Have you ever wanted to watch Sailor Moon, except instead of the operatic drama you’re up for more general cuteness and maybe a side of 90’s style environmental hand-wringing? If so, Tokyo Mew Mew (New version) may be for you. It’s got all the sparkly transformation sequences, all the monsters of the week and a lot less of the theater, darkness, and intelligence.
That, however, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad show; it’s a different show with different appeal, so I’m hoping to try to look at it in its own context, even if some comparisons are going to be inevitable. Please note as well that this review is solely of Season 1, being written before the release of the second season, much less any viewing of it.
Our story starts out with a somewhat airheaded and romance obsessed girl, Ichigo, on her first day of high school. There she encounters school hearthrob Masaya Aoyama and develops a crush, which her friends are eager to help her pursue. She learns more about him, including that he’s very much into conservation, when a mysterious benefactor gives her two tickets to an endangered species exhibit that he’d love to go to and… the tickets work pretty well, getting Ichigo her date.
Said date is interrupted by an alarm in the building, and the arrival of the same girl who gave Ichigo the tickets. She makes sure Ichigo is in the right place at the right time to get hit by a magic science laser thingy that melds her with the DNA of an endangered species (a cat, of course. Gotta be cute.) and grants her super powers.
Ichigo discovers this after she comes to and she and Masaya are set upon by a giant rat monster. Masaya is knocked out cold, and reinforcements arrive in the form of a broody grump pretty boy and another magical girl, who need Ichigo to transform and fight, which of course she has the instincts to do.
The transformation sequence and combat choreography are really, note for note, copies of Sailor Moon. The formula was to be expected – Sailor Moon did, after all, leave a huge impact on the genre and spawn many imitators. But I could swear that some of the exact poses and twirls Ichigo performs are lifted straight from Usagi’s routine. Maybe I’m being a little too harsh on it, but a magical girl’s transformation scene is actually a place where a lot of character both for the girl in particular and the setting she exists in can be established. Sailor moon had very fancy routines that were almost like dance numbers. Vividred Operation had a lot of focus on technical aspect and really enforced that these were mechanical and scientific powers even as they did these cute and mystical things. Madoka Magica largely played down the transformation scenes, likely to reinforce the oppressive feel of the darker setting, but the ones it did use were full on particular character notes. Tokyo Mew Mew New? The creators have seen Sailor Moon and assume that’s how it’s done, but throw a couple of cat moe moves in as well.
Call this gutterball number one: with the magical powers in this story being derived from animals, at least enough to get catgirl magical girl states, you’d think there would be a more organic vibe to the transformation. You could still make it cute, but there have been so many good werewolf transformation scenes in cinema that you could also crib at least a couple notes on that.
In any case, Ichigo is able to do a little jumping and fighting and ultimately pulls out her knockoff of Sailor Moon’s first ultimate move (a heart shaped fuzzy ring with a bell rather than a tiara, but the effects are… similar, and from a reasonable loop shaped object) and defeats the Rodent of Unusual Size, which is when the mascot thing (R-2000, later named Masha, a “robot” that looks like a floating white tribble with big pink eyes, pink cat ears, little wing-a-dings, and a tail that ends in a cartoon love heart) for the mad scientist magical girl making pretty boys shows up, secures (swallows) a gribbly alien that emerged from the rat as it returned to being just a normal rat, and everyone else involved hauls Ichigo along to their lair (the most obscenely pink frosted cafe you ever did see) to go through more of the tutorial.
Basics are that evil aliens are trying to take over the world, they do this by fusing with animals to create “Chimera Anima” like the big rat or cryptids, and as an afterthought she has to worry about new cat instincts, her ears and tail popping out if she gets flustered (which doesn’t help her interact with Masaya), oh, and she’ll be working at the cafe side of the secret base because being a waitress in an overdesigned maid cafe makes for good rumor gathering.
She’s also expected to help find and awaken the remaining three of the five Magical Girls (with snarky and aristocratic blue bird girl Mint being the mysterious benefactor from before) because we haven’t had that quest before. Here’s an idea, maybe scoop them up when you science ray them into unconsciousness and unwilling hybridization? I question Dr. Moreau’s ethics but at least he had a system.
The first new girl is set to be extreme doormat Lettuce Midorikawa (Ichigo, I get. Mint, I kind of get. What cruel parent names their daughter Lettuce?). Lettuce’s problems are social isolation and being abused by her current “friends” – to the point where there’s no monster of the week this time, and it’s instead Lettuce’s own out-of-control powers that need a friendship speech from Ichigo to deal with, adding her to the team.
The next, discovered at the end of an extended zoo date between Ichigo and Masaya, is Purin Huang, a character once more named after food (Pudding in this case) In the same encounter, we also meet one of the intelligent beings behind the alien attacks, an pointy-eared pretty boy named Kish – though if alternative romanizations are to be believed, that name should be Quiche. He forces a kiss on Ichigo and turns most of the zoo berserk, which leads to the day being saved by the arrival of Mint and Lettuce and ultimately Purin’s first transformation.
Purin’s animal is a monkey, fitting her loli comedian-acrobat routine, and she actually gets a good and characterful transformation scene
This is followed up by seeking out the last of the girls, Zakuro Fujiwara (“Zakuro” meaning “Pomegranate”, though Western viewers are less likely to connect this than Ichigo with Strawberry), who is a moderately famous actress. They make contact at an audition for a role alongside her (with time filled by an extended song sequence from Zakuro), which triggers Zakuro’s transformation when Kish attacks with an army of crow Chimera Anima. However, Zakuro is the tall, dark, and brooding type and thus initially refuses to team up or be friends, even crushing mega-fan Mint by calling her annoying to her face.
Being called annoying (which she kind of has been) is apparently traumatic enough for Mint that we need an entire episode to cheer her up, with an abrupt fight at the end where Kish shows up, turns Mint’s little yappy dog into a Chimera Anima that naturally the team has trouble fighting, and leaves without abducting Ichigo in order to take out Zakuro.
So, never mind that Kish apparently knows who Mint really is and where she lives, we’ve got an idol to save and/or recruit! The episode goes about how you’d think with trouble getting into the building and a few abortive encounters with Zakuro before Kish shows up and has his little alien minions attack, then take the form of a giant alien snake thing which forces Zakuro to enter the fray properly. The twist? Zakuro was doing a live show, so the entire magical girl battle just got broadcast live. Zakuro, at least, joins the team after that. (And yes, this includes working at the cafe. She’d be a better waitress in Blend-S than here but she tries. And somehow we’re told that nobody puts two and two together because “no one would believe that.” After magical girls on TV, including Zakuro)
We also move into a new phase in terms of villains, with Kish being put on time out for his continued failure and two new members of his species, Tart and Pie, moving in to take over villainy, with Pie displaying a new mechanism of attack that uses evil smoke rather than alien parasites to transform animals into battle mode.
You know, for guys whose stated goal is wiping out all life on Earth, this whole “Fight superheroes with monsters” thing seems a little petty and convoluted. But that, I suppose, is at least a genre convention that can be forgiven as we don’t have a show otherwise.
In terms of less forgivable genre conventions, it seems like a magical girl transformation is a more effective brain hack than Clark Kent’s glasses, since Ichigo has to transform right in front of Masaya, who is only dazed and not out cold this time, and he at least claims to not have caught on to the fact that “Mew Ichigo” who everyone notes looks just like Ichigo is, in fact, Ichigo. True, it’s implied he’s playing along with her wish to not be found out but… why? You two clearly have a mutual crush, the “secret” she’s been keeping is something that’s generally agreed to be pretty cool, and it’s not like the villains don’t already clearly know your mortal identities if the attack on Mint’s house is anything to go by. Why not just own it?
I guess because it wouldn’t drag out a contrived alter-ego romance plot.
Anyway, next step, Lettuce is down about herself because she screws up a lot. The team goes on a cruise sponsored by the cafe, Lettuce continues to be down on herself even when being applauded. A (not literal) magic feather and doing a mermaid-style morph to fight off Tart’s sea monsters and save one of Purin’s siblings helps, though.
The last third of the season is dedicated to throwing new curveballs. First is the introduction of Mew Aqua, a “super pure form of water” that takes the form of a shiny blue crystal and that can magically purify all the evil corruption and pollution that the aliens like to use. In another, Ichigo turns into a cat! Not a catgirl, a regular cat, supposedly because, as she gains power in combat, her endangered species DNA begins to overtake her human side. She spends an episode like this while everybody else hunts for Mew Aqua to deal with Kish preparing to unleash a deadly smog cloud on Tokyo.
In this section, to load things down more, we get a subplot where Mint is offered a normally very desirable study abroad opportunity, and also have a scene detailing the origin and motivation of the aliens. We knew they wanted to make Earth their own home, but apparently the main reason for this is that the surface of their homeworld is polluted and unlivable, such that their people have lived in underground cities for generations, and Earth looks like the ideal spot to set up. But, if that’s the case, why make an attack of scale on the environment of the planet? Okay, humanity needs to go, one sapient species per planet, I kind of get that motivation but if you guys are looking for a world of green and blue then why are you fighting like Captain Planet villains who pollute just for the hell of it? Isn’t the whole point to have a planet like Earth in decent condition? It would have made much more sense (and I kind of assumed before this reveal) if the aliens came from a world that was rather different than Earth, and that whyever they needed to leave home a hotter and more “toxic” environment would be to their liking
Anyway, Ichigo stumbles into the fact that she turns back into a human if kissed as a cat (just roll with it), gets saved from Sleazeball Garfield and re-humaned by a rather suspicious other cat, and joins the fight at Tokyo Tower where the rest of the team is barely holding off an army of mantis monsters while the aliens mostly just watch, Kish holding onto a Mew Aqua sample they need to stop the cocoon of poison from turning Tokyo into a forever unlivable wasteland of doom.
Of course, things aren’t that easy – the Mew Aqua is a fake and the aliens unleash the Cocoon and their ultimate creation, evil Mothra (or Battra, by the color scheme). They call it Dust Wyvern, and evidently it’s going to do the deadly poison spreading (making it more like Hedorah than Mothra… last Godzilla reference, I promise), but Team Mew Mew doesn’t intend to give it a chance. They end up fighting the alien trio directly until Mint senses the Mew Aqua above the poison clouds. She’s launched upward, gets it, and clears the sky with one magic wand (Masha plus Mew Aqua) while Ichigo levels up her wreath into a wand to finish off the overgrown Venomoth and send Kish, Pie, and Tart into retreat.
All the chaos, however, has caused Ichigo to miss a concert date with Masaya, though. That’s okay, because he’s still waiting for her even in the dramatically appropriate rain for the two of them to confess their feelings. Finally, the alien trio are seen kneeling before some shiny blue evil master who gets one ominous line before the season cuts.
So, a topic I feel I need to address: What is “Moe”? Well, it’s a term that is essentially untranslatable to English as we don’t have a one-to-one word for the concept. Various constructions with “Moe” can be translated with various words depending on the context and exact implications, but any one word will be awkward for what part of speech it is, will have unfortunate connotations that don’t fully apply, or more likely both. It’s a troublesome enough word that some subtitle writers at least often leave it untranslated, figuring I suppose that anyone watching anime with subtitles will have enough cultural background to ‘get’ moe.
This is probably most noticeable in the sometimes-translation, “fetish”. In some contexts and constructions, it does essentially work: In The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya there’s a point where Kyon admits he “(has) a ponytail moe” (one of those cases where at least the subs I watched with left the word) and in that case you could probably just sub in “fetish” and the scene would play, though you wouldn’t expect Kyon to use “fetish” quite as casually as he does “moe”.
This is because while the attraction of “moe” can hit on sexual desire, it’s absolutely not the main marker – there can be lust mixed in, but it’s not primary. It doesn’t have the same heavy lewd connotations as “Fetish”, effectively being a cleaner word. On the other hand, you can also translate “moe” constructions around the word “cute” (though the sentences would need to be significantly restructured), but that’s usually only applicable when “moe” is used as an adjective to describe something, even if the connotations, while still not perfect, are closer than “fetish”.
Essentially, “moe” is appeal. “having a (foo) moe” could be accurately rendered as “finding (foo) to be appealing”, but those words are so dry and neutral it’s no wonder that translators don’t favor such constructions, and instead try to be more specific to the given instance. Plus, that’s an uncommon expression of the concept anyway and other uses of the word would still require one to get creative. For instance, referring to the object as “moe”, such “Maid moe” or “moe character designs” or “moe aesthetic” which use the word in different ways. And then there’s the rub that “moe” isn’t actually that general and does refer almost exclusively to feminine cuteness or appeal in some form. So, yeah, a complicated concept to explain, if one you tend to “get” after being exposed to it.
The etymology is, if you can believe it, even more bizarre and twisted, and suggests a meaning of a deep psuedo-romantic attraction to a physical entity or traits thereof. Things that are “moe” are those sets of attributes that tend to provoke the “moe” reaction of appreciation, appeal, and connection. Naturally, since the response is a positive one, many creators have deliberately attempted to cash in on common “moe” traits… and Tokyo Mew Mew is particularly hungry for that.
The designs of the magical girls and their frilly costumes, which teeter on the edge of maturity and cuteness, are already reaching for some “moe” reactions. Animal girls, especially catgirls like our lead? That’s another moe flag. Waitresses in maid outfits? Maid moe is pretty huge. Even when it comes to the character writing, the thin sketches but loud features of Purin, Zakuro, and especially Lettuce are more a matter of fishing for moe attraction than trying to write deep or rounded characters. Tokyo Mew Mew is aggressively attempting to multi-dip, that much is clear.
And that’s not strictly a bad thing. It’s not wrong for a show to want its audience to like it. It’s not wrong for a show to want to have mass appeal, or to form a connection, even the indescribable “moe” connection, between its characters and its viewers.
But for Tokyo Mew Mew, none of it feels organic. More than that it comes off as… kind of desperate. The creators don’t seem to have been confident in their story or characters, or even in evoking one particular appeal to moe, and instead throws everything at the wall in the vain hope that something will stick.
This is, in my mind, a high-risk low-reward sort of move when it comes to the quality of the show. I’m sure an accountant would see it differently, but in my mind it doesn’t actually improve quality in a significant way and means that if the show as a whole falls flat, it will end up falling harder than it otherwise would because of backlash to weak manipulation.
Tokyo Mew Mew New… doesn’t quite fall into that pit. Make no mistake, this is not a markedly good show, but there is… enough to it. Ichigo is a perfectly acceptable leading lady, Mint and Zakuro are kind of fun, and the villains, while making no sense, at least have something of a charismatic screen presence.
When compared directly to Sailor Moon (even as known through Sailor Moon Crystal), Tokyo Mew Mew New fails pretty hard… but Sailor Moon is actually kind of a high bar all things considered. Sure, this show invites that comparison and loses, but how badly does it actually lose?
Not bad enough, in my mind, for me to warn anyone against viewing the show. It’s harmless enough and the writing isn’t incompetent. It wears its influences and its 2002 origin on its sleeve, but it has a modicum of actual charm beneath its abundance of moe, such that I really bear the show no ill will.
For all that, Tokyo Mew Mew New squeaks by with a C-. I feel like better could have been done with all the moving parts the show had access to, but as it is, it manages to be just pleasing enough that I can’t say there’s anything wrong with watching it if you just want more Sailor Moon style magical girl material to chew on.