NoScans: Generations of magical girls – from the beginning to three parallel sub-genres

[leahandillyana]

Magical girl is a Japan specific storytelling genre that has existed for over fifty years. During such a long period, it evolved significantly, with its current form being created artificially. But to talk about it, I’ll first talk about the history of the genre. I’ll divide the stories into generations, sharing storytelling and visual elements, for simplicity.

Generation 1: 60s to early 80s

These are the earliest magical girl series. They are intended for early primary school girls (approximately 6 to 9), and usually follow adventures of teen girls from fantasy lands that find themselves on Earth. The focus of these stories is daily life and mischief, and while some series have some kind of mission, the series are very low drama. The protagonists tend to be young noncomformists, and the series tend to be somewhat feminist in message. Notable series, almost all from Toei Animation, from this era are:

Majokko Megu-chan, for featuring low-key sexuality of the teen protagonist as well as social issues such as domestic violence or addiction, themes unheard of in earlier anime. The protagonist is a magical princess sent to Earth to prove herself worthy of magic against her opponent and sometimes-ally Non. She lives with a retired witch who brainwashed her family to believe Megu is her daughter and has always been. These tropes will reoccur in later series.

Hana no Ko Lunlun, which features some very familiar tropes: titular character is a normal girl who one day gets visited by two talking animals who tell her she is a descendant of magical people and therefore must find a magical object (flower) before the villains do. In her travels, she is helped by a mysterious handsome boy who in the end turns out to be a prince of magical land.

Minky Momo highlights the titular character’s mission the most – if she doesn’t succeed in bringing dreams and hopes to people of Earth, her land will disappear. She wields magic that allows her to turn into an adult version of herself and give her knowledge of various professions. Uniquely for the genre, she ultimately loses and gets killed in an anticlimactic way.

Princess Tutu, an elegant anime that aired in 2002-3, was inspired by this generation.

Generation 2: 80s, with some revival in late 90s-early 00s

This generation features the magical idol trope. The stock plot goes as follows: a little girl is visited by a cute mascot-like magical creature that gives her the power to transform into an adult version of herself and pursue her dream of being an actress/singer/model etc. Stock romantic plot is that the girl is in love with an older boy who doesn’t return feelings of her older self while overlooking a younger boy in love with her younger self. These series are even more low-key than previous generation and focus on commercial success rather than helping people. I guess such was the zeitgeist. Studio Pierrot produced about half of these series.

Full Moon wo Sagashite and Fancy Lala revived this generation in late 90s, in modernized and more dramatic way.

Generation 3: 90s

This is the generation of magical girl warriors, what is understood as magical girls in the West. The popularity of the genre skyrocketed thanks to Sailor Moon, and as much as I love the series it needs to be stressed that many elements, at least in its first half, were heavily borrowed from earlier magical girl series. Nonetheless, the series has to be credited with introducing the concept of magical girls as warriors, heavy stakes, as well as LGBT themes present through the series. The series from this era are aimed at slightly older audience, 11-14 years old. Other notable magical girl series from the decade include:

Magic Knight Rayearth, featuring a trio of girls transported to a magical world and fighting in sentient giant robots in an unique mish-mash of genres.

Super Pig, an affectionate parody of the genre that is very enjoyable for fans of magical girls.

Vampire Princess Miyu, an older horror manga revamped as a darker magical girl series.

Revolutionary Girl Utena, one of the best if not the best anime ever created, this elegant and oniric series utilizes elements from both magical girl genre as well as 70s shoujo manga, presenting very dark and mature themes. A genre deconstruction, the series is simply too complex to show to a primary school student.

Generation 4a: late 90s-present

The magical girl boom proved complicated for the studios – traditionally, magical girl series were adaptations of existing manga, which meant that not only the studios had to share the income with original creators, but also didn’t have full control of the plots, which often led to controversies surrounding nearly all the series from the era, from suits deemed too skimpy by concerned mothers to the characters dying to LGBT plots. As a result, from late 90s on studios, Studio Toei in particular, turned to corporate-created original anime where they had full control over story. Wanting to avoid any controversies, they made their series really bland and repetitive, returning to advertising them to 6 to 9 age group. While technically of the warrior girl type, the series just aren’t as dramatic or groundbreaking as their precursors, and instead of being somewhat-feminist in nature they are kinda forcing traditional gender roles on girls.

Generation 4b: 2011-present

These are magical girl series for men. While erotic parodies and some PG-rated magical girl series for men existed before, with Kannazuki no Miko and Lyrical Nanoha in particular coming to mind, as a genre it developed thanks to success of Madoka Magica. And honestly, I’m not that fond of these stories. At best, they are mature deconstructions of G4a, magical girls at their lowest, completely ignoring the complex history the genre had for over thirty years before the corporate takeover. At worst, they are brutal sexual fantasies starring teen girls who don’t really resemble magical girls at all. A few of the series stand out.

Lyrical Nanoha predates the magical girl for men boom, and first two seasons are a solid story mixing elements of fantasy and science fiction. Later seasons not so much.

Madoka franchise tends to be decent story. Definitely good read if you like sad stories. It contains many spin-off comics and even a cellphone game, all of similar quality.

Magical Girl Raising Project is a series focused on battle royale like game between magical girls. It has some of the best designs in the genre period and surprisingly deep and diverse characters.

Generation 4c: 2015-present

These are magical boys stories. They are focused on adult female audience and are vary fanservicy and comedic in tone, with plenty of LGBT subtext. Two series that got an anime are Earth Defense Club (actually an anime original series) and Magical Girl Ore (where the protagonist is actually a girl who happens to transform into a muscular guy in a dress).

Comments

[icon_uk]

Yeah, I also loved the Christy Marc New52 reboot, which changed things a little, like making Amy a little older (17 as opposed to 13) amd making her mother and aunt a powerful part of the story (Magic is shared between a bloodline, which can make power struggles nasty), and updating the magic system, so that instead of them all having generic semi-Green-Lantern magical energy blasts, each House had a distinctly different ability and they rely on some fairly fragile alliances to prosper.

So, of course, it was cancelled after less than a year and then retconned almost instantly.