Creamy Mami, the Magical Angel, directed by Osamu Kobayashi. Written by Hiroshi Konichikawa et al. Starring Takako Ōta. Studio Pierrot, 1983–1984. 52 episodes of 24 minutes (approx. 20 hours, 48 minutes). Rated TV-14.
We haven’t reviewed an anime series here in a good long while. In large part, that’sibecause I’m married with children now, so I don’t have as much time to binge-watch TV as I once did. Besides that, I admit my interest in magical girls has waned slightly. Like, I have to deal with real-life girls now.
Anyway, Magical Angel Creamy Mami, which ran from 1983 to 1984, is a title I have wanted to see for over a decade, but aside from a short-lived Blu-Ray release that I sadly didn’t acquire in time, it has been almost completely unavailable in the U.S. except through piracy.
Recently, however, Creamy Mami appeared on streaming services. As of this writing, it is available on Amazon Prime, which is where I found it, but you can also watch it for free on RetroCrush, a service that streams older anime titles and which, notably, also hosts Magical Emi and Pastel Yumi, two other classics from the same era and studio. I’ll probably watch and review those next.
A review of Creamy Mami could be one sentence: If you are interested in magical girls, you should watch it. This holds such a place of importance in the history of the genre that any comments I might make about quality or entertainment value are largely unimportant.
But I’ll try anyway.
Overview & Synopsis
Background
Creamy Mami is probably the best-known and best-loved series from the magical-girl genre’s Studio Pierrot era. For most of their early history, magical girls were exclusive to Toei Animation—which would eventually take them back with a vengeance—but through the 1980s, Studio Pierrot dominated the genre and shaped many of its standard motifs, or what the internet incorrectly calls “tropes.” In these Studio Pierrot series, a young girl encounters fairies or similar magical beings who grant her magical powers and talking-animal mascots, and she has an older boy who serves as a combination big-brother figure and love interest.
With these shows, beginning with Creamy Mami, Studio Pierrot introduced mixed-media anime: Each of these series, with one exception, featured a debuting pop idol as its main voice actress, and her music features throughout the show.
Plot
Creamy Mami stars a tomboyish ten-year-old girl named Yuu, who is secretly in love with her childhood friend Toshio, who is in middle school. One day, she observes a flying boat called Feather Star and is brought aboard, where she encounters a variety of creatures from fairy tale and myth. Having assisted the captain of the Feather Star in some unspecified way, she receives, as a reward, a magical compact that she can use for one year, along with two talking cats who help her harness her new powers.
Yuu uses her new abilities to turn into a teenager, but she is soon after accosted by Shingo Tachibana, the president of an entertainment company called Parthenon Productions, who coerces her into becoming a pop idol. Initially reluctant, she chooses the stage name “Creamy Mami” in honor of her parents’ business (they run a food truck called Creamy Crepe). She is an instant sensation, and Toshio, who does not recognize her as his childhood friend, becomes obsessed with her, making Yuu jealous of her own alter ego.
This show had a major influence on the magical-girl genre, in which magical pop idols are now a common feature, and the basic premise of a girl who uses a secret identity to be a pop star was also recycled in Jem and Hannah Montana, though it’s difficult to say if there was any direct influence.
Discussion
The series features the genre’s hallmark metaphorical portrayal of adolescence, particularly through Yuu’s ability to transform herself into a near-adult, a common ability of magical girls. This series also established what for a long while was the standard relationship dynamic, with the protagonist having a male companion, usually significantly older, who is simultaneously a sidekick, assistant, confidant, and love interest. This remained standard until magical-girl teams became common and boyfriend characters largely disappeared because they had become superfluous.
As for plot and character development, Creamy Mami barely has any. Almost all the episodes are self-contained and could be watched in any order. The only exceptions are the pilot episode, a two-parter in the middle that creates and resolves a particularly thorny crisis, and the three-part conclusion, which refers back to multiple earlier episodes and resolves the story.
The plots vary wildly in tone and content from one week to the next: Creamy Mami may battle evil fairies one week and the next week deal with family difficulties caused by her double life. Most of the stories are comical in tone and usually effective, though a few are nonsensical—one that sticks in my mind is episode 15, “The Rainbow-Colored Angel,” which stands out for its sheer unintelligibility: A ridiculously elaborate plot requires characters to launch into lengthy expository monologues, and someone appears to die at the end but then comes back for no apparent reason.
Most of the episodes are not that ridiculous, though the show has a curious habit of bringing together characters who shouldn’t know one another: Creamy Mami’s boss and mananger, Yuu’s friend Toshio, and Yuu’s family sometimes go on trips together, but why Yuu’s parents are close to Mami’s coworkers when they don’t know about their daughter’s secret identity goes unexplained.
Criticisms
As in many magical-girl series, the extent of the heroine’s magical abilities is left vague, with her ability to turn into a teenager and her magically enhanced singing voice being the only consistent elements. In the earliest episodes, she is depicted as able to produce hallucinations while singing, but the show soon drops that concept. A few episodes in, a fairy rewards her heroism with telekinetic powers, but she had already been depicted using those anyway. Over time, she uses magic less frequently as most of the stories come to focus on Yuu’s struggle to balance career and family rather than on conflicts with otherworldly beings.
Generally, the show avoids addressing its own plot holes and absurdities. How Mami keeps her identity secret while getting her paycheck from Parthenon Productions is never discussed. She appears to work for free. Also, although Mami is a big-time celebrity and Toshio is just an average bloke, he gets innumerable chances to hang out with the idol he’s in love with. He goes backstage whenever he wants and helps Mami out of numerous jams. (It’s probably a good thing that none of Mami’s other ravenous fans know she’s so accessible.)
In addition, there’s a running gag in which Yuu gets punished when her parents catch her sneaking in late, but her parents seem to forget about her misbehavior from one episode to the next. A real parent who caught his daughter in so many compromising situations would suspect she’s in a gang, doing drugs, or getting pregnant, but Yuu’s parents suffer from plot-convenient amnesia, so they never notice a pattern or restrict her freedoms.
Production Quality
The animation quality varies. Generally, it’s stiff, though it has standout moments, especially in the final three episodes. Since so many anime series drop in quality over their runs, this one is notable for doing the opposite. Still, the best animation is expended on curiously trivial things, such as a scene in which the camera continuously rotates around a taxi.
The show also suffers from a problem common to series of this type—it doesn’t have nearly enough songs. Mami will sing one song and repeat it for several episodes, then finally produce a new song and repeat that one. For a cartoon that is allegedly showcasing the singing voice of its main actress, it features decidedly little singing.
Content
Although Creamy Mami has the trappings of a show for kids, Amazon rates it as TV-14, and parents should think twice before showing it to young children. Like many magical-girl series, it deals with the awkwardness of adolescence through suggestion and innuendo, though it is more restrained than many similar titles.
The pilot episode is almost wholly dedicated to showing us Yuu’s underwear, though the animators apparently got it out of their systems after that, as panty shots are AWOL for the rest of the series. Other suggestive images occasionally crop up, including a few bathing scenes, though Yuu’s transformation sequences are without nudity—and are, notably, done individually for each episode rather than with stock animation.
And, of course, as in many magical-girl stories, the young heroine has a questionable relationship with a boy who is a significant number of years her senior. Creamy Mami handles the relationship between Yuu and Toshio well (they’re three years apart in age, and he is oblivious to her precocious crush on him), but more uncomfortable is Toshio’s sidekick Midori, a comically huge boy who is in Toshio’s class but is madly in love with Yuu. Why a boy in middle school is chasing a girl in elementary goes unexplained; he’s never deliberately depicted as ill-intentioned or creepy, but he manages to be creepy anyway, and at the end, after the story is resolved, we see several images indicating how the characters continue their lives—and Midori is hitting on yet another elementary-school girl.
Conclusion
Overall, I found this enjoyable, though my attention wandered whenever I tried to watch multiple episodes in a stretch. There is certainly nothing profound here; since I have been futilely chasing this title for years, I might have the right to call it a letdown now that I’ve finally been able to watch it. However, my expectations were modest, so it met them. Its historical importance to the genre outweighs any opinions I might offer about its content, so I repeat what I said before: If you are interested in magical girls, you should watch it.
