Miracle Girls (Japanese: ミラクル★ガールズ, Hepburn: Mirakuru Gāruzu) is a Japanese manga written and illustrated by Nami Akimoto, originally released in 1991. It was a commercial hit and would see the creation of 12 more manga books. Naoko Takeuchi of Sailor Moon fame worked on early editions of the Miracle Girls manga (seemingly artwork), before moving on to make Sailor Moon It was adapted into an anime series by Japan Taps in 1993. Tokyopop licensed the manga for English release in North America.
Miracle Girls | |
ミラクル★ガールズ (Mirakuru★Gāruzu) | |
---|---|
Genre | Magical girl |
Manga | |
Written by | Nami Akimoto |
Published by | Kodansha |
English publisher | |
Magazine | Nakayoshi |
Demographic | Shōjo |
Original run | 6 July 1991 – 6 August 1994 |
Volumes | 13 |
Anime television series | |
Directed by | Takashi Anno (eps. 1-17) Hiroko Tokita (eps. 30-51) |
Music by | Michiru Ōshima |
Studio | Japan Taps |
Original network | Nippon Television |
Original run | 8 January 1993 – 24 December 1993 |
Episodes | 51 |
Manga Book 1:
Tomomi and Mikage Matsunaga are identical twins with special powers. Together, they are able to teleport and communicate telepathically. The athletically challenged Mikage begs Tomomi to switch identities with her for her school's sports day track meet, where she and Tomomi are teamed with Mikage's arch enemy Yuya Noda, in the relay race. Tomomi, however, finds herself drawn to Yuya. Tomomi's success in the relay causes the captain of the track team, Hideaki Kurashige, to try to recruit Mikage. So, once again, the sisters switch identities. However, the science teacher, Shinichiro Kageura, finds out about their psychic powers, and begins to stalk Tomomi. Sensing that Mikage (who was really Tomomi) has been behaving strangely, Yuya visits them at home.
Original Japanese names/Names in Tokyopop's translation
At some point during the early years of The Lost Decades, multiple dolls of Mikage Matsunaga and Tomomi Matsunaga were made. There were other toys featuring the twins, but the other characters only appear on the cardboard boxes of these toys.
During its original Japanese run, the manga was split in two main parts. The first part is what the anime takes from, but the manga continued on after the anime had finished. This makes the anime an unfinished adaptation of the series it is based upon.
The Miracle Girls manga was licensed for English release by Tokyopop, who released the series from 2000-10-17 until 2003-05-13.[3] It was licensed by Editions Star Comics for Italian released, where it was serialised in Amici. The manga has been released in Spanish by Norma Editorial as Gemelas Milagrosas from December 2004 to June 2006.[4]
It was adapted into an anime series by Japan Taps in 1993. The anime was dubbed into Italian by DENEB Film where it was broadcast on Canale 5 from March 1996 and on Italia 1. In the Philippines, where it was known as Magic Girls, the show was dubbed in Tagalog and broadcast by ABS-CBN. It is also available in Spanish and Korean.
The series uses three pieces of theme music. The opening themes of the whole series are performed by GARDEN, with "KISU no Tochuu de Namida ga" as the opening for episodes 1-29, and "Koi no Mirai" as the opening for episodes 30–51. Dio performs the ending theme for all 51 episodes, "Futari ja Nakya Dame na no". The Italian dub used its own opening theme ("È un po' magia per Terry e Maggie" by Cristina D'Avena).
The first two series of the book were not made into anime by any companies, but it started with the third book of Miracle Girls. [5]
A video game adaptation of Miracle Girls was developed by Now Production and released for the Super Famicom by Takara on October 22, 1993. The player can choose to play as either Mikage or Tomomi and use candies as weapons to stun enemies and use them as platforms which the gameplay is similar to Capcom's Little Nemo for the NES, and when the player clears a level, the player challenges the area boss to a mini-game.
Adam Arnold of Animefringe praised the series, particularly for the detailed an expressive eyes, and the story "light-hearted and fun to read".[6]