When money is a key motivation, ethics and the greater good are quickly abandoned. This theme is apparent in Season 1 of the anime, bubbling away ever-present in the background as Kana learns the magical girl trade, but comes to the forefront in subsequent material when the manga really starts to dig into the politics of the magical girl business.
In effect, Sailor Moon’s narrative asked if individuals commit acts of evil or if evil is an inevitable force, and came up with two separate answers.
In a season about environmentalism and illness, Nodoka is in remission from a years-long infection and doesn’t want anyone to suffer the way she did. While she’s not quite depicted as disabled or chronically ill in the show itself, her arc focuses on recovery from a chronic illness in ways that can be similar to managing one.
Hotaru’s story represents the tension between our desire for comforting narratives of disabled people healing and the reality of disabled life as shaped by capitalism and the limits of our bodies.
Tropical-Rouge balances historical attitudes with refreshing, contemporary ideas that grant its young female characters agency and thus delivers a great message to its target audience.
As the tone in the Madoka series shifted at the end of episode three, so did the tone of the mahou shoujo genre as a whole, leading to a change in demographic focus that’s still being felt today.
Looking at this series through an economic lens reveals yet another layer of interpretation: a story about the cruelty of business models that profit off the worker’s suffering.
As Jeanne, Maron steals paintings possessed by demons trying to steal the beauty of human hearts, weaken God, and strengthen the Demon Lord. By doing so, Maron seals the demons away, restores the affected humans to normal, and leaves a new painting of an angel in its place. This premise intrigued me because the magical girl was a phantom thief, rather than the standard “magical warrior” or “witch.”
Even now, with the vast increase of explicit queer womxn’s representation on television over the past decade, I still see myself in Sailor Moon and The iDOLM@STER more than I see myself in Orphan Black.
There comes a time in every girl’s life where she’s obsessed with one thing: the occult.
SPOILERS: This article covers episodes 1-29 of Hugtto! PreCure. The magical girl genre as a whole is often stereotyped as blatantly feminine. Characters fight in skirts and frills, love and kindness save the day, and our magical protagonist is almost consistently covered in pink. As a whole, the genre seems to play off of gender […]
Instead of focusing on suffering, dark magical girls can inspire young female audiences by showing that they have the power to overcome their personal pain.
Since the rival trope goes back to fairy tales, it’s no surprise that Princess Tutu involves a pair of dueling princesses. But as the rules of the story break down, the designated rival becomes so much more: a strong and loving young woman, a good friend, and the heroine of her own story.
When I saw Adorned by Chi, the Black-owned “nerdy lifestyle brand for misfits & magical girls”, had an 80%-funded Kickstarter with a week to go, I had to know more.
Princess Tutu pays tribute to various classic ballets and fairy tales while simultaneously weaving a new fairy tale-like story that upends gender roles and rejects the archetypal tragic narrative. In doing so, it embraces feminist ideals of individual freedom, rebellion against archaic tradition, and the construction of a new, more liberating society.
Murder and despair are normally nowhere near the magical girl archetype, but that’s changing in some recent and disturbing developments.
