Hello folks!

So, it’s already been a while since I published my review of Creamy Mami and since I finished watching today’s anime, but I really wanted to talk about Hana no Ko Lunlun since it’s a very interesting anime indeed.

Hana no Ko Lunlun is probably one of the oldest mahou shoujo that can be found and watched online. Having aired in 1979 and 1980, it’s a very good incarnation of the flower power culture in a very Japanese context. So, let’s get going!

1. General Information

Name: Hana no Ko Lunlun (花の子ルンルン)

Number of seasons: 1

Number of episodes: 50

Original airing: 1979-1980

Studio: Toei Animation

OVAs: 1 (?)

Available?: Yes, first 7 episodes were subbed and can be found on various anime sites (watch here), but episodes 8 through 50 are only available in Japanese without subtitles (watch here)

2. Main Characters

Lunlun

Lunlun

Lunlun is a 15-year-old French girl who has been raised by her florist grandparents for most of her life. When she turns 15, she is visited by Nouveau and Cateau (see below) who tell her that she is a far descendant of the Flower Fairies who used to live on Earth in harmony with mankind but decided to retreat to a magical kingdom of sorts when humans became mean and greedy. She is then tasked with finding the seven-colour flower (七色の花, nanairo no hana) which has to be used to crown the new ruler of the Flower People and she is given a magical flower mirror pin that allows her to use the power of flowers to change her outfits. About halfway through the series the pin is broken, but she obtains a new one, which grants her skills related to the outfit she gets with the flower powers, in addition to the clothes.

Nouveau & Cateau

Nouveau, a medium to large size dog

Cateau, a small white cat

Hana no Ko Lunlun precedes many other animes which use talking animals as support companions for magical girls (such as Creamy Mami with Nega and Posi). Nouveau and Cateau are magical beings from the Flower People’s planet who are tasked with guiding and helping Lunlun in her quest. Like many magical creatures duos, one of them is more rational (Nouveau) and the other one is more adventurous (Cateau). Unlike animal companions in other anime such as Mahou no Princess Minky Momo, Nouveau and Cateau can be heard by other human beings, which gets Lunlun into trouble quite often.

Serge

Serge, the pretty fairy boy 😍

Serge is an elusive ally of Lunlun, on whom she develops a huge crush the first time she meets him, in episode 1. He poses as a photographer specialized in taking photos of unique flowers. He appears at the end of every episode to give a pack of flower seeds to the people helped by Lunlun, each flower he gives has a specific meaning tied to the lesson the episode hopes to give. I suppose it was a way for the producers to tie in information related to ikebana (Japanese art of flower arrangement) into the show. At the very end of the series, Serge is revealed to be the oldest son of the royal family of the Flower People and heir to the throne.

Serge giving the girl helped by Lunlun a packet of flower seeds

The flower seeds have grown

A cute picture of a fairy with the flowers given by Serge and a “word of flowers”, which is the signification of that flower (here the characters “誠 実” read “sincerity” or “sincere”, from episode 15); a similar scene appears at the end of every episode.

Togenishia

Togenishia is one of the Flower People, but she is not part of the royal family and she wants to be the queen of the Flower People’s kingdom. She can use magic and summons magic whirlwinds a few times during the series, but using her magic makes her grow old (it is suggested that magic is what keeps her looking young, that in reality she is quite old). During the series, she both pursues Lunlun to steal the seven-colour flower from her and nudges Lunlun to go forward with her quest when she spends too much time in one place or is in danger of being stopped on her journey. Togenishia’s main goal is to use the seven-colour flower to conquer the Flower People’s kingdom. She generally mistreats Yabōki and appears to have an unlimited supply of money, often driving expensive cars and staying in luxurious hotels while Lunlun is usually struggling to find somewhere to sleep that won’t break the bank. She is all in all a classic and stereotypical villain with not much nuance in her characterization.

Yabōki

Yabōki is portrayed as a servant of sorts to Togenishia, he thinks she would make a better queen than the current heir to the throne. He is an anthropomorphic talking tanuki (Japanese raccoon-dog) who has the power to change his clothes at will using his umbrella. As such, the character borrows directly from Japanese folklore surrounding the tanuki. His disguises are frequently believed by normal people, until some sort of comic situation reveals his tanuki tail and forces him to flee.

Yabōki disguised as a villain in a play (episode 15)

Yabōki’s tail is revealed after he is beaten by Lunlun in a swordfight (episode 15)

Yabōki tries to hide his tail from spectators of the play (episode 15)

That’s about all for the main characters as, except for Lunlun’s grandparents, there are no other truly recurrent characters.

3. Premise of the Series

As mentioned earlier, Lunlun is tasked with finding the seven-colour flower to crown the new ruler of the Flower People’s planet because she is a descendent of the Flower People. During the first episode, Nouveau and Cateau appear on Earth near Lunlun’s village and spend all day looking for her. At the end of the day, they finally find her house and they talk to her and her grandparents about the Flower People and Lunlun’s mission. Somehow, Lunlun’s grandparents are totally chill with the idea of letting their 15-year-old granddaughter travel alone all over Europe and they don’t actually find it too odd that this is asked of them by two talking animals… I guess this is just anime being anime.

The ever elusive seven-colour flower, which appears at the end of the opening of each episode.

So Lunlun sets sail all over the world, armed with her magic flower pin that allows her to channel the power of flowers (I told you this was a flower power anime) by pronouncing what sounds like a very heavily deformed “fleur, fleur, fleur” (pronounced “fureru, fureru, fureru”). Have I told you that Japanese people aren’t the best at French? Here’s what her “transformation sequence” looks like (before transforming she is already wearing a wig and a big dress because she is in a play):











First she activates her locket by saying “fleur, fleur, fleur”, then her locket’s mirror shines on the flower, which shines back towards her, and gives her new clothes.

4. Episode Structure

So Lunlun spends each episode travelling in Europe, the Middle East and possibly Northern Africa (not sure). She stumbles upon people having problems and uses her powers to help them. She could be considered one of the first “odd-jobs” magical girls. Some of the people she is helping have very serious problems like criminality, poverty, homelessness, debt, parents on the brink of divorce, etc. and at least a few episode refer more or less explicitly to the fact that Lunlun’s father has more or less abandoned her (my Japanese is not good enough for me to go into details here). Anyways, that mostly means that Hana no Ko Lunlun is a good example of how children’s TV shows in Japan in the 1970s and 1980s didn’t really shy away from tackling very dark themes that were probably more accessible to adults than children. Among others, longing from home and people’s relation to strangers and new experiences are very interesting themes. A lot of episodes are obvious cautionary tales about being suspicious of strange older men, but there are not too many sexual undertones, at least when compared to Creamy Mami or Minky Momo (which I will cover in another post when I’m done watching it).

Some of the common tropes of the episodes are Lunlun looking for Serge but not finding him, Togenishia plotting and having her plans turn against her, Yabōki getting found out as a tanuki at just the right moment for Lunlun (see above), Lunlun’s powers wearing off at the wrong moment (she can’t keep using them for more than a few minutes), Lunlun thinking she’s found or she’s being led by someone to the seven-colour flower only to be disappointed, etc.

As mentioned earlier, precisely halfway through the series, Lunlun’s magical flower pin gets broken and is replaced with the condition that she will never be able to come to the Flower People’s kingdom if she breaks the new one. The new one not only grants her the power to change her outfit, as the old one did, but also gives her skills matching her outfit, like those of a pilot or a horse rider for example. From this point on, not only is she shown as a role model by her kindness in her actions, but also because she is forced to compensate for the shortcomings of her powers and that requires her to develop significant strength and ingenuity.

One of the interests of the anime is that it is a good tale about perseverance. You’d think that after 49 episodes searching for an ever elusive seven-colour flower the main character would eventually want to give up. It truly feels like searching for a needle in a haystack. However, the people Lunlun helped during her journey ended up sending some of the seeds Serge gave them to Lunlun’s grandparents, seeds which eventually make the seven-colour flower grow in the grandparents’ backyard (according to some information I found; my Japanese is not good enough for me to verify that). Here, the journey essentially makes the destination.

At the end of the series, when Serge’s position as the heir to the throne is revealed, Serge asks Lunlun to marry him and she only accepts if he agrees to return on Earth with her. Serge gives up his crown to his younger brother and goes with her. It’s a cute ending for an actually really cute and rather heartwarming anime.

5. General Appreciation

So, it’s hard for me to give a fair appreciation to this series since my Japanese is really no good and the episodes got increasingly complex as the series advanced. I would recommend only picking this up if you have an intermediate Japanese level or higher, which is part of why I don’t really feel guilty about spoiling the ending here (and anyways it was pretty easy to predict).

I can commend this series for its overall mature approach to very difficult themes. I didn’t really enjoy how caricatural the bad guys were, or the portrayals of other cultures in general. I feel like the setting might be a huge reason why the series was not that popular in Japan (especially compared to Minky Momo and Creamy Mami). The use of the tanuki is interesting, but generally the characters and settings must have felt too alien to the children. Only one OVA for this kind of franchise is quite low. But I think it was overall well made and I feel like it is quite underrated. The fact that it allows its heroine moments of fragility and vulnerability and explores some forms of trauma is particularly interesting. Unlike Creamy Mami, Lunlun is a character that lives constant hardships and is doomed to fail in her quest until the very end, so it teaches an important lesson about how to accept failure too.

It’s an interesting series to put into perspective the later developments of mahou shoujo as a genre and it’s cute, but due to its lack of accessibility due to the absence of subs in English, I don’t think it’s an absolute must-watch.

I hope you liked the review! Please tell me what you think below!

Bye bye!