Kim White has brown hair and green eyes. The brown hair could be Korean, although Kim is commonly a surname, not a given name, in Korea (to my understanding). The surname of White and the green eyes, however, suggest otherwise. Then there’s Donna, her husband Gants, and their son, Will (recognizably voiced by Luci Christian in the dub). Definitely not Korean. I get the impression there’s no Korean culture put into the characters of this series, whereas if it were a Japanese series you might have Kim-san, Mishel-san, Will-kun, and Donna-san. And that’s not to mention Sitel-kun and Poyo-chan. Oh, and Sarome-sama. I wonder why the story follows a non-Korean cast. I know the series is based off of a French novel in inspiration, but I think inspiration is as far as it goes.

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Typically, Japanese anime released by ADV Films will have a translation of the opening and ending theme songs in the subtitles for every odd-numbered episode on a DVD (first episode, third, fifth if applicable), and then romanized Japanese captioning for the songs on the even-numbered episodes on the DVD (second, fourth, etc). With Michel, this isn’t the case. The second episode uses the English subtitles rather than romanized Korean. I find this disappointing, but perhaps it was chosen due to this being an “ADV Kids” release.

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I can see this series is clearly intended for young viewers. The Pokémon-style influence is there, with all the fairies ready to battle, and to add to that Michel can fuse with them. The potential for a line of toys includes not only the fairies, but Michel fused with them.

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It’s always hard to decide what to watch next when you have a cabinet full of unwatched DVDs. As I was heading out the door, I didn’t have time to weigh one series versus another. On top of that, I have to be careful or else I’ll end up with a series with scenes not suitable for vanpool riding. I’m think of the bath scene in Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (which also had some other inappropriate scenes, but I wasn’t watching it in the vanpool by then) and Strawberry Marshmallow. Princess Tutu unfortunately falls under this category of NSFC, all of these going to show that no matter how innocent a series is, you need to know the material before watching it in certain places.

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