Fushigi Mahou Fun Fun Pharmacy 1-10:
This is a traditional (non-combat) mahou shoujo produced by Toei in 1999 in 48 half-length installments. It revolves around the episodic misadventures of Potpourri, a girl who stumbles upon the secret witch identity of the pharmacist in her shopping district and so becomes a witch herself; if this premise seems slightly familiar, the show really does feel like a blander and more conventional dry run for some of the concepts and formulas eventually employed by
Ojamajo Doremi.
It's a fairly simplistic show and the self-contained narratives are typically vignettes about Potpourri solving a mystery or problem with magic or, alternately, Potpourri trying to use magic and her attempt backfiring comically. Everything is played completely straight and it's not particularly stimulating for those outside of the target audience, but it's colorful and cheerful and there's a charming innocence to everything--the simplicity of how the material is presented actually makes Potpourri's childlike thought processes and perception of the world around her feel more realistic and natural, if that makes sense. Fun Fun Pharmacy was actually apparently written by Chiaki J. Konaka, but you'd never be able to tell.
From a technical standpoint, there's not much here either. There are some lovely backgrounds and character design is distinctive for how simplified it is, but actual standout animation is scarce and the show has the same early digital Toei jank that old episodes of One Piece also suffered from. It also has a bizarre lyric-less OP that gives the impression that the credits were designed for use with a particular song but the song was never used--the OP music, instead, simply a track from the OST and the cuts in the OP don't match up with the melody at all. Toei: fucking simple things up since
forever.
The ED is unbelievably amazingly beautiful.
