What is the next step for the magical girl genre...?

[KizKat]

Thank you for bringing this into my life

[Snickerdoodles]

I'm actually reading two "magical girl" comics, mostly because they're such well-done subversions of the genre. "Sleepless Domain" has young characters and a cute artstyle but the stakes are very real. It starts with the main character trying to get back into patrolling after an incident that killed most of her team. PTSD, survivor's guilt, a civilization under siege. It's all good.

https://www.sleeplessdomain.com/

Then there's "Shattered Starlight", which is about a now-grown-up magical girl trying to make it in the adult world while also dealing with the return of old enemies.

http://www.shatteredstarlight.com/

[ninjashira]

A show about what happens when a magical girl retires and grows up. Do your powers just go away when you turn 21 and you're not a "girl" anymore? Or is it Peter Pan rules and as long as you believe in childlike wonder you stay powerful?

That is sort of the initial entire premise of the comic I'm working on right now. It started out as a thought along the lines of, What would happen to a magical girl like CardCaptor Sakura after she's sealed all the cards, and the magic is suddenly just gone forever? How would someone whose formative teenage years were formed around the presence of magic, and who honestly went through some terrifying near-death experiences, cope if it all just stopped one day? And you can't exactly talk to a therapist about your magical childhood trauma, because the unwritten rule of magical girl series is that nobody can know about the existence of magic.

I love the magical girl genre and I definitely think there's a lot of room for more stories that haven't been told yet. I kind of like the idea of the magical girl has now grown up into a magical woman, and she has a family and a child to worry about when new magical catastrophes pop up. In typical magical girl series, the main character is always very willing to sacrifice herself to save the world, but if that character has children and a husband, how does that change the self-sacrificing dynamic? How does it change the story when she gets teleported to another dimension in the middle of putting her kids to bed?

[ryoko]

Clamp sort of answers this with Tsubasa Chronicles. You do find out what Sakura does with her powers towards the end of the manga. Not going to spoiler it and I'm pretty sure the anime never gets that far.

[starry-sea]

pretty cure will continue save us all

[miripao]

Although generally comedic, I do like this manga: https://mangadex.org/title/25977/can-you-become-a-magical-girl
It's about an old lady becoming a magical girl. (Sadly she became younger as a magical girl, but still a cute concept.)

[AmysGames]

The magical girl genre seems to be really popular lately, lol. I guess this is a good a time as any to mention that I've also been working on a magical girl comic? (I've finished the first few pages, but idk when I'll start posting them. Hopefully soon?)

I definitely think there's a lot of exploration left to do with the genre. My personal take focuses a lot on characters being forced into roles they didn't necessarily want, with the girls chosen being people who don't really get along to begin with. It also focuses a lot more on the villains, playing pretty heavily with the concept of "arbitrary people turned evil by the powers of darkness." (Something I've seen a lot in "monster of the week"-styled magical girl shows, lol.)

But yeah, I definitely think there's a lot of mileage you can get just from having unique characters. Magical girls who hate being magical girls? Elderly magical girls? Magical people of other genders? The possibilities are endless.

[nathanKmcwilliams]

So I don't know much about the genre...but I have a character that will eventually make an appearance that is essentially: What if Deadpool was a Magical Girl?

People may have even seen me post pictures of her ebry once in a while. But for hers, I kind of fused Powerpuff Girls into the Magical Girl concept also, so in my comic (when she appears...later...much later) she'll already be established as a famous superhero in canon.

She's got all the pretty sparkly stuff, but it just so happens that it's all glued on to weapons of mass violence like guns, knives, and bazookas xD her catchphrase is
"Razzle-Dazzle Motha-F !"

She's really not supposed to be a die-hard magical girl kind of character though. More of what most people who haven't actually watched a magical girl series think it's about xD

[KoreanTacos]

It never got that far from what i remember...

[IndigoShirtProd]

Funnily enough, the magical girl idea I came up with a few months ago has some of the things you brought up. An older character just trying to get through life while being a magical girl, a MC who doesn't have that many friends, just because that how it is, and unconventional home life.

I think there are interesting concepts surrounding magical girl stories out there, like how I saw a comic that focused on the aftermath of being a magical girl. I dont remember the name, but it followed the main characters after they defeated the big bad and their powers were stripped from them and I think that a super fascinating take on the trope.

There are plenty of ways to take the genre in different directions such as all the things mention previously.

[jensrichard77]

So I don't know much about the genre...but I have a character that will eventually make an appearance that is essentially: What if Deadpool was a Magical Girl?

Ohe yes. She is diffidently a moden new kid of dark magical girl. Can't wait to meet her.
Please spoil us with a preview.

(I would like to ad Bunneh the Rabbit here too, but she is more fantasy than magic girl, but it is build on that same new concept of letting the magical girl be more dark.)

[NickRowler]

If you are asking because you feel the genre is stuck, I would recommend expanding it.

I don't think the way to go is making everything grim dark, I find that route annoying. Instead, maybe find different ways to do magical girls. Like most of them have frilly outfits, a wand thing, and an animal side-kick, so maybe switch them up.

-magical girls on motorcycles and they wear motorcross outfits.
-magical girl group but each member is based off a sport, and their outfit matches
-magical girl with mech or something similar to power rangers
-magical girls in medieval armor
etc.

[thedude3445]

I feel like the magical girl genre as you see from your Creamy Mamis and Sailor Moons and Madoka Magicas hits a wall far too easily in terms of limitations, and already in the ten years since Madoka you've seen even that end of "magical girls but it's serious now" be played to its absolute limits with the material that came afterwards.

Adding gimmicks (e.g. it's magical girls, but their theme/powers are different) won't help the genre continue to expand, and non-dark deconstructions are already aplenty (e.g. stories about adult ex-magical girls). So my only real suggestion about how to keep the genre fresh is to expand the notion of what even counts as a magical girl show.

Western animation has already shown this to be a success--Steven Universe and She-Ra are some of the most popular animated shows of the last decade, and both follow the magical girl template as a basis but use them to form completely different experiences than, say, Pretty Cure or whatever. Just like superhero stories aren't just capes and villains, magical girl shows aren't just mascots and frilly dresses. There is a lot more to offer if you branch out a little but with it.

In anime specifically, I think that the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha series took the idea of "What can magical girl series become?" in an interesting direction. Each sequel show, the story strayed further and further from its cutesy elementary schooler fighting monsters roots and became an action-packed sci-fi show about interdimensional warriors. However, after a certain point it becomes debateable whether or not even that show qualifies as magical girl anymore. It's a blurry line.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

So my only real suggestion about how to keep the genre fresh is to expand the notion of what even counts as a magical girl show.

To be honest, I think that's a little counter-productive, at least the way you described it. Keeping a genre fresh and expanding its definition are two different things. Sometimes they overlap, but they shouldn't always.

It's like if someone asked you to come up with some fresh new chair designs...and seeking to 'expand the definition' of chair, you hand them a cylinder-looking thing without a back.
That's cool; stools exist. It's got some minimalist design flair...then, you hand them a glass cube. And then you hand them a rock. Like, a literal boulder.

It's not that it's wrong to call these things chairs or use them as chairs, it's just that...well, if someone really wants a rock in their house, why hit up a company that makes chairs? Why not just go down to the quarry and get one for free? At some point, the difference between an actual rock and the rock that's supposed to be a chair becomes so arbitrary, it doesn't matter anymore.

Basically, this:

However, after a certain point it becomes debateable whether or not even that show qualifies as magical girl anymore. It's a blurry line.

If you keep on pushing into the 'blur' in the name of innovation without ever returning to the center, you risk watering down the genre into obscurity. Kinda like what's happened to westerns over the 20th century...plenty of elements and themed characters from the genre are still around, but as far as I know there are very few overtly 'western' stories left in the popular culture. I dunno if it's just that people don't like cowboys anymore, but it seems that no one wants to return to the center.

By all this I mean, as fun as it is to take just a few elements from a genre, spin them into completely new stories, and say "this actually still counts as x because it contains one y and a little bit of z", it's just as important to a genre's survival to do "gimmicky" reinventions of the same old stuff. Departures from the norm don't mean nearly as much when no one knows what the norm is anymore.

[Jenny-Toons]

Plenty of ways to go with the genre: Different settings, different types of evil, different time periods, and, different dynamics.

I'm kinda sick of most magical girl stories taking place in some modern day high school setting. Give me something more.

I want to see Magical Girls attempt to stop a zombie invasion.

I want to see Magical Girls hand picked from a the massives in a post-apocalyptic world, where maybe it's not cute fluffy animals picking them -- maybe it's through science that they gain their powers. PPG-Z (yes, that anime version of Power Puff Girls) played with that, so I'd like to see it more.

I want to see Magical Girls face off against eldritch horrors that aren't conveniently attractive. Sailor Moon wet into the depths of cosmic horror elements, but I'd like to see that go a bit farther. Yes, that would mean playing into more of the dark Magical Girl scene, but less with "humanity sucks" and more with "some things are neither good or evil, but they exist and are dangerous"

More romances between the hero and the villain. Doesn't even have to be tragic.

More of the family being involved. I dunno -- sometimes, I get sick of seeing the same obliviously, ignorant and incompetent parents/guardians and siblings who don't know that the MC is risking her life for the entire world, if not the universe. Give me stories where the family knows, and it's a constant choice between her saving the world and them losing her if she dies in the process.

Hell -- Magical Girl PTSD. There is literally no way a lot of these girls (or guys) fight all of this evil, have their lives put on the line, maybe die or see a love one die in the process, save the world, and not have some form of trauma. Like, we don't really see a lot of what happens to them after they get older or when everything is saved.

Do they get awarded for their bravery? Do they get some type of honor? Some type of money?

Or is the feeling of being the world's savior (which may go unnoticed) the only thing to get? I'd love to see more thoughts on how they process their experiences after doing all of this. Like, would they do it again? Would they have regrets? I've seen some people begin to do this in the webtoons stage, and it's getting me interested.

Medieval, Mythology, Horror, Occult Summoning, Sea Monsters -- there's so many ways to go about it.

It doesn't have to be the same "modern day, high school girl"

[TAMAnnoying]

“Keep magic girls fresh!!”

looks at BL genre where black hair boy loves blond hair boy and protagonist is always sub

looks at how many people love the same damn thing over and over again

Eh....... sometimes if it’s not broken then don’t fix it. As a part time mechanic I can attest to this.

[AmysGames]

Honestly, I kinda agree? Sometimes it's nice to have another story that's just "more of the same" because sometimes you just want to consume something familiar and comforting. The magical girl genre is one of those things for me, where sometimes it's nice to relax with something that's just cute and wholesome. Not every story has to be unique and innovative, haha.

Which isn't to say you can't innovate, obviously—I like subverted tropes as much as the next person—just that sometimes it seems like people bend over backwards to be unique, when sometimes readers just like having two cakes.

[indagold]

Magical girls but they're all truckers.

[rajillustration]

I've always seen Magical Girl as more of a Trope than as a "Genre" persay. You see them used in like...a whole bunch of different genres nowadays. There was even that one anime where girls turned into like...boats. Like huge ass WW2 boats.

But you can do whatever you want with a trope. I'm mostly just tired of magical girl parodies--since anime already parodies itself by nature. It just seems kind of redundant at this point.

[thedude3445]

Westerns are actually a good example of the way Magical Girl stories feel to me at the moment. Westerns were so popular for so long that they basically covered all possible ground for stories and then began falling into the same traps over and over--every Western story was required to have shootouts or scenes of riding through the grasslands, and every small town had to look exactly like whatever you'd find in Blazing Saddles, to the point that the aesthetic itself risked becoming a cliche.

Westerns survived by adapting, though. You have your deconstructions like Unforgiven and The Revenant and so on, and then you have stories that adapt the Western style into new genres, such as the Star Wars series, or Cowboy Bebop, or a movie set in modern day like Hell or High Water. The classic idea of a Western from back in, say, 1950, barely exists now, but the genre still thrives with media like Hateful Eight, Yellowstone, _Logan, Red Dead Redemption_, and more. None of them play the tropes straight, though. I'm not sure there has been a single Western movie or TV show in years that sticks true to the old genre conventions.... Maybe the new Magnificent Seven remake? But I barely remember that one.

To me, the magical girl genre risks falling into the exact same traps, where the same aesthetics and story tropes become so codified that it stifles the genre as a whole. I personally feel very little interest in the magical girl stories releasing lately, so I may be biased, but it does feel to me like there is a declining level of interest overall in the genre too. I don't have any stats to back that up, though.