Almost everyone has a favorite anime, and with a neverending array of titles, they are split into genres – so there is something for everyone. One of the most recognized anime genres is Magical Girl. In America, superheroes have a few traits in common like the cape, superpowers, a side kick, and a secret identity. In Japanimation, Magical Girl type superheroines also have common attributes, with few exceptions to the formula. They are ordinary girls who gain superpowers and have an animal life coach. Once the heroines’ new identities are realized, they have lengthy transformations and attack sequences. More often than not, the title heroine has magical friends who work as a team to conquer villains and promote morals and believing in oneself.
The first Magical Girl anime dates back to 1966 with Sally the Witch. In the 1970s, there were more added to the category, with Majokko being popular. In the 1990s, the genre grew exponentially with the debut of Sailor Moon.
Magical Girl anime and manga can be uplifting and give a sense of female empowerment, which women and girls vicariously experience through the superheroines. Our joys and struggles are reflected in the characters, and since multiple heroes cooperate as a team with diverse personalities, viewers have more characters to identify with.
The following is a list of twelve Magical Girl titles that are recognized in contemporary anime/manga. Included are the elements of the Magical Girl genre, storyline synopses, manga comparisons, some marketing techniques, and cultural reactions. By the way, manga is a Japanese comic book, and anime is the Japanese word for animation. An otaku is an anime nerd.
I have watched most of these animes or have read the manga, sometimes in Japanese or German. However, I only became recently familiar with two titles, Wedding Peach and Tokyo Mew Mew. Some passages are short as not to spoil too much, especially if it’s a favorite, like Princess Tutu.
Just as a quick way to compare and contrast, here is a table displaying the Magical Girl aspects each show exhibits. Then there is a short analysis of the table, and after that come the more comprehensive detailing of the twelve shows from the table.
To clarify the abbreviations….
T seq = Transformation Sequence
A seq = Attack Sequence
Yes and No are shortened to Y and N.
N/A is Non-Applicable.
Ten out of twelve series have a signature transformation sequence, and three quarters have attack sequences. Half of the titles have magical girls with nature-related powers. Looking over the individual warriors, it is still 51% as having nature magic.
One quarter have cats for coaches. The cat who dresses like a soccer coach in Princess Tutu hardly takes on the advisory role, so he doesn’t count. However there are two robots serving as guides in Tokyo Mew Mew. Although they are not fuzzy, they fulfill the role as pet/life coach in a Tamagotchi capacity. The second robot emerges in the sequel. There is an average of 1.5 mini-advisors in these titles. Having half an advisor may not seem possible, but Japanimation may predictably try it someday.
The next column regards where the story takes place most of the time. Three quarters of the titles take place in the real world, including fictional Earth cities. By fantasy standards, this is called low fantasy since impossible things happen in a real world, whereas high fantasy takes place in a fantasy realm exclusively.
Some stories fit into middle fantasy, meaning the character transcends into a fantasy world. The Wizard of Oz is a perfect non-anime example. In these Magical Girl animes, more than half involve transcending into another world. Five stories involve being whisked away into a fantastical realm, while two are the reverse. For instance, the sailor scouts leave the Moon Kingdom to live on Earth.
Sailor Moon
It’s undoubtedly a classic and a first anime for scores of otakus. The creator Naoko Takeuchi created an epic story about solar systemic princesses who unite to take down villains with geological names. Each sailor scout embodies the personality traits of astrological signs associated with their respective planets.
Serena is a normal teen until a cat, Luna, gives her super powers to fight monsters. She becomes Sailor Moon and meets friends who become her fellow sailor scouts. The sailor scouts represent planets and have mostly elemental powers, with some exceptions like bubbles. They all eventually find out that they were princesses from other planets, and that their souls were sent to Earth after the Moon Kingdom was sieged by the Negaverse’s army.
American marketers tried to target the show to little girls, but the show appealed to teens and adults with no gender boundaries. For awhile it was the highest viewed show on Cartoon Network. Acquiring more seasons was difficult due to conservatives’ protests against Uranus and Neptune’s relationship, which required altering the English translation to portray them as cousins.
The show’s popularity has spawned storefronts with Sailor Moon related merchandise, a Sailor Moon café in Japan, and even a musical. To dispel the uninformed argument that Sailor Moon is just for kids, there is a hentai titled, Sailor X, and there is Sailor Moon themed lingerie. Ultimately, Sailor Moon is for all ages, but some things are adults-only. Nothing is kids-only here.
Sailor V
She was the predecessor of Sailor Moon, and Takeuchi’s original idea. The V is short for Venus. She was the video game character in Sailor Moon’s earlier episodes, and later Serena meets her gaming icon who joins the team. The manga has been rereleased and is easier to obtain, but usually Sailor Venus is depicted in her orange skirt and collar, and rarely in her original colors and mask.
Like Sailor Moon, Sailor V finds out she has magical powers from a talking cat named Artemis. In contrast, Sailor V is British. What the two sailors have in common are that they are both frequently late for school. It makes me wonder if the creator had similar personality traits to her first two heroines.
Here is the original opening theme song for Sailor V, and you can see how much the original heroine had in common with Sailor Moon. Molly and Melvin were in the series too.
Code Name is Sailor V - Opening Theme
Magic Knight Rayearth
A masterpiece by CLAMP, alongside Chobits, Rayearth’s breathtaking imagery draws in the fans. The artistic complexity is best shown in the manga with its mural-like displays of scenery and characters.
Three girls from different schools are whisked away to Cephiro to save a princess who protected her world from chaos. A wizard initially explained everything and gave the first sets of armor and magically empowered one girl. The other two gained powers from the bouncing creature, Mokona, who seems to have a one-worded vocabulary. Their armor and weapons evolve, and their elemental powers advance with their convictions of friendship.
Cardcaptor Sakura
Another wildly popular anime by CLAMP, this is like Pokemon mixed with Lolita fashions. A 10-year-old girl, Sakura, finds a sorcerer’s book in her basement, and inadvertently releases numerous cards containing beasts. Keroberos, a small yellow winged primate, serves as her guide in retrieving all the Clow Cards. Sakura has a magic staff with a winged end, allowing her to fly. The other end has a beak-shaped jewel that unlocks a card’s creature to battle escaped Clow Card monsters. Each conquest results in collecting more Clow Cards to use in subsequent battles.
Unlike the other Magical Girl series, Cardcaptor Sakura does not transform or have a lengthy attack sequence. Her cousin, Tomoyo, provides her costumes for donning her superheroine identity.
Glitter Force/Smile Precure
This is a more child appropriate version of Sailor Moon that will appease even the most conservative parents. The heroines wear shorts under their dresses, and there’s an absence of romance. Instead the focus is more on friendship and morals with fairytale themes throughout the series. The villains are ones featured in folklore, and they conjure the least nightmarish monsters for the heroines to battle.
The five Glitter Force warriors have more innocent weaknesses like shyness and a fear of bugs. Whereas in Sailor Moon, characters had tempers, eating disorders, and one was expelled for fighting. The original Japanese version of Sailor Moon had alcohol references. In the sailor scouts’ defense, they were not mono-dimensional characters. Moreover, it’s fun to find the parallels between Glitter Force and Sailor Moon. I jokingly refer to Urlic as “Furry Malachite.”
In Glitter Force, there are creative episodes, where the members shrink, become invisible, turn into children, and one girl temporarily is transformed into a giant robot. Whoever writes the script is pretty good at clean comedy too.
Glitter Force is the Americanized version of the Japanese original Smile PreCure, which is the ninth in the Pretty Cure franchise. There are a total of 18 Pretty Cure series so far, and it was Glitter Force/Smile PreCure that caught my eye. A few years prior, I had seen a picture of some PreCure characters and I loved the color usage. Along with Sailor Moon, each series can be compared and contrasted with the others, yet the stories and characters are all lovable in their own way.
Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch
The premise of the story is simple. Mermaids turn into popstars and save the world. A mermaid princess leaves the sea to become human to pursue her love interest. If people find out she’s a mermaid, she dies by turning into bubbles. Her two friends from school are also mermaids, and when the villains try to cause problems, the protagonists transform into human songstresses and thwart them with their songs.
The animal companion who gives guidance is an anthropomorphic penguin named Hippo. He may seem bossy, but in the Japanese voiceovers, he speaks in honorifics towards the main character since she is royalty.
Alice 19th
A teenage girl, Alice, saves a rabbit from a busy intersection. The rabbit transforms into a human with rabbit ears, and for saving her she empowers Alice with a jeweled bracelet to become a Lotis Master. Her first Lotis Word is Courage. With magical words coupled with runes, Alice could enter people’s minds and vanquish the darkness from within their inner-worlds. With time, Alice gains more Lotis Word virtues to advance her mastery as an inter-psychological warrior princess. The oppositional terms are the Maram Words, which are vices.
Unfortunately, this beautiful manga did not make it to anime, so there’s no epic transformation into her Lotis Master outfit or her casting of her virtue runes. However, there is still hope that an Alice 19th anime may be developed, and you may live the dream of voicing the talking rabbit, Nyozeka.
Princess Tutu
A storyteller’s fictional world lives on after his death. Within this realm, a girl attends a ballet school run by a cat in a jogging suit who threatens to marry everyone. Ahiru morphs between humanity and duckhood every time she deals with her low self-esteem. When she gains inner-strength, she transforms into Princess Tutu in time to battle a perceived enemy. Her powers are derived from classical ballet.
The plot displays fairytale elements and Tchaikovsky storylines, and of course ballet. The Ugly Duckling and Swan Lake are recurring themes. Overall, if you love weirdness, this is an anime for you.
Wedding Peach
Three friends in the school newspaper club become angel warriors with bridal superpowers and battle devils from the hellish realm. Their celestial leader is Aphrodite, and their transformation tools and weaponized jewelry are prefixed with Saint. They are angels reincarnated into humans on Earth, and the main angel warrior is Wedding Peach. Her fellow Love Angels are Angel Daisy, Angel Lily, and Angel Salvia. (I don’t recommend salvia usage; that’s just her name.) The latter’s secret identity is named after the protagonist from Gone with the Wind, Scarlet O’Hara. This same angel falls in love with someone named Dean Butler.
Their magical attacks include, “Wedding Engagement Gift - St. Crystal Love for You,” “St. Mirror – Bridal Flash,” and “St. Pure Sword – Passionate Cake Cut!” Wedding Peach has a gun with a heart-scope that shoots love only. A whip comes out of Angel Lily’s armor-garter, and Angel Daisy has boomerangs and a fan. Angel Salvia has a sword and sometimes she fights in a wedding gown.
Tokyo Mew Mew
Young waitresses merge with endangered species’ DNA to become the Mew Mews, who fight Chimera Animas, which are alien parasites that turn animals into monsters. The villains controlling the parasites are aliens named after fattening foods, and the heroines are named after health foods and one herb. No major food group is left out, including pudding – wait that’s not a health food! Oh, it might be low fat. Anyway, onward! One villain, Quiche, falls in love with the first warrior, Mew Ichigo – but he wants to destroy all her friends, which may pose a problem. She never gives into Quiche’s romantic demands. In contrast, Mew Pudding struggles with her emotions akin to Stockholm Syndrome after being abducted by Tart. She eventually has to face him in magical combat.
Mew Ichigo, whose name means strawberry in Japanese, is the main hero who merged with Iriomote cat genes. Her weapon is a bell attached to a heart-shaped ring. Mew Mint loves ballet, and she mixed DNA with a blue lorikeet, a rare bird. Don’t be fooled by her wings and tutu, because her archery is en pointe. Mew Lettuce merged genetics with finless porpoise, and morphs into a mermaid once in awhile. Mew Lettuce and Mew Pudding have musical instruments for weapons, castanets and a tambourine respectively. Mew Pudding was exposed to golden lion tamarin genes, which is a reddish primate – not a lion. Mew Zakuro, whose name is Japanese for pomegranate, was infused with gray wolf genes, the only non-endangered species. Her genetic totem fits her persona since she prefers to be a lone wolf. Her weapon is a laser dancing ribbon attached to a crucifix.
Honorable Mention: The following fit the formula of the Magical Girl genre, but they are both Italianimation.
Winx Club
This is a combination of Sailor Moon, Harry Potter, and fairies. Six fairies attend Alfea College for good magic, and they fight off evil witches from the rival school of dark magic. Their powers involve elements, music, and technology. The witches have different powers as well – ice, storms, and mind control. Instead of having an animal to provide moral support, they each have a miniature fairy, a pixie, who tries to help them with their weak spots in life. Their pixies seem to embody personality traits that are opposite of their own.
The storyline feels like a soap opera except more colorful, with its relationship dynamics, personal problems the girls face, and the saga-type continuity in plot.
W.I.T.C.H.
Five girls are elemental guardians whose first names spell “witch,” and ironically they are not witches. The original comic book is from Italy, and was later adapted into an animated series for American and French production companies. In the original Italian comic book, the girls are guardians with powers of earth, air, fire, water, and energy, and they guard the center of the universe. In the cartoon, the energy empowered character has the element of quintessence, and the team guards the Veil. They transcend their fictional Earth city of Heatherfield into fantastical realms. They have to manage superheroine issues as well as mundane teenage girl responsibilities on Earth.
