Nice, cheerful series aimed at young girls, but becomes repetitive because it's too long.
A 'mahou-shoujo'-series, where a junior high schoolgirl becomes the magic-using thief Saint Tail. As expected, Mahou Shoujo comes with a dozen of transformation sequences, and Saint Tail isn't an exception. Our dear protagonist, Haneoka Meiko changes every episode into Saint Tail and although it's bearable for 10 episodes, 43 episodes is obviously too much to handle. Even though the series has 2 different transformationscenes besides the normal transformation, they change after a sheer amount of episodes and I have to say that neither of them became better.
The animation itself was pretty decent. The series still shows that good old '90s look, which is neither bad nor good, just budget-lacking. But the fact that they hardly use any reused frames beside the transformation sequences are a good thing. Although there are a few 'comical' degenerations, there are only a few throughout the entire series.
The Opening-song is girlish-genki, with a nice pace, but the ending-song is very sad and slow, which doesn't fit the series at all in music.
The BGM often plays childish tunes, when there are comical scenes, which shows that this series is aimed at young girls and not to adults.
The voices are done well, but unfortunately they sometimes feel too childish.
The bad guys look and sound like bad guys and the good guys look exactly like good guys, which shows that this series is really made for children, but that doesn't mean this show is not suitable for adults.
The story starts out okay, but it becomes repetitive after watching around 8-10 episodes (I started to notice it after 10, because I liked the series I could bear it longer than usual), where Meiko always goes to her friend, the nun-in-training, and receives her mission. Now it's not that thing which makes the series repetitive, but it's the 'We only steal from the evil people' which may get on your nerves at times. Especially since all episodes (with 1 or 2 exceptions) are episode-based, which means that a story starts and ends in the same episode. This results in pretty easy and predictable cases, but after watching 20 episodes, the cases aren't only easy and predictable anymore, but also semi-annoying. Not because it's predictable, but rather because the cases look so much alike that it's just repeating the same thing over and over again, stretching the series without any content.
While the characters were fun to see in the beginning, they also developed pretty much in those episodes. Meiko, Asuka Jr. and also Rika are characters who make a great entrance and manage to keep you focused and make you enjoy the show, but after 13-15 episodes, they stall almost completely in development/relationships. Rika completely disappears from the series, only to be used as backgroundfiller, until they manage to come up with a use for her again, near the end of the series. Meiko starts out strong, but after around the same number of episodes, the main character also stalls. It's only the same thing over and over again, getting a job, notifying Asuka Jr., stealing the object, case closed, without any real value, while the first episodes managed to evolve the feelings and relationship of the characters. Of course there are episodes where the characters do get a bit more development, like the romance-part in the series, but that progresses so slowly compared to the first episodes that it tends to get boring and you'll end up waiting when it will finally happen.
But - overall, the characters are likeable, fun to see and they don't bore much, unlike the storyline itself.
Since the series is pretty long and most of them are episodes without much real value and also pretty much all the same, this series isn't really worth rewatching. That is, unless you actually adore the characters and the romance-story in the background, or if you're a little girl who likes to watch this kind of series.
The series itself was fun to watch and although the middle parts in the series are pretty boring, it's not worth shoving aside completely. They managed to come up with a nice, lighthearted story with a bunch of comedy and a very easy story so you won't have trouble to keep track of it all. It's not too realistic, especially the magic-part isn't (Meiko seems to use all the tricks from her father, the one who has a job to play tricks, but not all of them are realistic - especially not the ones Meiko pulls), but they do make the show lively and funny.
I do believe that, if they managed to make this a 13-26 episodes series, they could've made it much more valuable since it wouldn't get boring that easily. The first 10-13 episodes had a fast pace, introduced the characters really quick and it looked like they could wrap it up in a few more, but they wanted to stretch it, meaning that the episodes 20-35 are mostly useless episodes. You might consider skipping a few if you want, since you won't miss much by skipping them.
