Tokyo Mew Mew New ♡ 東京ミュウミュウ にゅ～♡
Synopsis
Tokyo Mew Mew New is about Ichigo Momomiya is excited to start high school and fall in love. She is in luck when she meets the popular and good-looking Masaya Aoyama, and she immediately develops a crush on him. When Ichigo learns that Aoyama is passionate about the environment, she seizes the chance to ask him out thanks to some tickets to an exhibition about endangered animals.
During their date, Ichigo is struck by a mysterious light and faints. Waking up to the sight of Aoyama, she remains unharmed—but they both must escape from a giant rat-like creature after it injures Aoyama. To save her crush, Ichigo awakens her powers and transforms into a heroine with the skills of a cat.
After she defeats the monster, researchers Ryou Shirogane and Keiichiro Akasaka explain that Ichigo was chosen to become a part of the Mew Project: a group of five magical girls whose DNA has been infused with those of certain endangered species. Now, Ichigo must find the rest of her teammates to defeat the Chimera Anima—beings infected by aliens who want to take over the world—before it is too late.
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Review
A classic revitalized, though that’s nothing compared to the AniManga scene of the constant sequel effect, and it’s honestly quite average at best.
Ask any die-hard fan of Reiko Yoshida and Mia Ikumi’s Tokyo Mew Mew, and they would say that it’s one of those shows that were once in the pipeline slew of the gaining classic Mahou Shoujo a.k.a Magical Girl genre of the early 2000s, right at the time of the immense success of Sailor Moon that has made its way into the West that has taken into effect for years.
Of course, with the advent of Madoka Magica that completely turned and screwed the genre upside down, it’s of no surprise that the genre has continued to evolve, even to this day with more tried-and-true tropes flooding its market just like all other genres nowadays. But what if there is a way to relive how the anime scene was like back then, and this remake which serves as the series’ 20th anniversary is defintely part of that celebration…which was lukewarm at best given its popularity.
But if the recent complete adaptation of the subpar reboot that is Hiroyuki Takei’s Shaman King has taught us one thing, is that even if the source material doesn’t sell like hotcakes nowadays, it uses nostalgic memorabilia to re-define the revingorating success it once had, though that ultimately amounted to the loss in overall quality just for the sake of “putting things right” of how the source material should be adapted. And yes, bar for the course that Tokyo Mew Mew New’s rendition is going, it doesn’t actually cover the entire manga, but rather, adds its own whimsical spin thanks to Yumeta Company’s in-house director Takahiro Natori and series composer Yuka Yamada, which the latter has a knack for shows similar to it from shows like Koisuru Asteroid to the more recent Slow Loop.
And in the sacrifice of having to adapt the entire manga (which would’ve taken another 12 episodes to do so, that thankfully has Season 2 coming next Spring), ultimately, this I felt was the better approach in trying to weigh between counterbalances of having a decent reboot than one that feels rushed. And even then, pales in comparison to Studio Pierrot’s original 2002 rendition of covering the entire manga plus fillers in 52 episodes.
The Mew Mews of Ichigo Momomiya (bearing the Iriomote cat DNA), Mint Aizawa (bearing the Blue Lorikeet DNA), Lettuce Midorikawa (bearing the finless porpoise DNA), Bu-Ling Huang (bearing the golden lion tamarin DNA) and Zakuro Fujiwara (bearing the gray wolf DNA), they are the stereotypical “Girl Power” team to save the world from the aliens whom had their home destroyed to smithereens, and Earth is their next place of interest to do the same evildoer stuff. Like you know, each and every Mahou Shoujo tried-and-true formula that predates Madoka Magica.
This is pretty stereotypical for the time, and for the most part, the remake serves its purpose well by adapting only the first 3 out of the 7 volumes closely and sprinkling whatever the production staff wants to add into it, making it into a modern remake of an old property, plus new songs to boot in its decency. But this is the same reason where the remake also lost a lot of its luster by being a low-tier production of today’s anime industry standards, that not only gives little to no respect to the original, but instead is made in such a way that provides a source of income invested into the project. It’s just sad that old legends, whether popular or not, their status have been mostly being castaways of a time where anime was fun (and it still is to this day), but it’s how the anime industry had grown up to become an exploitative industry of work that all works are regarded the same way, and to me, this is not how things should’ve been, but it is what it is.
The general advice, as is any hardcore fan of said source material, would be for you to read the manga that’s enclosed in 32 chapters in 7 volumes, something that’s more feasible than watching the 52-episode anime (which can take too long). Good thing there’s a Season 2 to continue for the fans who love this new iteration. Even if this is or isn’t speaking out of nostalgic bias, as someone who really hasn’t seen much of the oldies (but have enough knowledge about it), I guess the banter’s true that “the original is (undoubtedly) better”. I would just like to wish that the remake got the attention and respect that it truly deserves, but it just ended up falling flat on its face.
