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