My family has been struck down by the Wuhan coronavirus, though we’re lucky enough to have caught it in a variant that amounts to little more than lassitude and a mild head cold. Since we’re sick and off work, we’ve spent this time lounging around, complaining, and watching too much television.
I have mentioned before that I recently bought my toddler daughter a pair of training chopsticks that serendipitously introduced me to the Korean magical-girl series Secret Jouju, a CGI cartoon aimed at young girls and built around a toy line. At the time, I was unable to discover any detailed information about the series or find episodes in any language except Korean.
More recently, however, I stumbled upon the series in English. It’s actually right there on the official YouTube channel for the franchise, but despite being owned by Google, YouTube’s search function failed to discover it for me. Instead, I ultimately found it through Brave Search.
Here’s an embed of the first episode of the first season. Anyone interested can easily find the rest of the English-dubbed episodes from there:
My daughter is barely beginning to speak in complete sentences, but she can already say “Choochoo” (Jouju) and even wave her hand around and cry, “Chiriring chiriring,” which is Jouju’s catch-phrase when she casts spells. So, despite some shortcomings, this show clearly appeals to its target demographic.
Also, if my daughter has to watch some television, I’d rather it be something obscure like this where an ocean separates her from the toy franchise it’s based on. Unlike some other toy franchises, she won’t be able to see Jouju anywhere and everywhere to the point that she is tempted to build her personality around it.
First Impressions
Conceptually, Secret Jouju appears to take its inspiration from Pretty Cure and Sailor Moon with arguably a dash of Winx Club, though it has toned everything down and mushed everything together to the point that it lacks individuality. Although most magical-girl titles have franchise tie-ins, this one feels especially like a weekly toy advertisement, a feeling that is not helped by the look of the cheap animation, which makes the characters look like plasticky action figures.
That being said, the character designs—which improve notably over the course of the series—are fetching and also a relief from the sexually provocative designs that have come to characterize Japanese magical girls in their late stage. Jouju and her friends prefer flowing gowns (reminiscent perhaps of Wedding Peach) rather than micro-minis and bikini tops, which make me more comfortable letting my daughter watch this.
The Plot
When I reviewed the Korean magical-girl series Flowering Heart, I noted that it jumps into the story with almost no explanation. Secret Jouju does something similar.
The premise (what there is of it) is that Jouju is a fairy from the Fairy Tale Kingdom. One day, she impersonates the princess Cinderbella in order to woo a handsome prince and convince him to marry her. However, the real Cinderbella then shows up and reveals the deception. As if that weren’t enough, an evil witch suddenly attacks the kingdom. Jouju attempts to fight the witch but loses her magic in the process. Sensing this crisis, a magical item called the Secret Diary activates and seals away the witch—but also seals away everyone else in the Fairy Tale Kingdom, Jouju excepted.
The next day, Jouju wakes up to find a talking teddy bear and the Secret Diary in her bed. Both give her instructions to travel to Earth where she must make friends and help others in order to return Fairy Land’s inhabitants to normal. Each friend she makes receives a “Secret Flower” to make her a member of Jouju’s magical girl team. And although Jouju is oblivious, the viewer will easily discern that the longsuffering talking teddy bear following her around is actually the prince she’s in love with.
Comment
There’s something interesting here that I, as an adult, would like to see explored in more depth, though the intended audience of early-elementary girls might be bored with it: Jouju’s former job as a fairy had been to turn girls into princesses, which apparently means that she served in the role of the fairy godmother from the Cinderella story, granting girls their wishes in order to ensure their happily-ever-afters.
But Jouju had found, she tells us, that these girls were always ungrateful for what she’d given them, so she finally decided to use her power on herself instead. All of this is delivered to us in brief hints, leaving us to fill out most of the details ourselves, but it informs much of Jouju’s behavior: She insists that she never again wants to use magic to help other people—even though doing so is the only way to restore the Fairy Kingdom.
The Heroine
When I first came across this series and watched some of it in Korean, what I saw came from later seasons, so some elements of this first season have surprised me. The first surprise is the character design, which is primitive in the first season but improves later on.
As a second surprise, Jouju in the early episodes is decidedly obnoxious. Taking inspiration from Sailor Moon, the heroine here is thick-witted, selfish, and gluttonous. She differs from Sailor Moon in a few important aspects, however: She is headstrong rather than cowardly, and she grows noticeably over the course of this series, whereas Sailor Moon’s character flaws (in the animated version, at least) get turned into a running gag.
A parent can easily see that Jouju’s shortcomings are things that Jouju needs to overcome if she is to complete the Diary’s tasks and save Fairyland, but I wonder if my tiny daughter is getting the same message or is merely thinking that Jouju’s funny antics are worthy of imitation.
The Dub
If a subtitled version of this show exists, I have not found it. The options at the moment appear to be the Korean version with no subtitles and an English version. While imperfect, the dub gives the impression that the voice actresses are sincerely giving it their all despite dubious material.
The dialogue frequently plods, but some of this awkwardness is clearly due to the young target audience: Characters express themselves in clear, simple terms and often say things in more than one way as if speaking to someone who has difficulty understanding. Since the intended audience is probably about five years old, we should excuse these affectations even though they sound unnatural to an adult. The dub frustrates me occasionally, but I don’t feel fit to judge it.
Overall Impressions
I have barely scratched the surface of what is now an extensive franchise with multiple seasons. Although I intend to keep seeing it with my daughter, I’m not binge-watching because I don’t want to let her watch too much television, so this post is a set of first impressions rather than a thorough review. My thinking at the moment is that this is little more than a generic magical-girl title for the youngest audience. Jouju’s bitterness over her role in Fairyland is intriguing, though it’s unlikely to get thorough exploration and probably couldn’t hold the attention of the average adult viewer.
