Hazuki must find her own story.
Hazuki Kagimura is a normal girl who spends most of her time reading books alone, until her life changes forever when she visits a library and discovers one of its bookshelves is actually a portal to another world. There, she meets Shizuka Tsuchimikado and discovers the world of mädchen, witches bonded with fairy tale books named Origins. Shizuka helps Hazuki realize she herself is a mädchen and her Origin is Cinderella and introduces her to a school for mädchen so she can learn to control her new magic. So begins Hazuki's new life as a mädchen.Märchen Mädchen (メルヘン・メドヘン, "Fairy Tale Girls" in German) is a Japanese light novel series written by Tomohiro Matsu (author of Mayoi Neko Overrun! and Listen to me, girls. I am your father!) and StoryWorks, with illustrations by Kantoku. It is published by Shueisha under their Dash X Bunko imprint; the series began publication in 2017, based on Matsu's completed drafts for the story due his death in 2016. Hoods Entertainment produced an Animated Adaptation, which premiered on January 11, 2018.
Märchen Mädchen provides examples of:
- Badass Bookworm: Technically, all mädchen are this, what with them getting magic powers from storybooks.
- Big Damn Heroes: Hazuki arrives to save Shizuka's team just as they were about to be defeated.
- Big Good: Sugami fully supports Hazuki and helps her whenever she's in danger.
- Blatant Lies: Tatiana of the Russian team comes up with all sorts of ridiculous excuses to convince her teammates to forfeit their match against the Japanese team. Altough none of them buy it, they decide to honor her request nevertheless.
- Break Her Heart To Save Her: Fearing for Hazuki's life if she competes in the tournament, Shizuka lies to her that she never see her as a friend and forces her to leave.
- The Chosen Many: Mädchen are chosen by the Origin books.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: Whenever a match is finished, the losing team has to serve to everyone as waitresses and wear the garments with it.
- The Cutie: Aside from Hazuki, there's also Tatiana from the Russian school. She is polite, honest and friendly to everyone, earning her the admiration of the Russian team. Unfortunately, an unknown party ended up tampering with her Origin.
- A Day in the Limelight: Episode 7 focuses on Team Russia and their efforts to sabotage Team Japan on the day before the Hexennacht begins.
- Deconstruction: Hazuki deconstructs the tale of Cinderella by criticizing some of its hallmark elements, such as the prince possibly not being the right person for her, the Wicked Stepmother and step-sisters actually being nice to her and questioning why does the Fairy Godmother's spell only lasts till midnight.
- Earn Your Happy Ending:
- Hazuki's main drive. Having found it, Hazuki declares that the story doesn't fit her... which is why she'll make her own version.
- The entire series revolves around this. It's wrong to follow a path chosen by someone else and one must have the will to change their own destiny to find theie happy endings.
- Easily Forgiven: In Episode 7, Team Russia is easily forgiven by Hazuki and Shizuka despite the former's attempts to sabotage their team throughout the episode.
- The Fool: Tatania of the Russian team, to a massive fault. Being both incredibly naive and innocent, she usually ends up making things worse for herself when taking things others say by face-value, To the point her very Origin ends up as collateral damage when handing it over to a complete stranger after a cheap, simplistic, reason given to her. She's painfully aware of how foolish she is, to the point where her wish for the Hexennnacht is simply "I want to be smarter". Her Origin by coincidence is aptly enough "Ivan the Fool".
- Genre Savvy: With her extensive and diverse knowledge of literature, Hazuki is very quick to question herself about what kind of story she stumbled into upon discovering the world of the Mädchen. For example, thinking to herself that the school was akin of Harry Potter and surprised over it being more akin of a Magical Girl story instead upon seeing magic manifest for the first time.
- The Mole: Yumilia is actually a member of the Coalition.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: During their match against the Russian team, Hazuki unintentionally fixes Tatiana's malfunctioning Origin when she wishes to grant the latter's wish. Fortunately for her, Tatiana manages to convince her teammates to forfeit the match.
- Our Monsters Are Weird: Specks are entities of black magic that feed off the magic generated from Origin books. If a speck devours enough magic, it can be strong enough to challenge mädchen.
- Personality Powers: To the point where most, if not all, of the mädchen appears to be avatars of the stories within their contracted Origins even when not using their powers. Hazuki being the first exception as not only does she reject this aspect, but makes it so her Origin adjust to fit her and not the other way around.
- Poke the Poodle: The Russians are not that good of saboteurs using very harmless and absurd methods against the Japanese.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Hazuki gave an epic version regarding the fairy tales and how ridiculous much of their premise are.
- Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Hazuki accidentally has a Naked First Impression with the entire magic school. Although she seems no more bothered by this than by ordinary social awkwardness.
- Wicked Stepmother: Subverted. Hazuki's stepmother is kind and caring towards her.
- Wizarding School: The main setting of the series is a school for mädchen.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Yumilia thinks all mädchen are destined to follow the paths set before them by their Origins and it is useless to do otherwise. Hazuki is quick to disabuse her of such notion.
