Marvelous Melmo is a magical girlmanga and anime by Osamu Tezuka. This series centered on Melmo, a nine-year-old girl whose mother is killed in an auto accident and has to then take care of her two younger brothers. While in Heaven, the children's mother is given one wish. Her wish is that Melmo will be allowed to grow up more quickly than usual, since their lives as children will be difficult without their parents. Melmo's mother is permitted to visit her as a ghost, and gives Melmo a bottle of candy given to her by God. The blue candy turns Melmo into a lovely 19-year-old version of herself, while the red candy turns her back into a child. Combining the two turns her first into a fetus, then into an animal of her choosing. When Melmo ages from 9 to 19 her clothes don't grow with her, usually resulting either in shredded clothes, or skin-tight children's clothes on the body of an adult woman, leaving little to the imagination. This was only the case of the anime; the manga had Melmo's clothes change with her into whatever she desired. A total of 26 animated episodes were produced, which aired from 1971 to 1972. Although most of the episodes of the anime revolve around adventure stories, Tezuka intended the series to also function as a kind of introductory sex education for children and Darwinist evolution. That being the case, not surprisingly the series only aired in Japan and Italy. When the manga first appeared in 1970, it was originally titled Mamaa-chan. However, by the time the anime debuted in 1971, the name of the main character was changed to "Melmo" due to "Mamaa" having been previously trademarked. Many Japanese parents reportedly hated the show, since it raised many questions from children that parents were uncomfortable with answering.
Characters
;Melmo Watari Melmo as a 19-year-old is no smarter or more experienced than her 9-year-old self, though at 19, she is given more opportunities to learn about adult matters than she would at the age of nine. ;Totoo Watari ;Touch Watari ;Professor Waragarasu ;Jiro Melmo's mother, Hitomi, and God play small roles on occasion throughout the series.
Availability
The entire series has been made available for streaming to international audiences on Viki . Currently, only the first two episodes of the series have been translated by users of the website into English. The complete manga series has been collected and is available in Japan. A DVD set collecting all the episodes in the series was released in 2003, but, according to some sources, might now be out of print in Japan. During the 1990s, the series was available on a set of seven laserdiscs, as well as on a set of 12 VHS videocassettes. The full series was also released in Italy on a 5-DVD set, containing Italian and Japanese audio tracks. Some episodes have been shown on channel 47 in New York in the 1980s in a Japanese program block. The series re-aired in 1998 on the Japanese satellite channelWOWOW as Marvelous Melmo Renewal. This version differed from the original broadcast version since it was given new opening and closing credits, new voice dubs, and the image quality was restored. Since then, it has also aired on the Tokyo TV station Tokyo MX.
Differences between the manga and anime
The manga and anime versions of Marvelous Melmo are quite similar. In contrast to The Amazing 3, several Marvelous Melmo manga stories were adapted and animated for the TV series.
Episodes
There are 26 episodes in all, running from 1971 to 1972.
Other appearances
As a member of Tezuka's Star System, both versions of Melmo made a number of other appearances in Tezuka manga throughout the 1970s; mostly in the Black Jack manga. The older Melmo is also a main character in 1970's Apollo no Uta.
