As a casual fan of My Melody and Sanrio characters in general, when I saw that Melo had her own TV show, I thought it would be worth checking out. Honestly did not expect much from this 15 year old kids’ show, especially when it was just something to try out of curiosity in the middle of an anime burnout, did not think I would get any further than episode 1. And then I watched all 52 episodes in a month, ranked it as my #3 favorite anime of all-time, and now have kicked my anime burnout to the road and have kind of reignited my passion for the medium. Onegai My Melody is genuinely one of the most funny, charming, comfy, and detailed anime I have ever seen, so much so that I want to write a review for it (and I haven’t written an anime review in like...a year).

There is a lot I want to say about Onegai My Melody here, but a lot of that branches out from the core of the show itself, which I find more or less flawless. On the surface, My Melo is a pretty standard episodic kids show with a monster of the week formula, and I can’t say anything big-brain about it subverting the tropes of this format or anything either. But what I can say is that the show executes on this better than any show I’ve seen in this style.

My Melo really excels at keeping its episodes breezy, balanced, and not too dumbed down while also not engaging in esoteric dialog about “being a star” or “finding that sparkle” or whatever. A problem I have with a lot of Precures and its ilk are their tendencies to be overly moody at times, have fight scenes that take up way too much time but aren’t interesting enough to actually pay attention to, go in way hard on dumb episodic drama that ultimately means nothing. And this was my initial expectation for My Melo as well, but thankfully the show avoids doing all of this. Instead it’s just always on.

It’s lighthearted and fun and always moving. The “fight scenes” in My Melody are mahou shoujo adjacent, but are so much more creative and diverse than you’d get from the typical kids’ magical girl show. Firstly because there aren’t any actual “mahou shoujo”—My Melo just puts a sticker on a teddy bear (or men & women’s bathrooms signs, alarm clock shaped like a muscle man, etc.) says “please” and they punch a couple times and that’s it. I am oversimplifying here a bit, but I do love how brief but substantive the episodic fights are. Some are more intensive than others, but they’re always entertaining, and that does have to do with the diversity of the episodic “villains”. Some of their powers and the way their animated are genuinely insane, and the animations for them are always so expressive. Of course some episodes are better than others (the NO guy was an especially bad memory), but my overall takeaway on episodic fights in My Melo is more positive than negative.

This may have something to do with the fact that even though the plots are self-contained, they do build into a bigger story without spending too much time on lore. Everything matters, but the end goal is brilliantly simple and the endgoal is in sight—if Kuromi gets more 100 “black notes” faster than My Melo gets her 100 “pink notes”, she wins and the world will end in human instrumentality or whatever. There aren’t many twists and turns on the way, you know how things will go from the start and are just along for the journey. Again, I love how straightforward and brisk the show’s plot is and how it avoids the soupy ramblings of so many adjacent shows.

But that’s not to say that the show’s main plot is without depth, it’s just able to communicate its message in fewer words, and much more effectively at that. Really, My Melo’s themes of morality are presented so black-and-white, but there is more depth to them than the conciseness would let on. All of the episodic struggles are based on the wants, insecurities, and envies of normal people, then perverting them on the widest scale possible through the means of an episodic monster fight. The “monsters of the week” are just average people that aren’t “bad guys”, but, like everyone, have some internal nastiness to them. And each episode struggle wraps up so succinctly with the pink notes and black notes—is achieving your goal with such brute worth everyone left in the dust as collateral or not? It’s nothing too deep or anything, but comparing the inner struggle of average people as the centerpiece of each episode to “big living blender that got brought to life”, there is much more to latch onto in My Melo.

And that does lead to the next point here—My Melo’s character writing is so detailed and incredible and genuinely impresses me so much. My Melo has a surprisingly big ensemble cast of characters. Of course there’s the main girls and stuffed animals, but also a non-insignificant amount of recurring randos who add a lot of texture to the show, and literally all of them are so well-written and relatable and real in a way. Like, this show really excels at making the characters feel like “normal people”—everyone has very realistic flaws and actively negative traits, but also the good in them to want to do the right thing.

Really the best way to put it is that these characters do genuinely feel like real people. For example, yes, Uta is a do-gooder main character who wants to stop the bad guy with her friends, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s still literally a child enchanted with the idea of romance and lacking in the skills to communicate her emotions. She has a dead mom that she loves and misses, but that’s not like, a plot point or anything. It’s just real and adds to her and her sisters’ character. Dad makes jokes no one thinks are funny and can be kind of cringe when overcompensating as a single parent to three girls who has to travel for his job, but he’s loved and respected by all of them with no hangups. And it’s not like the show takes a whole episode to say “look how good this dad is despite his flaws” or anything, it’s just character development that happens naturally in the story.

Anime, or maybe even fiction in general, has a tendency to overstate the qualities of the character that need to be pointed out for plot purposes, “telling not showing” you know, and I really feel that My Melo does such a good job at avoiding this while also making every character in the cast feel so well realized and fully fleshed out in the process.

And then of course there are My Melo and Kuromi themselves—I left them out when focusing on the human cast previously because I just love both of them so much. My Melo is the de facto protagonist of her show, but like...she’s the suckiest magical girl ever, and it’s so incredible to watch. She’s completely airheaded, has literally no physical strength, doesn’t even want to pay attention to the tasks at hand and can barely complete them even if she did. And while she is genuinely just a total space cadet, I also love the fact that she knows EXACTLY how to weaponize her dumbness, and can really piss people off completely intentionally. The moments of clarity where My Melo is not the butt of the joke and is just needling are comedy gold. She does have the technical know-how to get shit done and always does it effectively by the end of the episode, but the fact that she is this bumbling dumbass with a magic stick makes it so much funnier. There’s no character growth for My Melo, she’s just a smiling dummy that wants to make cake for everyone and for the world to be happy, and I think that’s kind of a perfect protagonist for this story, in a way.

And on the other end of the spectrum are Kuromi and Baku. I love these two and their relationship so so much. Kuromi is an overly edgy, high strung, tempermental brat who wants nothing more than to uh inconvenience My Melody and like embarrass her or something? Kuromi is one of the main villains of the series, but there’s something so cute about how pure her intentions are, as fake evil as she wants to be, she’s still just a petty brat that likes the aesthetic and isn’t actually a corrupted individual, she just can’t stand My Melo and is perfectly valid for that. And then Baku is just such a joy, he’s a genuine, nice, hard-working & lovable guy that maybe got pulled into something bigger than he is here, but his lifelong friendship with Kuromi keeps him going.

As the show progressed and more is revealed about Kuromi & Baku’s origins and friendship, the more I fell in love with them. It’s such a cute, sweet relationship that just feels so good to get a deeper understanding of, the warmest moments of the show are between these two. (remember, these are the two nasty mean villain characters I’m talking about).

And to wrap up the characters section here, Hiiragi, the “true” villain”, is such a complex character I don’t even know if I can go into it here. Kind of a story of someone who is in want of nothing and turns evil because of it, but there’s a palpable sadness to Hiiragi’s story. He’s not a twisted power hungry freak or anything, he’s just a directionless kid that isn’t able to let in anyone who genuinely cares for him or is able to guide him, jaded and forced to live a life that doesn’t challenge him on a worldwide stage. For a kids show character, there’s a lot going on with Hiiragi here, I can probably just leave it there. There are a lot more characters in this show I could talk about here (see Mana’s struggle with gender, Kogure’s asinine middle schooler energy, Uta’s sister and her dork of a boyfriend), but I don’t wanna make this longer than I have to.

So, all that said, I think My Melo nails down the basics of storytelling pretty perfectly, especially in the character writing department. But what really ties together the whole show for me into one perfect package is the overwhelming charm and humor of it all. My Melo is a show that literally makes me laugh out loud at least once an episode. The show is masterful at being quick and witty, and then turning its one off witticisms into inside jokes that are referenced to just enough to be brought to your memory and remain clever and funny—no one being able to tell which end of Baku is his head, Hiiragi’s fish tank full of phones, Piano-chan & Miki’s ongoing rivalry, My Melo talking about how good tea is to ignore her responsibilities, etc.

Also, My Melo and Kuromi are just GOLDEN characters. Literally anything My Melo says is almost guaranteed to be some batshit idiocity, perfectly performed by Rei Sakuma (a voice actress I am not familiar with outside of this show). And Kuromi is just...perfect. Again, her character is so well-realized in the writing, but also by the voice actor. Junko Takeuchi as Kuromi is literally my #1 favorite voice acting performance of all time now. She is so expressive and so funny and GETS the character, and it is such a joy to watch and listen to.

Visually the show is about at the same par as its big eyed magical girl contemporaries from the mid-2000s, but even with the somewhat flat art and limited animation, the characters are so expressive and the episodic monster designs are so absurdist and insane it’s easy to ignore the shortcomings there. The soundtrack is simple but effective, there’s only a handful of songs used throughout the show, but they’re all ingrained in my brain now and make me feel good to listen to.

And in terms of shortcomings, I can easily see why a lot of people wouldn’t like My Melo. If you don’t right away vibe with the characters or its way of storytelling, it may not be for you. There are a lot of side characters that range from “I could see that being annoying” to “absolutely insufferable” (looking at you, the My Melo simp), not to mention some characters with vocal tics and catchphrases that drain your life force after awhile. And of course not every episodic plot is going to shine as bright as others, it is a kids show and sometimes you really feel that in full force.

But is that enough for me to say that My Melo isn’t a perfect 10/10 show for me that has enchanted me endlessly and makes me want to watch anime again? No, it’s a 10/10 idc.