Let’s get back to Ojamajo Doremi! Last episode saw Doremi and the gang returning to the magical world, where they just barely passed their Level 8 exams and even ran into the queen of all witches. It was a surprisingly fantasy-focused episode for a series that generally just uses magic to illustrate pretty mundane personal problems. That’s certainly not a bad thing, though – the show’s premise is loose enough to facilitate episodes using as much or little magic as they need. Let’s see what Doremi’s latest adventure brings!

Episode 14

A new focus character from class this time, it seems. A girl who hasn’t really stood out before, with a pretty mundane design

It seems she’s upset over a dress or something? Well, we’ll find out

A new setting this time – their school gym, which is designed like a giant prism

Doremi tries to play basketball but gets wrecked. Sorry Doremi

We briefly see Hadzuki’s friend with the flower garden in the background. Every episode that fills out the life of one of these classmates makes all the future classroom scenes that much richer

And we see our focus character, a very tall and athletic girl. So perhaps this will be a body image-focused episode

Doremi and Hadzuki proclaim their envy of the tall girl. Gotta set up that initial expectation of what their life is like before we actually investigate it

“Laugh and Forgive Me!?”

Okuyama is the new girl

“Okuyama is like an Amazon girl.” Yep, here it comes. The angry losers immediately start ragging on her height

Kids can be so casually cruel. I like that even Sagawa, the boy who “turned a new leaf” in the flower episode, is participating in the bullying here. We don’t experience one formative event and then suddenly become good people forever after, we remain complicated and messy people to the end

It’s also nice that Sagawa has a distinct and very different relationship with Okuyama. There are all sorts of threads between classmates that we’re not always privy to

Hadzuki idolizes Okuyama and it is adorable. Hadzuki’s great

“I’m just good at height-related sports. I’m not good at anything else.” Once again, the show emphasizes how we all have different talents. You shouldn’t feel bad about not being good at most things – that’s true for everybody

Okuyama talks about how being tall means she’s always outgrowing her clothes

The classic story – Okuyama is praised for being boyish, but she just wants to wear a friggin’ frilly dress. Like Idolmaster’s Makoto

Presumably we’re gonna magic that dress back into her size

Or just invent a new one. Yes, I cannot foresee any problems resulting from our Level 8 witches conjuring actual clothes for someone to wear

Well, at least they’re aware enough to have Hadzuki cast the spell, not Doremi

Doremi’s wonderful art design makes even Okuyama’s fairly mundane apartment building look cozy from outside and in

I love how supportive Doremi and her friends are being. It is just so nice to watch a show about fundamentally good people. Characters don’t need to be antiheroes to be charming or interesting to follow. It’s a constant frustration to me that in media terms, kindness is so often associated with being boring or weak

Hadzuki gives Okuyama a goddamn bouquet of roses. Hadzuki is extremely gay for this girl and it is great

Oh man these are some excellent Doremi faces

Oh no, the bullies are here

Okuyama can wear a dress you assholes. Don’t make her beat that into you

Oh my god, they all look so fierce in the corner here. I love these girls

Hadzuki with her tiny fists up this show is so good

This scene builds to Okuyama’s tears very well, hiding her expression for as long as possible

Once again Sagawa is a jerkass and makes a girl cry. People don’t change that easily

Some lovely sunset-colored backgrounds for this episode

And again, the show emphasizes Sagawa’s conflicted feelings after the fact. This episode is at least as much a lesson for him as anyone else – demonizing him wouldn’t help any of the kids who have themselves felt awkward about hurting someone in these sorts of situations

And our focus jumps directly over to Sagawa’s perspective for the second half

Aw man, this scene of them trying to be goofy in their usual way is very good. It’s easy to relate to this idea of trying to act like an even more You version of yourself to convince everyone else that everything is fine

“Rather than telling bad jokes, why not just apologize to Okuyama directly”

Sagawa legitimately doesn’t understand what he did wrong. I like that. From his perspective, this was just another of their usual friendly squabbles. He doesn’t have the insight to know Okuyama is insecure about her appearance

It’s also nice to directly underline the point “we can hurt others even when we don’t intend to, and even though we didn’t mean to hurt them, it’s still our responsibility to try and make things right”

The Doremi trio just kinda gets to do play-by-play commentary for this episode. This is a personal conflict between Sagawa and Okuyama, they can’t really do that much

And they just cannot stop dunking on the SOS trio

Alright, time to go deep on that bank footage. TRIPLE TRANSFORMATION

Hadzuki actually giggles at one of their stupid jokes, because Hadzuki is very good

I feel like hearing this conversation about the impossibility of making their comedy funny would scar those boys for life

Legit laughed out loud at them Magical Staging “make their jokes funny.” Absolutely ruthless

And the solution is… harass Sagawa with an army of frogs. Of course

I really love how magic works in this world. It’s essentially a positive version of the monkey’s paw – your wish will be granted, but in some totally absurd and circuitous way. It feels actually “magical,” and not just like some alternate form of energy. Like there’s an internal logic to the world and witches can just mess with the dials a bit

Okuyama’s height comes in handy on the roof

These horny frogs will SAVE THIS FRIENDSHIP

It’s nice that they emphasized the other boys are also worried and happy to see Okuyama laughing

“I really don’t understand the magic this time.” Ahahaha. They got a cushy job this episode

And Done

Well, that sure was a charmingly weird episode. As expected, the focus returned to very commonplace personal problems this time, with just a couple of magical embellishments around the edges. That finale sequence was a whole lot of fun, and I appreciated that Sagawa is still just kinda figuring kindness out. Plus watching Doremi, Hadzuki, and Ai be absolutely merciless comedy critics was totally great. Doremi sure is good at cheering me up.

This article was made possible by reader support. Thank you all for all that you do.