Bewitched is a 1964 sitcom about a witch named Samantha who marries a human named Darrin and tries to give up magic for him but can't quite seem to quit. It could be argued that Bewitched is a magical girl show given that Sam is the main character and her magic is an important part of the plot. However, whether or not the show itself is magical girl, it has an interesting place in the history of the genre.
A well-known bit of trivia is that Bewitched was a point of inspiration for Sally the Witch, the first ever magical girl anime, which began airing in 1966. Earlier that same year, Bewitched had started airing in Japan under the title of Okusama wa Majo (which literally translates to My Wife is a Witch), and it became quite popular with young girls. Japanese love for Bewitched didn't end in the 60s either. A Japanese-made reboot of the show aired in 2004, also titled Okusama wa Majo, and the name was spoofed in the title of the 2005 magical girl anime Okusama wa Mahou Shoujo (or My Wife is a Magical Girl). Most relevant to this blog's subject matter, during its original run Bewitched was adapted to manga not once, not twice, but three separate times.
The first of these manga was published in the now-defunct Shoujo Friend in 1967 and was created by Yasuko Aoike. Aoike is notable for being a member of the Year 24 Group, a group of female manga artists who were hugely influential in the medium in the early 70s. Aoike in particular is known for writing gay romance, such as her most well-known work, From Eroica with Love. Sadly, I couldn't find much information about her work on Okusama wa Majo aside from a small handful of scattered pages, not even an exact chapter count or publication dates. The preliminary timeline I drew up before starting this blog lists this manga's start date as March 21, 1967, but I cannot for the life of me remember where I pulled that information from, nor can I find anything to corroborate it now, so take it with, frankly, an entire salt lick.
1967 also saw the serialization of a manga by Masako Watanabe in the then-weekly shoujo magazine Margaret. The Margaret version has been chronicled online in surprising detail. A total of 9 chapters were published, starting with issue 32 (published July 23, 1967) and ending with issue 40 (published September 17, 1967). This iteration of the manga seems to be the most well-remembered, at least in the sense that it is the subject of more online discussion than the other two and it has by far the most surviving scans, as well as being the only manga mentioned on Bewitched's Japanese Wikipedia page.
Watanabe is another influential creator in the realm of shoujo manga from this time period. In addition to more traditional shoujo, she dabbled in everything from horror to erotica. In the sixties, however, she wrote a number of stories focused on mother-daughter relationships. It makes sense then for her to adapt Bewitched given the focus not only on Samantha's relationship with her mother, Endora, but also with her own daughter Tabitha.
Lastly, a version of Okusama wa Majo ran in Nakayoshi and, interestingly enough, this was the only one to get printed outside of its original magazine run. It was published as a single tankobon volume on February 1, 1968. I say "interestingly enough" because this version seems to have the least available information online. In addition to being unable to find the number of chapters or dates it was originally serialized in Nakayoshi, I can't find much information about the mangaka, Kiyoko Takenaka, either. I couldn't find a singular profile of her work anywhere, and this Bewitched manga seems to be one of the most well-remembered things she ever created. Which is saying something considering how obscure it is.
Sadly, I haven't been able to read any of these for myself. They've all been out of print for decades and I haven't found anything to suggest they were ever translated in any capacity. All I've found is scattered untranslated page scans supplemented with some low quality photographs. Like I said, Masako Watanabe's take on the series seems to be the most well known, and even then I wasn't able to collect a complete chapter. As such, I can't accurately say how these manga compare to the source material. But I can certainly make some educated guesses.
One thing that's worth noting is that across all three manga, Samantha seldom seems to be centered as a singular protagonist. She's definitely the main character, but in the pages I have access to, she is rarely on her own. There's lots of her loving Darrin unconditionally, lots of her caring for baby Tabitha, lots of Endora being Endora, and all of this feels very much in the spirit of the show.
Something that does not seem to have carried over from the show is the impetus to refrain from magic. In the original series, Sam's goal is not to do magic but to resist doing it. This, I think, is one of the major reasons people are often hesitant to call Bewitched a magical girl show. Yes, she gives in to the temptation to cast spells more often than not but she's still not supposed to. By contrast, I didn't see anything in any of these manga that would indicate Sam is trying to curb her magical tendencies. Mind you this is hard to confirm definitively without a full understanding of the dialogue and with huge swaths of the manga still missing. The only times she seems a tad cagey around using magic is when Endora does so in public where others might see. This implies that they are still nominally supposed to keep the fact that they are witches a family secret, which makes total sense.
It's a shame these manga aren't more well-known because from what I could find of them, they're all quite nice. Their connection to a series that has so much influence in the inception of the magical girl genre already is really fascinating, and they make for a great early entry in the genre.
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