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| Marvelous Melmo | |
 Cover toMarvelous Melmo from the Osamu Tezuka Manga Complete Works edition. | |
| ふしぎなメルモ (Fushigi na Merumo) | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Magical girl |
| Manga | |
| Written by | Osamu Tezuka |
| Published by | Shogakukan |
| Magazine | Shogaku-Ichinensei |
| Original run | September 1970 –March 1972 |
| Volumes | 1 |
| Anime television series | |
| Directed by | Tsunehito Nagaki Osamu Tezuka |
| Studio | Tezuka Productions |
| Original network | JNN (ABC,TBS) |
| Original run | 3 October 1971 – 26 March 1972 |
| Episodes | 26 |
Marvelous Melmo (ふしぎなメルモ,Fushigi na Merumo) is amagical girlmanga andanime byOsamu Tezuka. This series centered on Melmo, a nine-year-old girl whose mother is killed in an auto accident and has to then take care of her two younger brothers (Totoo and Touch). While inHeaven, the children's mother is given onewish. Her wish is that Melmo (the oldest out of her 3 children) will be allowed to grow up more quickly than usual, since their lives as children will be difficult without their parents.
Melmo's mother is permitted to visit her as a ghost, and gives Melmo a bottle of candy given to her by God. The blue candy turns Melmo into a lovely 19-year-old version of herself, while the red candy turns her back into a child. Combining the two turns her first into a fetus, then into an animal of her choosing. When Melmo ages from 9 to 19 her clothes don't grow with her, usually resulting either in shredded clothes, or skin-tight children's clothes on the body of an adult woman, leaving little to the imagination (for this reason the series was one of the first to make regular use of the now-commonpanchira, or "panty shot"). This was only the case of the anime; the manga had Melmo's clothes change with her into whatever she desired (ranging from a police uniform to a fairy costume). A total of 26 animated episodes were produced, which aired from 1971 to 1972.
Although most of the episodes of the anime revolve around adventure stories, Tezuka intended the series to also function as a kind of introductory sex education for children and Darwinistevolution. That being the case, not surprisingly the series only aired in Japan and Italy (asI bon bon magici di Lilly, lit. Lilly's magic bon bons). When the manga first appeared in 1970, it was originally titledMamaa-chan, but by the time the anime debuted in 1971, the name of the main character was changed to "Melmo" (derived from "metamorphose") due to "Mamaa" having been previously trademarked. Many Japanese parents reportedly hated the show, since it raised many questions from children that parents were uncomfortable with answering.[citation needed]
Melmo as a 19-year-old is no smarter or more experienced than her 9-year-old self, though at 19, she is given more opportunities to learn about adult matters than she would at the age of nine.
Melmo's mother, Hitomi, andGod play small roles on occasion throughout the series.
The entire series has been made available for streaming to international audiences onVikihere. Currently, only the first two episodes of the series have been translated by users of the website into English.[1]
The complete manga series has been collected and is available in Japan. A DVD set collecting all the episodes in the series was released in 2003, but, according to some sources, might now be out of print in Japan. During the 1990s, the series was available on a set of sevenlaserdiscs, as well as on a set of 12VHS videocassettes. The full series was also released in Italy on a 5-DVD set, containing Italian and Japanese audio tracks.[2] Some episodes have been shown on channel 47 in New York in the 1980s in a Japanese program block. The series re-aired in 1998 on the Japanese satellite channelWOWOW as Marvelous Melmo Renewal (ふしぎなメルモ リニューアル,Fushigi na Merumo Rinyūaru). This version differed from the original broadcast version since it was given new opening and closing credits, new voice dubs, and the image quality was restored. Since then, it has also aired on the Tokyo TV stationTokyo MX.
The manga and anime versions of Marvelous Melmo are quite similar. In contrast toThe Amazing 3, several Marvelous Melmo manga stories were adapted and animated for the TV series.
There are 26 episodes in all, running from 1971 to 1972.
As a member of Tezuka'sStar System, both versions of Melmo made a number of other appearances in Tezuka manga throughout the 1970s, mostly in theBlack Jack manga. The older Melmo (as two different women) is also a main character in 1970'sApollo no Uta (Apollo's Song).
