The other day I watched the first two episodes of the recent TV Asahi/Pioneer/J.C. Staff series 'Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsuna Koto'/'Someday's Dreamers'. I didn't get to watch the original broadcast which started in January of this year, so I ordered the first R2 DVD release as a test - PIBA-7179, 47 minutes, 4:3 aspect ratio, 5000 Yen. I ordered early enough to get the DVD in a box under the number PIBA-7178. A small color booklet is included, which contains mainly photos along with some background details and credits.
Last year I was complaining a lot about the plethora ( nearly a plague ) of 'shy girl/quiet girl' series, but something about the 'look' and the plot details given on the website:
http://www.yume-mahou.com/top.html
made me decide to give it a chance, and I'm quite happy that I did.
The story starts out like many others as 17 year old Yume Kikuchi arrives at Tokyo from her home in the countryside. But the look and feel of the show was immediately different. There is incredible attention paid to the details of the street scenes in Tokyo. As I watched the scenes I could recognize places that I've been, and the look of a steamy hot summer day was done perfectly - if I had turned the heat up to 30 degree C I would have felt just like I was there again.
Another difference also showed up almost immediately. Being overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, heat and crowds, Yume is stopped in her tracks, and eventually gets knocked down in a crosswalk by a careless passerby. As the lights change and the cars start to bear down upon her, Yume suddenly casts a spell that causes the cars to fly up in the air, then come down again relatively gently. Yume is a novice magician who has come to Tokyo to learn her craft properly.
What we have here is a non-Miyazaki-style variation on the basic premise of 'Kiki's Delivery Service', set in an alternate world which is almost exactly the same as ours, but in which a few people have magical powers that they use in everyday life. And like everything else in Japanese everyday life, there are rules, schools, regulations and mentors to help Yume learn to make her powers part of society. Yume goes to an older established magician, Masami Oyamada, who agrees to act as mentor to her and provides a room for her in the apartments that sit on top of the Salsa club that Masami runs as his 'day job'. Masami takes Yume to the various rounds that all novice magicians must go, and Yume starts to learn what her life is going to look like in Tokyo ( and what the bureaucracy is like that she will have to deal with while she lives there ).
Yume is unfailingly polite to all her superiors, as befits her place in society, but when she is on her own she is confident and makes her own decisions on what is the proper use of her magic in terms of helping and thanking people. As she says to herself from the balcony of the apartment building, she 'isn't a child anymore' and looks forward to her new life, despite occasionally missing her family.
There were no 'monsters of the week', nor magical fights, nor any slapstick comedy in the first couple of episodes, just a sense of veracity that utterly fascinated me. I believe that this is an original anime, and it has the sort of feel of being 'shoujo' ( Yume definitely fits my rule-of-thumb for shoujo heroines ), without falling into too many shoujo style stereotypes in the first couple of episodes. The music was enjoyable and the animation superb. I've happily ordered the next DVD and look forward to watching the entire series.
Dave Baranyi
