Creamy Mami: Forever Once More Anime Review

If you want to watch Studio Pierrot's original magical girl TV series, you are, as of this writing, largely out of luck. While the series received a crowdfunded DVD release back in the days of Anime Sols and was later streamed on RetroCrush, the DVDs are out of print, and RetroCrush no longer streams the TV series. But both Tubi and Amazon Prime have this film available, and it's your best chance to experience the original, since the first 48 minutes of the hour-and-a-half-long movie are a recap of the TV series' salient points. You get to see how Yuu is given the power to transform from alien Pino Pino on his space ark Feather Star, how Shingo scouts her at Parthenon Pro, briefly loses her powers when her friend/crush Toshio finds out about them, and finally regains them and has a final, triumphant concert before her years with the magic is up. You lose out on all of the goofy antics and the rivalry between Mami and Parthenon Pro's Megumi, but you do get the gist of it. It's enough to understand the second half of this, which functions as a series epilogue, and still appreciate the romance angle.

There is a genuine effort to make the nearly fifty minutes of recap feel smooth, although it doesn't always work. For one thing, it's certainly a little troubling that fifty-two episodes can be cut down to less than an hour of “important” plot, although that's more indicative of the era the show dates to than anything. But even though we get the basics of Mami's story, we lose a lot of supporting details, like Megumi's rivalry with Mami, the sleaziness of the idol industry, and Yuu's friendships with Toshio, Midori, and Mamoru. There are moments where it feels jarring, too, a dead giveaway that a lot is being cut out. Still, it's a decent effort, and it does transition well into the new material, which picks up a month after Pino Pino took back Yuu's transformation compact and left with Nega and Poji to return to space.

When the new story opens, Yuu is trying very hard not to think about her alternate life as Creamy Mami. She's generally happy – she and Toshio are “dating” as much as two younger kids can – but she misses Nega and Poji and is having some trouble adjusting to being just a regular kid again. When her friend Mamoru tells her about two kittens in a box under a shrine, she jumps at the chance to at least have cats again, and unsurprisingly names them Nega and Poji as well. This speaks less to Yuu's lack of naming creativity and more to the sadness she feels, an effort to move on while still mourning her year of being someone else. (And Yuu bringing filthy kittens home while covered in dirt herself is so very her from earlier parts of the series.)

Everything is thrown into turmoil, however, when she and Toshio see a poster claiming that Creamy Mami is having a new concert. Since they both know this is impossible, they're immediately suspicious; it's one thing for Shingo to claim that Mami is “studying dance in America” and quite another to appear to be bringing her back. When they overhear Shingo and Kidokoro talking about “Project M,” they get even more suspicious, as does Megumi, Mami's rival in the idol world. Toshio and Yuu start to wonder whether another child saw Feather Star and was given the compact, suspicions that double when Shingo returns from a trip to L.A. with a little girl named Ai in tow. Has he simply found another little girl to use? Does that mean he knows that Yuu was Mami?

All of this makes the inadvertent (I assume) joke of having Shingo be at ARS TV (because he truly is an ass most of the time) work very well, but the meat of this plot is how conflicted Yuu is. She knows that her time as Mami is over, and she's working hard to cope with that. But it still feels like a slap in the face that someone else could be transforming into her alter ego, and even worse, that Shingo is using her for his own ends. It isn't as emotional as Mami's final concert in the TV series, but it's still a strong part of the story and helps show Toshio and Yuu's growing closeness as they work together to figure out what's going on.

This is still very much of its time. At the same time, there are some spectacular '80s fashions on display. Midori, Yuu, and Toshio's plus-size friend is often used as a walking fat joke (although he does get a successful romance). There's also what may feel like a surprising amount of underwear shots and naked scenes involving Yuu; it's important to note that these are nonsexual in nature and clearly aren't meant to be prurient. They still may take modern viewers, used to seeing nakedness and underwear as fan service, by surprise, though. Another element that may surprise modern viewers is how painful Yuu's transformation appears – when slowed down, there's a clear expression of pain on her face as she grows into Mami. It makes sense, she is aging up almost a decade, but it's striking when compared to modern magical girls, whose transformation is typically shown as joyous.

The subtitles for this aren't stellar. There are more typos than I'd like to see in a professional product, and none of the songs or signs are translated. Neither is Yuu's nonsense word transformation phrase, but that feels less egregious. Art and animation are of their time, but they're still good, and it's impressive how many unique outfits Mami and Megumi wear, especially since pretty much no one else changes clothes.

Creamy Mami: Forever Once More is a fun outing. It gives you enough to understand the new material (though it will make much more sense to those who have seen the TV series) and does a good job as a successful coda. There is another OVA, Creamy Mami: The Long Goodbye, that doesn't seem to have an official stream as of this writing, so I can understand this piece alone feeling like an incomplete experience. Still, it's better than no Creamy Mami at all, and if you're a fan of early magical girls, I'd encourage you to check it out.