Magical girls

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LovelyTragedy111

New member
So, what's the general consensus when it comes to these types of shows? Do you find them charming or boring? Repetitive or acceptable? Cute and fluffy or...too cute and fluffy?

I personally do like Magical Girl series a lot. And you know it's funny because between all the series that I have watched I should be somewhat nurab to the common traits that they have (naked transformation, Engrish special attacks, etc.) but every time I see a new one, I'm always like "WHOOOOA! THAT'S SOOO COOL!" Like I just started watching Pretty Cure on CR (one of the better magical girl series I say) and I just love watching it. Except for Mepple and Mipple. Those things are just too cute and fluffy. I mean, there's Keroberos and then there's...these guys

(shudders)

My favorite magical girl series is the Nanoha franchise but I really like Cardcaptor Sakura, Cutie Honey (particularly Re:Cutie Honey) and (despite it's insane filler) Sailor Moon....the original anyway. Also, can the other five people who have seen Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne please stand up? Please tell me I'm not the only one who's seen that....

Anyway, what about you guys?
 
I find 99% of them to be terrible. Cliche, bad writing, offensive gender stereotypes, and so forth. It'd be nice if we saw more magical girl shows that were, well, not magical girl shows, and tried to redefine the genre.
 
As a general rule, I utterly despise magical girl shows from any continent, from WITCH to SM. If they're wearing pink and take ten minutes to transform I am getting out a pitchfork and torch.

Honey is the exception so far for me, mostly because she actually, y'know, fights people. That and Go Nagai is awesome. (And Re: and the live were even more awesome) I think Honey has more in common with western heroines like Power Girl and Wonder Woman than the sugar drenched sailor senshi.
 
Have you ever seen Nanoha, out of curiosity? Doesn't exactly "re-define the genre" but it is pretty different.

More of a shounen mecha series if anything.



Yeah, more people need to see the live. Both movie and TV versions.
 
I'm generally not a big fan, but I'm a twenty-something male. As such, that sentiment of mine doesn't go very far.

The decent ones have their place. As do giant robots, comedy shows, space operas, action shows, fantasy shows, and beloved cliche busters, just to name a few. For its intended audience, Pretty Cure seems like a rather good and positive franchise, encouraging girls to reach for their dreams and all that. It's certainly a step up from a passe series like Wedding Peach, which is one of the very few cases where I could not sit through one episode. It was incredibly cheesy and the three heroines were gushing over their desire for boyfrienRAB. Gah. ADV once gave a volume of it to me as a free gift when I ordered some Robotech directly from them. Can't imagine why.

At any rate, the early dubs of Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z did conspire to get me exploring what anime was a long time ago. I'm far from alone on that one. I also have an odd sort of respect for Sailor Moon S in particular, which got as serious as shoujo ever gets. The ultimate villain in that was not messing around, and the new characters were actually used well.

People say Nanoha is different, though I think that only goes so far. It is distinguished by its cute characters as much as its flashy magical powers, and the story boils down to winning frienRABhip and winning over misunderstood foes with kindness. Not too far off course, although it's well and good that it ignores the post-transformation speech.

If I had to name a cliche buster it'd probably be Magic Knight Rayearth. After all they've got magical powers, sworRAB, and giant robots of their own, and it's a fantasy instead of a story about schoolgirls that are having everyday life interrupted by bad guys. If I were to watch another magical girl show, it'd probably be that one.

So, I suppose I'm not really into your traditional magical girl. I do have a soft spot for cute though, which is why I'm partial toward Cardcaptor Sakura. No lame speeches, no sermonizing about frienRABhip smiting evil. It's just about a young girl living a very abnormal life. She deals with situations as opposed to generic monsters.

So I guess what I'm actually saying is that I usually only particularly like magical girls when CLAMP is drawing and writing them. Huh, fancy that.

Though I suppose this means I disagree with Beat, he did hit on a good idea. Anime could stand to take a page or two from the Wonder Woman concept.
 
Although they're not the best kind of anime, I don't mind the genre. I think its cute.

I like Sailor Moon. I like Cardcaptor Sakura. I like Nanoha. Winx Club is okay.

I have nothing against the genre, it just isn't the best.
 
I still love Sailor Moon to this day as it was the gateway for me to both Toonami and the world of anime and I like Cardcaptor Sakura, Revolutionary Girl Utena and Princess Tutu but other then that I don't really care much about the genre.
 
I'm not sure if I'm more offended you lumped WITCH in with Sailor Moon or the fact you wouldn't give it the time of day just because of their outfits. I wouldn't consider WITCH a 'magical girl' show so much as I would consider it a fantasy epic. If we are considering it, then I revoke my former statement and replace it with 'WITCH is the only good magical girl I've seen, because the hero is a likable and non-offensive female stereotype' and actually has an epic storyline'.

Yes, I've seen it (one of them, I can't recall which series); it suffers from the same problems as other shows do.
 
Yeah, it's weird right? CLAMP makes awesome magical girl series. I hope they make another when they're done with the Tsubasa/xxxholic fanwank...I mean, saga

(tearing up)
Thank you for agreeing with me on this!

(How about Rayearth, have you ever seen Rayearth?)
 
So, to not be offensive, magical girls should just mope around all day? >_>

"My astral drop is a total blank!" *mopes*
"Matt doesn't like me~" *mopes*
"I got in a fight with my mom" *mopes*
 
(ahem)

"Mamoru doesn't like me anymore!" (cries)
"I need to lose more weight!" (cries)
"Mamoru is evil now!" (cries)
"Luna ran away!" (cries)

and then there was the fillers...
"I should learn to be an ice skater...just like the Moon Princess!"
"Oh no! The bad guys targeted the Supermarket!"
"I need to study how to become a princess..."(Goes to take princess lessons)

And then there were the many depressed perioRAB that would occur during the middle and end of the seasons which she would "lose" Mamoru for one reason or another. I can go on...(Okay she was more of a crybaby than mopey but are those two really more or less annoying)
 
As a 40-year-old dude, my opinion on the genre doesn't carry the weight of an anorexic flea, but while I'm indifferent to magical girl shows as a whole, the good ones are something of a guilty pleasure for me. I admit to having kind of a weakness for adorable girls and magic powers.

As always, it depenRAB on the show. I was never all that into Cardcaptors (though I liked Sakura and Mei Lin) or Sailor Moon (though I did like the characters of Sailors Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Uranus) and I've never seen Rayearth, but I do kind of like Winx Club. I like it a little more than W.I.T.C.H. for various reasons, actually.

*ducks*
 
Can you expand a bit? I don't recall them moping around that much. Will has a crush on Matt, but unlike most other shows, she actively pursued him, got to know him, and asked him out by the end of the first season, and they were an item for the rest of the series. Ignoring the shock of the girl being the one to initiate a relationship, most shows would delay that to hype up the drama, or save it til the last episode to hook anyone up. Most of WITCH's drama stemmed from the actual story (Phobos/Nerissa and their threat) rather than mundane 'girl' activities like not having a date for the prom, or losing weight, or something. Could you expend on the astral drop comment? The only time I remeraber them complaining about the astral drops were when Will was upset that hers went off and screwed up Will's plans to hang out with her frienRAB

and then she died

I've heard of it, but never got around to watching it.
 
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