What’s it about? Sister Fuu and Rui used to be super close, until a medical incident changed it all. Yet when Fuu finds a mysterious spaceship and gains magical powers, she starts to shape her future and become the girl she dreams of being. Only there’s a catch: she has her powers for one year and no one can know about them. Too bad her sister, the one person she’d share her secret with, is bound to a similar contract…
Episodes 1-3 are the opening arc to an adventure for Fuu, an elementary schooler, and Rui, her middle school aged older sister, serving to set the stage for a story about lost connections. For you see, Fuu and Rui used to be incredibly close, and that’s immediately evident: there’s a distance between them that was caused by Rui’s fragile health and her losing her ability to sing. Rui is immediately forced to mature in a way that Fuu doesn’t understand, and they both chaff from the sudden canyon of distance even if both yearn for their friendship and sisterhood to return.
However, a chance encounter with two alien cats and an alien from a magic realm (after she almost eats it) gives Fuu a chance to figure out life and everything complicated about it, because with one wave of a wand, she can grow up and, hopefully, figure out a path back to her sister.
What ensues over the next few episodes feels akin to a softer version of Full Moon wo Sagashite: Fuu experiences becoming older (she looks roughly 12-14 at the oldest) and finds her own voice as a scouted idol and a grand debut, only to inspire her sister to seek the means to sing again and shape a brighter future.
One thing to know right off the bat is that LuluttoLilly is set in an already established universe—the Pierrot Magical Girl Series universe, which has five series that come before LulutoLilly. Most notably is Magical Angel Creamy Mami, which you can definitely feel affecting the color palette of this series.
Additionally, these series follow the same rules that were last used almost twenty years ago in LuluttoLilly’s predecessor, Fancy Lala: the protagonist is an elementary schooler, she transforms into an older adolescent via a magic wand from another world, there’s idols and music, an older boy crush, a familiar, and some sort of family business. These, for the most part, link the series. Within the first hour and change of watching episodes 1-3, that legacy continues on.
Still, all that in mind, Magical Sisters LuluttoLilly is clearly doing its own thing with a story focused on reconnecting the younger Fuu with her middle school sister. That’s the core of Fuu’s mission, even if she gets her magic powers on a limited time contract. And of course, unbeknownst to her, that connects her even deeper to Rui, her older sister, who by the end of episode 3, has magic all her own.
You don’t have to watch those earlier series to understand that depth here, and I think that’s highly in this opening arc’s favor, even if there’s little referential tidbits to be found in the background. Because really, this is a coming-of-age series about becoming the type of adult—in this case, it’s mostly through the lens of being a tweenager—you dream of being, and for that, you can just dive into this specific series.
Magical Sisters LuluttoLilly is refreshing to me because it’s a show so openly for children and not appealing to an adult demographic. It’s colorful, it’s sweet, and it wears its heart on its sleeve, combining a legacy of famous magical girl shows into a modern series that feels fresh enough. It’s not here to “rewrite” what magical girls do: instead, its magical idol singer foundation makes space for healthy nostalgia. It actually has me curious to dive back into Studio Pierrot’s backlog, since I haven’t seen the previous series outside of clips.
One thing I do want to note as the only prominent ding: I couldn’t get the English subtitles to work on Tubi. That’s fine for me as someone who maintains fluency in Japanese and is watching a show aimed at an elementary demographic, but uh…WTF Tubi? What about accessibility? Hopefully this will be fixed pronto, though given the date of this review…we’ll just have to keep an eye on that, won’t we? (Note: This was when watching on my TV. It seems to work on desktop.) Fortunately, the series is also on YouTube in at least some regions.
Ultimately, I think this is good enough for you to add to your watchlist if you’re looking for a mid-season mixup. It’s cool to see Pierrot get back into the magical girl game, and sometimes you just want to watch a sweet little series where the stakes are on the same level as Precure with plenty of smiles to be found at the end of each episode and the promise of an HEA (Happily Ever After) for two sisters who deserve to have their bond back. At the end of the day, that’s more than good enough for me and I hope you’ll feel the same!
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