Your Japanese Animes - Ojamajo Doremi

The nefarious sushi swine, Zane chained me in the dungeon and forced me to watch this. A cute noodly witch anime from the late 90s. I vaguely remember the 4kids version on tv but this sadistic swinus-american demanded i watch it in Japanese, so i did. And i didn't just phone it in by watching 1 or 2 episodes, i go the extra mile for my weebs. I watched somewhere around 100 episodes of this brain-sugar and now my skull has cavities. 

I also watched some of the dub for comparisons sake. It's fine. Everyone complains about 4kids and i barely understand why. The dub is heavily americanized but it stays true to the important stuff and a lot of the dialogue is very funny and charming. Also the voice of the green booger person is far less annoying in english, and Aiko's dad is Goku, so that's at least two objective improvements. 

This isn't an anime i would ever have chosen to watch on my own, but i know why it was chosen for me. Somehow my career took a turn at some point that set a precedent for reviewing this kind of stuff. This one ain't bad at all, but i watched a lot of it and at certain points i definitely felt like dying. 

There's a lot of long stretches where nothing really happens and it spins it's wheels doing slice of life bullshit about the other kids in the school that no one cares about. The good episodes are the witch exams that actually explore the mythology, but those are few and far between. It does pick up toward the end of the seasons when actual conflicts occur. 

Season 2, which i stupidly watched first because i don't understand anime at all. Introduces a baby for the characters to take care of and that leads to some more heartwarming stories that are a lot more interesting than the school shit. When this show isn't being a show about witches it's being a show about 4th graders with kid problems and i couldn't care less about that, because i have grown up problems. 

Best character is aiko, who has by far the most interesting arc of having to navigate her parents divorce. All of that stuff is good. In the dub she's called Mirabelle. Otaku will cry foul on the level of localization but i will defend 4kids here because they actually did something somewhat creative with the names. They changed the main characters name from Doremi to Dorie, and the other two become Reanne and Mirabelle. They combine their names to name the little magic shop Do-Re-Mi. Screw you weebs i think that's neat.