Anime / Jewelpet: Magical Change

Jewelpet: Magical Change is the seventh (and final) season of the Jewelpet anime.

Seven years ago, a castle descended from Jewel Land to land in the human world. Though visible to all, it is impossible to enter it, as it is intangible. People eventually got used to it and stopped trying to investigate it.

Around the same time as the castle drop, 7-year-old Airi Kirara comes across the Jewelpet Ruby one night before going to bed. She asks Ruby to use her magic on her to put her to sleep, to which Ruby acquiesces. And then she disappears.

In the present day, 14-year-old Airi, with only vague memories of what happened that night and a mysterious pendant, lives in a detective agency with her science-crazed older brother Sakutaro. The Jewelpets Larimar, Luna and Labra appear and ask her to look for their friend Ruby, who disappeared in the human world seven years ago. Airi and co. find her sleeping in a toy store. After a happy reunion, Ruby manages to shake off a couple of guards by using Airi's pendant to turn into a human, amplifying her magic.

The plot of this season mainly deals with the Jewelpets trying to adapt to the human world, where they were sent to in order to understand humans better and make them believe in magic again. Interfering in their plans are Ruby's rival Luea and her human partner Laura Fukuooji, who want Airi's pendant (and her big brother) for themselves.

It's the first not to have any involvement by Studio Comet. Instead, the series is a co-production between TMS Entertainment and Studio DEEN, the latter being the animation producer.

---

Tropes:

• Abandoned Pet in a Box: In Episode 12-A, Airi tells Labra she understands her feelings about wanting a pet all too well and brings up how she and her friends once found a cat left alone in a box. Labra misunderstands this as "pets can be found in all cardboard boxes" and goes to find a box, leading to her adopting a banana as a pet.
• Age Cut: 7 years old Airi goes to sleep. 14 years old Airi wakes up.
• Amateur Sleuth: Airi is a 14-year-old working as a detective.
• Amplifier Artifact: Airi's pendant, besides turning the Jewelpets into humans, can increase the potency of their magic by a lot.
• Beach Episode: Episode 14-B, about Airi and co. going to Laura's house, which has a pool, so Sakutaro can learn how to swim.
• Beautiful All Along: Sakutaro, the unkempt nerd, is a bishonen when he takes off his glasses.
• Big Brother Attraction: Played with, as Laura is clearly obsessed romantically with Sakutaro (whom she is unrelated to), but wants him to be her "Big Brother".
• Bindle Stick: The Kiraras' seal stamper carries one around in Episode 18b, since he's run away after a magic spell from Ruby backfires and makes all seal stampers useless.
• Bird-Poop Gag: In Episode 24-A, Garnet is in front of a karaoke store when bird droppings fall on her head. Garnet, surprisingly, actually likes it because she thinks nightingale droppings are good for the skin, and she even asks the bird to poop on her again. The result is that a little sprout pops out of her head due to seeds being in the droppings.
• Bittersweet Ending: In the last episode, the Jewelpets go back to Jewel Land and leave their Earth friends behind.
• Body Paint: In Episode 26-C, Sakutaro is the star of a fairy tale movie and tells a pumpkin he helped in a store that he doesn't have suitable clothing for Laura's party. The pumpkin (actually Ruby playing one), using her magic, creates fancy prince clothes that are painted onto Sakutaro's body; however, since the magic doesn't last long, Sakutaro has to leave the party early so that nobody sees him mostly naked.
• Breaking Old Trends: So far, this is the only season to not implement the mascot trio. It also has no major villains.
• Brick Break: In Episode 28-A, the Jewelpets and Airi have to break a bunch of bricks in this fashion for their training. Airi, predictably, hurts herself doing it.
• But Not Too Foreign: Laura Fukuooji, half-French rival of Airi.
• The Cameo: Hello Kitty and My Melody appear as plushies who turn into giant monsters in Episode 6-B.
• Company Cross References: They make a number of references to other Sanrio properties in this season. Most of them are cameos from Hello Kitty and My Melody.
  • Hello Kitty and My Melody plushes appear in Episode 6-B and are later made giant and sentient.
  • Hello Kitty appears again in Episode 21b as one of the people who tries to call Ruby on her Jewel Pod.
  • Both she and My Melody show up once more in Episode 26-A as character bentos.
  • In Episode 31-B, Ruby's Halloween costume is of Hello Kitty, Luna's is of My Melody, and Sapphie's is of yet another Sanrio character, Cinnamoroll. The same episode's "Jewelpet: Currently on the Run" segment has Labra trying to find Ruby among a bunch or trick-or-treaters dressed as even more Sanrio characters, including (but not limited to) Badtz-Maru and Keroppi.
  • Episode 38 features a Christmas tree with a Hello Kitty decoration on it.
• Die or Fly: Jewelpets transform into their human forms for the first time by them or their friends being placed in 'a pinch'. This is spoofed in Episode 3-A with the attempts to get Larimar to transform: Ruby summoning hot food to burn her tongue and begging Larimar to rescue her.
• Digging to China: In episode 10b, Angela digs from Japan to Brazil (appropriately enough, since they're partially antipodes).
• Do-Anything Robot: Sakutaro dreams of making a robot that can do absolutely anything, so he can prove that magic isn't needed. His roomba called Mambo that he redesigns into Mechapet in Episode 4 is one, being capable of doing any chores around the house.
• Dream Within a Dream: The "Jewelpet: Currently on the Run" segment at the end of Episode 28 has Labra catching Ruby... only for it to be a dream. And then it turns out to be Ruby's dream, and then Labra's again, then Ruby's, then Labra's, and so on and so forth. At the end of the segment, Labra wonders whose dream it is.
• Elephant in the Living Room: That big-ass, tipped over castle whose architecture totally clashes with the human world is ignored... because nothing can be done about it.
• Establishing Shot: Many episodes start with a shot of Airi's house, the action taking place inside.
• Eye on a Stalk: In Episode 24-A, Ruby's attempt to make Labra's potted plant bloom with magic instead causes it to become sapient and gain a pair of eyes on eyestalks. This is a Japanese Visual Pun - "me" can mean either "sprout" or "eye".
• Ferris Wheel Date Moment: Larimar and Souya end their date at a ferris wheel.
• Festival Episode: Episode 22-B is set at a Summer festival, with Sakutaro trying to find a girl he met there many years ago.
• Fiction 500: Laura's family is insanely rich, having an entire skyscraper for a home and the power to order a movie to get made in Hollywood.
• Floating Clocks: They appear in Episode 12b when everyone uses Titana's Jewelwatch to time-travel.
• Flower from the Mountaintop: Ruby and co. find the rare flower to cure Granite on top of a cliff.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Airi and Ruby, seven years ago. It gets resolved when they meet again in the toy store.
• Fractured Fairy Tale: Episode 26-C is a parody of Cinderella. Sakutaro is the title character and the outfit he wears to the ball is actually body paint, provided by Ruby/the fairy godmother. When he leaves the ball, the thing he leaves behind for Laura to identify him is a pair of disposable chopsticks.
• Geek Physiques: Sakutaro is of the tall and skinny variety, and also tends to walk hunched over.
• Good Morning, Crono: After the prologue with the 7 years old Airi, we meet her 14 years old self waking up to her alarm clock.
• Gratuitous French: Laura, in case you forget she's half-French. Favorite phrases seem to be "Tres bien" and "S'il vous plait".
• Halloween Episode: Episode 31, which aired on October 31. The first part has a treasure hunt for pumpkin and the second has Airi and the Jewelpets in costumes for the nightly festivities.
• Here We Go Again!: Episode 12-A, about Labra adopting a pet. She first adopts a banana which she names Takuan (yellow radish), which gets eaten by a monkey at a pet contest. The episode ends with her getting over the loss as she adopts an ear of corn which she names Banana, causing everyone to Face Fault.
• Hidden Depths: Laura seems single-minded in her pursuit of Sakutaro and the Magical Stone, but Episode 26-A shows her bonding with Airi over the fact that they both dearly miss their constantly absent parents.
• Hollywood Mirage: Episode 33's "Jewelpet: Currently on the Run" segment has a thirsty Ruby in a desert running into mirages of not just an oasis, but of things like a store and a water park too. Then she sees Labra offering her water, at the price of being turned into one of her minions. When Ruby decides to drink the water despite Labra's mind-control attached to it, she discovers Labra is a mirage... and then Ruby herself realizes she's a mirage as well.
• Intra-Franchise Crossover: In Episode 21-B, Ruby keeps getting calls from strange people on her Jewel Pod. One of the calls is from herself, but from the Alternate Continuity of Jewelpet (2009). After the two Rubys talk to each other, the Magical Change Ruby hopes the original Jewelpet's Ruby will get the Jewelsticks and hangs up... only to get successive calls from the Rubys of the other previous seasons, followed by her Magical Change self somehow calling her on the Jewel Pod.
• Invisible Parents: Hand waved with the Kirara parents; the father is said to be constantly taking on odd jobs, meaning he's never home, and the mother is overseas.
• Kimodameshi: Episode 6-B is about Airi and Ruby entering the school at night to investigate Laura's claims of there being ghosts. It's clear that this is Laura and Luea's trap to get the Magical Stone, but Ruby believes it's a kimodameshi set up to entertain her and Airi.
• Lighter and Softer: As there's little plot or character progression and more focus on the Jewelpets' antics, it's definitely this compared to Lady Jewelpet (though in all fairness, it's hard to go darker than Lady and still remain Jewelpet).
• Loves My Alter Ego: Souya falls in love with human Larimar, but when she has turn back to a pet he thinks she's disappeared and leaves in disappointment.
• Magical Accessory: Airi's pendant.
• Magic Misfire: The Jewelpets' magic is only about 20% accurate on Earth, being more like typing a broad word (like "sleep") into a search engine and selecting "I'm Feeling Lucky". The human transformation, along with powering up the magic, also makes it far more accurate at doing what the caster wants.
  • For example, trying to conjure a pizza might get you the ingredients to make a pizza instead.
  • The percentage comes from an example where an attempt to clean trash ends with only 1-in-5 pieces of trash actually making it to the trash can.
  • Or trying to cast a sleep spell and instead summoning a "learn while you sleep" device.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: Souya is the only boy and the youngest of six siblings; to his chagrin, his older sisters dote on him a lot.
• Meaningful Name: In keeping with the Rock Theme Naming of the franchise, Airi's (and her brother's) family name Kirara means muscovite or mica, but is also similar to "kirakira", the onomatopoeia for something sparkling.
• Meditating Under a Waterfall: The Jewelpets' training in Episode 28-A involves meditating under a waterfall. Airi hates the water falling on her head, and Luea shampoos her fur while she's at it.
• Mega Meal Challenge: To gain access to a portal to Jewel Land in a ramen shop, Airi and her four Jewelpets have to eat a huge bowl of ramen each.
• Memento MacGuffin: Airi's pendant, which allows the Jewelpets to turn into humans, was given to her by her father.
• Me's a Crowd: In Episode 16-B, this happens to Sapphie unwittingly - the cloning machine that causes it was sealed by her, but somehow someone still triggered it and the resulting clone kept on creating duplicates to have friends to talk to (Sapphie was all alone on an island and felt lonely, a trait carried over to the clone). At any rate, there's a massive number of Sapphies that the others have to distinguish in order to find the real one.
• Minor Living Alone: Since their parents are never home, Airi and Sakutaro effectively live alone, even though Sakutaro is still only 17. Laura can be explained by Mittermeyer probably being her ward.
• No Antagonist: There are no villains in this show, not even the supposedly ever-present and abstract threat of Dark Magic. Laura and Luea are mild annoyances rather than villains.
• Onion Tears: In Episode 6-B, Airi and Ruby investigate a room in the school that is said to be crying. When Ruby enters the room, she discovers there's a portrait that is indeed crying because Mozart, who is in a potrait right next to him, is peeling an onion. Ruby solves the problem by painting a snorkel mask on the tearful art piece.
• Paper People: In Episode 35-A, a side-effect brought on by Sakutaro's Cool Watches is that the humanized Jewelpets become paper thin. It escalates to them being unable to move at all a minute or so later.
• Parental Bonus: Mostly in the form of references to older shows such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, The Matrix, and Kaiketsu Zubat.
• Phenotype Stereotype: Half-French Laura and half-Italian Mario both have blonde hair and blue eyes to make their European ascenstry more evident, even though the combination is not all that common in France and even less in Italy.
• Picky Eater: Sakutaro doesn't like strawberries or any of takoyaki's ingredients (this last one leads to Labra remarking on how troublesome he is). He's also not seen partaking in the Kirara household's many days-long melon bread diet.
• Potty Emergency: Downplayed in episode 27a, where Luna really needs to fart, but can't because of the social pressures of doing it in a crowded bus.
• Recursive Canon: In episode 36b, the Jewelpets are seen watching an episode of Jewelpet on television (and it's an episode from this very season of the show, no less).
• Reverse Telescopic Vision: Labra looks through a reversed telescope in episode 10-B, leading to an epic misunderstanding where she tells everyone that the Earth is shrinking and the gang makes efforts to avoid the end of the world.
• Science Destroys Magic: Sakutaro believes in the superiority of science over magic. He's not far off, since people in this universe don't care about magic anymore.
  • To be fair, the Jewelpets' own magic is only 20% accurate on Earth.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Episode 25 has everyone go search for a flower because it's the only thing that can heal Granite's illness. The quest ends in failure and irrelevancy, because Sakutaro meanwhile had ordered and gotten the cure through the internet.
• Ship Tease: Granite, who's stated to be Ruby's rival here, gets his Magical Change when Ruby endangers herself by falling off a cliff with rocks after her.
• Siblings Wanted: When Laura was younger, she asked her parents for a big brother. They told her that wasn't possible, but that they could do something about a younger one, which she didn't care for.
• Sick Episode: Episode 20-A has Airi catch a Summer cold and having to stay in bed all day. Cue Laura, offering herself as Sakutaro's substitute little sister to do the chores around the house.
• Spot the Imposter: In episode 16b, Sapphie has had so many clones made of her that Airi and her gang can't discern which is the real one. To solve the problem, they hold a tournament with all sorts of games (among them a quiz, air hockey, and jankenpon) and declare whoever is the last Sapphie will be considered the real one.
• Stable Time Loop: In Episode 12-B, elderly lady Tokiko wants to find Titana. Airi discovers he's been disappeared for 60 years. The Jewelpets use a spell to travel to the moment young Tokiko and Titana said goodbye; it turns out that the reason Titana disappeared then is because elderly Tokiko took him into the show's present.
• Stalker Shrine: Laura has a place in her room, hidden by a curtain, that's filled with pictures of her crush Sakutaro.
• Stern Chase: The Currently on the Run omake that airs at the end of every episode is about Ruby running away from a big mob-like organization led by Labra, who wants to capture her for some reason.
• The Stinger: After the credits in the last episode, years have passed and Ruby appears in front of Airi's daughter. Adult Airi hears the ruckus and comes up to see what's going on. The end.
• Tap on the Head: The spell that Ruby used to put Airi to sleep resulted in her conjuring a sleep learning kit that fell on Airi's head. Which did put her to sleep.
• Three Shorts: Like Jewelpet Sunshine, this season's episodes are divided in two sub-episodes, as well as a 1-minute slapstick humor short at the end. However, there are a few episodes that are full-length.
  • Episode 26 actually is three shorts, but it's an anomaly.
• Toilet Teleportation: One of the portals to Jewel Land is a toilet in a luxury liner, used in the penultimate episode.
• Training from Hell: Ruby and Luea are seen undergoing this (climbing a steep and tall wall) when Luea reminisces about how Ruby was her greatest rival.
• Transformation Trinket: Airi's pendant is one half of it; the Jewelpets' watches are the other.
• Unknown Rival: Laura wants Airi's pendant and brother and goes about her wishes rather aggressively, but both Airi and Ruby believe she's a good friend and think her traps are well-intentioned.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Sakutaro is shocked to learn that the beautiful woman who helped him when he got lost as a child is really a guy who dresses up like that for theater. A little later he decides he's okay with it and thinks that he wants to see him again next year.
• Versus Title: Episode 19-A is titled "The Revenge! Ruby VS Luea".
• Wire Dilemma: In the 12th omake, Titana is trapped in a capsule with two vines, green and red. Ruby decides to cut both and the capsule rockets into the atmosphere.

---