Minky-momo is useless. Lengthy reside Minky-momo. After episode 46, which had scarred the kids of Japan with the dying of the magical lady through truck, the collection nonetheless had seventeen episodes to go, properly over the initially deliberate fifty. That meant the writers needed to provide you with one thing comparatively shortly: ought to it concentrate on Momo rising up as a toddler of her earthly dad and mom? Ought to it fake she by no means died and deal with her dying as a nightmare? Or ought to it attempt to do one thing totally different and basically reboot the story as a metaphor for Momo coping with her dying?
For those who guessed the latter, you’re heading in the right direction. Whereas episodes forty-seven and forty-eight are clip exhibits, permitting everybody to get the collection again on observe, the remaining fifteen episodes concentrate on new adventures for the Fenarinarsan princess. It begins along with her royal father mourning the dying of his little one. He’s at a pond in Fenarinarsa when he notices some unusual, diamond-like stones that he’s by no means seen within the water earlier than. He fishes them out and takes them house, the place the queen suggests becoming one into the middle of the crown, which is empty attributable to Momo’s dying. When he does, the gem is pulled into the crown and compressed right into a laser disk that begins taking part in scenes of a barely totally different Momo. Neither mum or dad is aware of what’s occurring, however because the adventures proceed, a darkish power creeps nearer and nearer—a misty black fog that finally takes on a face and a objective. In episode fifty, we will see a robust implication that the scenes they’re watching with us are by some means Momo’s childhood desires; The King notes that Momo continues to be a child in her reincarnated kind.
This opens the door to what these episodes truly do: each give Minky-momo and the viewers a option to come to phrases along with her dying. Momo died along with her mission unfinished; Fenarinarsa continues to be indifferent from Earth, and her place as protector and supply of desires and marvel continues to be at stake. Momo was totally conscious of the significance of her mission, whilst she behaved like a typical little one, appearing out her encounters. The implication is that she carries guilt for dying earlier than finishing her job, and now as a child she has no actual option to resolve issues—in any case, she will be able to’t actually discuss it. Due to this fact, the darkish cloud, later referred to as “Nightmare”, is consultant of her guilt and worry that she has finished irreparable injury, whereas her adventures can all be seen as her coming to phrases with what occurred to her.
Essentially the most important means we see that is within the variety of deaths Momo encounters in her desires. In episode 51, Momo meets an actor identified for doing his personal stunts; he’s affected by a terminal sickness and finally dies off-screen. Momo should come to phrases with the truth that she helped him fulfill his dying want and that he’s gone, dwelling solely by his movies. Within the subsequent episode, a penguin within the aquarium loses her chick and Mocha should assist the grieving mom—who finally forgets her chick when she meets a good-looking male penguin. This speaks to Momo’s fears of substitute; sure, she is now really the child of her earthly dad and mom, however she can be human, not a magical princess. Does this imply that her Fenarinarsan dad and mom will substitute or neglect her, because the penguin changed her chick? These fears are addressed within the following episode when Momo helps a lady change her tragic previous by getting her aboard a ghostly model of the prepare she by no means received on the primary time; By serving to Cecilia, Momo thinks about how she will be able to re-arrange her personal life and alter her destiny into a cheerful ending, as she does for Cecilia.
The opposite widespread thread in these episodes is the Satan Queen, also called the Evil Queen from Snow White. Episode fifty strongly means that Snow White is useless (so far as the queen and the dwarves know, and she or he dies within the early Grimm model), and Momo tries to disguise herself as Snow White twice to appease folks’s emotions. The Satan Queen then turns into Aunt Satan, a lady who tries to atone for what she has finished, primarily by promoting tasty apples from the Fairytale Forest and utilizing the income to assist others. Aunt Satan may characterize Momo’s need to assist others despite the fact that she is now an bizarre human, a dream to discover a option to nonetheless make a distinction on this planet, even with out her magical powers.
After all, all of that is almost undone when Nightmare catches up along with her. The ultimate three episodes of the collection are darkish, with episode sixty-two being downright scary as Nightmare picks off Momo’s family and friends one after the other, making her query herself and all the nice she did earlier than her dying. It’s no spoiler to say that she and her associates finally triumph (the statute of limitations on spoilers has absolutely handed after forty years). Nonetheless, it’s not a simple emotional journey for Momo. She has to simply accept the top of her outdated life and embrace her new one, and so can we as viewers. It’s a troublesome lesson, even for the after-school particular period of youngsters’s leisure (to not point out the age of toy gross sales), however one which works for me.
Along with the recurring character Aunt Satan, Momo can be accompanied by a pink dragon named Kajira, whom she meets throughout a tongue-in-cheek episode about Momotaro who the anime addresses in English as Peach Boy. Kajira, who resembles a pink Spike from the unique My Little Pony franchiseserves an important objective. For many of the collection, he’s only a chump comedian aid, chewing his means by something he can get his fingers on whereas accentuating the manufacturing values along with his ever-changing measurement. Momo’s new outfit is cuter than her outdated one – her vest is now a hoodie, which works properly – and her new transformation has 100% much less ass, making her look extra like the sunshine present transformation from the later Magic Woman collection. Her transformations proceed to have an amusing diploma of specificity – at one level she remarks that she’s a fighter pilot, not an everyday pilot, and due to this fact can’t fly an outdated biplane. And naturally, there are nonetheless the problems of a bit of media from a much less enlightened time; episode fifty-one has a fairly terrible stereotype of a First Nations man (full with saying “how” as a greeting).
Fairy Princess Minky Momo takes extra twists and turns than was in all probability initially supposed. Momo’s dying and these episodes that assist her cope with it is probably not uncommon in comparison with different worldwide kids’s media from the 80s, however the turning level that was episode 46 left an indelible mark on the top of the collection. It’s a must-see for anime historians, but in addition , if typically weird, story in its personal proper.
