Mahou no Mako-chan

Mahou no Mako-chan is an early Magical Girl Anime loosely based on The Little Mermaid, created by Toei Animation's planning team, the veteran producer Kenji Yokoyama (under the name Shinobu Urakawa) and the also veteran screenwriter Masaki Tsuji. The staff included Yuugo Serizawa as its director, Shinya Takahashi as character designer, and a cast led by Kazuko Sugiyama as the mainb character. It first aired in 1970-71 on TV Asahi (then known as NET).

Mako is a young mermaid who one day rescues a handsome young man named Akira Shigeno from drowning in a shipwreck and promptly falls in love with him. In order to be with her beloved, she convinces the Witch of the Sea to turn her into a human, becoming Ordinary High School Student Mako Urashima. The rest of the series follows Mako in her new life in Early Seventies Japan as she makes friends, learns about the human world, and solves problems with the help of her magical pendant given to her by her Overprotective Dad, Ryuu-oh the King of the Sea. In essence, it sticks close to the tropes of the original Magical Girl template, except that the heroine is a teenager and deals with typical teenage concerns.

Noteworthy for a number of reasons: it was one of the first shoujo anime not to be adapted from an existing manga, as well as one of the first to target older girls and teenagers rather than just little girls (contemporaneous with Attack No. 1 and Sasurai no Taiyou). It also was one of the earliest series to feature what would later be called Fan Service, showcasing the titular heroine in bras and panties, see-through negligees and hot pants. However, Mako did not reach the levels of popularity of her predecessors Sally and Akko-chan and the series is often overlooked as a minor work today, although it was also released in Italian, French and Spanish.

Toei would return to the original Andersen fairy tale in 1975 for a feature-length anime film using some of the same staff but hewing closer to the original story without the modern touches.

Tropes used in Mahou no Mako-chan include:

• Arranged Marriage: Mako's look-a-like Midori has one in her future, but she wants to marry the guy who saved her younger sister and asks Mako for help...
• Almost Kiss
• Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: Mako's magic pendant.
• Bittersweet Ending: Mako and Akira do end up together, but Mako gives up her pendent as well as her life as a mermaid forever.
• Blithe Spirit: Akira is not a prince or a rich boy, but a free-spirited young man who constantly travels around.
• Body to Jewel: Mako's tears, which turn into a magical pearl that makes her human as she eats it.
• Coming of Age Story: For Mako, who not only has to search for her guy, but also has to adapt to human life.
• Composite Character: The Sea Witch herself is Mako's grandmother, as opposed to have them be separate characters, like in the original fairy tale.
• Creepy Child: Funakichi Koinuma, a powerful and creepy teenage boy with Psychic Powers who brainwashes Mako's classmates and lures them to a bombing testing site. This is due to his Dark and Troubled Past: he actually is a Kappa prince who wants revenge on humanity for how they've treated his people.
• Crucified Hero Shot: In episode 32, as Lulu is dragging Nobuko out of her burning house, the ceiling starts collapsing and two burning wooden beams fall on the passed-out girl. Lulu, Mama Bear that she is, manages to cover Nobuko with her body to shield her, and the beams form a fiery "cross" on the poor dog's back as she gets fatally burned. Lulu ultimately manages to pull herself and Nobuko away and out of the house, and dies in a sobbing Nobuko's arms.
• Darker and Edgier: Mahou no Mako-chan was made for older girls, and it shows: it touches rather serious themes (classism, racism, sexism, child abuse, etc.) that Mako cannot always solve with magic. Heck, in episode 2 she frees herself from two criminals with magic -- and ends up accidentally killing them.
• Deranged Animation: When Mako first turns into a human, the visuals turn all trippy and nightmarish.
• Dub Name Change: Mako was renamed Ginny in the Italian dub. She keeps her name in other dubs, although it's spelled "Makko" in French and "Maco" in Spanish ("Maco" is also Toei Animation's official Romanized spelling).
• Everything's Better with Princesses: Mako is one of the daughters of the King of the Sea.
• Evil Uncle: Episode 32 features the blind girl Nobuko, who's heavily mistreated by her Resentful Guardian of an uncle. Her Only Friends are her housekeeper and her Big Friendly Dog Lulu, whom she raised from before she was blinded.
• Friend to All Living Things: Mako can be friends with seagulls, bears, monkeys, Big Friendly Dogs, deers...
• Godiva Hair: Unlike her Disney counterpart, Mako does not wear a seashell bra.
• Happily Adopted: Mako and her human foster family, albeit her Parental Substitute Mr. Urashima is more strict than usual.
  • Subverted at the start: few after Mako was found, a couple claims Mako is their lost daughter and take her away. It turns out they're criminals, and they want to kill her... Mako uses her recently adquired pendant's Master of Illusion powers to escape from them - and then she kills them by getting them to crash their car. She then returns to Mr. Urashima's house and definitely gets to stay there.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Mako-chan has the same voice actress as Jun the Swan, Heidi, and Jariten.
• Hotter and Sexier: Mako isn't sexualized to the extent that Honey and Meg would later be, but she does get several chances to show off her figure. Especially her long legs
• Humanity Ensues
• Identical Stranger: We meet a girl who looks like a blonde Mako in episode 13. She's murdered, though. In a subversion, this happened in a movie. The King was watching it and thought the actress was killed for real. Understandable, it looked like this was the first time he saw a movie.
  • There's also Minori in episode 21. Her and Mako's only physical difference is Minori's mole on the left side of her face.
  • An early episode includes a boy who looks like an Off-Model Akira.
  • Nobuko, the blind girl from episode 32, looks quite a bit like Mako but with her hair down, paler skin and Eyes Always Shut.
• Lethal Chef: Mako is... not good at kitchen tinkering.
• Lingerie Scene: A Trope Codifier in regards to anime.
• Love At First Sight: Mako and Akira, for each other.
• Love Dodecahedron: Mako and Akira fall in love after she saves him. Tomiko and Rika like Akira. Banchou and Prince Hans like Mako.
• Master of Illusion: Mako is a rare benign example.
• Meganekko: Mako's best friend, Haruko Hayashi.
  • Mako's dad once shares a brief talk and a smoke with a "Bad Girl"-like one.
• Mitsuko Horie: Sings the theme songs. She was only 13 at the time.
• Naked on Arrival: After getting transformed, Mako is found in the buff on the beach.
• Outliving One's Offspring: The fisher man that adopts Mako lost his daughter Kyouko many years ago.
• Painful Transformation: Poor Mako!
• Parasol Parachute: Funakichi uses his red parasol this way when he jumps off a building on a dare of Banchou.
• Plucky Girl: Mako won't give up. Ever.
• Rescue Romance: Genderflipped, Mako is the one doing the rescue. She tries it again in the Grand Finale, but almost dies.
• Rich Bitch - The Rival - Romantic False Lead: Tomiko. She mellows out later.
• Sailor Fuku: Mako attends an uniform free school, but Haruko wears an blue fuku and Banchou Matsubashi has a modified gakuran
• Shout-Out: Urashima is the name of the main character in a Japanese folk tale, who saves a turtle and gets to visit a kingdom underwater.
• Spank the Cutie: Mako gets a spanking from her Overprotective Dad in episode 26, when she hangs out with a foreign prince and wacky hijinks ensue.
• Swiss Army Tears: Mako turned into a human by swallowing a pearl that formed from one of her tears.
• Tall, Dark and Bishoujo: Mako has the looks, though she's more emotional than usual.
• Tall, Dark and Handsome: Akira
• Tragic Keepsake: Mako's iconic outfit belonged to Kyouko Urashima, her foster father's dead daughter.
• Tentacle Rope
• Watching the Sunset