Majo Minarai wo Sagashite

A love letter to fandom and nostalgia; this is a film for anyone who's ever been a fan of anything. It hit especially hard for me given I had just completed the entirety of Ojamajo Doremi prior to watching this, and the last episode of Dokkaan! is still fresh in my mind.

While I do like this film, I don't love it. Visually, I find it's a bit lacklustre for a theatrical film, especially when looking at characters in the backgrounds. That said, I do appreciate the use of music from the show. That made me smile.

You don't need to see the show before watching this, ... though I would still recommend doing so anyway because it's just a damn good show (it's a serious contender for best magical girl anime).

This review was written on 2021/11/20.

I usually don't write reviews, but this anime is so unbelievable, I can't help but write one. I watched the original first season when it was out on 4Kids.TV and I fell in love with the show. I always dreamed of having a magic wand like them and meet amazing friends. Of course, when you grow up, that magic disappears and you become too caught up in the adult world.


This wholesome movie is about three characters who are fans of the original show just like any one of us who watches it when we were young. When those 3 girls met, they instantly became ... best friends and decided to go traveling together visiting all of the locations where the anime were featured. It is super fun because they take you on a trip of what other places in Japan is like. It hits home to because I visited japan before and some places mentioned in the show literally looks exactly like what it does in real life. It gives viewers couple ideas where you can visit when you are in Japan - It's like a mini field trip. Throughout the story, you get to see the struggles of the main characters goes through in their personal life that are realistic. One thing I like about the show is that it reminds you of what its like to be a child, to keep that inner hope and happiness you once had when you were young in order to survive the cold, hard realistic world. Cling onto hope, keep fighting because even though magic may not exist, you can make your own magic. It is a super wholesome anime. One thing I really love about the movie is that you DO NOT have to watch the original anime in order to watch this show. It's basically about fans of the original story, and if you want to watch the show yourself, you can always go watch it on your own time.

Well, Ojamajo Doremi got its own movie! Except...not really. The movie has its own benefits and flaws which I attribute mainly to the narrative, which is all over the place, for better or for worse. The first defining feature of the movie is that the OD cast is not the prominent cast, as you'd expect; instead, we centralize on three Japanese girls, all fans of the eponymous series and from different walks of life, perhaps drawn together by fate or some other mystifying force. The way their stories are set up does leave something to be desired: whenever one girl becomes the focus of the ... movie, the other two noticeably melt into the background almost completely, to the point where Nagase is missing for at least one third of the movie. We only see brief glimpses into these girls lives and who they are, and aside from Reika, their lives are largely unknown. The series plays out similar to how you'd expect an episode of Lucky Star, which is unfortunate: the movie constantly feels the need to assert that it's Doremi-related, inserting forced gestures ("Hey, remember when Doremi tripped on these stairs and got bad luck for three years?"). This wouldn't be too bad, if it weren't for the fact that it was like the show was desperately trying to prove that it belonged to the same franchise as the rest of the series. Having a movie based in this context means a couple things. First of all, it means you not only need to draw the audience to them and become invested, but you need to keep their attention as well. This means you need to have interesting things happen, which the movie unfortunately does not do. Instead, the film plays out like a jumbled-up road trip, the girls stumbling across various sites that appeared in the plot with...not much happening, honestly. The most excitement that really happens is with Yoshizuki, or the girls getting drunk, which oddly happens remarkably often considering it's based from a children's show.
The movie also mentions quite a number of new characters who have very small roles or aren't even important to the overall plot whatsoever, some not even appearing on-screen. The core concept of the movie seems to be that the girls' friendship was drawn together by magic, though as adults it seems to be a combination of both childhood innocence and a sense of immaturity. The movie tries too hard to push the similarities that Reika is similar to Aiko and Nagase to Hadzuki, though they interestingly mix this up by having her use Doremi's spell. It's a bit difficult to consider this movie as canon and it somewhat feels like the movie just exists in its own canon only using Doremi's name to drive its success. Yes, the recipe that friendship is magical and will help you out is very much there. However, there's little else related to the series besides the girls, to an extent, being stand-ins for Hadzuki, Aiko, and Doremi. They're a bit too literal about the matter, and as mentioned, the girls spend most of the film wandering around and getting into random mishaps. Unfortunately, it was a bit boring to me and regrettably let down my expectations upon watching. 6/10.