Ojamajo Doremi

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Ojamajo Doremi

Pretty Witch Doremi-chi.
Genre: Magical Girl
Slice of Life
Running Time: 22 minutes
Country: Japan
Release Date: February 7, 1999 - January 26, 2003 (Television series)
June 26 - December 11, 2004 (OVA series)
Created by: Izumi Todo
Distributed by: Toei Animation
SPE Visual Works (Seasons 1-2)
SME Visual Works (Seasons 3-4)
Aniplex (Season 5)
Starring: Chiemi Chiba
Tomoko Akiya
Yuki Matsuoka
Rumi Shishido
Nami Miyahara
Sawa Ishige
Ikue Ōtani
Seasons: 5 (+OVA)
Episodes: 201


Ojamajo Doremi (おジャ魔女どれみ, lit. "Bothersome Witch Doremi") is a Japanese magical girl anime television series created by Toei Animation. It focuses on a group of elementary school girls, led by Doremi Harukaze, who become witch apprentices. The series aired in Japan on TV Asahi between February 1999 and January 2003, spanning four seasons and 201 episodes, and was followed by an original video animation series released between June and December 2004.

Plot

Season 1 (Carnival)

Doremi Harukaze is an unlucky girl in love, who after getting into trouble at school finds herself outside of the mysterious Maho-do run by the equally mysterious Majorika. There, Doremi accidentally compares her to a witch, causing the woman to suddenly change into a witch frog.

In order to change back, Majorika makes Doremi an Apprentice Witch, who she must now teach. Along the way, Doremi finds herself unable to resist telling her best friend Hazuki Fujiwara, and the new transfer student Aiko Senoo and Majorika agrees to take them on as students as well. As new apprentice witch, the three elementary girls are forced to juggle their daily activities; from going to school and activities to working at the Maho-do to practicing for their witch exams.

Season 2 (Sharp)

The season begins when the Ojamajos gloomily discuss how much they miss Majorika when they decide to come by for old time's sake and enter the Maho-Dou. But they struggle upon realizing that the witch world door is closed off until finding a note, along with an item Majorika left behind so they go to return it, not aware that the witch worlds door is now open..

Season 3 (Motto)

In this season the ojamajo are joined by a new girl who was given a second chance at being a witch apprentice after she lost her witch mentor tragically. At first this new apprentice rubs the others the wrong way but they soon both learn there is more than meets the eye and quickly befriend her!

Season 4 (Dokkan)

Hana, who has gotten bored of the Witch World and wants to be with Doremi and the others, uses all of her magic to instantly grow up and become a sixth-grader. This results in the Maho-Do being transformed into a crafts shop and Hana's magical crystals shattering, requiring Doremi and the others to supply her with the energy needed to become a witch apprentice. Meanwhile, the Queen discovers Majo Tourbillon's power will eventually cause all worlds to be put to sleep. As such, the Queen tasks the girls, who are assisted by Majo Tourbillon's fairy, Baba, to recreate various handmade gifts that Majo Tourbillon's six grandchildren had made and received from her in order to remind her of the happy times and break the vines imprisoning her. The vines soon start spawning black flowers that cause people and magical beings alike to be affected with hopelessness and apathy, with the girls enlisting the help of Hana, and a white elephant named Pao to put a stop to them.

Season 5 (Na-i-sho)

Ojamajo Doremi Na-i-sho is set during the time-frame of Motto! Ojamajo Doremi, meaning the main cast are currently in the 5th grade, Hana-chan is still a baby and the Maho-dō is in the form of a sweet house. Each episode is dedicated to a particular character and features events which expand their personality and background.

Why It Rocks

  1. The concept of a Magical Girl and Slice Of Life in a magic shop is very well done and is interesting.
  2. It shows realism and mature themes even though there are little to no action scenes despite being a Magical Girl series. One exemple would be a loss of a loved one.
  3. Unique and beautiful art style that fits well with the characters and usual mood, and it's had aged well and still look good by today standards, much like Kirby: Right Back at Ya! and the early 2005 Doraemon episodes.
    • In fact, the art style would be improved in every seasons, such as in Sharp, in which that season had slightly more detailled animation than Carnival, and after that you get Motto and Dokkan, who basically changed their animation style, while for some it may appear as a slight downgrade, it still look great.
  4. The voice acting is very well done, especially in the original Japanese, French and Italian dubs, with the voices fitting the characters.
  5. Likable characters and great development as they help others, learn what's right and wrong and knowing that the world will be difficult for them always, including:
    • Doremi Harukaze
    • Hazuki Fujiwara
    • Aiko Senoo
    • Onpu Segawa
    • Momoko Asuka
    • Pop Harukaze
    • Hana Makihatayama
  6. The 1st season ending shows that the protagonists will learn that things will get in their way and there's no way to avoid that and they must always find hope and try their best.
  7. It's a very well done deconstruction of both the Magical Girl and Slice Of Life genres.
  8. It teaches children that the world will be difficult for them and they must accept that there will be obstacles and fixing their mistakes in the past.
  9. It had plenty of good morals, such as:
    • Taking care of someone.
    • Having true friends rather than fake friends.
    • Bullying is bad.
    • Being kind to the others.
    • Fighting is wrong.
    • Problems sometime can't be avoided and need to be stopped.
  10. More often than not the episodes are well written, which give a ton of decent/amazing episodes such as:
  11. Instead of using magic energy as a flow in the body, the items have ammunition like spheres to limit the amount of usages which is very interesting and a unexpected great idea.
  12. A lot of very humorous and funny moments, mostly involving Doremi.
    • The season 1 gag of where Pop try to not be sleepy and that her mom does caught her is also extremely hilarous and never fail to make us laugh.
    • Doremi being clumsy is also very hilarous, and while at times it may appear as obnoxious, sometime they make up for some of the most funniest scenes of the whole show.
  13. The animations is very good for it's time, with the later seasons having almost no animation errors to the point that it's can almost be compared to the 2003 series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animation (only in term of not so much animation errors), and it's was made better by the fact that the art style is great for it's time, as said previously.
  14. Good soundtrack with many catchy musics or even some bangers, for exemple the song Ojamajo Carnival!! is one of the most catchy songs of the show, with it being fun to listen to and in fact it even became an internet meme where some peoples would do videos about them dancing with that music.
    • Each seasons had their own style of musics, and all of them are very good, especially in Sharp, as it either is catchy, funny, relaxing or sometime even would make you remind of your good moments in the past, and some of them also sound sad for the emotional moments, which are very fitting.
  15. Despite mostly being aimed at girls, the show can still be quite enjoyable to the male publics, this is mostly because the show isn't too girly like other shows aimed at girls.
    • It's also mostly aimed at little kids but it's can still appeal to some teens and especially the adults, especially if they had troubles with their actual life.
    • In fact, many videos about this show on the internet had males that review the series, which show that it is also popular to the male public, especially in France.
  16. The characters design are both amazing and cute at the same time, with the main characters like Doremi, Hazuki, Onpu and Aikobeing the best examples.
    • Many of the secondary characters also had good designs, even if some of them are not great but even then, some of the bad designs might be intentional, such as for Nakata.
  17. The pacing of the episodes are decent, it's not too slow nor too fast, and most of the episodes are fun to watch due to that, although some of them can go way too quick, but that's not really a bad quality.
  18. All of the openings are very good, especially the one of the season 3 (due to it's amazing song), although it contains one innapropriate moment at the 54 seconds of it.
    • The opening are also made even better than it's already is with the surprisingly good and catchy music that are in these opening and even in the episode.
    • The French dubs of the openings songs are also great, being pretty fun to listen to and is better than most dubs out there, even though unfortunately not everything from the first theme song was translated since instead of being 1m50 like the original, it reduced to 30 seconds, howewer it might be good for those who prefer shorter openings.
  19. It spawned two TV movies, which were both good, even if they only last 30 minutes and that they were never dubbed outside Japan.
  20. Every seasons had excellent finals, especially Dokkan (even if the season 1 finale was not really a finale due to the show continuing later on).

Unlucky Qualities

  1. The 4Kids Entertainment English dub, Magical DoReMi, was terrible, due to having a lot of censored scenes and being overall unfaitful to the original Japanese version, it was also made way too late, being released in 2005, 6 years after the original Japanese version and most of the other dubs that aired before, it's also had a poor soundtrack in comparison to the original Japanese version of the show.
    • Fortunately, not all the dubs with this name are bad and some are more faithful to the original Japanese version, such as the French dub for example, although in that one some of the names were changed, but it still works compared to the 4Kids dub.
    • Also, not all the other dubs are brillant, one exemple is the Arabic dub, who suffer from terrible voice acting and other changes, though not as bad as the 4Kids dub.
  2. Some of the tie-in video games are mediocre, such as Ojamajo Doremi Dokkan: Nijiiro Paradise.
    • Speaking of the tie-in games, there wasn't that much of them and most of them were only released on the PS1, with the only exception being the Sega Pico games and Ojamajo Adventure on PC.
    • In addition, they are just mostly party games, which doesn't really fit the universe of the series at all, and would have worked more as an adventure game, howewer that party game idea was not the worst idea.
  3. It's can be a bit mean-spirited to sometime, especially with Doremi in the earlier episodes or when she can't have steaks, also some of her class mates treat her badly due to them making fun of her, especially in the first episode.
    • This can also be said for the Harukaze family with the parents that fight a lot.
  4. Despite this show being made for kids, there has some inappropriate moment for kids. Like example in the Motto! Ojamajo Doremi opening in 54 seconds, you can see the moment where Doremi and Friends are doing twerking dance.
  5. Some of the characters can be unlikable or even annoying at times, such as:
    • Majo Rika in the earlier episodes, as she treat Doremi badly when she do something wrong with magic, she would also treat Hazuki and Aiko badly when they first trying to do magic or transformations.
    • Doremi, while likable in every episodes, can still sometime being obnoxious and would also sometime doing way too much, and not in a good way.
    • Tamaki, while still a great character and can be likable, she can be quite unlikable since she act like a brat because of being rich.
    • Aiko can be really mean to her dad, such exemples are in episode 32 where because of her dad not wanting Aiko to trying to see her long lost mom, she said that he hate him and would never goes home again, her dad might probably have prevent this and it wasn't the best thing he did but still...
  6. The transformation scenes, while good, can be repetitive since it's the same thing, although it isn't really a bad point due to the show not being repetitive with it's formula but still...
    • To be honest, the way they transform themself would change in every seasons, so at least they doesn't make it even more repetitive.
  7. Despite the animation being still good and cute, the lightning can be poor at many occasions, despite that, it's art style is still beautiful and great for it's time that still look good by today standards, like many other animes back then.
    • The later seasons such as Motto and Dokkan would howewer correct this problem a little bit, being less dark and is more adapted to the art style of those seasons, but still it has not aged well compared to animes such as Sonic X or Naruto
    • Despite that, the OVAs had even better animation and of course better lightning.
  8. There's some bad episodes such as'
  9. There's a lot of animation errors in the season 1, while in some other seasons such as in Sharp there's some of them too, season 1 is the one who had the most animation errors, especially at the earlier episodes.

Reception

The series received mixed reviews on IMDb, with a score of 6.8 but received positive reviews by audiences and had a small cult following over the years in the United States since the english dub by 4Kids wasn't that successful and wasn't well received.

In France and Japan though, it is very popular and is still beloved to this day.

In fact, recently the series received a huge cult following in the States after watching the Japanese original, and without the still terrible 4Kids dub, then maybe the cult following would not exist.

Episodes with their own pages

  1. "I'm Doremi! Becoming a Witch Apprentice"
  2. "Majo Rika Goes to Kindergarten"
  3. "Hazuki Chan is Kidnapped!"
  4. "The Ojamajo's Fight for Justice!?"
  5. "Papa, Fireworks and Tearful Memories"
  6. "Onpu Mail is a Love Letter?"
  7. "Raising a Baby is a lot of Trouble!"

Trivia

  • The Latin Spanish dub got cancelled while the original Japanese version was celebrating 20 years of Toei Animation.
  • The Ojamajo Doremi movie was originally supposed to release May 15, 2020, but was delayed due to production issues and the COVID-19 pandemic and would be released on November 13, 2020.
  • The series' name comes from the combination of two words. "Ojama" usually translates to "clumsy", "hindrance", or "troublesome"; and "Majo" means witch. Doremi is the name of the main protagonist. So all together, it means "Troublesome Witch Doremi" to reference the many situations Doremi gets into.
  • The series' title has been mistakenly romanized as Ojyamajyo Doremi on several occasions.
  • The series has also spawned a live action series called Ojamajo Kids. It also had a radio show during the airing of the series.
  • Ojamajo is a palindrome, meaning "words spelled the same both forward and backwards".
  • Many assume the first season is called "Ojamajo Doremi Carnival" due to that being the name of the theme song. The first season is the only series in the anime to not have a full official name other than "Ojamajo Doremi".
  • Normally, season finales tend to be about farewell and thus very emotional. The only exception was Motto! Ojamajo Doremi which ended in a somewhat more light-hearted tone.
  • Doremi Harukaze name is similar to that of Dorami from Doraemon, although that was probably unintentional.

Videos

Soundtrack

Ojamajo Doremi Full OST playlist

Clips

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Reviews

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