FancyLala

Mahou No Stage Fancy Lala

The story of an extraordinary six months in the life of extraordinary nine year old Miho Shinohara.

One day, apparently entirely at random, Miho Shinohahra is made the beneficiary of a gift. Two stuffed dinosaur figures disconcertingly come to life and present her with a magic sketchbook and pen. Within limits, and subject to varying degrees of control, Miho can draw in the sketchbook and bring the drawings to life. She finds that she can transform herself into a young woman who she names Lala.

By a very clever series of coincidences Lala becomes, over a period of six months, a pop star! The process is brought about at the hands of a well-meaning but driven talent agency team working for Lyrical Productions (amusingly, Lala's personal manager is named Ririka, pronounced identically with "Lyrical" in Japanese, making it very difficult for her to make a good impression when introducing herself!).

Fancy Lala is the most thoughtfully realised anime series I have seen. The characters develop gradually throughout the 24 episodes of the series, and all of the main characters are complex and interesting. There are a relatively small number of filler episodes that do not contribute to the central story, but they are not *too* distracting (though they are not as well done as the episodes that make up the central theme. Two teams of writers?).

The artwork in Fancy Lala is unusually expressionistic for a show that is earnestly intended for a pre-teen female audience. The characters are drawn very simply, but expressively, and the backgrounds are often very detailed, the overall effect is very pleasing. Very often the hair of a central character will be modelled with a degree of care strikingly out of proportion to the rest of the scene and the characters face. This is apparently intentional, and may even be considered to have some significance relating to the final moments of the series, which I will not spoil.

The English dub is well realised, my only complaint would be that songs are rendered into english to no good effect. The Japanese versions of the songs used for the opening and closing are quite nice, and do not translate to their advantage.