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What Makes Magical Girls So Popular?

The biggest western imports of the genre as of recent years are Steven Universe and Star VS. the Forces of Evil.

Strictly focusing on North American fandom, is the magical girls genre that popular?

The biggest western imports of the genre as of recent years are Steven Universe and Star VS. the Forces of Evil. The former ditching most of the traditional aspects of "girls" and changing forms, but having the empowering females and personal relationships in spades and the main male character being the more traditional type

Sailor Moon's major innovation came from making magical girls into superheroes. Prior to that, magical girl shows post-Princess Knight downplayed the fighting and functioned more like sitcoms. Their magical powers resembled the antics of Steve Urkel in Family Matters – an excuse for crazy stuff to exacerbates the episode's social conflict. While they were often still princesses, magical girls dealt with schoolyard problems more often than actual threats. They'd use their powers to go out with boys or live double lives as pop stars.

I like MG shows because they depict females as humans with actual ideas and ambitions in life, other than to be attractive to males, be in a relationship, get married and have kids. Because lets face it, even in the 21st century western world the apparent decent woman should be sexually attractive and hold snagging a man and family as the ultimate priority in life.

Women who prioritize careers or other activities are depicted as frigid, antisocial and cold.

In the idealized world of anime where the focus is on female characters, they appear to have goals, overcome personal challenges, help each other, the community and the world. Most of the shows pass the Bechdel test.

LOL What? who wrote this. There was a show nearly 20 years before Sailor Moon that blended Magical Girls and tokusatsu.

So why do you love magical girls?

While Usagi's relationship with the hunky but useless Tuxedo Mask is still a big part of Sailor Moon, most of what I remember from watching the show as a kid were her interactions with her fellow Senshi. With their playful bickering, the Senshi acted like a real group of school-aged girlfriends.

an intriguing part of magical girls is that in the genre you can sometimes get away without needing "magic" per say (ala AKB0048/Macross Delta levels of Tech) and sometimes they don't have to be strictly girls (Ore, Twintail ni Narimasu) and then you have cases where a show is about a Card Game and still delves into the realm of Magical Girl genre (Wixoss, Fantasista Doll).

That said, it is saddening that the current staple of Magical Girl genre Precure just barely recently got a form of a release in the form of Glitter Force for the Smile season of Precure, the only prior release was a regional English release of the Futari wa season which still premiered years after the source series Japan debut.

Magical girl shows for an adult audience, like Madoka and Yuki Yuna, often don't feature male love interests at all. Instead, there's the implication of a deep partnership (or even more) between the girls themselves.

I would love to see a magical girl series that is actually yuri.


There is something interesting about magical girls...

I can't offhand think of any female-targeted magical girl series that focus on girl-girl couples as the primary romantic relationships; anyone else know of any?

Although the sitcom relationship is even more convoluted – magical girls were inspired by a Japanese dub of Bewitched.

Quote:

Magical girl shows for an adult audience, like Madoka and Yuki Yuna, often don't feature male love interests at all

Or male anything. I may be mistaken, but I don't believe there are any lines spoken by male characters in all of Yuki Yuna Is A Hero.

not quite. while the yuri romance of uranus and neptune was the original in the magical girl genre,but what re triggered the staplepoint for this was the nanoha series and the very close relationship between nanoha takamachi and fate testarossa. in a way,it kind of pegged the way for madoka and yuki yuna to explore the yuri romance as the storyline. and from the looks of things, its the only thing fans of the genre wants right now,since its starting to look like fate/kaleid prisma illya will be going down the same road and explore the whole yuri romance as well.

Wasn't there a male doctor in Yuki Yuna that spoiler[gave the condition to one of the characters in a flashback] or something.