From episode 33 of Fushigi Mahou Fun Fun Pharmacy, a show I mostly ended up watching because it’s a charming thing that Igarashi did episode direction for a bunch of episodes of around about the time that he was also working on the first season of Ojamajo Doremi, a show which is in a similar ilk, albeit with a very different sense of humour to it.

Although it is, I guess, worth noting that the show is based on a novel by Sachiko Kashiwaba. I have no idea how faithful it is to that book, admittedly, though in general I get the feeling that Kashiwaba is one of those authors that is so widely read among at least the folks that direct Japanese childrens cartoons that her influence is likely all over the stuff that isn’t even explicitly based on her books. Heck, there was a bit of an old to-do over Spirited Away bearing more than a little resemblance to one of her novels, even.

This years movie Birthday Wonderland, directed by Keiichi Hara, was also based on one of her novels, coincidentally. Though, getting onto the “author being widely read” thing, a lot of the problems I have with that movie is that it feels awfully derivative whilst not really having much of a distinct spark of interest or flamboyance to it. I mean, it’s not a bad movie by any stretch, but it’s also not something that particularly stands out when you are watching it in the middle of a three-movie day at a film festival. It’s just kind of there – that you could take pretty much any episode of a Sunday morning Toei cartoon from the late 90s and it’d be mining similar material in a far more engaging or energetic fashion is kind of the scathing thing about it.

But I do wonder how much those of same shows is based on ideas mined from stuff that’d she’d written, but I guess I’d probably have to learn Japanese and read a bunch of books to figure that one out.

Also I’m not sure how I feel about Potpurri taking off her funky animal-foot shoes in this episode.