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Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Breaking the Mold with Soaring Sky! Pretty Cure
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Saeryen
 Posts: 984 |
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Okay, who thought they could insult my dear Pikario’s hairstyle?
Silliness aside, yes, I love Cure Wing! Sweetness and compassion are important values for boys. |
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Nev999
Posts: 159 |
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Good discussion, though there's a couple other examples I want to mention regarding the history of magical boys in the genre- while it's definitely a first for Precure, there are a few other fulltime magical boys that don't slot neatly into the Tuxedo Mask role or come from parody shows. Syaoran from CCS functions as a rival and then full partner to Sakura in the way a girl might in another show and Nanoha Strikers also had a magical boy as part of the team- though it was very noticeable that his transformation sequence was not as sexualized as the ones for the young girls in that show, barf. There's probably other examples too but those are the main ones that come to mind. Neither of these examples had the touch of unashamed fem/cute fashion that Cure Wing does with the earrings and so on though, and that's something I really appreciate about him.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2652 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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Kaito Sinbad from Phantom Thief Jeanne is another interesting example - Chiaki starts out as Maron's rival in his magical boy form, but there's no question that he IS a magical boy - transformation, mascot character, and all. He's the first one I remember who didn't fit the Tuxedo Mask mold. |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2302 Location: Online Terminal |
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I think one thing to keep in mind in the Gender Discourse is that Magical Girl As Action Hero is relatively new to the canon. I don't want to assume Sailor Moon was first, but it was definitely the most prominent example of moving away from the standard of using magic simply to solve problems and/or change one's age. (That one comment from a piece here about Sailor Moon being Saint Seiya for girls will forever live rent-free in my head.) However, enough time has passed that a countercultural idea like a Distaff Jump Hero is now just the culture.
Also, I feel like pointing out that the educational mixed-media series Cook R'n shifted from girls-only to including at least one boy in 2017ish. It switches between live-action and animation, but I will point it out because a) it holds a special place in my heart as a Fun Japanese Thing I first found while in Japan and b) you can legally watch it with a subscription to TV Japan via a participating provider. |
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2291 |
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Which makes Tuxedo Mask a less Jesusy Athena. That fits surprisingly well. |
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TsukasaElkKite
 Posts: 4014 |
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Cure Wing is ADORABLE.
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JennLegacy
Posts: 108 |
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I think it's worth pointing out that Mewkledreamy also had a magical boy in its main cast. Seeing as how they're direct competitors, it makes me wonder if Toei saw what Sanrio was doing and decided it was finally the right time for them to start fully committing. The timeline checks out with Delicious Party having Black Pepper a year after Mewkledreamy's premiere.
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TAnthonyAuld
Posts: 60 |
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YES! I want Team Butterfly Wings to arrive already! 
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spacedin
Posts: 44 |
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Please, no scapegoating of "conservative toy companies" here. The toy business is high risk and low margin. Meaning the vast majority of new toy lines fail, and most of the toy lines that succeed don't generate much profit per individual toy sold. If your response is "whatevs" you are overlooking something: toy companies LOVE toys that are equally popular with boys and girls - or at the very least are popular with both in some measure - because said toys increase profits and reduce risk. The ideal for every toy company isn't "Muscle Ninja Bob" on one hand and "Ballerina Nurse Betty" on the other. Instead it is Play-dough. Slinky. Silly Putty. Hungry Hippo. Toys that everyone can play and don't need the increased costs associated with standing up separate channels for manufacturing, packaging, distributing and marketing for boys and girls individually.
Also, the theory - accepted as fact by some - that corporations and their advertising campaigns shape cultures ... I will say that it is overstated. The reason is that, well, market capitalism is only a few hundred years old in the first place and is only dominant in a tiny percentage of the globe. So no blaming Hasbro and Bandai for cultural ideas that long preceded them and exist in places that have never seen a single Barbie or G.I. Joe ad. A historian who published a book claiming that America's gun culture was entirely the product of Winchester, Colt and other firearms manufacturers blanketing the U.S. with advertising campaigns. Received a ton of acclaim, including the Bancroft Prize. But it fell apart under scrutiny. Turns out that there was plenty of evidence that people simply wanted to buy guns and no evidence that they had ever seen the ads in the first place. And that those same ads were ineffective in locales that were disinterested in or hostile to guns. So commerce reflected the culture rather than shaped it. Another example: check out the "American Kirby is hardcore" page on TV Tropes. Something along those lines: the famous meme on how The Legend of Zelda's Link would have looked had he been made by an American company instead of a Japanese one. As the link franchise was in the 1980s, an American design would have looked like a cross between Rambo, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Duke from G.I. Joe (tall, brawny, muscular, a scar or two). But because Japan's standards for male attractiveness was very different in the 1980s, Link has had thin, even feminine looking designs as opposed to an 80s professional wrestler. Not just Link. Hero from Dragon Quest? Cloud (and Sephiroth) from Final Fantasy? Same. Toy companies would LOVE it if girls bought "boy toys" and boys bought "girl toys" or for that matter if there were no distinctions. It would be more money for less risk. The issue has always been getting the kids to buy the toys. Yes, lots tried. The company who makes Legos noticed that very few girls played with Lego sets. They did lots of advertising, they even did cross-licensing agreements to make Lego sets based on popular girl toy lines and media franchises. It moved the needle but not a whole lot. Lego remains heavily favored by boys to this day, which is why the protagonist of The Lego Movie was Emmett (Chris Pratt) and not Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks). It certainly isn't due to any conservatism on the part of the company that makes them, as it is a progressive company based in Denmark. A more recent example: the case of the American cable superhero cartoon "Young Justice." The TV network, DC comics and the toy manufacturers worked out this deal where the TV network's revenue for "Young Justice" would be based primarily on a percentage of the toy sales. Pretty good right? Easy money. Except that the TV network decided that they wanted advertising revenue for the show too. So instead of making a traditional superhero cartoon marketed at preteen boys - who they figured would watch anyway because it was a superhero show - they basically made the narrative a soap opera. Result? The ratings were great ... with preteen girls. The preteen boys ditched it when they saw that it was more about family drama, friend group dynamics, love triangles and - I kid you not - regular one on one therapy sessions where Black Canary compelled the teens to talk about their feelings and a major arc where Miss Martian decides to deal with her body image issues by becoming a cheerleader than it was explosions and knock down drag out fights. And since preteen boys didn't watch the show, they didn't buy the toys. As for the preteen girls who did watch the show? They didn't buy the superhero action figures either. The ratings were good, but the network needed both boys AND girls to watch the show to reach the ad rates targets. So they had to infuriate a ton of their fans by cancelling a show that - despite being one of their better ratings performers - was actually losing them money. So they tried again by hiring the creators of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic to create a superhero show specifically for girls associated with a "for girls" line of toys and merchandise. Result? Same. Preteen girls watched but didn't buy the toys, clothes etc. as they did with My Little Pony. Toy companies reflect culture far more than they create it. And my guess here is that the toys for this male Cure won't sell particularly well. Particularly because the people who have spent years lobbying for a male Cure aren't going to buy them either. |
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Nev999
Posts: 159 |
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Cutie Honey all the way back in 1973 was the first to fit the Magical Girl Warrior mold, but Sailor Moon was what really kicked off the trend by adding the whole color-coded sentai style team thing to the mix. It didn't really blow up as a concept until that. |
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Nev999
Posts: 159 |
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Oh right I forgot about that! Jeanne really had a lot going on, and I'll never stop trying to remind everyone that spoiler[it pulled the bad guy mascot plot twist way before Madoka].
I don't really have time to get into all that, but why are you going "omg i kid you not" about therapy sessions and love triangles? Those aren't unique to Young Justice or soap operas lmao. There's a BTAS comic where Bruce Wayne has to attend therapy, there's several arcs in mainstream DC and Marvel comics where heroes attend therapy. Teen Titans had an episode where Starfire struggled with her body image and still had a big audience of pre-teen boys. Superhero media in general friggin' loves love triangles, they practically invented the secret identity love triangle. |
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redvelvetdoll
 Posts: 65 |
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I don't have any hard sales data or anything to back this up, but my understanding is that Black Pepper from the previous precure season got a lot of the same merch that cures do. Dolls, costumes, those little things that look like Fisher Price people, etc. And it sold relatively well for both adult collectors and children. Personally, my precure friends and I are ready to go all out for Cure Wing merch at our next con, so I hope Toei can see it as a sign of support for male cures 
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Regalli
Posts: 113 |
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I mean, I'm pretty sure the YJ toyline didn't do well because the toys for Young Justice were not great. The figures weren't well-articulated, adult superheroes were released before main cast-members, they saved standard issue Robin as a solo figure for what was ultimately the final wave (probably because they were trying to sell the two-pack with Batman)... a questionable showing all-around. And I remember complaints about articulation when the line was new by collectors. I'm also pretty sure DC Superhero Girls did respectably well for itself. The show debuted in 2019 four years after the toyline and web shorts did, which presumably means WB thought the franchise was earning enough to keep investing in. 2019-2022 and two seasons isn't a phenomenal run for said TV show, but when you add in the preceding shorts (starting in 2015) and the toys' original launch in 2016, you're looking at more like six-seven years. I struggle to find data there, but the length of the line if nothing else is a pretty decent run. (And given WB's whole... everything, the last few years, and especially the cancellations and problems with DC and Cartoon Network stuff, I wouldn't take DCSG's cancellation as a given sign of low revenue. Again, I can't find data but we have reports from multiple showrunners that there was some behind-the-scenes chaos impacting production and show cancellations the last five years.) I doubt Wing's going to be the single biggest seller this season, but they're clearly trying new things with it in general - this is, after all, our first season with a supporting pink Cure and a leading blue, too. (And Prism's a rare color for Precures herself, with white - there's only two examples with it as their "proper" color.) So we'll see how these shakeups do. |
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August61992
Posts: 2 |
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What's so "breaking the mold" about having a male in a female group, or having more males in a female-dominated show? Don't you think we already have so many male characters in this world already? Are females not allowed to have a place for themselves? If a popular all-male idol/magical show gets a single female member, would you consider it to be "breaking the mold" or would you pretend that it doesn't exist? What about "how will it hold up against conventional wisdom that girls should stay away from "boyish" things"? Strange that you didn't write that Uta no Prince's all-girls spinoff. Must be because it was just an April Fools joke.
Besides, this has been done so many times. Even Nanoha did this decades ago. Hell this may surprise you but some harem shows can be counted as "breaking the mold" because the male MC is just as capable as the females. Brutally honestly, this Precure feels like a slap in the face to the little girls and people who were happy about Precure for sticking to their magical-girls-only roots until this one. To have this to celebrate the 20th anniversary is insulting too. I heard that this entry isn't doing well in the ratings and it's not winning over the fans.
You guys sound like those countless crossdressing shows never existed. Mariya Shidou, Hideyoshi Kinoshita, Jun Watarase, and Astolfo would like to say hello to you. |
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primalmaximus
Posts: 109 |
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Ok. This has convinced me to watch "Fairy Ranmu", for the beefcake and all the other aspects of the show. And it's convinced me to watch a Pre-cure anime for the first time, ever.
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