I’m not sure if it is only in Japan, but most people here can recognize the costume with a blue wizard hat with white crescent-shaped moons and stars for Mickey Mouse, even if they have never watched Walt Disney’s Fantasia. The movie is the third animated full-length movie of Disney’s, and we can enjoy the fusion of classical music and beautiful animation. There are eight different music pieces, and each one is played with different animations. Mickey Mouse with the above-mentioned costume appears as a clumsy apprentice of a sorcerer in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. Personally, I think it is the most iconic and well-known part in the movie.
If you have ever played Kingdom Hearts Series (by Square Enix), you may know that the sorcerer is called Master Yen Sid and his apprentice is Mickey Mouse even if you haven’t watched Fantasia. However, the classical composition “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” by Paul Dukas might be unfamiliar to you since the music was not used in the video game series unfortunately. For people who have watched Fantasia but haven’t played Kingdom Hearts Series, the sorcerer could be very mysterious and there seems to be no information about him. I’m not certain if it was Walt Disney’s idea or not, but the sorcerer’s name is “Yen Sid”, and not only Mickey Mouse but also other characters in the game call him “Master Yen Sid”. He is an important character to progress through the game. Oh, and there’s one thing I was surprised to find out. If you read his name backward, it turns out to be “diS neY (Disney)”.
Walt Disney is the father of Mickey Mouse and the master at the same time, so I like this idea very much. I hadn’t known that the difference of words between “sorcerer” and “wizard” because both are the same in Japanese (魔法使い mahou-tsukai); (魔法mahou) means magic and (使い tsukai) means user.
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary says:
wizard: (in stories) a man with magic powers.
sorcerer: (in stories) a man with magic powers, who is helped by evil spirits.
These definitions made me confused since I had believed that Master Yen Sid is a good guy, and he is not helped by evil spirits. I also asked my husband about his opinion, and he had a different definition like below.
Wizards need a wand or staff to use magic power.
Sorcerers can use magic power without anything.
Hmm, I remember Master Yen Sid didn’t use a wand in “Fantasia”, but I don’t remember if he used it in Kingdom Hearts Series.
Wizards, witches, magic powers, and etc. are very popular categories which are used in Japanese animations. If you like to watch Japanese animations with subtitles, you might have heard some words below.
魔法使(まほうつか)い mahou-tsukai : a wizard or sorcerer
魔術師(まじゅつし) majutsu-shi: a magician in direct translation, but can be considered as a wizard or sorcerer
魔女(まじょ) majo : a witch or sorceress
マジシャン majishan : a person who performs magic tricks
*There is no single definition for mahou-tsukai and majutsu-shi, and meanings often change depending on manga-artists’ preferences. I also found some manga artists use カタカナ(katakana) words for the above words such as ウィザード(wiza-do for wizard) and ソーサラー (so-sara- for sorcerer) recently.