Tokyo Mew Mew New – Season 1 and Season 2 review

There appears to be a trend of anime studios readapting magical girl series for more modern audiences. Sailor Moon has had multiple adaptations, a new version of Magic Knight Rayearth is coming soon, and a few years ago Reiko Yoshida’s manga Tokyo Mew Mew was given a modern remake, having originally been adapted for TV 20 years earlier.

The series begins with Ichigo Momomiya, a girl who gets a chance to be with the boy she loves, Masaya Aoyama, when they visit an exhibition about endangered species. While she is there, the venue is mysteriously attacked by some kind of animalistic monster. However, Ichigo ends up being one of a group of girls hit by a mysterious beam. The beam causes her to gain superpowers and a catgirl body. She is able to defeat the monster, but this is partly due to some help from the people who fired the beam in the first place.

The ones who fired it are Ryo Shirogane and Keiichiro Akasaka, who run the Mew Project. This project is designed to merge human DNA with that of endangered animals. In the case of Ichigo, her DNA was fused with that of the Iriomote cat. The plan is create a group of heroes to protect the world from a group of aliens who are turning animals into monsters called Chimera Anima.

Eventually Ichigo meets and finds the other girls who were also hit by the beam: rich girl Mint Aizawa who has the DNA of the blue lorikeet; shy Lettuce Midorikawa who is fused with the finless porpoise; energetic, trick-performing Purin Fong who has the genes of the golden lion tamarin; and mature pop idol Zakuro Fujiwara, who shares the genes of the grey wolf. Together, the five form the group Tokyo Mew Mew, whose cover is working as waitresses in Ryo and Keiichiro’s business, the Café Mew Mew.

The series mainly follows Tokyo Mew Mew as they fight off several Chimera Anima created by a trio of aliens named Kish, Pie and Tart. Meanwhile, each of the quintet have their own individual issues: Ichigo panics that she might lose Aoyama if he discovers her secret identity; Mint gets frustrated about a lack of independence from rich family, including from her old brother; Lettuce tries to overcome her shyness as she slowly comes to fall in love with Ryo; Purin has to look after five younger siblings while her parents travel the world as circus performers and Zakuro has her professional music career to think of, as well as dealing with Mint who turns out to be a superfan of hers.

Tokyo Mew Mew has multiple strengths to its name. First, the central characters, who each lend a different quality to the show, whether it be Ichigo and her complicated romance with Aoyama, or Mint providing comedy with her being oblivious to the way poorer people like Ichigo live. This also combines well with the art used, with each of the five standing out thanks to them being given their own colour to distinguish them (Ichigo is red, Mint blue, Lettuce green, Purin yellow and Zakuro purple).

Perhaps overlooked however in terms of what makes this series stands out are its overall themes. Whereas some magical girl series might be mostly about how these young characters grow up and mature as a kind of coming-of-age story, or are even just nothing more than battling monsters every week, Tokyo Mew Mew also deals with environmental themes. It is not just the role that endangered species play in the creation of the superpowers, but the aliens’ main objective is to turn Earth into a pleasant land for their own race. They themselves live on a planet ravaged by storms, but their plans involve getting rid of humans, who they see as having destroyed the Earth due to them harming the environment. These themes were true when the manga first began in 2000, and feel truer today.

While the overall series is good, there are some issues regarding the English-language release. First of all, there is no English-language dub, so you have to listen to the original Japanese and watch the subtitles. Secondly, the way some of the names have been translated into English could be regarded as questionable. In the show, most of the names refer to items of food – Ichigo being Japanese for “strawberry” as any fan of Bleach can tell you. However, some of these translations go missing in this work. For example, Kish is originally “Quiche”. “Lettuce” is actually called “Retasu” in the original Japanese, but her name is translated into English for the subtitles, but Ichigo’s name is not translated as “Strawberry”. As for Purin, this appears to be a mixture of the Chinese “Bu-Ling” and “Pudding”, which is what the character was called when the manga was first released in English by TokyoPop in the 2000s. While overall this doesn’t really hamper the enjoyment of watching the show, some of the choices made here do feel off.

As for the music, I admit that the opening and closing themes for the show, as sung by the five main cast members, are not exactly to my taste. Different openings and closing are used between the two series, with “Cat! We Are Super Girls” as the first series opening; “Heartbeat Once-in-a-Lifetime” for the first series closing; “Megamorphose” for the second opening, and “Can-do Dreamer” for the second closing. While these songs are a bit too pop for my own liking, I did enjoy more the solo songs performed by Zakuro during her day-to-day idol work. There is one enjoyable episode where Zakuro gets the other Tokyo Mew Mew members along to star in a music video.

Textless openings and closings form part of the extras in both the collections, whereas the second season also features a series of anime shorts, over 40 in all, with chibi versions of the characters. Part of me thinks that it might have been better to split these up across the two collections, as the first season only has the textless opening and ending as a bonus. Having said that, part of me wonders why they’re selling both series separately instead of one boxset, and why they released both collections on the same day. I guess MVM must think this is more profitable.

Despite some personal reservations, overall, this new adaptation of a popular magical girl series is still an enjoyable addition for those who enjoy the genre. While perhaps in the shadow of more popular titles, its themes to give it a weight that allow Tokyo Mew Mew to stands on its own two feet – or paws, delete as applicable.

Our review copy was supplied by MVM.