Hana No Mahoutsukai Mary Bell

English Title: Floral Magician Mary Bell
TV Series: 1992 (50 Episodes)
The Key of Phoenix (1993)

The story starts with the two children, Yuuri and Ken, reading from a fairy tale. In the story, two children are lost in the dark woods until a flower fairy named Mary Bell finds them and guides them home. The children are so taken with this story that their parents have even named the small flower shop they run after the good little fairy.

But in the first episode we learn the flower shop isn't doing so well. The two children and even adults wish Mary Bell would appear and help them (of course as sincere as the wish is, they're very surprised when she actually appears on the hillside next to the children). She sprouts from a little flower having learned of their plight. Of course, the first thing she does is use her magic to conjure a potion to grow her house. She goes on to use her magic to help the flower shop and the neighbors when adventures come up in the small town. Mary Bell is 500,000 years old.

The series is charming, with a small child's storybook feel to it. Several stories deal with fairies and fairy items like the retrieval of the Fairy Horn. Others are as simple as helping two pets in love be together. There are also references to popular children's stories such as Cinderella's carriage by the Flower Car and the Cinderella dress Mary Bell wears in the closing credits.

The show is filled with images associated with magic of the imagination and a girls' creative magic world: flower fairies, tea & parties, flower houses and motifs, Mary Bell keeps a little house of her own and a little garden with a variety of flowers (she also has the ability to talk to flowers). She has lots of items mentioned below that would make appropriate and marketable toys for children to play with (possibly even a playset if one ever was made).

This series would be classified under the shows that fall under magic coming traditionally from fairies or associated with fairy folk, such as earlier shows like Lunlun. Also, Tambourine is a fairy who resides in an object. This theme came up earlier in Magical Emi with Topo, and in the series of the next decade, Pretty Cure, in the fairies who take the form of the magical objects used by the heroines. In fact, just like the latter, Mary Bell cannot do her magic without her fairy companion.

Magical Companion
Tambourine-the fairy who resides inside Mary Bell's tambourine

Magical Phrase
Mari rin, beru run, rin rin rin!

Magical Items
Mary Bell Tambourine-besides helping with magic, it also serves as a door to the Flower Magic World

Flower House Mix-potion Mary Bell uses to grow her house

Mary Bell Stick-her wand

Magical Perfume-someone who smells the perfume, will have everything they touch turn to flowers

Flower Car-like Cinderella's pumpkin carriage, only made from flowers, used for travel

Holography Powder-potion used to bring drawings to life

Magical Flute-a Pied Piper reference here, in ep. 3 Mary Bell uses it to lead the drawings out of town and over a rainbow

Mary Bell Compact-small pendant but grows to compact size and opens into a communicator; the mirror is like a seer's pool or magic mirror in that one can speak over great distances or see someone or somewhere through the magic of the mirror

Flower Loop-acts like a kind of portal

Magical Emblem-can talk with floral world with this

Frying Pan of Flower Magic

Magical Ivy

Magic Bubble Solution

Magical Box w/ ring and key inside

Petal Eraser

Fairy Whistle

Organizing Team

Mary Bell Cleaner