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purplekoop · 6 months

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Things I Love #2: WATCH OJAMAJO DOREMI.

Okay so. context.

A while back, way earlier this year if memory serves correctly, my friend Dyna (y'know from the streams) found a peculiar song in the girl idol band rhythm game they like. Upon investigating, they learned that was an official cover of the theme song for a 1999 magical girl anime with a very niche cult following here in the states. They looked into it further, watched a video explaining why the show is so great, saw it for themselves, and after becoming thoroughly obsessed, convinced me somehow to watch the entire 200+ episode run with them.

And it. was.

Worth it.

I say it without an ATOM of hyperbole that this is genuinely one of the best shows I've ever seen. Like. Seriously, no bits no laughs no nothing, this silly little pastel-colored show is utterly phenomenal in more ways that I can do it justice. It's genuinely that good. It's hilarious, it's intense, and it made me cry and intensely hilarious number of times. It's legitimately a show that makes me happier to be alive when I think about it.

And one of the main cast members looks like this for the majority of the show.

...Okay maybe it deserves a little more context.

So, okay, plot summary:

Doremi (the pink one) is a silly, short-tempered, and chronically unlucky grade schooler who kind of sucks at... most things, to be frank. And one thing she sucks at that actually bothers her is her inability to muster up the courage to one day confess to a boy she likes. Logically, the only way she'd be able to confess is if she had magic, so she's also obsessed with witches, and one day becoming a witch herself. (Good news for her incoming.)

One day, she goes to a mysterious old house, and finds an equally mysterious woman inside with a cat. Just kind of, y'know, as a hunch. She accuses the woman of being a witch, which causes her to spontaneously turn into the green creature seen above.

This is Majo Rika, a genuine article but short-tempered witch, and the cat is secretly her fairy companion Lala. When a witch's identity is found out by a human, they get cursed into being a silly little creature known as a Witch Frog, and the only way to turn back into their original form is for the human who found them out to become a witch themself, and then use their magic to turn the witch frog back to normal. This, very conveniently, means Doremi now has to become a Witch Apprentice, learn magic, pass the apprentice exams, and eventually earn the honor of becoming a full witch herself.

Along the way, some of Doremi's friends get caught up in the secret, including her childhood friend Hazuki, the soft-spoken sweetheart (and my favorite of the apprentices but quite not my favorite character outright), and the new transfer student Aiko, the cool-headed tomboy who rocks the blue. Together, they all train to be witch apprentices, learning under Majo Rika, and working at her house, which is turned into a magical crafts shop, the Maho Dou. A few more witch apprentices join them along the way, but aside from them they have to keep their witchy business a secret from everyone else.

Now that we've established the basics, I think I'll continue the tradition of posting the show's theme song in each of these. Doremi has a 4-ish season run, with each season getting its own OP in standard anime fare, but I think the first and most iconic opening, Ojamajo Carnival, should suffice:

youtube

Oh yeah, might help to explain what "Ojamajo" means. It's a pun that roughly means "bothersome witch", since "Majo" is "Witch" and "Ojama" means "bothersome" or "annoying." So the title would more directly be "Bothersome Witch Doremi" but literally everyone prefers "Ojamajo" so. yeah.

Anyways, theme song shows a lot about the show that's great.

For one is the art style, which I'd say is "pleasant" in the most intensely delightful sense of the word. The designs themselves are all nice, soft, and delightful, with hardly a sharp corner in sight and a real sense of childlike whimsy permeating through it all. The general color palette and style of the show also just has a nostalgic fuzziness, even after the show's technical quality improves over its 4 year run. And the animation I adored as soon as episode 1, with characters frequently deforming to goofy faces and round nub hands right out of Animal Crossing. Hey, I don't blame them, I wouldn't wanna draw full hands for over 200 episodes either.

Another thing is the soundtrack. I don't know what terms to describe its genre, but beyond just the bombastic opening, with its cheery violin, twangy guitar, and overall exuberant joy, the soundtrack for each episode is also full of bangers. There's upbeat jazz to stir up excitement for energetic scenes, pleasant standard background tracks, and even some unexpectedly tense tracks for some dramatic scenes. This is also a show that will make you cry, and that includes even just from the ending themes. Here's season 1's:

youtube

That plays during an episode and I become a sopping mess without fail. Gets me every time.

The other big thing is arguably the show's biggest strength: its cast. While I won't go in-depth on the main cast, both for the sake of spoilers and because people have done that better than me already, I will give the show its due respect for its more broad cast. As the intro implies, the girls' entire class are notable side characters. While a good number of episodes focus on magical trials and hijinks, the majority of the show actually has the girls encounter a problem their classmates are facing, and then secretly use magic to help solve that problem. It's a formula that not only keeps things fresh with making different side characters the spotlight of an episode, but also rewards following along as the show progresses. Even the most obscure background classmates (save for I think ONE exception) will be the focus of an episode, and remember how Doremi and the gang helped them out. You can even see characters from past episodes in almost every group shot, and get to go "oh hey it's that kid!" in a really satisfying way. It really helps add to the childhood feel of the show, since... yeah, back then, your classmates were the stars of each day's adventures, and even if you weren't close friends you still knew their names would hang out every day. The teachers are also great characters in their own rights, again hearkening back to elementary days where teachers really were there for you. The cast isn't limited to the classroom though. The girls' families often factor into their more personal episode plots as well. And the magical side of things has its own small recurring cast. Witches actually reside in, another dimension known as the Witch World, a pastel-colored world with a striking visual appeal of its own right, and is also home to a cast of additional witch characters that get introduced over the course of the show.

Of course, the only important one is the underhanded saleswitch who barges into the Maho Dou with a smile and a song:

Dela.

Yeah no she's the best character and nothing's changing that.

Not kidding about her song by the way:

youtube

Literally every single time she appears, she sings a unique (shorter) version of this song to announce her arrival. It's fantastic.

So yeah, that's the basics of what makes this show great, but like... again, this show is insane, and there is SO much more I could say but won't, I'd rather people just experience it for themselves.

Which... brings us to how you experience this show yourself.

I should explain first that Doremi didn't take off in the west. Unlike her home country, which still has a dedicated fanbase who remembers the show fondly, English-speaking countries were stuck with...

*dramatic lightning crash*

the 4kids dub.

The dub, otherwise known as Magical DoReMi, is widely considered to be a downgrade from the original by fans. Look up the opening compared to the original and you'll see what I mean. Though the quality is one thing, the real way 4kids screwed the show over was by greatly limiting its airtime due to it being "another boring girl show", kneecapping its potential popularity severely. They only ever dubbed the first season, and the second half of that was limited to an online-only release if I remember right.

Now, while the show itself was a relatively failure over here, apparently toy sales didn't do too bad actually. And I know that specifically, because when I told my partner I was watching Doremi, they went "Wait WHAT" and proceeded to show me pictures of their childhood Doremi toys. Apparently they even came with a bonus DVD, though only for one episode. My friend Seven also had Doremi toys and a bonus DVD of that one episode too, so uh... small world, huh?

But yeah, with this in mind, it shouldn't be surprising that Doremi has such a limited english-speaking fanbase, and thus should be even less surprising that there is no official way to watch the show here. There is no newer dub of the whole show, and no official subtitles. I managed to watch the show thanks to the efforts of fanmade subs, and though there's some unfortunate dated language early on, it's otherwise an extremely commendable effort that I can't thank enough for making it possible. As for how to access this subbed version... I mean come on, if you're reading this, you're an adult on the internet, you can figure out how. I know pity for corporations is comically low on this site but if you need help feeling better about it, remember that there is no way to officially watch the show as an english speaker. If they do make official subs and stream the show somewhere, I'll let you know, but that seems extremely unlikely.

As for what you watch then, Doremi has 4 main seasons of roughly 50 episodes each, and then one weird bonus season. Each season after the first one has a subtitle: season 2 is Ojamajo Doremi Sharp, 3 is Motto, and 4 is Dokkan. There's also Naisho, a shorter set of about 17 episodes that takes place during the same time as Motto, but was made years after the main show originally ended. I watched episodes of Naisho sprinkled in with my watchthrough of Motto, but there's also merit to watching it in release order, at least the final episode. There are also two episode-length "movies" that take place about midway through a couple seasons: one for Sharp, and one for Motto. Finally, made for the 20th anniversary back in 2020, there's the feature-length film "Looking for Ojamajo Doremi", which was the final thing of the show I watched, and just finished tonight actually. It's not directly in the same "canon" as the show itself, but I highly recommend it as a great finale to a watchthrough of the show as a whole.

It's a long ride, but it's worth it. I genuinely wouldn't skip any episodes, as again, even minor characters are worth remembering for later. It's not a show with "filler", because what you're there for is a simple and relaxing slice of life style show that takes it easy to appreciate the mundane joys of just being nice and helping others. Plus, it makes the absolutely fantastic gut punch of a finale all the more worth it.

I really can't say enough about this show. It's genuinely better than I can put into words. If you have the time (and a soul) then please, PLEAAAASE consider giving it a watch, I swear it's worth it.

So that's this Things I Love. Not sure what the next one will be actually. These won't all be shows, so maybe expect a game next? Could also be a show that I'm due to finish a watch or rewatch of too, like a certain other show where a weird girl stumbles into a witch and her creature companion, and then learns to be a witch herself. We'll see though. In the meantime, uhhh... Rabbids? I think I was talking about Rabbids for some reason.

#things I love #koop's things i love #ojamajo doremi #doremi #Youtube

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