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What Makes Magical Girls So Popular?

However, at the same time, I found a Tumblr post saying that magical girl anime, while considered feminist by Western standards, are actually made to make little girls conform to very strict gender roles (Granted, I don't know how true that article is, and the post is littered with the OP cursing the living heck out of the person they're attacking, and I can't find myself taking it seriously because of that), enforcing the "girls have to be beautiful, sweet, demure, and love boys" ideal by presenting girliness as a strength. Apparently, the Japanese view feminism as not focusing on presenting either masculinity or femininity as a strength. But I only heard this from TVTropes and a Tumblr post, so don't take my word for it.

Even so, I still like some magical girl anime. I did have some bad experiences with the Precure fandom, so I'm staying away from Precure for a while.

The biggest western imports of the genre as of recent years are Steven Universe and Star VS. the Forces of Evil...
There's also Miraculous Ladybug and it's small if loyal following...

at least for general broadcast television in the West.

Interesting and as far as I can tell, accurate article. But it does make me wonder if something like this could be done for why so many men like magical girl shows, especially since usually they can't relate to it. I love the magical girl genre and I know a lot of other guys who do, I just wonder why they catch on with guys so well as well. I think there's a lot more to it than just having cute girls. But an attraction to the genre might be different than an attraction to certain shows in the genre.

if a Pikachu transformed into a hot guy, would you date it?

Instead, it is a run for stardom by a girl in a 6 y-o girl placed, at times, in a 16 y-o girl's body who got into show business by her own talent (and some minor boost from a "chance").

jr240483 wrote:

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.

I agree that Nanoha's had a lasting impact in that regard, but you can also point to Mai-Hime/Otome for helping push things in that direction too. That franchise's stock has plummeted over the years, so it's easy to forget how popular it was for a while in the mid-2000s (or that there was a time when people brought it up regularly in "best magical girl ever" conversations). The first time I watched Madoka, I immediately saw callbacks to both Mai-Hime and Nanoha in the first episode. Anyway, Mai-Hime came out the same season as Nanoha (Fall 2004) and had several relationships with a pretty clear yuri subtext, while Mai-Otome in 2005 went even further and pretty much dropped the "subtext" qualifier entirely. Meanwhile, Nanoha/Fate, though the earlier seasons definitely lay the groundwork for it, didn't really become a firm ship until StrikerS premiered in 2007 (and I remember there were still plenty of Nanoha/Chrono shippers at the time who weren't very happy).

Coming out of this history, Sailor Moon combined magical girls and another Japanese genre, tokusatsu. As a genre of live-action TV aimed at young boys ...