doremi has two administrators. One was Yu Kamatani, who has a number of credit on the Precure anime. The opposite is a far larger title, Junichi Sato. He was one of many two primary administrators on the primary 51 episodes of Ojamajo Doremi, and earlier than that he dealt with the opening season of the Sailor Moon anime. Since then, Sato has helmed the ballet-themed fantasy Princess Tutu and one of the vital fan-beloved “friendship” anime sequence, Aria, set on the waters of Mars.
Andrew Osmond is the creator of 100 Animated Characteristic Movies. Searching for Magical Doremi is launched by Anime Restricted.
