A Kind of Magic (known as simply Magic in French, and A New Kind of Magic in the second season) is a French animated series produced by Xilam. It first premiered in 2008 on France 3 and Disney Channel France.
In Fairyland, fairies and ogres don't get married. It just doesn't happen! Willow the fairy and her beloved husband Gregore, a reformed ogre, have no choice but to emigrate and settle in the real world with their children Tom and Cindy. And boy are they unprepared! Here in the real world, there is no guarantee of a happy ending, especially when you add to the mix the other dysfunctional members such as Ferocia, the colorful, sharp-tongued witch, or His Highness, the Toad, still in search of that magical kiss. This ill-equipped and maladjusted family of immigrants goes from one blunder to another and it is going to take every ounce of courage and street smarts that Tom can muster in order to protect his family from all the curious intruders, for whom magic is more than a little bit strange!
A second season was announced for a long time, but nothing came of it until February 2018, when the show came back with 52 episodes (which the first season only had half of) and aired on Gulli in France. The episode "My Dad the Super Hero" was released in English on the Xilam site until it disappeared with the redesign. In 2019, the official YouTube channel has finally started to release the episodes starting with "Candy Through the Looking Glass", and has every single episode of season 1.
It's a kind of trope:
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Ferocia adores dasterdly pirates and nasty gnomes, justified in that she's a bad witch.
- All Myths Are True: It seems they were, back in Fairy Tale Land.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Usually Gregore and Willow for their children.
- Animesque: Used occasionally in tandem with the lineless art style of the series (e.g. a character's mouth would grow to around the size of their face or more when angry).
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Cindy. A stubborn and rebellious teenager.
- Break the Haughty: In "Big Love" Cindy attempts to make a move on Tom's Italian tutor by greeting him in Italian, only to be humiliated when Tom points out that "hola" is Spanish.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Willow.
- Cringe Comedy:
- In "Big Love" Ferocia unknowingly hits on an aged up Tom.
- In "In My Shoes" Tom and Cindy switch bodies, leading to some awkward interactions between "Cindy" and Sophia, since Tom can't hide his crush on her.
- The Cutie:
- Tom. He's the probably the nicest guy you would ever hope to meet and will always do damage control for his family.
- Also his best friend Jojo. He's just so adorable and helpless. Helps that he's sometimes the Audience Surrogate.
- Deadpan Snarker: His Highness the Toad and Ferocia.
- Faint in Shock: In "Memory Gaps", Mrs. Tinker suffers from this after accidentally discovering Willow's flying abilities, and again when His Highness tries to offer her a kiss.
- Fantastic Racism: Ogres are often accused of eating people. Gregore became a vegetarian to avoid this, but was still suspected of having eaten the (admittedly annoying) neighbours. By his own family, no less!
- Feminine Mother, Tomboyish Daughter: Willow is a perky mother who delights in using magic. Cindy is a rebellious teenager who dresses more frumpy, and wants no part of any magic nonsense.
- Fish out of Water: All the family, minus Tom and Cindy, have problem to fit into society as normal humans.
- Flying on a Cloud: Willow and Ferocia's grandfather is a wizard who gets around by flying around on a cloud.
- Forgotten Anniversary: In "When an Ogre Loves a Fairy" Willow and Gregore have a falling out because Gregore thinks it's their anniversary and Willow thinks it's not for another week. In the end it turns out they're both wrong.
- For the Evulz: Ferocia will often cause trouble just to amuse herself.
- Gentle Giant: Gregore. Despite being an ogre, he is a sweet, benevolent, and gentle father.
- The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Ferocia REALLY HATES IT when someone mentions how smart, sweet, and pretty Willow is.
- Happily Married: Gregore and Willow.
- Hartman Hips: Willow may have the biggest thighs and butt of any woman in cartoons at the moment.
- Heart Beats out of Chest: In "Uncle Sandman", part of His Highness's reaction after seeing a piranha.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: In "Professor Ferocia" Ferocia uses her magic mirror to take control of Miss Tinker and teach her class to misbehave. Later, Tom uses the mirror to take control of Ferocia and make her command the mirror to never let her use it to take control of anyone again.
- Hot Teacher: Ms. Tinker (Tom's teacher), so very much.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Gregore and Willow.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Tom just desires to be a normal kid in the Real World.
- Idiosyncratic Wipes: As transition theshow uses sparkles (either stationary or flying to one side of the screen).
- Interspecies Romance: Part of the reason why the family had to move to the real world is because ogres and fairies aren't allowed to get married in the fairy tale world, although a later episode suggests that they had to move because Ferocia was banished.
- Karma Houdini: Cindy gets away with pranking and bullying Tom in the episode "Only Child" and even frames him for things he didn't do. Even when he wishes she didn't exist and finally gets some attention, she still finds ways to get him and trouble and ruin his life through her spirit. After Tom brings her back, Cindy apparently doesn't remember any of it, and goes back to bullying him again while everyone somehow still thinks Tom is at fault.
- Minnesota Nice: Willow's English voice invokes this.
- New Season, New Name: The second season is called A New Kind of Magic (Magic 2 in France).
- Nice Character, Mean Actor: The popstar Opal in "The Ventriloquist". On TV, she seems really sweet. But in person, she's openly insensitive and cares only about those who win "Talent Trap". Also, she abhors toads.
- Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid: Tom and Cindy are half ogre, half fairy. They were originally planned to be simply posing as their children in the original pitch.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: Usually Ferocia to Gregore.
- One-Word Title: The show is known in French as simply Magic. note
- Our Fairies Are Different: Willow is a humanoid fairy.
- Out of Focus: Ms. Tinker doesn't get as much screentime in the second season.
- Phlebotinum-Induced Stupidity: In "The Cruelest of Them All" Ferocia gets Cindy to eat a candy apple that turns her into a brainless fairytale princess, needing a kiss from Prince Charming to change back.
- Precocious Crush: Tom for Ms. Tinker in the first season and Cindy's friend Sophia in the second season.
- Punny Name: Tom and Cindy's names are a pun on Tom Thumb and Cinderella. According to some sources, they were originally planned to actually be their namesakes, who were also banished for undisclosed unfairytale-like behavior, although they seem to actually be Gregore and Willow's children in the final show. In this pitch, Gregore could have been the ogre from the Tom Thumb story, and Willow could have been Cinderella's fairy godmother. It's eventually made clear that Cinderella is a separate character when she visits the family in "Cinderella's Rebellion."
- Redhead In Green: Jojo is a fiery redhead who wears a green hoodie and hat.
- Reused Character Design: The design of an usher in "Meet the Parents" was later used as the design for the school principal.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: In "The Future's Tense", Tom and Cindy use a spell to skip summer camp and find themselves in a future where Tom is treated as a hero and Cindy is a social pariah, and neither of them remember why. It turns out at camp Tom saved his bully Victor from drowning while Cindy was on her phone not paying attention and just threw coffee at him.
- Screamer Prank: Subverted. The end of "Peekaboo Tom" has Gregore playing a prank on Willow that he is invisible and that he's at the stairs. When she goes searching for him, he roars at Willow causing her to scream and later faint.
- Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Jojo and Tom are this to an extent with Tom being more confident, brave and athletic and Jojo being more of the cutie who scares easily.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: Gender inverted with Gregore, who looks like a handsome human man once he shaves.
- Shout-Out: Jojo and Miss Tinker look very similar to Disney's Peter Pan and Tinkerbell (Willow even says in one episode that Miss Tinker looks like Tinkerbell).
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Willow and Ferocia.
- Spotlight-Stealing Squad: It's very clear that Tom is the main character of the family for this reason.
- Stalker with a Crush: Leah from Tom's class. Subverted in the sense that she's not crushing on the main character (who would be Tom), but rather on Tom's goofy best friend, Jojo. She went as far as to frame Tom for stealing, just so that Jojo would stop idolizing him so much.
- Status Quo Is God: One episode has Cindy developing fairy powers (which she instantly starts abusing to torture Tom). It is also revealed that if a fairy gets enraged she will lose her powers forever (which seems also to be how Ferocia lost her powers). So of course Tom manages to get his sister angry by the end of the episode.
- In "Love Gives You Wings" Cindy grows fairy wings, which catch fire and get burned off at the end.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Played With in an episode between Tom and Ms. Tinker, mostly thanks a spell than turns Tom into a Prince Charming.
- Toilet Paper Prank: In "Operation Tamara" Cindy covers the principal's office with toilet paper. She's caught when she leaves a trail with the roll still in her bag.
- Token Evil Teammate: Aunt Ferocia.
- Top-Heavy Guy: Leans into Exaggerated Trope with Gregore. He has a very massive upper body and ridiculously tiny legs, that barely encompass 1/6th of his full body height.
- Trying Not to Cry: Jojo in the "Wishing powder" episode, in order to save face. He fails miserably. But in his defence, He... was... doomed!
- Unexplained Accent: In the English dub at least, Willow and Ferocia have very different accents despite being sisters.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: In the Babysitting Episode, Cindy calls Tom after repeatedly getting annoyed and being hurt thanks to the baby girl she's babysitting. When she tells Tom to get the wand, the baby's face turns green, the camera cuts to Tom and the baby vomits right in front of her, leading her to scream in disgust.
- A Wizard Did It: Several situations are solved by Willow using her wand to magically turn everything back to normal. Granted, she's sometimes the cause of the problems she has to fix.
