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Magical Fairy Persia
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Title Info
- alias: Magical Fairy Pelsha
- seen: 1-4 of 45
- type: TV
- grade: watchable
- genre: shoujo
- made: 1984
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
Also referred to as `Magical Fairy Pelsha' which is another possible translation of the Japanese title. I'd love to rate this one higher, because it is quite an enjoyable title with some interesting touches. To begin with Persia is not that normal a girl. It seems she's been brought up in the wilds of africa, complete with lion companion and amazing physical skills, as well as a very straightforward (albeit naieve about `civilisation') attitude. She's on the plane to Japan when her plane is drawn into the dimension of dreams, which is currently frozen leading to dreams growing very slowly. She is charged with finding `love energy' to rectify the situation, given various magical girl items to help and three tiny kappa (Japanese mythological creature) to guide her and put back on the plane. Of course introducing Persia to Japanese society offers enough opportunity for chaos, but considering she is now a magical girl the possibilities seem limitless.
And to be honest the trip is very good fun. The combination of `young girl' innocence combined with physical and magical abilities offers lots of flexibility. This is especially true because her magical powers seem largely unbounded, seemingly capable of doing anything that could make the episode more entertaining. Likewise the `outsider' learning the ways of Japanese society is always a safe bet for an interesting story. The `quest' element hasn't been too visible yet and there don't seem to be any villains (yay!). At the same time there are some very strange events, for example in episode three she is kidnapped and threatened with death by a pistol wielding murderer. Her response? well, she thinks he just wants to play and he's the one who ends up doing the dodging. Watching a magical girl shooting a handgun (pretty fireworks, being the comment) and then demonstrate her skill at knife-throwing is more than a little off the beaten track for magical girl shows. The problem comes from the fact that this high energy, high humor approach can quickly lead to a sense of unreality and an inability to do subtle moments and atmosphere. This is enhanced by some weak writing, for example Persia has her `female tarzan' moments but they are a bit erratic and unsupported, leading to some confusion about her character. Both her character, her magic, and the story are willing to diverge to provide `humorous' scenes, but this gives a somewhat `broken' feel to the story. Still, it does have moments when it works well, and it is at least entertaining in between. I can't help think it would have been even better if the magical girl staples could have been dropped entirely.
The animation is fairly basic. The character designs are simple both in line and character. The action, movement and effects animation is very basic and the ability to do atmosphere not that strong. The world design seem fairly sketchy and the magical girl aspects pretty corny. This is best demonstrated by her largely undefined magic and dodgy `quest'. On the other hand there is an ability to provide character and energy which really are the core needs for this kind of show. Thus Persia, and some of the minor characters are cute more by virtue of actions and character than appearance, which is not actually an unpleasant fact. The biggest problem may be that the whole production has a somewhat unfinished feel, suggesting that this might have been designed to be another production line magical girl show. It does feel like a couple of the creative people fought this, but their victory was not complete leading to an uneasy combination of elements.
None of the sites I source from have a review of this title. Indeed there is very little information on this title at all.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:21 WST 2009