The manga "ojamajo doremi" was created by Izumi Todo and Shizue Takanashi. It's been published in Japan in 2000, 1 year after the anime began to be aired. It tells less precisely and without details, the story of the 3 first seasons, with the same characters : DoReMi, Hazuki, Aiko, Onpu, Momoko and Hana-chan.
The drawings are, as you can see by yourself with the scans, quite punyaccording to me. They aren't really designed, even if sometimes, they have some appeal (mostly the covers pictures which are in color). The style is quite clumsy, but anyway it's a style ! Personally, I like some of the drawings whereas I think others are horrible, within the same manga ! As in "regular" shojos, there are only a few settings. And the chara-design is mostly SD. Besides, Hana-chan has a really different look, not to say she looks ugly, but she has strange little wings and looks like a baby boy ^^;;
The story of the anime is a bit different from the manga's one, but I think that's because of the number of episodes. For instance, in the manga, you'll notice that the 3 girls gain their powers at the same time, but these are details, which are, like in other animes, added to give more personality and make the story last longer ^^;
In this manga, there are some nice things too. First of all, the stickers board just before the 1st page, tiny funny stickers, well stickers... ^^;. Besides, at the end of the manga, there are what I call some "how-to-draw", which means little drawings, anime style, so that we can learn how to draw by ourselves some DoReMi stuff. There are also some fanarts, some comments by the seiyuu etc ! ^_^
Well, finally, I think this manga is only aimed at BIG fans of the DoReMi universe. Why ? Because for a quite important sum (manga bought by import, impossible to find in Paris), it's in fact just OK. We get used to TAKANASHI Shizue's drawings without being totally involved, without having the same feeling I have when I watch the anime : I'm never bothered whereas with the manga, I feel the time going. It's my very opinion ^^; To tinge a bit, I must add that I don't read Japanese and that maybe the story written by TODO Izumi would have changed this feeling if I did ! We'll see that later ... ^^
The Kodansha, editor of the manga, can't praise itself about it (it was less successful that the anime), contrary to the Toei ! |
