Faux World Masterpiece Theatre show with a few of the trappings of a Magical Girl show (easily merchandisable jewelery and the like), seemingly aimed at the children of fans of that other faux WMT show, Secret of Blue Water. It’s all carefully calculated to fit a well worn formula, but what I saw of it was well executed. Young orphan runs away to join the circus and find her mother, the usual sort of tale of pluck, courage and romance in turn of the century Europe.
The show is another example that Toei was/is still nurturing talent, as this was a show directed by Takuya Igarashi (Ouran Host Club, Soul Eater) before he went freelance. Toei seems to be a place you can learn the skills needed as a director, and possibly in the case of Mamoru Hosoda, the skills needed to create feature films. But there does seem to come a point where you can’t do any more there. Igarashi’s work at Bones has been visually more ambitious, but while fun, it’s still adaptation work. I’d love to see him on an original series or ideally a feature film in the next 10 years.