Talk:Sally, the Witch

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I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask, but it’s a start.

I’d like to suggest some changes to the entry on “Sally, the Witch.” But I do *not* want to just put them in without getting responses from other folks, especially the people who wrote this entry. (Consensus is better than fighting and vandalizing.)

The issues center on the early history of Yokoyama’s manga and of the anime. First, the entry says that Yokoyama “… obtained the concept of it directly from an American sitcom: “Bewitched” (known in Japan as “Oku-sama wa majo” …” These conclusions are common enough on the Internet (see the two website cited below for examples). But even so, the Japanese television show “Oku-sama wa majo” is dated to 2004 in Wikipedia’s own entry for “Bewitched,” and this version of the show is still available on amazon.co.jp. So the entry needs a reference to a better example to prove that the American (1964 and later) sitcom provided the “concept” for the original manga.

Second, about Yokoyama obtaining the concept *directly* from the original US sitcom. In the US sitcom, Samantha is a grown woman, married and with a child. The central heroine of “Mahou Tsukai Sally” is a pre-teen (at most, early teen) girl who confronts problems of coming-of-age. That is a large change indeed, and undermines, I think, the idea of a *direct* conceptual influence of the US show on the manga or on the anime. Instead, it might be much more accurate to say only that Yokoyama was “indirectly influenced” by “Bewitched.”

Is this important? Yes, if you think (as I do) that it’s doubtful to imply that American cultural icons are of course and unquestionably the source of anime and manga plots and characters. There are certainly US cartoon influences on “Mahou Tsukai Sally” – “Tom and Jerry” is one example (see the opening scene on the awesome-engine site below) – but I think we need to ponder how much of “Mahou Tsukai Sally” is original to Yokoyama and how much is native to Japan and comes from 20th century Japanese cultural and aesthetic redefinitions of the “girl,” that is, “shojo.”

http://www.awesome-engine.com/?p=78

http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=68483

Timothy Perper 12:46, 21 July 2007 (UTC)