A 50-Year-Long Transformation Sequence | Why I’m Fine With The Current State Of The Magical Girl Genre
North Carolina is a great vacation spot if you know the right people and places, but MAN is it humid. I became aware of this a decade or so ago when my family stayed with a friend of my dad’s at a beach house in Ocean Isle. It was wonderful. Nothing was better to a nine-year-old than having the beach within walking distance AND having a pool in the backyard! However, Mother Nature had other plans, forcing Zeke and I (as well as my dad’s friend’s kids) to stay indoors for several afternoons as the thunderstorms seemingly raged on forever. At least we had television.
Specifically, we had Nickelodeon (My parents hated the Disney channel, and I liked a balance of animation and live-action shows, so I grew up on Nickelodeon’s lineup from the mid 2000s to early 2010s).
More specifically, we- mostly I- had Winx Club. The one-hour specials that premiered on Nickelodeon in 2010 were my introduction to the magical girl genre.
From that moment on, I was entranced. I wanted to have magic powers and wear cute outfits and defeat evil with the power of friendship! And I had already been bullied to the point where I had given up on friendship entirely!
For the record, I’m planning on writing a full article about Winx Club in the future, so look forward to that. But back to the main topic.
Magical girls have a long and storied history. Beginning in the mid-1960s with Sally The Witch and Himitsu no Akko-chan, two series inspired by the popularity of Bewitched, magical girls have since evolved and changed in many ways, taking on traits of other genres. Keep this in mind for later.
Some people, however, have found the evolution of the genre dissatisfactory at best and troubling at worst. People like to joke about how a genre that was once a haven of glitter and happiness has now turned into a hellhole of gory, sexually-charged misery porn.
This video might seem like a joke, and it is, but some people hold this point of view with the utmost seriousness. They’ve even written articles expressing their grievances.
(Please read this article, it’s the one upon which I’ve based a lot of my points).
People who bemoan the supposed death of the magical girl genre typically point to two trends: “otaku-baiting” and “grimdark”. They bemoan the fact the genre has been “stolen” from little girls by gross nerds (who are presumed male, because obviously men are the root of all evil).
‘Course, it’s not only magical girl fans who don’t like the genre in its current state. Japanese feminists seem to have had a longstanding bone to pick with the whole operation!
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…where do I even start?
Well, obviously, the best place to start is at the beginn-
Actually, no. This part at the beginning?
Not only do they continue to enforce the very strict gender roles for women in Japan we’ve been trying to combat…
I’m going to save it for a future article. It’s a whole separate topic that doesn’t fit that well into this diatribe. I’m not going to spend any time talking about whether or not magical girls are “empowering”; all that will come at a later date. I hope you understand, but trust me, it’s going to be good.
For the record, this is not a strawman of Japanese feminists, per se. Many of them are on record as not being a fan of magical girls, for the oppressive gender roles they represent.
Now, if you’re thinking that this sounds more like an ideological divide, one between liberal (“performing femininity can be empowering”) and radical (“women must reject femininity to be truly free”) feminists instead of between Japanese and Western feminists, that where you are from has no bearing on what kind of feminist you are… you’re exactly right. I’m sure Naoko Takeuchi, the creator of Sailor Moon, would consider herself a feminist, and she is, in fact, Japanese. Does she lose her Japanese heritage and ethnicity for the crime of- gasp- creating the most famous magical girl of all time?
Look, I don’t know how feminists think. I march to the beat of my own drum when it comes to social issues, but not in a “centrist way”. I’m staunchly on the left, I just do things my own way.
Anyway, let’s pick up right after the part I said I was saving for later:
…but a lot of the more contemporary shows are made by otaku men for other otaku men and the young girl characters are often sexualized.
When people make this point, they’re usually talking about shows like Vividred Operation and Strike Witches (but for the sake of argument we’ll just focus on Vividred Operation because it best encapsulates the point, and also i’ve actually seen it), which, while they may seem normal at first glance, are more fanservice-heavy than expected, usually for the sake of their male audiences, commonly thought of as basement-dwelling otakus who jerk off to underage anime girls.
Looking at these series’ Wikipedia pages, their “seinen” (older male) labels look pretty damning. These girls are being sexualized for adult men!
Except… not really.
“Seinen” is a misunderstood label. First of all, it’s supposed to be used solely to describe manga, and many anime nowadays, including magical girl shows for older demographics, are based off of light novels, which are not characterized with such labels. Furthermore, the line between “seinen” and “shounen” is pretty blurry sometimes (ex. Attack On Titan, JJBA, Neon Genesis Evangelion). “Seinen” can be used to refer to men in their twenty-somethings, but it also covers older teenagers. If fanservice of teens is in a show for teens (and how many grown adults would watch something like Vividred Operation, when stuff like Re: Zero is available?), I can’t be too mad.
On that note, the fanservice in “seinen” shows is usually not that different from the fanservice in “shounen”(younger male) shows. Senki Zesshou Symphogear, which I’ll just call “Symphogear” for short, is listed as being aimed at the “shounen” demographic. It also features some fanservice, though not quite to the extent of Vividred Operation.
And you know what? It’s also really fun to watch, potentially even by young girls. They won’t notice the boobs and butts and skintight leotards (unless it factors into them realizing later in life that they’re into girls, which isn’t out of the question) because they’ll be having too much fun singing along to the songs, of which there are many (this show was basically created to sell soundtracks).
Now here’s the part where you tell me that these shows are for a male audience and therefore impossible for girls to enjoy or something. Yes, I’m aware of the male gaze to some extent, but it’s a term, not a female repellant. Beyond demographics, we need to consider psychographics as well.
Demographics refers to statistical data (age, gender, income, etc.) collected for a particular population.
Psychographics refers to information about a particular population’s attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria.
As a girl (well, partly), I enjoy plenty of media “not made for me”. I don’t need a whole instruction manual on “How To Enjoy Problematic Media”, I just… do it. I don’t feel alienated by characters like Bayonetta or Cammy, because I don’t see them and think “Is this how the creator sees women?”. I even find something fun about sexualized media, as it’s sort of a wish-fulfillment thing for me, having grown up with pretty restrictive dress codes.
“But the characters aren’t women in most magical girl shows! They’re teenagers!”
I’d go on a lengthy diatribe explaining, again, how the majority of shows with teenagers are aimed at teenagers in some capacity while trying my best not to sound like I condone child sexual abuse, but since all this “fanservice” is coming from Japan and is largely viewed in Japan, it’s worth taking a look at whether it has an overtly negative impact on the population.
As you can see, Japan doesn’t have significantly higher rates of sexual assault than anywhere else (I’m sure there’s some underreporting, but underreporting is a problem in every country, for the exact same reasons). The idea that sexualized imagery in media promotes violence is a flawed one, because that could only be the case with certain perpetrators. Most of us can distinguish fantasy from reality.
Now, critics targeting anime for seemingly pandering to pedophiles is nothing new, even in the realm of shows considered today to be tame, even wholesome. Remember when The Nostalgia Critic called Sailor Moon “jailbait” for having teen girls in miniskirts that sometimes flip upwards? And everybody thought he was oh-so-hilarious and not creepy at all, especially when he lied about the age of consent in Japan (it’s not 13 across the board, in most prefectures it’s 16–18)?
So we’ve covered the impact of fanservice in a genre “made for little girls” on its intended audience, demographically and psychographically. But what about the little girls who are “having the genre stolen from them”? How would seeing a show like Vividred Operation impact them?
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, so I’ll just work with what I’ve got.
I acknowledge that I’m on the back foot here in terms of needing to argue this particular point, that fanservice isn’t going to terrorize kids who see it. A 2007 report by the American Psychological Association details the effects of sexualization in media and society on young girls. You can read it in its entirety above.
However, it’s important to bring up the fact that these negative effects only “can” take place, rather than being an inevitability. The key is whether or not the child is raised to be negatively impacted by such things on television. It sounds tacky, and like a cop-out, to point to upbringing and parental influence in the difference between taking sexualized media in stride and having it scar you for life, but it’s true.
If ten-year-olds could handle Totally Spies, they can handle Vividred Operation. It’s colorful and simplistic and heavy on “the power of friendship” in the same way some of the more “traditional” magical girl shows are. But personally if it was me, I’d rather my child watch something more edifying, like TV static.
In short, I don’t care whether a show has “fanservice”, I care if it’s good. And Symphogear is more than enough to justify the genre branching out from its traditional demographic.
Grimdark is a whole separate topic. Seemingly, ever since Puella Magi Madoka Magica was released in 2011 to critical and audience acclaim, the entire magical girl genre has been swamped with cheap imitations… at least, that’s what the uninitiated would have you think.
The truth is, I can only think of a few “Madoka clones” that can arguably be called such. But since I’m more fair than the average critic of magical girl shows, let’s actually go down the line and see if these shows are all just grimdark torture porn.
Spotlight: The “Madoka Clones”…or are they?
- Daybreak Illusion (2013)
Yes, but that’s not the main problem.
Madoka clone or not, this show is trash. Hackneyed writing, stolen plot and setpieces from other shows, awful art and animation (but great character designs). I barely finished watching it. But yeah, this show is all about its disturbing and gory imagery, which had no impact on me because the characters barely felt real. I can’t call it 100% bleak, though, mostly because it chickened out with its ending.
- Yuuki Yuuna Is A Hero (2014)
No.
I love this show. It actually does a few things better than Madoka Magica, but most importantly, it’s neither a ripoff nor is it 100% grimdark. On the contrary, this show is largely slice of life, and uses the interactions between the characters to make you care about them so, when the shit hits the fan, you feel more strongly when bad things happen to them… which is how this is SUPPOSED to work, Daybreak Illusion. This show honestly warrants its own article, so look forward to that.
- Magical Girl Raising Project (2016)
Not really.
This show is a “battle royale”-style show, with all the violence and gore that suggests. It has some light moments between characters, but nothing too substantial or character-building. I stayed for the character designs and action sequences.
- Magical Girl Site (2018)
Kind of, but it’s different enough.
Again, I’m going to write a whole article about this show in the future, but I’ll just leave it at this: this show is arguably the closest to Madoka Magica in terms of plot, but people who think the whole show is just like the (admittedly overboard) first episode are sorely mistaken.
- Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka (2020)
Doesn’t seem like it.
So, I’ve never seen this show, but it doesn’t seem to be trying to be “overly grimdark”, only ordinary levels of edgy, since the characters are (I think) adults. At the very least, this show seems to be doing its own thing.
All in all, anybody who says that these shows are all just embodiments of edginess has never actually watched them.
But even if they have, it won’t help them make good arguments. There’s the idea that these shows, particularly Madoka Magica, were created to “punish girls for having ambitions”. I’m assuming that this person in particular, whose video I linked to down below, has watched the whole show, but they apparently did not fully pick up on its themes of maintaining hope in the face of despair.
Even though the magical girl genre was not explicitly created to be a power fantasy for young girls (it mostly existed in the first place to capitalize off the success of Bewitched), any deviation from this is often taken as an attack on young girls. This strikes me as odd because Neon Genesis Evangelion was also a deconstruction of a gendered power fantasy, but apparently it’s only a problem when a girl’s power fantasy is targeted.
The narrative that the genre is being taken over by gross otaku men who want to see girls suffer has the same train of logic as the alt-right white nationalist conspiracy theory “The Great Replacement”. In the same way that white people are not being “driven out” and are not the victims of a genocide, old and new magical girl series can-and do- exist at the same time.
But you want to know the real reason I’m not worried? Because we’ve actually been here before.
This is Kisaragi Honey, protagonist of 1973's Cutie Honey (I’ll be bringing up this show in future articles), which has had several iterations since. If these radical feminists were alive at the time of its release, they would have had a meltdown, considering that it was the first magical girl anime aimed at a male audience, with all the fanservice you would expect. Unless you count Princess Knight, Honey was the first magical girl warrior. The genre for decades to come wouldn’t be the same without her.
Not only is fanservice in magical girl shows nothing new, neither are “dark magical girl” shows. Revolutionary Girl Utena and Princess Tutu both came out before Puella Magi Madoka Magica, as well as influencing its creation. Even shows like Sailor Moon weren’t always as light and happy as people let on.
When people lament that, presumably in the past decade, every wants to be Madoka Magica and nobody is making new things {suitable} for young girls anymore, I would be inclined to agree... if it wasn’t for the existence of:
And if we look at the overall trends of magical girl shows released and which ones get popular, a blend of “traditional” and “alternative” shows have always existed (Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha comes to mind).
And of course, we can’t forget Pretty Cure.
This staple of the magical girl genre took off in popularity in the mid-2000s, even when girls had shows like Shugo Chara to choose from. Whether it’s new shows or old, 12 episode pop-ups or longstanding franchises, young girls will never run out of shows to choose from.
Even Pretty Cure recognizes that there is space in the genre for boys, because in HUGtto! PreCure, they introduced Cure Infini, often cited as the first official male Cure in the show’s history. Granted, this isn’t exactly true, but this character’s arc was still significant for other reasons.
This was met with backlash by some gatekeepers insisting that “boys don’t need representation in girls’ shows”. But if there was some sort of unanimous agreement back in the sixties that men don’t belong in the magical girl genre, there’s so much we would have missed out on, in terms of both male characters and creators.
So at the end of the day, what is the magical girl genre? It’s not Sailor Moon, or Cutie Honey, or Sally The Witch, or Puella Magi Madoka Magica, or Strike Witches, or Magical Girl Site. It’s all of them, together, at once. They all have a place in the genre, and none of them bring it down with their existence.
Back to that original Tumblr post, I understand that Japanese feminists are just trying to look out for the female population of their home country. They’ve actually managed to pull off some pretty impressive stuff, such as campaigning to remove high-heel mandates from workplace dress codes, but when it comes to media criticism of this sort, their arguments are pretty flawed. Now, I’d never dare to talk over feminists of color situated outside of the West, but…
…nevermind. That’s exactly what I’m going to do. And you know what? I’m not sure this counts as “talking over”, because there are simply a lot of points to be made and I think I did so pretty well.
Is the magical girl genre dead? No. It’s simply… transformed.
Thank you so much for reading. Until next time, stay on the hook!
