Magical girl retrospective - simulwatch starts 1st Feb 2025

[Dai]

Ah the good ol' eighties...

Back when "black vehicle" was a genre. Knight Rider! Airwolf! Street Hawk! The one with the boat!

Minky Momo - episode 2

the setup does seem to be introduced in an oddly blunt fashion. Presumably they wanted to crack on so that she could start solving folk’s problems, but everything just kinda happens

This kind of pacing continues in episode 2 as we somehow go through Momo training a dog, tricking a fairly sus photographer, visiting Africa, and becoming a celebrity model in the space of 20 minutes. Momo's easy access to wide-ranging magic powers, vehicles, and talking animals seem to have resulted in a complete lack of impulse control.

I guess her alignment would be Chaotic Good. Despite all the things Momo can do, it's interesting that there is a limit on her transformation power when it's applied to someone else. Rather than causing her to physically grow up, it's a glamour that's patterned to look like an older version of her.

 

[Professor Irony]

Minky Momo ep2 - I Bless the Rains Down in Akihabara

Well, that happened. The previous episode grew on me as it went on, but this one felt even more scattershot by comparison - considering that the moral of the story appears to be as simple as ‘it’s okay to wear glasses’, it feels like we got there by the most convoluted route possible. Maybe it would settle down as it goes on, but my impression is very much that no-one quite knew what to do with Momo as a character. Was Sindbook’s questioning whether they really needed to go to Africa thinly veiled meta commentary by a frustrated writer? Am I thinking too much about this again? Probably.

I think anything that had to follow a Tezuka series was probably always going to be a bit of a step down, but Princess Knight felt like it had something to say, whereas, on the strength of these two episodes, Minky Momo sadly feels like no-more than the sum of its parts. It’s a perfectly pleasant half-hour, but it does just feel like a toy-line tie-in for little girls.

While I’m throwing shade, it also surprises me a little that the design for Momo’s adult form feels decidedly more plain than her default look. When she’s a kid, she has that distinctive wavy hairstyle, whereas adult Momo just has a very simple bob cut.

Mildly curious to see how Creamy Mami would compare, but will I actually bother to watch it? Dunno.

tricking a fairly sus photographer

Different times, I suppose, but yeah - I feel like hand waving some guy with a camera coming up to little girls in a park as perfectly fine raises all sorts of alarms. There’s something similar in Orange Road iirc, although in that, the photographer was one character’s father. Not that it makes the situation better…

 

[Dai]

on the strength of these two episodes, Minky Momo sadly feels like no-more than the sum of its parts. It’s a perfectly pleasant half-hour, but it does just feel like a toy-line tie-in for little girls.

Out of curiosity I had a look on Mandarake to see what kind of merchandise there was for this show. So much. So much merch. Everything from sketchbooks and pendants to jewelry boxes and toy hairdryers.

This was also the moment I discovered that Hideaki Anno drew a doujin called Godzilla vs Minky Momo back in 1983. Because of course he did.

 

[Professor Irony]

This was also the moment I discovered that Hideaki Anno drew a doujin called Godzilla vs Minky Momo back in 1983. Because of course he did.

Not calling her Minky Mothra, smh.

Curiosity also got the better of me, so a quick note on:

Creamy Mami ep1

While enough is borrowed from Minky Momo that it feels derivative at times, this feels like a lot of lessons have been learned. It’s better paced, there’s clear logic to the narrative and even the visual change in the character after transformation makes more sense. There’s some nice work in the animation too; heroine Yuu briefly enters a fantasy dreamworld to fight a giant dragon, and reappears in front of an electronic scoreboard sent impressively haywire by a bolt of lightning. It seems more determined to take its time, however; Yuu’s ‘Creamy Mami’ guise isn’t introduced until the end of the episode and it’s not entirely clear what the thrust of the story is likely to be at this point. I think it mainly centres on her becoming a pop idol (episode 2: “I wish I was watching Jem and the Holograms”), but apparently she also fights aliens? It’s a bit less clear cut than Minky Momo on that one.

My only complaint is that the camera has a voyueristic fixation on Yuu’s underwear; I’d rather not feel like I’m going to end up on some kind of list for watching a children’s show, thanks.