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Dec 2019

Magical girls shows. I'm sure we've all seen at least one from the classic Sailor moon to the more obscure Winx Club. I've always liked the concept but have struggled with the execution. I like the double life trope because it can lead to some interesting character dynamics. Gaining magical powers usually in contrast to a world where there is no magic is also really interesting. I think the biggest thing keeping from making my own magical girl characters due to trying figure out what their powers would be based on. Animals? I'm not really a fan of animal based powers and there are plenty of existing properties that do that well. Elements? Well, I've done elements before in other stories and I don't want to rest on my laurels when it comes to this concept. It's been a awhile since I've just sat down and worked through characters so I'm a bit very rusty. I don't know if I'll put the characters I make into a comic or another form of story. I kinda just want them to have and to hold.

So why am I making this topic? Really I just want to hear if anyone else has made their own magical girl(or boy) characters, your process and your inspirations.

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    Dec '19
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    Dec '19
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I never actual started mine, so I can't really say much.

If you like magical girl stories enough to write a story about it, just write what you would like to see. Worrying about whether or no something has been done before or if it could be considered lazy means very little. Execution is what matters. You could do none of the above and find something that could be unique but it could also end up extremely boring or uninteresting despite being different.

This probably isn't helpful, but it's what I'd think about.

I guess I'm in the stage of worrying too much about the end product.Thanks for the encouragement.

I haven't written anything yet, but I had an idea for a story about magical knights. The knights would have magic rings made out of different materials (gold, silver, onyx) when in civilian mode. They'd each fight with different weapons, like a lance or bow and arrow. When transformed, they'd be in complete suits of armor, so there'd be no 'magical barrier that hides their identities'.

Yea, I've always hated it when in their transformed states, characters could still be easily recognized for who they are in their day-to-day lives.

I don't have any thing super similar to this particular subgenre of Fantasy, but my main character is a mage with a demon inside of her (and later a light goddess, which allows her to turn into a giant spirit monster).

Reminds me of Superman whenever Clark Kent takes off his glasses. Why can't people recognize him???

Yeah that's a whole thing. I guess it's because his glasses obscure his face, their personalities are different, and really how many of Clark's co-workers are up close and personal with superman other than Lois Lane. It's still really dumb even with all of that.

I remember winx club! I didn't even like the show, but I watched it because of how much I loved the concept

I plan on doing a magical girl webtoon someday. The hardest part for me was coming up with the magic system and the powers. I couldn't come up with a theme either so I just ended up giving them random powers. The one theme, if you could call it that, is their powers all end in -ette. For example, silhouette. But that was a retroactive thing, I came up with the naming convention after coming up with the powers. I just tweaked a few powers so they would fit the names.

When dealing the identity issue, I made it so there's a magical reason they can't be recognized in their day to day lives.

Hi hi! Certified magical girl expert here (not really lmao, I just like 'em a lot)! I make a magical girl comic currently, so this is the perfect thing to respond to

I thought about making a magical girl comic for a while but I also had no ideas. I usually like to go back to my "roots", things I loved when I was a child and wanted to learn about without any force. So for me, that's the paranormal and mythology, so I went with that idea. You don't really need a theme to their powers imo, like looking at Madoka Magica. The game puts them in specific circles (forest, water, fire, light, void, etc) but not all of their powers connect like that? Their weapons or powers aren't necessarily element themed, they just needed those divisions for the game I'm assuming (like NOTHING about Mami screams grass or forest to me, but that's what she is in game)
My personal inspiration or starting point I guess was mythological monsters, so all of my characters are magical girl iterations of those, like one character is a vampire, another is a wendigo, etc, etc. Their appearances are based off of them and the reason why people can't see them in their magical forms is because I took the idea of "children and animals are more susceptible to the supernatural" rather than the whole "they magically just look different when they aren't in their magical girl forms". Technically only they can see them but not everyone believes kids? Like monsters underneath the bed or in the closet, they aren't supposed to be real.
The way magic works and how they can exist was also just kinda random. I write about death a lot so I circle back to it when writing, plus I didn't want to be the person to write another cute animal turning girls into magical superheroes, but oooooo there's a catch to their powers oooooo. Those are fun but dang there are a lot!
Winx Club could be the best magical girl show if it was rewritten honestly, but I still binge watch the first four seasons once a year.

Yea I really like winx club too. I'm also straying away from the cutesy, bright and colorful magical girls and going in a similar direction as you. I want to base their powers on creatures related to death( grim reaper, ghost, ghouls, etc.). I have no idea how I'm going to make those into costumes. :cry_02: I've got some ideas but I need to do a session of brainstorming first.

Yeah, those ones are tough tbh, I tried to design a grim reaper magical boy and gave up-- my head went to him wearing black and then the entire outfit was just too much black. The worst part is making the costumes :weary: they either look stupid or look exactly like the others

The key thing about magical girl teams is that they're all descended from Sailor Moon, which is in turn derived from two genres; Magical Girl and Sentai, being combined in a stroke of absolute genius. Why this is worth keeping in mind is that you can look to both genres for inspiration, and particularly Sentai.
Sentai, the most popular of which is of course Super Sentai, which we know as Power Rangers, has all sorts of fun themes. Like elements, animals, technology, dinosaurs, magic, ninja etc. It's good to remember that in sentai, and in magical girl teams, the characters should always have different colours, but so long as the powers feel like they belong to a team who all got powers together from the same source, they don't necessarily need to follow an exact theme.

You could easily get away with like... I dunno, they all have a magic crystal and it gives them a power and the powers are: Super strength, super speed, invincibility, invisibility and flight. They all feel roughly on the same power level, their powers all have the same source and there aren't any weird odd ones out. If you throw into that mix, "control over fire", or "can turn into a bear" it feels weird because those powers are more mystical themed rather than super-hero sorts of powers. They belong on a more whimsical, magical and perhaps lower-power-level team with powers like:
Healing kiss, Summons magic sword, Turns into a bear, Controls fire, Illusions.
My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, is actually kind of a magical girl show, though that side only tends to appear in big season events. The "elements" are Magic, Loyalty, Kindness, Generosity, Honesty and Laughter, and basically in magical terms they all just kinda... shoot a colourful beam, the elements themselves are depicted through the personalities of the characters; who are, of course, colour coded!

More important than the powers though, in ANY magical girl team, is friendship. The theme of friendship and how well the dynamics between the girls work, and having the girls each be interesting and hit archetypes that resonate so that different people all have a different favourite and a different one they point to and say "that one is me!" is super important. The great thing about Sailor Moon is that it's about a bunch of girls who probably wouldn't otherwise have become friends being put into a situation where they must spend time together and fight together to save the world and ultimately becoming friends who would literally die for each other, but still friends who bicker and fall out and fight over boys and snark at each other. Putting a bunch of mismatched people into a situation where they must spend time together is pretty much the definition of a Sit-Com, so that element is really important and shouldn't be neglected.

This topic...calls to me... O.O

I've been a magical girl fiend since I was a little kid. My very first animes were PPGZ and Ojamajo Doremi. ^^ To be honest, I don't even know if I particularly like the genre, I've just always liked seeing girls in action roles and Mahou Shoujo delivers on that, more often than not.

Whether I truly like it or dislike it, though, I can't deny that it's fun to play around with all the familiar tropes~. Here's my team:


They're actually Pretty Cure fan characters (and if you're looking for inspiration on team themes, I'd recommend looking at Precure; they do a new one every year). I used to write fanfiction for them, but I quit that a while back; right now I'm just focusing on finalizing all the villain and world element designs, trying to make the concept feel 'complete'.

I had a lot of fun while I was first developing this team, coming up with medical puns and tool designs and whatnot. I think my favorite thing, though, was introducing character concepts that I felt were more 'realistic' rather than traditional 'wholesome girl' fare.

I mean, let's face it: despite all the progress that has been made with the magical girl genre, the character concepts are still fairly predictable and easy to swallow: you have the 'average girl' who is kind of an empty character but always supports her friends, the 'sporty girl' who plays soccer or volleyball or something, the 'smart/rich' girl whose family expects too much of her, and every once in a while you get a 'child pop star' or a 'refugee princess' who shows us that not all that glitters is gold or whatever.

So my main character, rather than being 'average', is a clear introvert who kinda views all this magical girl stuff as business. She's not heartless or cold per se, but her main motivation for saving the city/world/universe is pretty much just "it'd be nice if people didn't die."

And instead of 'sporty girl' and 'popular girl' and all that, her team members are 'laid-back gamer who occasionally dabbles in sports', 'hyper techie-girl who enjoys art and photography and also works on the school newspaper', 'sweetheart girl who likes animals and baking and kinda just keeps the peace', and 'rich girl who tries to balance a million extracurricular activities with her love of cosplay, mild gaming, and general academic weakness'.

Like, they still follow the tropes, but not quite. And none of them really have big dreams or goals, which kinda goes against everything anime stands for. XD Especially the MC and 'laid-back gamer'; as much as I love them I rarely see any characters like them in magical girl shows, Eastern or Western. Like, 'really; they're just kinda chilling and living their lives without any overt obsessions or overarching character goals? What the hell??'

I guess people either don't enjoy characters like that or don't know how to react to them in kid-friendly media. But I don't see why they can't exist there. In fact, I INSIST on putting them there; I make those kinds of characters all the time. ^^

I'm currently developing another Pretty Cure fanseries with an even more unorthodox character group: 'lazy girl who really does nothing with her life except piss off her parents and collect interesting hats', 'quiet girl who likes to read, has a unique fashion sense and is also a master manipulator', and 'alien-princess-from-another-dimension-MC who's really too easygoing and scatterbrained to be cut out for any leadership position but is always forced into them anyway; also she's 7 feet tall'. ;D

It's one of the ideas waaay in the backburner that I have for the miracle day when Splitting Image is basically done, but I have kind of an idea of a Magical Girl twist that's slightly akin to Winx but not really.
It's already a world where magic exists, and because of that, the girls have no care in taking care of their identities at first, and this immediately causes problems; making the challenge and conflict be around minimizing the damage and being wary of all times that anyone they interact with could be a villain's next target, simply out of spite.
The team would be a nymph, a nephilim, a sphinx, a unicorn and a dragon, those last two able to shapeshift - kinda like most of SI, I like trying to think of teams with minimal humans even if there's humanoids.

What if your magical girls were magical bc they didn't need magic? Because they were Sherlock smart in a world of relative dunces who actually needed magic to accomplish anything as complicated as making toast?

Supernatural based magical girls. The Frankenstein one can cut herself up and glue herself back together. Werewolf one controls animals. A necromancer vampire magical girl? A invisible, floating ghost magical girl!