Miracle Girls is a Magical Girl manga by Nami Akimoto, which was serialized in Nakayoshi from 1991 to 1994. It was adapted to a 51-episode anime series that aired in 1993.
Toni and Mika Morgan (Tomomi and Mikage Matsunaga in Japan) are identical twins who can teleport and secretly comunicate with each other thanks to their Psychic Powers. Despite being twins, they have completely different personalities: Toni is an energetic and sporty tomboy, while Mika is quiet, studious, and ladylike.
The adventures of the twins also involve their respective boyfriends. Toni has Jackson, a happy-go-lucky athlete like her, while Mika has Chris, a mature and talented student who is absent for a good part of the story due to his studies abroad.
The twins also have to deal with Shinichiro Kageura, their crazy science teacher who is obsessed with everything paranormal. Being suspicious of Toni and Mika's powers, he starts to stalk them to learn the truth, hoping to find a proof of his theories to become famous.
A video game adaptation was released for the Super Famicom in 1993.
This series provides examples of:
- The Ace: Both twins are this in their own way, with Mika being the best at academics, and Toni being the best at sports. Both are envied by their classmates, both have handsome and popular boyfriends, and this without even mentioning their special powers.
- Academic Alpha Bitch: The obsessively jealous Rumiko, who hates Mika just because she is a better student than her. When she fails another time to get a better grade than Mika, she tries to steal her boyfriend just to antagonize her. Even more notable because Mika would normally ignore her, but Rumiko sees her as a rival and always tries to compete with her.
- Academic Athlete: Mika's love interest Chris is both intellectual and a good athlete. By contrast, Mika is just academic, Toni and her love interest Jackson are just athletic.
- Adaptation Dye-Job:
- In the manga, Toni and Mika have dirty/sandy blond hair while in the anime they have brown hair.
- Chris has pink hair in the manga but brown in the anime.
- Always Identical Twins:
- Toni and Mika, albeit with different hairstyles.
- Toni and Mika's mother and aunt are identical twins.
- The Diamas twins look identical except that one has shorter hair and wears glasses. Identical twins are very common in their family, which goes back to the legendary twin queens from several thousand years ago.
- And You Were There: Episode 41 does this with ancient Egypt. It is suggested that the characters in the present are reincarnations of the characters in the past. Although the Egyptians are drawn like the modern-day characters, Mika and Toni don't recognize a physical resemblance, which would make sense since Egyptians and Japanese probably wouldn't look alike.
- Anti-Villain: Except for Mr. X, the biggest villain in the final arc, the other villainous characters have some redeeming traits:
- Mr. Kageura is a Laughably Evil teacher who wants to expose the twins's powers to become famous, but also genuinely loves his wife. Eventually, being touched by the kindness of the twins, he has a Heel–Face Turn (in the anime, it only happens near the end, while in the manga it happens earlier).
- Masaki kidnaps the twins because he wants to use their powers to Take Over the World. However, he's very caring to his little sister, so the twins decide to save his life is spite of what he did to them. He then disappears.
- Princess Marie is a Rich Bitch and Yandere who forces Chris into a marriage, using blackmail. But deep down, she is a lonely girl who has lived with people who have lied to her for her entire life (including the aforementioned Mr. X). She also has a Heel–Face Turn.
- Barely-Changed Dub Name: Mikage was shortened to just "Mika" in Tokyopop's English translation. In contrast, her twin sister Tomomi got the "similar sounding name" treatment and was changed to "Toni".
- Beautiful All Along: Rumiko, who usually wears braids and Opaque Nerd Glasses. Without them, she's very pretty but she's Blind Without 'Em.
- Book Dumb:
- Toni, which is sometimes frustrating for her, because her sister Mika is a Teen Genius. When it comes to sports though, it's the other way around.
- Toni's boyfriend Jackson is also a jock who struggles at school, and sometimes has to do make-up tests along with Toni and their other friend Yamagishi, at least in the anime.
- Boyish Short Hair: Sporty, tomboy Toni has her hair cut into a bob.
- Canon Foreigner: Kohei Yamagishi, a friend of Toni and Jackson, only appears in the anime.
- Covers Always Lie: The covers almost always have the characters with incorrect haircolors. The mangaka lampshades this in her omakes, saying that it's due to the printing process and her original images had the correct colors.
- Dub Name Change:
- In the Tokyopop manga version, Tomomi and Mikage Matsunaga became Toni and Mika Morgan. In Italy the twins are known as Terry and Maggie.
- In the English translation, Yuya Noda is "Jackson Niel" and Hideaki Kurashige is "Chris Kubrick".
- Oddly, subverted with everyone else. Almost everyone else, including the twins parents, keep their Japanese names. The series also explicitly takes place in Japan.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Kageura gets embarrassed by his wife calling him "Shin Honey" in front of his students.
- Explosive Results: Mika is a part of her school's Chemistry Club but she has a tendency to blow things up by accident.
- Fictional Country: Diamas is a small, very obscure island republic near England.
- First-Name Basis: Princess Marie forces Chris to call her by her first name after knowing each other for only a month.
- Foreign Exchange Student: A lot of the drama is due to Mika's crush Chris going away to be a foreign exchange student in England.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: Episode 13 has a swap between identical twins. The trope is played utterly straight, with each of them having to pretend to be the one whose body she's in, even though they could just pull a Twin Switch using a couple of wigs and look exactly like themselves anyway.
- Hostage Situation: In volume 5, the plane that Chris is on gets hijacked. The twins end up panicking at the news and transport themselves onto the plane.
- Identical Twin ID Tag:
- Their style in clothing is different and Mika has longer her than her sister. As little kids they're harder to distinguish as they both wore Girlish Pigtails, however Toni's pigtails were braided.
- The twin's aunt wears her ponytail on the opposite side from her sister.
- Marie has long hair while her long-lost twin Emma has short hair and wears glasses.
- Inconsistent Coloring: The anime gives the titular twins consistently dark brown hair. In the manga, however, their hair has been varying shades of white, blonde, and brown. It's supposed to be some type of brown but the printing process often screwed with the colours.
- Indirect Kiss: Referenced in the first episode. Jackson steals a sip from Toni's soda and jokingly wonders if it counts as an indirect kiss.
- Localized Name in a Non-Localized Setting: The English translation of the manga westernizes the twins names as well as their love interests, but everyone else keeps their Japanese name. Tomomi and Mikage Matsunaga are changed to Toni and Mika Morgan, but their parents and maternal aunt still have Japanese given names.
- Long-Distance Relationship: A huge part of the story is about Mika having a relationship with Chris, who is currently studying in England. Unlike most example, their love survives.
- Long Hair Is Feminine: Girly Girl Mika has long hair, while her tomboy sister Toni has Boyish Short Hair.
- Mascot's Name Goes Unchanged: Inverted in TokyoPOP's translation. Everyone keeps their Japanese names, except the main twins and their two love interests.
- Phenotype Stereotype: Averted. Diamas is a European nation, however the characters have dark hair colors.
- Pocket Protector: Mika gets saved from a knife hurled by Takamura using psychic powers because it hits the pocket watch she got from Chris.
- Polar Opposite Twins: Toni is an outgoing and athletic tomboy, while Mika is feminine, studious, intellectual and bad at sports.
- Psychic Children: Toni and Mika are identical twins with the ability to teleport and communicate telepathically.
- Shading/Colour Dissonance: The twins don't have shaded hair, but their hair is some form of brown (with the anime giving them dark brown hair).
- Sneeze Cut: Happens in volume 5. Chris yells for help in his head when Marie tries to kiss him. Cut to Mika sneezing and wondering if she's ill.
- Tender Tomboyishness, Foul Femininity:
- Downplayed with the titular twins, being them both nice and heroic girls, although sporty, short-haired Toni is more patient and laid-back than bookish, long-haired Mika, who tends to be quite snippy and temperamental.
- Likewise, Emma is a short-haired athlete and a Nice Girl, while her twin Marie is a long-haired Spoiled Brat princess with a Villainous Crush on Chris.
- Teleportation: Together, they are able to teleport and communicate telepathically.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Toni and Mika respectively. Toni is a spunky Passionate Sports Girl who wears casual clothes, has Boyish Short Hair, and hangs out with boys, while Mika is intellectual, unathletic, has long hair, and wears frilly dresses which are often pink.
- Translation Convention: Pops up noticeably in the English translation when Chris is reading a letter. The text is obviously in English, but then an English-speaking character picks it up and mention being unable to read Japanese.
- Twin Switch: One episode revolves around Toni and Mika waking up in each other's bodies.
- Twin Telepathy: Part of Toni and Mika's package of powers, although there have been instances where they were able to communicate with other psychics.
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Mr. Kageura ends up married in volume 5 (in the anime, it happens in the first episode). He is a rather bland and a bit raggedy looking fellow with Messy Hair and Nerd Glasses. His wife on the other hand is gorgeous. Mika is surprised by how pretty she is.
- Villainous Crush:
- Marie has a very unrequited crush on Chris.
- The Arc Villain Masaki is another boy with Psychic Powers who wants to Take Over the World along with the twins, and is creepily attracted to Mika.
- Wonder Twin Powers: They fits the name so well that it might have been the trope namer. Mika and Toni are identical twins who need to be in physical contact to teleport.
- Younger Than They Look: Emma, and to a lesser extent her identical twin Marie, look more like adults than the other teens.
