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The Enduring History of Magical Girls

As much as other series had touched on these themes, it was the 2011 series Puella Magi Madoka Magica that truly solidified it. The series' first three episodes appear as a typical magical girl show before the story slowly spirals into its ‘hidden’ dark and violent tale, all the while maintaining its cute aesthetics.

Madoka Magica was one of the first times that the fragility of the human behind the magical girl was so exposed.

This is a very interesting article. But there one very important thing missing.
How can the authors write about the history of magical girls and not have a single line about probably the most influential magical girl series of the early 21 century, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha

Nanoha is the first real dark magical girl series and aimed to a different audience than the usual children, Shoujo and Shonen audience. Some previous series have elements that attract young adult male audiences but Nanoha was made for them. Nanoha opened the dark magical girl door to older male audience with an unprecedented amount of violence and darker themes. Some previous series had some darker parts but not near the scale of Nanoha
Without Nanoha we would not have Madoka Magica, Magical Girl Raising Project and Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka.

Quote:

Madoka Magica was one of the first times that the fragility of the human behind the magical girl was so exposed.

That was already done buy Nanoha. Family problems, abuse, torture, brutality and violence, Nanoha had that years before Madoka. Gen Urobuchi already talked how Nanoha was one of the influences of the Madoka series.

I saw the Nanoha series (1st two seasons and have the 3rd on hold but we'll come back to that for the reason why). Even in their very own anime, they are not referred to as Magical Girls. I forget what exactly they're referred too but one of the chars simply refuses to be called a Magical Girl and from there the moniker was dropped and instead either nothing was mentioned or whatever they are called in their series. FF to S3 of Nanoha and the genre sure as hell ain't magical girl, its Military which i ahve it on hold at around ep 6. Military fyi, is one of my LEAST fav genre and tech the past 2 seasons b4 it already had military elements to it. So yeah, I will say Nanoha is NOT a Magical girl anime esp when in lore/world itself says they rn't. So if this is why Nanoha wasn't mentioned, I honestly can't blame them given the sitch with Nanoha. Btw, Nanoha is competently average and underwhelming. And while the torture and abuse is mentioned, we don't see much of it so while am not saying it doesn't have it, it certainly wasn't that dark esp when compared to any other anime out there with real dark elements that show said dark elements and a good bit at that.

Nice that Minky Momo's importance in the MG genre has been explained, but for an article about the history of Magical Girls in Anime I miss the mentioning of Studio Pierrot's 80s shows such as Creamy Mami, Pelsha, Magical Emi and Pastel Yumi. They were all quite successful in in Japan, especially Creamy Mami, and had many fans overseas like in Italy.