Majokko Meg-chan

Meg's a Magical Girl and she'll steal your heart!

Majokko Meg-chan is an early Magical Girl Anime. Based on a proposal by the production company Hiromi Productions as a follow-up to the unsuccessful Miracle Shoujo Limit-chan, a TV series was made by Toei Animation and aired on NET (today's TV Asahi) in 1974-75. This particular story codified many of the tropes that would later become staples of the Magical Girl genre.

The story centers on Meg, a young witch who has been sent to Earth as part of her Magical Girl Queenliness Test. She is adopted by former witch Mami Kanzaki and her muggle family and spends the series learning about human relationships, battling magical enemies, and maturing into a woman worthy of claiming the throne of the Witch World. At the same time she also must deal with her strongest rival for the throne, a Dark Magical Girl named Non, and the perverted antics of a Dirty Old Man named Chou...

In addition to its success in Japan, the series was later broadcast in several European countries, including Italy (where the heroine was renamed Bia and where the show is still fondly remembered), France, and Poland. It was also dubbed into Spanish and Portuguese, but there is no official English version. The complete 72-episode run can nevertheless be seen - mostly in Italian, except for the episodes unaired in Italy, which remain in Japanese - at the Internet Archive.

Meg's seiyuu, Rihoko Yoshida, would voice another Majokko - Tickle - four years later.

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Contains examples of:

• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: In the Italian and French dubs. The Latino Spanish, however, kept the Japanese themes.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Chou has light blue skin.
• Animals Hate Him: Chou is hated by all animals, save for his two sidekicks of course. Gombei initially dislikes Non, but warms up to her after saving her life and realizing that she's Meg's friend...kind of.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Rabi. Apo too, though she often just follows her brother's lead and sometimes enjoys tormenting him too.
• Big Bad: Saturn
• Big Friendly Dog: Gombei
• Bragging Theme Tune: Similar to that of Cutey Honey - in fact, even sung by the same vocalist (Yoko Maekawa).
  • This time, the narrator (Meg) does the boasting herself, bragging about how her breasts are proof that she can do anything and how she can manipulate boys into doing what she wants (the lyricist, Kazuya Senke, was also known for writing similarly suggestive lyrics for then-teenage pop idol Momoe Yamaguchi to sing). The show itself isn't nearly that salacious though, as Meg is more a Reluctant Fanservice Girl than a shameless one and the show is mostly safe for young kids despite the occasional fan service.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The show leans on the fourth wall at various moments throughout, then totally breaks it at the end of the final episode, with Meg speaking directly to the viewer and even casting her trademark "Sharanra" spell on the viewer.
• Butt Monkey: Chou, the Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain.
• Cats Are Mean: One of Chou's sidekicks is a cat.
• Coming of Age Story: Doubling as Magical Girl Queenliness Test
• Cute Witch: One of the first, and one of the first to trade on her sex appeal.
• Darker and Edgier and Hotter and Sexier: Specially when compared to older magical girl shows in Toei's canon such as Mahoutsukai Sally or Himitsu no Akko-chan. Meg wasn't the first magical girl to be the subject of fan service (that would be Mako-chan four years earlier) and her show is closer to a "traditional" magical girl show than its predecessor Cutey Honey, but it has Honey's influence all over it.
  • It included a truly evil character as an antagonist (Saturn). Prior to this, there was a perception that young girls couldn't handle such things.
  • Like Mahou no Mako-chjan, its subplots sometimes touched more serious social issues like Domestic Abuse, extramarital relationships, drug abuse, Parental Abandonment, etc.. For this reason, nine of the 72 episodes were cut from the Italian version.
  • Meg not only lost fights, but she had to face serious consequences (deaths, injuries, humiliations, etc.) that could NOT be undone with magic.
  • It featured Fan Service in the form of Panty Shots, slight nudity, a blatantly Les Yay-tastic relationship between Megu and Non, and Megu being a bit of a Fille Fatale (though not as much as one would believe). It also included Lovable Sex Maniac characters (Megu's stepbrother Rabi and Dirty Old Man Chou). A lot of this was also censored in the European dubs.
• Dark Magical Girl: Non, also among the first ones.
• Dirty Old Man: Chou
• Driven to Suicide: In one particularly dark episode, a newspaper boy ends up jumping off a bridge to his death.
• Dub Name Change: Meg is Bia and Non is Noa in the Italian dub, but most of the other character names stayed the same. Meg is also known as Maggie in the Latino Spanish dub.
• Hair Decorations: Meg wears a yellow flower in her hair.
• Fan Service: Quite a lot for its time.
• Fiery Redhead: Meg.
• Fille Fatale: Also Meg. The girl is pretty aware of her good looks, is coquettish and outspoken (unlike the more mellow heroines of the time) and the OP of the series has her singing about using her beauty to woo the guys and get what she wants from them.
  • Surprisingly, Meg also doubles as a Reluctant Fanservice Girl since lots of her nudity come less from her initiative and more from Rabi and Chou's antics.
• Flying Broomstick
• Girlish Pigtails: Two of Meg's friends, Roko and Emi.
  • Also Leon, a mischievous witch-in-training that drops by once.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: This is how Meg and Non usually cast magic.
• Hypnotize the Princess: Chou comes up with a brainwashing device that makes girls take off their clothes. Meg falls under its influx and starts stripping... until Non destroys it. Interestingly, this episode was NOT one of the ones cut out in the European versions.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Rabi and Non; Meg herself qualifies to an extent for a good part of the series too.
• Loveable Sex Maniac: Meg's stepbrother, Rabi.
• Magical Girl Queenliness Test: The reason for Meg's journey to Earth and the source of her rivalry with Non. They BOTH fail in the end and are sent back to Earth for further training - Meg, having grown to love her human family and friends, is overjoyed; Non, not so much.
• Meaningful Name: The Kanzaki family were renamed Giapo in the Italian dub - a fairly obvious reference to Japan ("Giappone" in Italian).
• Mini-Dress of Power: Meg and Non both wear these, but only Non's comes with knee-high boots.
• Ms. Fanservice: Meg - though often unwittingly.
• Muggle Foster Parents: Since Meg's Parental Substitute Mami is actually an ex-witch, after taking Meg in she uses a bit of her remaining magic to trick everyone into thinking Meg is the Kanzaki family's eldest daughter instead of Mami's protegée.
• Off-Model: The show's animation is pretty poor in general (though the episodes supervised by the character designer, Shingo Araki, look decent, especially those from late in the show's run) and there is barely an episode without any glaring animation mistakes. One particular bad example is one medium shot (!) where the animators forgot to put Meg's still frame into the scene, so she just suddenly appears out of nowhere when it's her turn to talk.
• Ravens and Crows: Chou's other sidekick is a crow.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Meg and Non, who are Color Coded for Your Convenience.
• The Rival: Non. However...
  • Rivals Team Up: Meg and Non end up working together at times.
• Sempai Kouhai: Leon sees Meg as her sempai.
• Shout-Out: One episode shows Meg watching Cutey Honey (in her "Misty Honey" singer persona) on the television. To boot, the TV is tuned to channel 10, which was NET/TV Asahi's broadcast channel prior to Japan's analog TV shutdown. This was very likely lost on viewers in countries where the original Cutey Honey had not aired (meaning, everywhere outside Japan except France, where Honey was known as Cherry Miel).
  • In another episode, a model of Great Mazinger is seen in the window of a toy shop. Cutey Honey and Mazinger were both also Toei Animation shows.
  • A real-life example, also with a Go Nagai connection: Shingo Araki designed the character of Maria Grace Fried for UFO Robo Grendizer after having been asked to create a character for that show that resembled Meg in appearance and behavior. They even got Rihoko Yoshida to voice her.
• Spank the Cutie: Meg is the recipient of this on a few occasions (whether as a punishment from Mami or as ecchi horseplay from Rabi), and they almost always include a Panty Shot to boot.
• Sugar and Ice Personality: Non.
• Team Rocket Wins: One gets the impression that the producers of the show wanted continue past the last episode, as it concludes with both Meg and Non failing their test and being sent BACK to Earth all because Chou manipulates them, and he gets off scot-free for it. Of course, considering his extreme Butt Monkey status, one could consider this a Throw the Dog a Bone moment. Far from being disappointed, Meg is thrilled that she gets to live with her Muggle Foster Family for a while longer (although it's just delaying the inevitable); Non, not so much. This was a departure from earlier magical girl shows which concluded with the heroine being outed as a witch and forced to either return to the magical kingdom (Sally) or move somewhere else (Chappy), or losing her magical powers and continuing to live as a normal girl (Akko, Mako).
• Tomboy: Meg, especially compared to other heroines of the time like Sally Yumeno, Mako Urashima or Akko Kagami.
  • Non, whose hobby is wearing a black leather jumpsuit and riding around on a motorcycle, may also qualify.
• Too Hot for TV: At least nine episodes were considered such, in Italy, and the episodes that were dubbed sometimes featured edits for content. This carried over into the Polish and Portuguese dubs, which were based on the Italian.
• Trickster Twins: One episode involved a pair of identical twin witches who had been expelled from the magic kingdom and teamed up to make Meg's school life a living hell, framing her for playing various nasty pranks on classmates and even her teacher. Turns out Chou-san recruited them, promising he could get them re-admitted to the magic kingdom if they got Meg thrown out of school (which would have been an automatic fail in the Magical Girl Queenliness Test).
• What Is This Thing You Call Love?: The witch world doesn't have families, so at first Meg has a hard time understanding the love her Muggle Foster Family feels towards her.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Meg and Non by the end, so very much. A Type II example.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Non