Just for the record, watch out for Ayaka Wada, Ringo's voice actress; I hope we'll be hearing a lot more of her. Being able to play a small child convincingly while keeping one's voice from getting too high-pitched is a rare skill.

There seems to be a part of my brain that hasn't evolved since the 1980's, and it is this part that allows me to enjoy shows like My Little Pony. While the other part of my brain that demands actual stimulation may be more demanding, I have to care for my juvenile side now and again.

However, even the part of me that thinks Fizzy Making a Friend is the height of drama has standards, and I'm afraid that Lilpri doesn't quite meet them. It's not that it's bad; I suppose, if I was four, I would eat it up with a spoon. But my inner My Little Pony fan is closer to seven years old, and this show is too devoid of substance for that more mature demographic. Seriously.

I can't remember this little guy's name, so I've just been calling him "the Twitter bird."

It's about little girls who are transformed into pop idols in order to create "happiness tones" that will restore a fairy kingdom to it's former glory- kind of like the "Do you believe in fairies?" scene from Peter Pan dragged out into a show. Even with that premise, the show could still be entertaining if the characters were likable, but so far, none of them really have personalities. Ringo is a little more brazen in her desire to meet Wish, her favorite male idol, but that's all that distinguishes the three girls at this point.

One positive note is that I don't think any real attempt has been made to sexualize the girls for the purposes of appealing to lonely otaku, a la Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha; I've no doubt some otaku will take a shine to the girls (who are actually quite cute), but it's not targeted in that direction in any obvious way; for better and for worse, this show is meant for very small girls. Even their magical "adult" forms don't look like they were meant to have much sex appeal.

"What do you mean, they didn't make us SEXY?????"

The art style is cute without approaching Hanamaru Kindergarten levels of cute (oh well...), but the CG during the idol sequences is kind of off-putting; I don't know exactly what it is that they're doing during the song and dance numbers, but I can tell that it's CG and it's awkward.

I don't know what's going on here, but I DO NOT LIKE IT.

Saying that you should ignore this show if you don't happen to know a little girl of the right age might sound like an insult, but actually it's not; this show is a dedicated children's show, and there's nothing wrong with that. I may watch a few more episodes just because I like the cute Twitter-bird, but otaku who may be looking for a magical girl show that's satisfying on multiple levels- like Card Captor Sakura- can rest assured that that they aren't missing anything.