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Sixty Years Since Mighty Atom: 1986
As this whirlwind tour of anime pushes further into the 1980s it’s reaching an era of notable OVAs. Keeping the length of some of those OVAs in mind, though, for the moment I’m sticking with TV shows. I wound up deciding to watch the first episode of another magical girl series I haven’t seen before. After Minky Momo had turned out a bit differently than I’d imagined its “formula” would amount to (but closer to a much earlier series with a magic girl in it), I did do a bit of double-checking and confirmed Pastel Yumi had been produced by Studio Pierrot, the same as Creamy Mami. In this case, the series did involve a girl who’s granted magic by small animals, but it wasn’t quite “just the same as Creamy Mami.”
While I should be cautious of judging the artwork and polish of unseen episodes by the first instalment in a series, starting Pastel Yumi I did have the feeling I’d crossed some almost undefinable line between “mid-1980s anime” and “late 1980s anime” just from Yumi’s character design. She also happened to have a voice deep enough to surprise me as well, and that without “magically growing up.” The magical content remained far fluffier than the more recent era of “magical girls as feminine superheroines,” but I could imagine calling that “charming” in turn. I suppose the biggest caution in trying to talk about a series like this is sliding into “surely this isn’t for kids over here and now--I’m watching it, right?” With a collection of earlier series begun just this month, anyway, I am supposing it could be a while until I can see just what mischief and magical assistance Pastel Yumi gets into next.
While I should be cautious of judging the artwork and polish of unseen episodes by the first instalment in a series, starting Pastel Yumi I did have the feeling I’d crossed some almost undefinable line between “mid-1980s anime” and “late 1980s anime” just from Yumi’s character design. She also happened to have a voice deep enough to surprise me as well, and that without “magically growing up.” The magical content remained far fluffier than the more recent era of “magical girls as feminine superheroines,” but I could imagine calling that “charming” in turn. I suppose the biggest caution in trying to talk about a series like this is sliding into “surely this isn’t for kids over here and now--I’m watching it, right?” With a collection of earlier series begun just this month, anyway, I am supposing it could be a while until I can see just what mischief and magical assistance Pastel Yumi gets into next.