Floral Magician Mary Bell


Floral Magician Mary Bell, or known as Magical Heroes in some countries, is the fourth and last magical girl anime by Ashi Productions. The fifty-episode series first aired in Japan from 1992 until 1993. It has also been broadcast in Hong Kong, South Korea, Italy, Taiwan, China, France, Poland, Thailand, and in most Arab countries. The series was adapted as a theatrical film and two educational films. The DVD version was released on March 20, 2004.

Overview

Many other magical girls are primary-schoolers or middle-schoolers, but Mary Bell looks like a preschooler. She is a "native" magical girl just like Minky Momo and Sweet Mint, other magical girls by Ashi Productions from the same period. However, she is not a princess. The operatic approach is notable, each main character has his or her own leitmotif, and they sometimes sing instead of speaking, like a musical.

Story

Mary Bell, a magical girl who looks around five years old, comes to the Human World from a magical world called the "Flower Magic World." Using her Flower Magic she helps and encourages people.
The story starts with two children, Yuuri and Ken, who are reading a fairy tale about Mary Bell finding two children who are lost in the woods, and helps them find home. Yuuri and Ken love the story of Mary Bell so much that their parents have named their flower shop after the fairy.
But the flower shop isn't doing well, and everyone is worried. Yuuri and Ken wish that Mary Bell would appear and help them. Both are surprised when she sprouts from a flower. She tells them she has learned of their plight, and will help them. After creating a potion to grow her house, she uses her magic to help the flower shop and people in town.
Mary Bell started her adventures from making flowers healthy and emits friendship beams, helping Ken to drive a bicycle, telling a story about the tree of memories. She can make friends to fairies that don’t lead flowers or talk to flowers. In one of the episodes, she helped Ribbon to be friends with a poodle, and she helps Yuuri to take care of a duck named Peepchee, in the 500.000th year Quarrel, she made rivals with Tambourine for doing wrong things. In Episode 45, Mary Bell and Tambourine got stuck in Mystery Country in order to fight Christina, the Crystal Floral Witch. In another episode, Mary Bell reveals her Mother and Father. She and Ken battled a 2 horned unicorn, she helps Paula who is from Star land.
Mary Bell fights some bank robbers in the Flower House, meets and helps her grandfather to prepare Christmas. When Tambourine gets kidnapped, Mary Bell saves him, and saves Vivian, who is kidnapped also. In the third episode, Mary Bell makes children's drawings to life, but were frightened by Bart. She also reveals that in the final episode, she is the conqueror and the leader of her world. each of the girls and their companions lived peacefully and happily there, very different from Super Speedway world, where the people used to race there. Mary Bell also has Lightning Magic to control electricity, usually on Power plants. She has Fire magic, to control the temperature. She uses this magic if needed, to help the people when it is snow storming.
In the last episode, seeing the rise of the Holy Tree, hearing that a man will make a big busy city, terrorizes Sunny Bell and steals all plants because humans destroy the nature, and even eats Mary Bell into Flower Magic World, which kills her, but Yuuri and Ken got there too to resurrect her there. After she wakes up, she finds Holy Tree being burnt, saying that this is not good for the trees and flowers. Having new magic, she confronts the Holy Tree to return the flowers and trees. Finding that the man loves flowers, making the Holy Tree calm, and the man apologizes. But the Holy Tree apologizes for his big mistake, and Mary Bell’s family who helped her leave with the Holy Tree to Mary Bell’s world. After this ends, Sunny Bell is saved, and is once again a happy town once again. In the ending scene, you can see Mary Bell, Yuuri, Tambourine, and Ken, saying Mary Bell’s catchphrase all together.

Main characters

Mary Bell is the central character of the show, she helps children or others when they are trying to do something. A little girl, Yuuri, her younger brother, Ken, and Ribbon, a puppy, are the ones who first met Mary Bell. Other three children, Vivian, Bongo, and Tap, frequently appear too.
;Mary Bell
;Tambourine
;Yuuri
;Ken
;Rose
;Ribbon
;Remi
;Takuro
; Bart
; Jito
; Vivian
; Bongo
; Tap
; Bra
; Nopo
; Maggie Edelweiss
; Professor Sherbour
; Papa Belle von Decasse
; Mamabel von Decasse
Magical spells are "Mamarin, Berlin, Lunrunlun".

Development

Floral Magician Mary Bell is influenced by Mary Poppins or Mary Poppins , or both. The protagonists of Mary Bell Picture Book are Jane and Michael, the same names that appear in Mary Poppins.

Anime

The TV series was planned and produced by TV Setouchi, Big West, and Ashi Productions. It was directed by Tetsuya Endo, with series composition by Takao Koyama and Hideki Mitsui. The animation directors include Masashi Hirota, Kōichirō, Yuriko Chiba, and Kouji Fukazawa. These four supervised about 80% of the 50 episodes. The true identity of "Kōichirō" is unknown and people do not even know how to read his family name, but it is widely believed in Japan that "Kōichirō" is a pseudonym of Takeshi Ito, who later worked as an assistant animation director on and Tactical Roar.

Episodes

Fifty episodes were broadcast from 3 February 1992 to 18 January 1993.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack album, Let’s Sing with Mary Bell! was released on July 17, 1992.

Track listing

Internationalization

Floral Magician Mary Bell has been released in some other countries and areas, as: