Copyright © 1998 Studio Pierrot / Bandai Visual / TV Osaka
Bandai Visual (Emotion)
Vol. 1 BEAL-1124, 25 Aug 1998, ¥5000
50 minute CAV LD or VHS (BES-1912)

Studio Pierrot has brought anime fans popular TV series such as KIMAGURE ORANGE ROAD and more recently FUSHIGI YUUGI. MAHOU NO STAGE FANCY LALA (Magical Stage Fancy Lala) is the newest installment in Studio Pierrot's anime line-up, and with character designs by Takada Akemi, this series will prove to be a favorite amongst both magical girl fans and Takada Akemi fans.
MAHOU NO STAGE FANCY LALA centers around the life of a nine year old girl named Shinohara Miho who has a normal childhood with normal friends and a normal family. Her day starts off with an odd dream of herself and her family in prehistoric times. Things are going fine until two large dinosaurs attack the village Miho's family lives in. She awakens to another day of school and starts to get ready to go along with her family. Her mom, Mamiko, a producer at a television station busily talks on the phone as she gets both herself and Miho ready for the day ahead. Chisa, Miho's big sister, makes herself up for her first day of high school at Rokunomiya High School. Miho's Dad, Youichirou, is paleontologist by profession and is probably part of the reason she had that dream this morning.
As Miho runs off to school, she runs into Yoshida Taro, her classmate, and next door neighbor. He tries to strike up a bit of conversation as they run off to school, but he does not quite succeed as Miho's attention is sidetracked by two mysterious figures in the distance. Miho loves to draw and doodles accurate caricatures of each of her classmates who introduce themselves. When it does finally get to her turn, she finds herself becoming quite shy and quiet, the opposite of what she truly daydreams herself to be.
Feeling a bit bummed, Miho tries to cheer herself up by feeding the school sheep and going to the store to get some ziptone for her personal manga project, Fancy Lala, an idol star who is popular, fashionable, and beautiful. Miho finds a pair of dinosaur dolls but decides not to buy them. Much to the chagrin of the store clerk, the dolls have bigger plans for Miho and somehow attach themselves to her backpack. A kind man who introduces himself as Mr. Fushigi (Mr. Mysterious) rescues Miho. He pays the store clerk and disappears as quickly as he came.
Miho finds out that these dinosaurs are alive and their names are Pigu and Mogu. They provide her with a magic pen and drawing pad. Pigu and Mogu tell her she can draw whatever she wants and suggest she say "Dabu Dabu." With that, the fashionable clothes Miho has drawn pop out of the pad and become real. Miho tries them on, but they are a bit too large. Pigu and Mogu also tell Miho when she says, "Toki no kioku ni omoi wo komete, ima, Fancy Lala ni karei naru seichou." (Bringing my thoughts into the memory of time, grow now magnificently into Fancy Lala!) she becomes her manga character, Fancy Lala, who is fifteen years old. With that, Miho starts off her fantastic double life as Fancy Lala, a fashionable idol.
The second episode involves Miho trying out her newfound magical powers. She daydreams of an agent noticing her and whisking her away to be a popular idol singer who everyone will admire. After a run-in with an aggressive stranger asking Miho if she wants to be an idol singer, she quickly gets out of the situation. Meanwhile at Lyrical Productions, it is business as usual until the president, Haneishi Yumi, finds out the model she had signed up for a big photo shoot is not going to be able to make it. Frantic, Yumi grabs her staff, Ririka and Yoshio, and searches for another replacement. When all seems pretty bleak, a frightened, yet tired Miho catches the eye of Yumi. Yumi quickly snaps her up much to Miho's surprise, and thus Miho makes her debut onto the modeling scene.
MAHOU NO STAGE FANCY LALA is a wonderfully delightful story of a young girl's bout with her shyness and her daydreams of being popular and confident. Iit is easy to see how some girls may identify with Miho's situation and may one day want to be popular and admired. It is every young girl's dream, and fortunately for Miho she gets that chance by becoming Lala. The series is hard to judge from its first two episodes since it is basically more of an introduction than an actual story plot. But, the author can see much potential from this anime series since it takes the magical girls genre and gives it a bit of a twist. The big showcase of this show is the idol singers. Lala as well as others that appear on the scene sing wonderful Japanese pop idol songs. These idol vocals are enjoyably upbeat throughout the series, but the background music is also very interesting and reminiscent of the HANA YORI DANGO BGMs.
The interesting voice acting talent in Fancy Lala also may be of interest to anime fans, the lead role of Shinohara Miho is played by a fourteen year old voice actress in her debut, Ohmori Reiko. She not only does a great job voice acting a nine year old complete with a nine year old speaking style, but she is pretty much the age of Lala which helps her performance tremendously. One of the author's favorite voice actors, Yamaguchi Kappei, reprises his young boy voice with Yoshida Taro, Miho's argumentative classmate. Kappei does a great job, as usual, with this role being similar to Enoki Takuya in AKA-CHAN TO BOKU, one of this author's favorites.
With upbeat character designs by Takada Akemi of KIMAGURE ORANGE ROAD fame, FANCY LALA is a welcome recent addition to Takada's works. The vibrant colors and expressive eyes of all the characters help this anime series to achieve a reality as well as a fantasy at the same time. MAHOU NO STAGE FANCY LALA has a lot of potential of being a very cute yet interesting magical girls show. The show spares no expense in showing that to the viewer with its obviously interesting premise and gradual growth of the characters over the course of the series. Bandai Emotion video is releasing this TV series with the first two episodes on the first LD at ¥5000 and each future volume will be at ¥6000 and contain three episodes. The series is very affordable and the author recommends that fans of magical girl series better snap up this series quickly before it becomes scarce.