YMMV / Magical Princess Minky Momo

• Ass Pull: It turns out Momo's magical pendant can just be destroyed with an ordinary bullet, conveniently leaving Momo with no powers so she can die shortly after.
• Awesome Music: The Arabic theme song of the series. Tariq Tourgane, who sang and composed it, even uploaded his own guitar rendition of it on his YouTube channel.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In one episode of the second series, the Fenarinarsa Momo asks the other Momo about her pets. Then, a musical number where the pets sing about their personalities plays, and after this, the episode resumes like nothing happened.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • It was humongous in South Korea, so much that there was a saying that "when Minky is on the air, the children disappear from the street"^note 밍키가 방송되는 동안은 길거리에서 아이들이 사라져 버렸다는 말이 있을 정도로 엄청난 인기를 끌었다. To say that Koreans were upset when the truck hit Minky would be, well, an understatement. It was so popular in Korea that future Magical Girl shows that were broadcast there (like Persia, the Magic Fairy) were billed as part of the Minky Momo franchise. They even used the same dubbing cast for that anime.
  • Saying that it was huge in the Arab World would also be an understatement, and even as late as 2023, it got the Adored by the Network treatment from broadcaster Spacetoon.
  • It is also beloved in France as many kids grew up with it, under the name Gigi. The French fandom prevented this series from becoming lost media by archiving the episodes.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The whole fact that the second season ended with a grim bittersweet ending. In 2010, Takeshi Shudō passed away while still working on the third Momo, which only got as far as a title, meaning any hope of a happy ending... will never happen.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Momo getting hit by a truck only to reincarnate as a human is prescient of The New '10s' isekai genre boom, which is so famous for characters going to other worlds via death by truck that it became a meme.
• Macekre: La Ronde in my dream was adapted by Harmony Gold and Carl Macek. Most of the dialogue is altered and the opening scene is moved to the end and becomes a dream sequence, but the overall plot remains the same.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Momo getting run over by a truck has been referenced in many other anime. Relatedly, there's all the isekai-flavored jokes about said vehicular accident just being another (or perhaps the very first) instance of Truck-kun "doing its job" (see Hilarious in Hindsight above).
  • Japan has "The Curse of Minky Momo", referring to a series of natural disasters that befell Japan during or after a Minky Momo finale aired. The original finale was punctuated by a seismic earthquake, while the sequel series' finale was followed up by the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995. Some even joked that the shock of the first finale was so great that Momo herself took revenge on reality. Even more painful, Takeshi Shudo was working on a third series... and ended up dying before it could see completion, with it remaining perpetually unreleased.
  • Kenny Lauderdale's retrospective on the series (which covers the aforementioned "Curse of Minky Momo") had a more minor example arise from a joke late in the video wherein a fake Urban Legend is described: Should someone say "Minky Momo" in a mirror three times at 3am, they'll get transported to a Bad Future where Harmony Gold still owns the rights to Dragon Ball and — more importantly — Momo has grown up to become Haman Karn. Cue people doing Double Takes upon realizing it's not a joke; the classic Magical Girl and the notable UC Gundam villainess really are lookalikes. The Japanese fandom seems to have picked up on this uncanny resemblance much earlier, such as pixiv Encyclopedia's entry for the series listing Haman as a related tag while noting both series were represented in Super Robot Wars X-Ω (as Minky Momo was featured as part of a time-limited event due to the Minkinasa in Episode 31)... where the two meet and compare appearances.
  • In the Arabic fandom, it's common for Arabic musicians to upload guitar renditions of the theme song, ever since the original singer did the same on his YouTube channel.
• Moral Event Horizon: In "Lord of the Jungle", if trapping and killing Africa's native animals, including their young, wasn't enough, then the three evil poachers most certainly crossed it when they kidnapped Momo's friend (a boy who takes care of the animals), intending on shooting him to death for foiling their plans.
• It Was His Sled: Everyone who has heard of Minky Momo seems to know the twist of Momo being killed in an unexpected vehicular accident. For anyone overseas, this might be the only thing they know about the series.
• Moe: Considered by some to be the first moe anime.
• Never Live It Down: Outside Japan, the only thing people tend to know about this series is Minky Momo getting killed by a truck.
• Padding: One example in "Lord of the Jungle"; at one point, Momo — in her Jungle Princess form at the time — seizes one of the poachers' rifles and bends it out of shape... in a longer sequence than expected.
• Periphery Demographic: The anime was intended to be aimed at young girls, but within six months of its first airing, fan clubs of adult men began popping up as well. This was almost unheard of at the time, as the only anime with fan clubs during that period were more serious shows like Mobile Suit Gundam.
  • Minky Momo is also alleged to have kickstarted the lolicon subculture of The '80s. Reportedly, Sato Asohiko was disgusted at this.
• Retroactive Recognition: Series planner Takeshi Shudō and director Kunihiko Yuyama later went on to have the same roles in the Pokémon anime. In fact, several elements in scripts Shudo wrote for Pokémon were recycled from Minky Momo: "The Ghost of Maiden's Peak" noticeably contains many of the same elements as The Bridge Over Dreams, and Pokémon: The First Movie has a similar ending to La Ronde in my dream.
• Signature Scene: The most remembered scene, due to its infamy, is Momo being run over by a truck. The crossover special were the two versions of Momo meet even references it twice, though thankfully Momo avoids being hit on both occasions.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Probably at least part of the reason why this never got released in America, although the TV series was dubbed into English in the United States and was aired in Australia. While most of the series is totally fine for children, American networks would likely take some issue with the child heroine being suddenly hit by a truck and killed halfway in. And then the jokes that are made about it later in the series. It's also not exactly the sort of thing you can easily Bowdlerize out, being a major plot element that the rest of the series builds on.
  • Strangely, the show did reach Latin America with the names of the Harmony Gold dub, showing it was possible to dub it. But even they didn't dub the infamous "death by truck" episode.