 Why
is this anime so special? Watching every episode , we find that the
approach of the stories is very different. There are stories of friendship,
some romances, adventures with the mob, an encounter with God, and
even the death and resurrection of the main character, something not
seen before. The TV series is also full of cultural references as
well as western film and other anime parodies: James Bond, Tarzan,
Giant robots anime, Black Jack, Dr. Strangelove and even "The
birds" from Alfred Hitchcock are referenced here
 One
of the most pleasant aspects of this TV series is the way they build
interesting characters along the series. The main character, Gigi,
is a cheerful girl who faces any problem without any worry, always
confident of her own skills. She's not that different to other girls,
but she looks always happy. A noticeable and not ordinary fact in
the anime of magical girls, is the relevance of the parents of Gigi
in the series. In several other anime series of this genre, the
parents have such a low relevance that they don't even have a chance
to develop a profile because their role is non-existent for the
development of the TV series. However, in Maho no Princess Minky
Momo her parents (both her real parents in Fenarinaasa and her "parents"
in the Earth) have an appearance in every episode and they have
very interesting personalities. In fact, her parents of the human
world have a unique charisma that makes the audience to put an eye
on them. Those who had seen the show will surely remember the episode
44, "Tenshi ga orite kita" (an angel descended from above)
when an angel crashed with Gigi's home and mama ended with wings
of angel in her back. When they found there was no way to remove
those wings, papa disguised himself as a swan to be just like her.
Or the episode 39, "Totsugeki minkii mama" (The attack
of Minky's mama), when papa was kidnaped by the mob and mama rushed
in her scooter in order to rescue him. This couple lives in an eternal
honeymoon, even when they had a serious quarrel in episode 37, "Ai
no kuuchuu buranko" (The mid-air-trapeze of love), when mama
believed for mistake that papa had an affair with a girl he was
trying to help. With this strong attachement of Gigi in a family,
she has a frame where to develop herself and we don't see Gigi as
a lonely magic girl whose adventures are isolated of what's happening
in the surroundings of her real world. And this is very important
towards the last episodes of the TV series.
 As
you will see in the episode guide,
there is a wide variation in the selection of themes in the series,
but even so there is a quite linear sequence of events from episode
1 to 44: Gigi helps people using her magic in order to overcome
any troubles and she succeeds most of the times. Until this point,
Maho no Princess Minky Momo is not that different to other magical
girls series (and yet it has it's own and unique acomplisments),
but they are really just episodes to build what it was about to
happen. In the episode 45, "Mahou no kieta hi" (The day
the magic left), Gigi loses her magic, her pets are kidnaped and
her magical car dissapears. She was no longer able to use magic.
For practical purposes, she was no different in that point to a
human girl. In episode 46, "Yume no Fenarinaasa" (Fenarinaasa
of dreams) she died and refuses to return to Fenarinaasa: she prefers
to reborn as a human girl. In these two episodes, the series had
a drastic change. Through these events, Gigi could finally put the
pieces together and think about her adventures in the previous episodes.
It's not possible to bring dreams to the people, they are within
the people and it's up to them to fulfill those dreams, it's something
everyone has to do. In this analysis, Gigi realizes that she herself
has a dream: she wants to live as a human girl, without any magic.
This is why she didn't want to return to Fenarinaasa and reincarnates
as the newborn daughter of those who were her parents in the Earth.
Maybe this choice of individuality, this choice to carry on your
own dreams, is the biggest acomplishment of Gigi since she came
to the Earth. It's also what it makes Maho no Princess Minky Momo
such an interesting TV series, with a message to the audience which
will ever be a current issue.
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