- Informed Wrongness: Caused by the English dub; Maya is supposed to be an Enfant Terrible whose behavior is so out of control that the only thing her mother can do to get her to behave is to seek out the help of a good witch. The original version (which is a series consisting of 26 episodes) does show Maya behaving as she is described, such as kicking a ball into a boy's face and later refusing to apologize when he and his mother show up at her own door, but the English release removed these scenes and made it seem like Maya is mildly bratty at worst; it only keeps the scenes showing the witch's visions of Maya sleeping in class, trying to catch a frog, and pulling on her mother’s dress in an apparent attempt to get her attention, which are all typical behaviors of children around Maya’s approximate age and hardly serve to illustrate the “impossible problem” described in the opening narration.
- Narm: Maya's dub actor sounds like she thought the character was a young boy.
- Tear Jerker:
- The scene where a distraught and shrunken Maya tries to wake her mother up. While her scratchy voice dampens it some in the English dub, it's still heartbreaking to watch her shout "Wake up, mama!" and "Help me!" in desperation after finding herself to be tiny like the titular Thumbelina.
- When Maya walks up to the door of Aunt Ruth's house and looks at her cooking a soup, she briefly sees her mom instead. She then tears up and says she misses her mom a lot and is sorry for disobeying her. One can't help but feel sorry for her, especially since it clearly shows she progressed from being a bratty child after everything she's faced so far...
- Nightmare Fuel:
- Cassandra looks plain old terrifying. Her face looks like that of a demon and in general looks like she came out of someone's nightmare. Croven by extension counts too; despite the fact that he keeps failing to permanently bring down Maya and her friends, he still manages to commit such acts as luring Maya into his trap under the guise of a kind woman and threatening her with death if she doesn't obey his orders, and swallowing Noble whole and alive.
- The 3-parter consisting of the episodes "Trapped in the Mole Tunnel", "Crooked Proposition" and "Maya's Wedding" manages to get pretty dark:
- Hoppy very nearly dies two times. The first time it occurs, he gets lured into a small underground cave where he ends up trapped and gets close to suffocating to death. The second time it happens, he falls into a gorge with a river and gets swept away as he cries for his parents after a snake lackey lures him onto a bridge and bites the ropes holding it, and is thought to be dead until he turns up alive but injured. Keep in mind that Hoppy is a child.
- Mr. Mora is downright creepy. The moment he sets his eyes on Maya, he becomes bent on getting her to marry him; his first means of achieving his goal is through manipulating the others into helping him, such as forcing the old mouse to do his dirty work by threatening to cast him out (only to do it anyway) and outright trying to kill Hoppy in a discrete manner. Maya is then forced to accept his proposal and later gets brainwashed by a memory-erasing flower, and is only rescued when Angela shows up and encourages her to break free from the spell. And once the wedding is crashed and his plan fails, Mr. Mora attempts to capture Maya and marry her by force. And that's not even the worst part - he actually seems like a good character at first, but even when the audience finds out he's up to no good, he keeps up the charade for a long time and even manages to trick Hoppy into thinking that his initial suspicions were wrong, truly hammering home the scary and real fact that some people just can't be trusted no matter how kind they seem.
- Maya's Nightmare Sequence in "Dragon of Flower Light". She dreams about escaping from giant sentient flowers during a stormy night, not wanting to repaint their colorless petals when a dragon takes their colors for his ball of light. They surround her and start to admonish her for attempting to leave, towering over her in a very sinister manner. And to top it off, she hears Noble calling out to her... only to find him as a featureless pile of melting sugar, followed by the flowers accusing Maya of letting such a thing happen to her own friend.
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