Forum - View topicHow do you think the mahou shoujo genre is changing?
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potatodood
Posts: 17 |
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I'm not an expert on the mahou shoujo (magical girl) genre, since as a male, I'm not exactly the targeted audience. My knowledge comes from four titles, which I'll explain below.
With the two "classics" that I've watched, Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura, they've taken a simplified approach towards storytelling. While good entertainment, one could say that they are relatively simple, following a monster of the week type formula over a period of arcs. While these shows may not strictly adhere to these formulas and should definitely not be defined by them, I feel that the themes are a bit lighter compared to the others that I've watched. The more recent ones I've watched is Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha and Puella Magi Madoka Magika (man they're long titles). With MSLN, great detail was shown in the fights. According to my friend, a person who previously worked on a Gundam project (be it a director or fight choreographer) worked on this, which makes sense given the quality of the fights. (Though I have no way to verify this. I would like to know if this is true if someone knows.). As for PMMM, it was highly praised for being "different" and "darker", especially shown in that (in)famous episode 3. Thematically it feels heavier for both shows. While I'm not saying that they'll be revolutionary, do you think MSLN and PMMM is changing the genre into a more action oriented style? Are they targeting a wider audience? Or are they outliers compared to the "standard" magical girl formula? I would have to say that they are getting more action to target more people. Basically, how is the genre changing, if at all? |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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I don't think the genre is changing. There are still the shows aimed at young girls, like Smile Precure!.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha are anomalies. Both were directed by Akiyuki Shinbo (though the studios were different), and with the six-and-a-half year gap between them I don't think we are really seeing a trend. Just like Bakemonogatari didn't start a new trend for bizarre dialogue-heavy shows, I don't think PMMM will spawn a trend for more darker Magical Girl shows either. And yet, both were grand slams in terms of DVD sales and fan buzz. Last edited by dtm42 on Thu Jan 12, 2012 10:18 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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The problem with this is you're listing shows aimed at different demographics.
Madoka and Nanoha are not aimed at the same people as Cardcaptor Sakura and Sailor Moon. The first two are otaku shows. "True" magical girl, as in actual shoujo titles aimed at girls, you want to watch current shows like Pretty Cure, Pretty Rhythm, Jewel Pet, and the loads of other shoujo shows. This is where Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura comparisons belong. Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura belong in this group. Do not look at Madoka and place it n the same level or even related to the stuff that's actually aimed at little girls. Madoka isn't really going to change anything within the shoujo demographic, because it's not a shoujo. Pretty Cure, for example, is quite clearly the follow up to Sailor Moon in terms of thematics. Where as Sailor Moon fused magical girl with the Super Sentai formula, Pretty Cure does so with the Kamen Rider/tokuatsu formula and runs with it. New teams each year, just like Kamen Rider/Sentai, as well as having numerous cross-over movies with previous teams just like Kamen Rider/Super Sentai. Pretty Cure has, for all intents and purposes, become the female equivalent of those two tokuatsu shows so much so that it airs right after Super Sentai and Kamen Rider on Sunday mornings all one right after another. |
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naninanino
 Posts: 680 |
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Actually I would say that Cardcaptor Sakura isn't that much of a classic mahou shoujo type. It relied a lot on daily life, episodic stories with romantic innuendo. You could say that it was soft as opposed to Sailor Moon. I'd say it is close to... Hime-chan no Ribbon. And these are both close to more personal mahou shoujo stories like Full Moon or Fancy Lala. It seems that these are not that common anymore.
I'd also say that Precure, and to some extent Nanoha, have been pushing battle type mahou shoujo onwards. Other than that, I don't think there has been any change. |
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Hypeathon
Posts: 1176 |
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I will say that Madoka Magica being a really sucessful show in terms of blu-ray sales in Japan will somehow influence the production of future shows the way K-ON seems to have influenced production of certain shows (although I could be wrong) like more anime adpatations of 4-panel gag slice-of-life manga revolving around a main cast full of teenage girls like with A-Channel and Yuru Yuri or with how Sounds of the Sky had a very similar K-ON character design. We may likely see a similar influence from Madoka Magica. In fact, it probably already started with Kazuo Koike wanting to make his own magical girl show. Anyway, in terms of whether or not the genre is changing, well first of all, I've recently can't seem to classify magical girl as a genre as much as a theme. I mean obviously that's not going to stop other fans from classifying magical girl as such, but it personally makes more sense to call it a theme to me. Up until now, I've just went along with how others classify the genre without giving it much thought. There's something about calling magical girl a genre where it doesn't feel as broad with the number of stories that could be made as with action/adventure, comedy, drama, romance, or mystery. It's the same feeling I get out of the superhero theme in which it's so specific on the type of superhero stories being told that I can't find myself calling it a genre. But that's just me personally speaking first of all. Second (and the follwoing is also my personal opinion), I don't feel that the theme of magical girls is changing or even evolving all that much, at least not more towards my liking. I will admit that having rewatched Madoka Magica recently to properly examine it, I will admit it does provide a very different perspective on the magical girl theme and I like it, but again it wasn't going the direction I exactly had in mind. If say I hypothetically made my own magical girl show, there are a few things that I would like to apply that I don't see enough of in magical girl shows. And I'm sure someone will eagerly point out to some other magical girl show that supposedly does what I want more out of the theme as an example, but we'll see. One big thing I would like more of in a magical girl show is when characters transform into magical girls, I would want the transformation itself to serve more of a purpose than just make the character seem more prettier and girly-looking while also suddenly being acrobatic, able to leap and easily using a kind of magic without any prior knowledge or skill. I would like the concept of the character's magic when transformed to provide potential with the kind of magic but the character needs to go through a learning curve with her magic. And I wouldn't want it to be as simple as a mascot character telling the girl exactly how to use this magic or that magic and then she suddenly learns. I would want the learning curve of using magic to be like how I would need to figure out how to color with a different medium and different utensils and further understand color theory, saturation, value, etc. Basically, the magic power the character has would require her to develop her skills and open her mind and that she struggles with it at first. I do like how based on what I've seen in Shugo Chara so far, Amu has 3 character transformations where one isn't stronger than the other. At the same time, the transformations don't have much of a point to them in terms of having their strengths and weaknesses, so she could just stick to one and not need to use the other ones. I know there is a different point to the characters, Ran , Miki, and Su that provide the transformations for Amu which I don't mind at all. But still I wish I could've seen more of what I mentioned. There are definitely other things I would apply in my own magical girl show like characters who's behavior isn't just being an airhead or is fully of purity or is fixated on some love interest. I would like to see more of something three-dimensional out of the character's personality, which I actually have seen out of Pretty Cure. I've only watched the first series (not Max Heart yet) so far, but I really like the Nagisa and Honka characters. Those two and their characterization honestly feel rarer and rarer these days in terms of their human behavior actually being believable. Like in episode 5 I think, spoiler[nagisa and Honoka were at a park and were being hit on by 2 random guys joking around, which pissed off Honoka. She was trying to tell the guys about being better mannered and they just kept making fun of them. Honoka was so annoyed with them that Nagisa had to drag her away, before things would get ugly.] That was incredibly hilarious to me because she reminded me of one of my college friends who has a pet peeve about being randomly hit on by passing guys on the street. |
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Konopan
Posts: 399 |
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But that's wrong. Even Precure has an expected demographic appeal to males in their teens and twenties. Nanoha and Madoka are essentially made for yuri-subtext loving otaku and fans of sentai/mecha series. As for whether the genre as a whole has been changing, Princess Tutu and Utena are a hell of a lot more "thematically heavy" than Madoka, and they've both been around for a long while. Heck, Panty and Stocking counts as a mahou shoujo, and it's not much bolder than good ol' Cutey Honey Shit's cyclical, yo |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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Unfortunately I do not know much about the current state of "traditional" mahou shoujo because I do not watch anything that does not get a North American release. I love Cardcaptor Sakura, Sailor Moon, and Wedding Peach but shows of that type are just not popular here.
I read threads like this, usually as a lurker, because I do like to keep somewhat up to date just in case one of the newer shows does get licensed here. With the discussion about the definition of "mahou shoujo" it occured to me that if you do not limit it to the traditional definition and broaden it to include all girls who gain extraordinary powers after a transformation then Sekirei is mahou shoujo. Much as I like the traditional mahou shoujo I think that I like the Sekirei type even more. 
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Graceful Nanami
Posts: 303 Location: United States |
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Needs to go back to the Akazukin Chacha/Hime-chan no Ribbon era. But it won't.
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gsilver
Posts: 649 |
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Volibear
 Posts: 344 |
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i wouldn't say the genre has changed, i'd say its grown. once it was just for children but now there is a new sub-genre if you will, that targets the older audiences, its not a change in any way, its growth that targets people who will buy all the different kinds of merchandise and BDs
lets face it, without them shows like PMMM would never be anywhere near this popular, it would just be another show, nowhere near the phenomenom that its become
i wouldn't say that shows like Sekirei fall into Mahou Shoujo territory, sure they have some elements but i think the dresses and wands and petit girls are all far too crucial to the genre, they essentially define what the genre is so i think Sekirei etc. are just Girl Battle series, although i do see where your coming from there |
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chrisb
 Subscriber Posts: 638 Location: USA |
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Thank you! :D What a lot of the current mahou shoujo titles lack is a sophisticated touch. I know I may sound nerdy for saying this, but Sailor Moon, Utena and Cardcaptor Sakura had a certain level of maturity, whimsy and class that shows like Precure and Nanoha just don't have. Sailor Moon and CCS also knew how to tell a mature love story. They may have been immature romances at first, but by the end they had become very honest ones. I am no yaoi/yuri fanatic, but the homosexual romances in CCS (Toya/Yukito) and Sailor Moon (Uranus/Neptune) are some of my favorite anime romances. They were handled maturely and had a certain level of cool that I just can't find in other anime. I also miss shows like Nurse Angel Ririka SOS. I enjoyed Madoka a lot, but the depressing/dark atmosphere in mahou shoujos like Nurse Angel Ririka SOS or Utena felt a lot more genuine and carefully planned. |
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SnowMusket
Posts: 52 |
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Well there is a current trend towards more physical fights and less just standing there and throwing magic (a la Sailor Moon). There also seems to be a rise of fighting magical girls aimed to either the male or the adult audience.
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