When it comes to manga and anime, I tend to surprise
myself. The genres and titles I expect
to like often fail to spark my interest for the long term. However, titles I might not have expected
will often become my favorites. When I
first started reading manga, I thought I’d like shonen battle manga like Naruto, Bleach and FullmetalAlchemist because they seemed to be the closest equivalent to the superhero
comics I grew up with. Instead, I found
I didn’t have much of a taste for the battles that seemed to drag on for
multiple volumes or the constant “I must become stronger” mindset. Instead, my manga genres of choice ended up
being mystery, sports, cooking and even the occasional harem comedy.
However, it’s rare that I jump the gender divide and read or
watch something from the shoujo (girls’) or josei (women’s) demographics. So, it surprised me a bit when I ended up
binge-watching all of Sailor Moon Crystal
on Hulu. I knew of SailorMoon, mind you. Back in the ‘90s, it
was one of the few anime to get a foothold on TV here in the United States
before the Toonami boom. Then after
that, it would make a comeback on said Toonami block. However, I had never watched it all that
intently. So, I decided to do as deep a
dive as I could into the “magical girls” genre and see what I could figure out
about its appeal.
Now, when I first approached this subject, my knowledge of
the genre was limited. I mostly knew of
it in terms of Sailor Moon and to a
lesser extent Cardcaptor Sakura and Tokyo Mew Mew (both of the last two were
brought to the U.S. as Cardcaptors and
Mew Mew Power respectively). I also had a vague awareness of the PreCure franchise. So, the way I saw it based on Sailor Moon was that the magical girls
genre could be summed up as “like superheroes but frillier”. You know what I mean: villains, special
powers, secret identities and fighting the good fight. All of it done while wearing skirts and bows and wielding sparkly pink accessories. However, while that is true to an extent,
it’s not completely true. While some
magical girls could be quantified as superheroes, not all are. I put together a basic Venn diagram so you
could get the gist of it, but it doesn’t include every possible property or
franchise.
The biggest thing that seems to define the magical girl
genre are young, female lead characters with some kind of magical power
(duh). Sometimes it involves a
transformation, sometimes it doesn’t.
There’s usually a romantic subplot, but not necessarily (like, 98% of the time). The main lead will often have a power related
to healing of purification, but again not in every case. For every rule there is an exception and for
every exception there is a rule.
So, what did I think of all of it? Well, let’s set the parameters, first. During this dive into magical girl territory,
I mainly read them in manga form with a few anime sprinkled in. The titles I read were Wedding Peach, Tokyo Mew Mew, Magic Knight Rayearth, Pichi Pichi Pitch Mermaid Melody, Phantom Thief Jeanne, Shugo Chara and Cardcaptor Sakura. The anime
I watched were Sailor Moon, Princess Tutu
and the original Pretty Cure.
As expected, I leaned more towards the ones that had more
superheroic tendencies. Sailor Moon remains a favorite. Tokyo
Mew Mew is also good. Tokyo Mew Mew kind of reminds me of Spider-Man. For one, it embraces a science fiction origin
in terms of how its characters gained animal powers. Also, how the main character frets over how
her hero duties interfere with her romantic relationship. Shugo
Chara also proved to be a surprise
favorite. I just find the concept rather
clever. The whole thing revolves around
people creating heart eggs which hatch into Guardian Characters, which
represent a kind of person who the person wants to be. The main character Amu uses these characters
to transform into different magical girl forms.
So, her heroic forms are idealized versions of herself amped up to
superheroic proportions. Amulet Heart is
peppy and athletic. Amulet Spade is
artistic. Amulet Clover is super-skilled
at domestic tasks like cooking. And
Amulet Diamond is a cool idol (read as: singer/actress/model). Instead of it just being “here’s you
transformed by magic”, it’s “here’s who you want to be but dialed up to
eleven”. I also really liked the
original version of Pretty Cure, which
I found on the free streaming service Tubi.
What surprised me in that series was how much physical combat there
was. Shows like Sailor Moon tended to
focus on magical and energy attacks.
Cure Black and Cure White, on the other hand, tended to actually get in
there and mix it up. Princess Tutu, which is kind of
superhero-y but also about ballet and storytelling and oddly meta, is a series
I’ve watched before and is always good.
Seriously, watch Princess Tutu.
There were a couple of magical girl series that I liked that
didn’t quite overlap into superhero territory.
Incidentally, both of them were created by the artist collective
CLAMP. Magic Knight Rayearth is a magical girl story about three high
school girls who get whisked away to an epic fantasy world and made into magic
knights. They set off with the idea that
they’re there for one specific mission only to find they’re there for
completely different reasons that create all sorts of negative
consequences. It’s a well-written and
well-drawn fantasy series and one that is surprisingly funny in spots. The other series is Cardcaptor Sakura, which is a little bit closer to an urban fantasy
in execution. It’s about a girl named
Sakura Kinomoto who accidentally releases a set of magical Clow Cards into the
world and then with the help of the cards’ guardian and her friends, finds them
and recaptures them. This much I knew and
expected from the TV show Cardcaptors,
which was a heavily edited version of Cardcaptor
Sakura (it had an awesome theme song, though). What I didn’t expect was a light romance
comic that seemingly discards any sense of strict sexuality and all the
identity politics that come with it. At
least during the first half of the series (haven’t read the second half yet),
almost every character seems to be at least bisexual. Sakura herself has a crush on her older
brother’s friend but also talks about how her new female teacher makes her
“feel all floaty”. Meanwhile, her rival
is a boy named Li Syaoran. He’s on the
books as becoming a love interest for Sakura later, but also has a crush on her
brother’s friend. The lack of identity
politics is actually kind of refreshing.
Here in the U.S., such ideas often seem to get whittled down into who
people identify as and what “team” they’re on.
Still, there are some elements that might make American audiences
uneasy. The fact that so much is made of
romance in a story where the main character and her rival are about nine years
old might bother some people (they are a little young to be so worried about
all that). There’s also a romantic
relationship suggested between one of Sakura’s elementary school classmates and
her teacher, which might raise a few red flags with people.
Other manga didn’t impress me much. Phantom Thief Jeanne I stopped reading after one digest. One of the ones I found particularly
disappointing was a series entitled Wedding Peach. It starts off with the rather
crazy premise of the goddess Aphrodite choosing a girl to become the heroine Wedding Peach in order to defend love
from demons and retrieve the legendary “four somethings” (something old,
something new, something borrowed and something blue). The really noteworthy part being that her
first demon-fighting costume is a big, floofy wedding dress. As the series goes on though, it changes
first to a shorter, almost lingerie-like outfit and then to a sort of Wonder
Woman-like outfit but with hearts and angel wings on it. And then it’s just kind of finding treasures
and fighting demons. Also, a typical
will they/won’t they semi-antagonistic, semi-romantic relationship between the
main character and one of her classmates.
The whole wedding theme sounds odd and crazy enough that it could be
fun, but ultimately the execution of the whole thing proves to be kind of
boring and conventional.
Overall though, I enjoyed what I saw. The ones that did lean in more of a superhero
direction, really do tend to read more like the American superhero comics I
grew up reading. It may seem a bit strange
at first glance considering how oriented towards romance magical girl manga
is. But then, Spider-Man was always more
concerned about his love life than a lot of other things. Heck, the X-Men comics have often been
regarded by fans as just being a big, long, complicated soap opera. Someone once made the case that the writing
of American romance comics from the ‘50s had a big impact on how superheroes
were written from the ‘60s onward and I believe them. As for how the magical heroine stories match
up against the battle heroes over on the shonen side of the street, I’d say
it’s favorable. In the magical girl
stories, there’s a lot less macho posturing, a lot less obsessing over strength
or rivalries and a lot more focus on communal qualities like friendship and
love.
I’ve really just scratched the surface, though. I didn’t even touch the manga and anime that
subvert the genre and take it past the usual bounds of girls’ romance
stories. Manga like Puella Madoka Magica, which depicts becoming a magical girl as more
of a dark, Faustian pact. Or Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka, which near
as I can tell asks the question “What if magical girls were the result of a
secret military project?”. I’m not
finished yet, though. I’m still reading Shugo Chara and Cardcaptor Sakura as well as watching Sailor Moon. Heck, thanks to
Tubi I just discovered a magical girl idol series called Fancy Lala.
I’ll try my best to keep up with them. You see, I’ve started reading some other
manga series. Staying true to form, I’ve
developed an interest in yet another unexpected genre. This time, it’s . . . romantic comedies. I’ve begun reading manga like The Quintessential Quintuplets, We Never Learn, Wotakoi, Kaguya-sama: Love isWar and even some more risqué fare like Ao-chan Can’t Study.
When it comes to anime and manga, you never know what you
might like until you try it.
