Mahou no Tenshi Creamy Mami

Around the beginning of the pandemic I stumbled across this particular anime. To some this may feel just like some generic kid's magical girl anime, which it is. And for that reason I enjoyed it very much. Each episode I kept looking forward to it like a little child. I even felt as if I could be a magical girl myself and sing my nights away. This anime also gave me this sense of some nostalgia, as if I grew up in the 80s as well which is when it was released. It's nice n wholesome and well, I never had a dull moment watching ... this. If you like some retro anime maybe give this a try!

After reading the Moe Manifesto (A book that covers the history of moe, full of interviews from creators of moe work), I really wanted to look into some of the early 80s series mentioned. There were two series that caught my eye, Creamy Mami and Minky Momo. I could not find subs for the latter, so I decided to watch Mami since all of its episodes were subbed. I did not know what I would be getting myself into. Somehow, I was pretty hooked.

Creamy Mami is one of the most unique magical girl series I have seen. What stands out with this anime is how ... Yuu’s transforming idol career is integrated to its episodic story structure. In each episode, Creamy Mami covers a lot of intriguing themes and subjects that I did not expect. The situations Yuu goes through with her career can range from bizarre to surprisingly mature, covering the struggles of an idol in the most effective, kid-friendly way possible.

Its cast of characters also shine. Yuu started out pretty generic, but she became likable as more episodes showcased her child-like personality. The rest of the cast are rather cheesy, but very likable on their own right. Shingo/Megumi’s messy relationship and Toshio’s silly disdain for Yuu works for pretty solid comedy. If there were any problems, they are minor. Sometimes, a song gets repeated too many times in many to the point where it can get irritating. I wish there were more variety in the music choices. And this is mostly preferential, but I wish Yuu’s story as Mami were progressive. Its episodic format works fine, but I would have loved to see some form of character development that could make satisfying growth for Yuu.

Overall, I really enjoyed my spare time with Creamy Mami. There is just enough variety and enjoyment in Mami’s stories and characters for me to keep watching all the way through. If you liked the episodic nature of older magical girl anime like Cardcaptor Sakura, you will definitely love Creamy Mami. I will now take my leave as I listen to Mami's song "Fall in Love" for the umpteenth time.

An anime that is a first in its class, meaning the first magical girl show that was used in conjunction with a real-world idol as a way to sell her and her songs to the starving otaku crowd. Some firsts are still to this day an absolute blast from start to (almost) the end, this in turn is a nice diversion but nothing particularly engaging or memorable to begin with except for the historical importance it had, in line with the show one of the Seiyuus in the voice cast worked in (The first Dirty Pair Series, if you're wondering). The main problem of Mahou ... No Tenshi Creamy Mami is that, for being primarly targeted towards the advertisement of a real-life idol, the music is really repetitive to the point of becoming stale, with the same songs repeated over and over and over probably because the guys at studio Pierrot didn't wait for the idol to release a fully-blown album and they instead used the singles she released while she did it. Even if put in retrospective to the way music was made in the 80's, it get grating the same and it pales in comparison not just to Magical Girls titans like Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon (with it seiyuus releasing TWO MUSICAL ALBUMS EACH AT LEAST) but even to more modest vehicles like the Nuku-Nuku OAVs, mainly used as a way to prompt the career of Megumi Hayashibara yet feeling less repetitive in that sense. The second main problem of this show is that its focus on the idol part shrinks a bit the relatability part, meaning that you can't relate to her as you would, for example, to a Sally from Mahou Tsukai Sally in terms of the slice-of-life component or to a Sakura Kinimoto in terms of fantasy elements with all the stuff concerning the use of cards and whatnot (two of my favourites, the animated Minako Aino and Onpu from Ojamajo Doremi, are idols or wanna-be idols but are also developed in both slice-of-life and fantasy department). Unless, of course, you're an hardcore idol fetishist wanting nothing else in her or his life to be an idol, which I find difficult to believe even as a person who likes idol, listen to idol music 80% of his time and has watched some idol concerts. The animation is good, the style is very reminescent of the 80's, the seiyuu performance in particular of Rica "Sailor Venus" Fukami (whos likes on twitter are the reason in the first place why I watched this show) is excellent including the cameos of veteran Toru Furuya and Kikuko Inoue, a fun diversion that you'll likely to watch once and consider a fun footnote more than anything else. Oh and congratulation for the ubertoxicmasculinity of some of the sentences and acts, I really wonder what the problems of Studio Pierrot with tears were when somebody felt the urge to write "crying is like killing" or "only cowards cry", but whatever. I'll eventually rewatch Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon or Saint Seiya to see a lot of tears the way I like.