omeday's Dreamers opens in modern-day Tokyo, where a shy country girl named Yume Kikuchi seems overwhelmed by the idea of crossing a city street. A friendly local boy starts to help her, but a speeding sports car tearing recklessly around a corner seems about to cut her big-city visit permanently short. Suddenly, the car—along with all the others in the area—flies straight up and hovers harmlessly in the air. As it turns out, Yume is a mage-trainee, a girl gifted with "Special Power" (a phrase frequently used as a proper noun, as in "I don't like Special Power!" or "You should use Special Power!"). Yume's particular Special Power is very potent, as she proves when she rewards her new friend with a sweatshirt full of spontaneously generated money. But she's baffled when he seems resentful rather than grateful.
As Someday's Dreamers follows its gentle, languid story development, it becomes clear that Yume has a kind heart and a strong desire to help others, but she isn't very good at following rules or taking no for an answer. And she doesn't seem to understand people very well. Stricken with shyness and confusion after she meets her new instructor, a laconic, bishonen-to-a-fault young man named Masami Oyamada, she nonetheless moves into the open apartment above his salsa bar and starts training under him, mostly by watching training videos and reading books that explain how the Bureau of Mage Labor regulates "mage actions,"—powers should not be used without an authorized public request, duly processed by the bureau.
Yume is agitated when she realizes how many rules she's broken, but that doesn't keep her from breaking them again and again, on behalf of people who draw her sympathy: her street-crossing savior (once she gets him to accept her apology for her previous unauthorized use of Special Power on his behalf), an applicant duly authorized by the bureau, but wanting something more than Yume can immediately provide, and eventually a young child whose request is touching, but requires massive intervention on a wholly illegal scale.
Issues raised remain unaddressed
The odd thing about the opening episodes of Someday's Dreamers is that they repeatedly center on Yume's rule-violating usage of magic, but they don't take sides on whether her actions are morally defensible. She doesn't seem to be consciously rebelling; she acts instinctively, and sometimes regrets it later, but neither the storylines nor her immediate superiors punish her for putting individual interests above the bureau's laws. Nor does the series comment on the morality of those laws—none of Yume's beneficiaries are in danger, and Yume's powers never have large-scale positive or negative effects. She makes some people happier than they would have been, nothing more. Yume is told that profligate use of power causes problems, but she has yet to see any.
As a result, Dreamers sometimes seems a little half-baked, as though it lacks the ability to follow through on its own premise. Of course, this is only the first volume. And its approach does showcase a pleasantly restrained new take on the usual magical-girl series, one that evades the genre's usual shrill, bouncy over-the-top-cute qualities. The hushed, thoughtful, generally sweet tone established by the music and the low-key interaction between characters is particularly rewarding, and the relatively small stakes involved in Yume's life brings to mind unique, quirky, emotionally generous series like NieA Under 7 or, moreso, Oh My Goddess!. Dreamers has been compared to the Harry Potter books, but Yume doesn't face anything as focused or as dangerous as Harry; at most, she has to decide how best to help people with their minor personal goals.
Someday's Dreamers doesn't have much of a lure for action fans, but it does offer beautiful, seductive visuals with sharp, very detailed animation and a cool, appealing palette of pastel blues and browns. A surreal early scene where Yume stands daydreaming on a Tokyo street corner is particularly pretty, and whenever she uses her Special Power, the effects are remarkable. This series takes place in a fascinating world, which will hopefully be fleshed out better in subsequent episodes. But visually, it's all anyone could ask for.
Pioneer's dub goes to interesting lengths to convey the various dialects that characters are meant to have—Yume has a country twang when she's agitated, her family members sound downright hickish, and other characters have accents that reflect their origins as well. The results aren't always successful, but Pioneer gets points for trying.
— Tasha
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