Minky Momo by Alex / Anime Blog Tracker

Minky Momo

I already talked a lot about Minky Momo on Twitter, so maybe it’s time to round up everything I have about this series in one post. Of course, this post won’t be just a collection of tweets or things I already said, but a more thorough look into the whole series. That being said, Minky Momo may be a mere reason to justify me going on and on about Studio Live and the special animators that worked on this series. This is my first time writing in English, a second language, so overlook the mistakes and rough writing please.Magical Princess Minky Momo(1982~1983)The first installment in the franchise was the early-eighties TV show. Bandai was looking for someone to make them a show aimed at little girls so they can sell toys. Minky Momo, just like a lot of other shows of that period, was more like a 30 minutes TV ad for the toys Bandai made(more specifically Popy, which a Bandai subsidiary). Ashi Production(Production Reed currently) took the job, and Bandai didn’t make specific demands as to what the show should be, aside from it being aimed at little girls with the protagonist being a little girl herself who possesses the ability to transform. Therefore this project was more like the studio’s “own”, especially the studio’s president Toshihiko Sato, who planned the project and produced it.After creating the character other topics were discussed, such as the thing Momo will transform to, or her goals. The show’s idea is kind of special, because Momo doesn’t transform to a special state where she has magical powers, like Sailor Moon, she transfers rather to an adult with a specific expertise. That opened the way for a lot of possibilities, at one time she is a professional racer taking part in a competition, at another she is a pilot trying to rescue a plane, and so on. That served the show well, as every episode was something different and fun, and Momo could even transform into famous characters, like Snow White. The goal was, according to Sato, to convey the notion that girls can be anything they want to. Sato had, at the time, a girl in kindergarten, and the image of a working women in many fields wasn’t that popular in Japan back then, so you can see how this idea seemed pretty positive to Sato and the folks at Ashi Production. Here is a nice interview with Sato if anyone is interested.This project may have been the product of Ashi Production intellectually, but it was Studio Live’s artistically. That becomes clear when you look at the character designer, Toyo Ashida, being originally the president of Studio Live. Sure, other subcontractors handled some episodes as well, but none delivered the kind of work Live did.The show literally starts with Live, as Hiroshi Watanabe(a Live animator) animated the entirety of the first opening. Even the transform sequence used throughout the TV series is his work. Almost all the good episodes are Live episodes, Watanabe’s episodes to be more exact. There are some exceptions, which I’ll try to cover later.Going back to Watanabe, he directed(supervised) the animation for these episodes: #26, #36, #42, #50, #55, #61, or six episodes in total. #26 is his first AD work ever I believe. As for his work as key animator: #13, #15, #26, #36, #42, #46, #48, #50, #55, #61, #63, or 11 episodes in total. As I said, the best episodes were the episodes he AD’ed. His style at the time was heavily influenced by Yoshinori Kanada(even in his rare new works), yet more delicately and fluidly timed. What I like a lot about him are his effects and the way he handles fluids, he was one of the best in that regard, in my opinion at least. This was pretty prevalent in Minky Momo, because the villain Momo fights in the last stages of the show is basically a black cloud. I can go as far as saying that the good villain scenes were all drawn by Watanabe, specifically the finale that had tons of well-done fluids(villain) scenes, and was one of the best episodes overall.An interesting story arc was #45 and #46. I don’t know if you would consider this a spoiler, as Minky Momo is a show that doesn’t stick to the story much and one episode’s events barely affect the next’s, but you can avoid the red colored text if you don’t want to read about events limited to 2 episodes of an 80s magical girl anime. In episode #45, while helping someone, an accident occurs making Momo’s stick break, which takes away her ability to transform.These 2 episodes had a somewhat depressing tone, but I like about them that they concentrated on the normal, human side of Momo as a little girl. Wearing clothes, waking up and such. This was a chance for Watanabe to demonstrate another skill of his, character animation. Some Watanabe scenes in #46 contained beautiful character animation, the best maybe is this scene in which Momo wears her clothes. This scene also served to convey Watanabe’s tendencies away from the Kanada influence.#46 was even heavier, with Momo dying from a truck accident. I was a bit surprised personally, but I found an explanation. While I can’t verify it, it’s kind of feasible. It’s said that the sponsor, Popy, didn’t make the profit they wanted from the toys, so they decided, after #45 just finished production, to stop financing the show. Ashi Production, irritated by that, changed the screenplay for the next episode to make it like that. It’s very ironic how the truck that hit Momo was filled with toys, and the toys just fell on the street after the accident, with the camera even focusing on toys for a few moments. Although Popy stopped financing the show, the ratings were high and they somehow pulled through extra 18 episodes(63 total). The sponsor bailing out wasn’t the least bit weird or rare back then, and with most animes of the time being financed by a sole company this was mostly a killing blow to the show, and a reasonable business decision anyway(if not making money). Even the mighty Gundam fell victim to that, before turning, in a twist of fate, to the biggest anime franchise, but that’s a long story.Another star-animator of the show was Hiromi Matsushita, who is also a Live animator. He is like a companion to Watanabe, in a sense, since they worked a lot together. He worked on episodes #26, #36, #42, #46, #50, #55, #61, #63, and all of them are Watanabe episodes too. If you find a good animated scene in the TV show, chances are it’s either one of these two. Matsushita’s style is also delicate, maybe more than Watanabe, as he’s also heavily influenced by Kanada. One could argue that these two are more influenced by Masahito Yamashita than by Kanada, so I won’t go into this argument. I’m just referring them back to the Kanada-school of animation, to which Yamashita belongs too anyway. I may have described their styles in almost the same way, but that’s because I’m honestly not very familiar with either of them to tell them apart, unless effects of fluids are involved maybe.Matsushita is married to another Live animator who worked on Minky Momo, Kazuko Tadano. If the name sounds familiar that’s because she designed Sailor Moon characters. I think her first KA work was in #55 of Minky Momo. When talking about people promoted to KA, we also have Hiroshi Kojina, the current president of Live succeeding the late Toyo Ashida. His first KA work was one of Minky Momo’s toy ads, maybe this one.Nice surprises include Shinsaku Kozuma’s #9 and #14, one of the prominent Kanada school animators. No highlights specifically, yet there a lot of scenes with his distinct sharp timing. Kozuma was one of the first people to take Kanada’s timing more extremely, something that can be traced in many animators that followed him. His work in Minky Momo is an example of that.#45 was also good. No single person was the reason behind that, but the whole group. 4 people only did everything from AD to in-betweening. That’s not a rare or strange incident for animes from that age though, compared to the current armies needed to finish even early episodes of modern TV anime. This same group did episodes #17, #21, #22, #31, #40, #45, #49, #53, #62 together with good quality. This group, and the director of these episodes Mitsuo Kusakabe, would go later to establish the sub-contractor studio Sign.Minky Momo: La Ronde in My Dream(1985)Now we reached the best installment of this franchise, in my opinion at least. A good start with this OVA(or movie) would be naming some of the main animators: Noriyasu Yamauchi(Live), Yoshimatsu Takahero(Live), Michitaka Kikuchi(Kusama Art?), Yoshiharu Fukushima(Neomedia?), Koji Ito(Graviton), along Watanabe and Matsushita and others. A list like that is enough to make this movie one of the best works of the first half of 1980′s at least.Once again, the start is with Studio Live. Not Watanabe, but Tadano. The opening is nothing less than amazing, specially shading and drawings, although animation is good too but you can see Tadano’s leaning towards drawing rather than animating, which maybe led her to her career as a character designer. This opening presented Momo in her most beautiful image.What makes this movie special isn’t the abundance of super quality scenes, but the movie being of high quality overall, and mostly following my beloved Kanada-style of animation. Watanabe directing(supervising) the animation was a huge reason. The movie, from start to end, even simple daily life scenes, was submerged in this style. Maybe I’m being a bit biased here, and I can’t deny that. Anyway, animators were given a lot of freedom apparently, and for a work with a lot of freedom produced during the peak of the Kanada-craze, that is to be expected.Digging deeper into the movie, Noriyasu Yamuchi’s work catched my attention. He would become later on a strong realistic animator, although his early days were in projects like Cream Lemon Pop Chaser and this movie, that are all 100% Kanad-ish, and him being(to this day) a Live animator. His famous scene in Gainax’s Wings of Honnêamise goes to show how capable he is with this style. His work in Minky Momo showed(to me at least) a bit of tendency towards a more realistic approach, be it just slightly. I need more research and experience with his work to give a judgment. On a side a note, he is passionate about Fighter Planes and military stuff, what is called a “Military Otaku” I guess.What sparked my interest though was the dragons scenes. The way the “fire” comes out of their mouths reminded me a lot of these two scenes. The first is Watanabe’s dragon fight in Maeterlinck No Aoi Tori, which is an outstanding scene in and of itself, and it’s said to be a homage to the legendary dragon fight from Wanpaku Ouji animated partially by Yasuo Otsuka. The second is from Galatt, another TV anime with a strong presence from Live, and the scene is also Watanabe’s work. This leads me to say, with high degree of certainty, that the dragon scenes in La Ronde in My Dream were animated by Watanabe. His confirmed scene though, the escape from the city, is maybe the movie’s highlight.Hiroshi Kojina animated the best transforming sequence of the franchise, and Koji Ito was the star with these two scenes. Other than that, I have nothing to say about the animators of this movie. Maybe worth noting is my assumption that the credits were divided according to belonging to Studio Live or not. The first group are Live animators(haven’t checked all of them, just the people I know), and the second are people from other studios.All other highlights can be seen in Booru, but I don’t recommend that. There is a lot more to this movie than just a splendid artistic display, it’s also backed by a charming story and events. Once more references the franchise a popular story or a character in its own way, and it was Peter Pan this time. I won’t go deep into the story, as I don’t prefer that, but that isn’t very important. The story in this movie, or maybe the whole franchise, wasn’t by any means well built and thoroughly thought. It’s always the randomness and sheer fun the movie throws at you that made the experience delightful. It starts in a theater, then to a deserted island, then a magical city for kids, ending with a war. The movie doesn’t hesitate to throw scenes of dancing or races that are pointless, and even stray away from the flow and consistency of the story, just for kicks. That said, the movie also presented heavy themes, the toys thrown on ground in a children’s city ruined by war is nothing less than a very strong imagery.Other than Peter Pan, the movie contained a lot of references and jokes on other popular characters. It also had the interesting contrast of revolving around the land of eternal childhood, while Momo’s magic is basically growing up, but I would have loved if they delved more into this contradiction. In general, the movie catches your focus from the very first moment till the end. It offers the essence of this franchise in its best form.Magical Princess Minky Momo vs Magical Angel Creamy Mami(1985)Magical Angel Creamy Mami was another popular magical girl show of that time. I find the names of these shows back then, in a period of magical girls boom, silly but amusing. Most of them followed this formula of the heroine’s name and magical this or that, such as Magical Idol Pastel Yumi or Magical Start Magical Emi. Anyway, Creamy Mami is a long franchise that could fill up a whole post(that I’m not interested in writing at any rate), but what is important here is that one of the producers, Oono Minoru, also was a producer for Minky Momo, so one can guess that he pushed for this OVA, as a bonus for Minky Momo’s La Ronde in My Dream and Creamy Mami’s OVA. His Company was credited for planning and producing too.This short OVA is really fascinating, it’s a chance to see both franchises’ talents in one place. Tomomi Mochizuki was the director, and he was one of the main episode directors for the Creamy Mami TV show. Directing wasn’t a powerful aspect in Minky Momo as I see it, and Mochizuki is nothing but a great director. His Creamy Mami episodes were really good, and 3 years later he will direct Kimagure Orange Road, a personal favourite, and then his most popular works maybe, the Ghibli co-production Umi ga Kikoeru. I’ll leave his Kimagure OP3 as a testament of his timeless talent.Mochizuki is a demanding director though, his beloved scenes where the camera goes round and round are really hard to do, even harder in the pre-computer era. First is his wife, Masako Goto, who frequently AD’ed his works and was the Creamy Mami AD in this OVA. As for animators, Hiroki Takagi was one of the people he delegated to draw a lot of his special scenes. Takagi worked a lot on different popular franchises back then, including Creamy Mami naturally, but I haven’t got around to watch his works yet. This is one of his prevalent scenes. Unfortunately, Takagi died in january this year(2018). These three worked a lot together, as a team of sorts, and maybe the only connection between them was being from the same studio, Ajia Do(亜細亜堂).Third and last animator was Michitaka Kikuchi, from Kusama Art I believe. All these people relocated later without a doubt, but I think that following these relocations is interesting if not important. Kikuchi wasn’t a Live or Ajia Do animator, but his relation to this OVA isn’t tied to a certain group of franchise. He was a recurrent animator in the Magical Girl Series of Studio Pierrot, which include all aforementioned shows(excluding Minky Momo) and more. This series was planned by the same company from before, Yumiko Advertising(株式会社読売広告社), and Oono Minoru produced a big chunk of them. This may be an explanation as for why some people, like Kikuchi, worked on certain projects.With all the animators coming from Creamy Mami, a Minky Momo AD was necessary, and the best man for the job is Watanabe. Watanabe, as we will see later, is a pillar of the Minky Momo franchise, and will play a big role in later installments. This OVA was basically a great showcase of animation, and an amusing application of a nice idea.Minky Momo in Bridge Over Dreams + Minky Momo in The Station of Your Memories(1993 + 1995)The two OVAs of the first half of the 1990s weren’t a huge achievement in terms of animation, but with a delightful story. First OVA(Bridge over Dreams) had maybe the best story of this franchise. Remember what I said about #45? This OVA is just Momo as a normal girl, with almost nothing magical. It revolves around encounters and farewell, giving it a poetic, romantic feeling.Although not an achievement, there are still interesting side to the production of these two OVAs. Both were Ashi Pro projects, but with the help of another subcontractor( 制作協力 ). First OVA had Studio Junio( スタジオジュニオ ), that was one of the main subcontractors in the second Minky Momo TV of the early 90s. It was the starting point for some top animators, such as Toshiyuki Inoue, yet none of these talents showed up in Junio’s Minky Momo outings.As for the second OVA it was none other than Live. Sadly, Live wasn’t the powerhouse it used to be, which is a common phenomenon for subcontractors, and this resulted in the OVA having nothing of the charm of the movie or first TV series. What made this OVA special was Watanabe’s work, doing not only character design but also enshutsu(episode directing) and storyboarding. The designs are particularly excellent, being simple yet elegant and cute, you can tell his roots as an animator. Storyboards weren’t bad either. It was a good OVA overall, although the encounter of the two Momos from the two series deserved something more than good. I didn’t talk about the second TV series, and I don’t think I’ll. I’m intrigued by the people behind it, yes Watanabe was a character designer and directed few episodes, but other than that the people who made the movie or the first TV series such an enjoyable experience weren’t there. Studio Live, as I said, was past his glory days, and even Watanabe’s directing isn’t something I’m interested in, as Watanabe the animator is what appealed to me.

Alex

May 11, 2018 • Subscribe

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