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The Magical Girl Problem

no. said:
If we impose stringent aesthetic restrictions on what counts as a MG show, we remove much more good shows than bad ones. I'd rather have a murky genre than one where trash like Prisma Ilya and Raising Project and Site make up half the works.
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It's hardly stringent to exclude Revue Starlight. This is a pretty broad genre from Majokko Megu-chan to Creamy Mami to Sailor Moon, but Revue Starlight just isn't in it. The aimed at adults garbage doesn't even exceed 1% of the works, so overbroadening the genre just to include shows you like to 'balance' out the rest is just a little absurd.
 
Ford Prefect said:
It's hardly stringent to exclude Revue Starlight. This is a pretty broad genre from Majokko Megu-chan to Creamy Mami to Sailor Moon, but Revue Starlight just isn't in it. The aimed at adults garbage doesn't even exceed 1% of the works, so overbroadening the genre just to include shows you like to 'balance' out the rest is just a little absurd.
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Like the only argument I can think of to really include Starlight is that we tend to include Utena, and in terms of slightly loose integration of MG concepts and the blending of the thematic elements with the plot I can kind of see an argument there. Though, given that the thematic connection to MG anime is far looser in Starlight than it is in Utena, and I've always thought Utena rather borderline anyway, I'm not sure I can say it's a compelling argument. Like honestly in terms of appropriate placement it's far closer to Mai Hime than Utena to me, where you can bank on one or two components that kind of fit, and that is a hellishly hard sell.

Starlight is a pretty good faux-Ikuhara work but I feel like trying to claim it as a magical girl anime is definitely a stretch; like I honestly was continually conditioned, in a sense, to try and see it as one but it just kept presenting itself as something that is consistently different. And that's perfectly fine, I just think we can accept that things are what they are and are not what they are not if we want to argue that the label means that much.
 
Well, I think it's time to get the chart out again


I would probably put Starlight in the mid-left of ANTN, with what stops it being a ANTP the fact that the plot and character personal struggles sets of stuff are less mahou, as it's not really about growing up and becoming a woman /finding oneself because the characters are at a point in their life they have done that, and the plot itself is less traditional mahou. But the character dynamics and plot points relating to them are strong mahou, which is why its closer to TP in the TN square.

Which by my tandards means it is within acceptable bounds of true purist to be considered mahou.
 
I mean I have issues with some of the shows on that chart, but we'll just set that aside I think; one thing at a time.

Sightedjt said:
But the character dynamics and plot points relating to them are strong mahou, which is why its closer to TP in the TN square.
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How do you figure? Karen fits well enough I guess, and Karen and Hikari's interactions are some of the more MG stuff in the show, but otherwise...?
 
Id point to banana as what Id say is the biggest one in that style where as she lost the match but was still able to move on and grow as a direct result of that, thanks to the support of her friends.

Theres a few other ones like that where the characters are still able to gain personally from a loss which is a very mahou thing IMO.
 
Gotta say, it feels kind of weird trying to push Starlight outside of Magical Girl discussion when early on the thread we had a claim of Mai Hime as an orthodox dark magical girl show and Saekano, Boogiepop, and Narutaru as "unorthodox" dark magical girls shows go roughly unchallenged.

I mean, I agree, I think Starlight is at its core to wrapped up in Takarazuka and as a character drama, though it shares in some general aesthetics.
 
I admit I've never watched Prisma Ilya, so I don't actually know what it's about, but I was under the impression that it's one of those shows that uses magical girl conventions but adds in a lot of fanservice for the sake of fanservice.

Which was something I wanted to bring up earlier, when the dichotomy of "bright magical girl shows for kids" and "dark magical girl shows for adults" was stated; where would "bright magical shows for adults" (or at least people to whom panty shots start to become targeted towards, which is probably more "teen" than "adult") fall under? I don't remember Pretty Sammy becoming especially dark, for example.
 
Adloquium said:
I admit I've never watched Prisma Ilya, so I don't actually know what it's about, but I was under the impression that it's one of those shows that uses magical girl conventions but adds in a lot of fanservice for the sake of fanservice.

Which was something I wanted to bring up earlier, when the dichotomy of "bright magical girl shows for kids" and "dark magical girl shows for adults" was stated; where would "bright magical shows for adults" (or at least people to whom panty shots start to become targeted towards, which is probably more "teen" than "adult") fall under? I don't remember Pretty Sammy becoming especially dark, for example.
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Prisma Ilya is a spin-off of the Fate series that uses weird Second Magic stuff that because reasons has magical girl aesthetics to it. The girls use special Servant cards to take on forms based on various Servants from the franchise.

It's also disgusting, featuring constant shots of the ten year old protagonists in various states of undress, making out in very intense, sexual ways, and wearing rather skimpy costumes. The whole thing panders to hard-P Pedophiles in an extremely blatant fashion.
 
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Flibspeak said:
Gotta say, it feels kind of weird trying to push Starlight outside of Magical Girl discussion when early on the thread we had a claim of Mai Hime as an orthodox dark magical girl show and Saekano, Boogiepop, and Narutaru as "unorthodox" dark magical girls shows go roughly unchallenged.
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Like, I must have missed that or wasn't focused on it, or just didn't feel like getting into a classification debate at the time. But I wouldn't count Boogiepop as magical girl, no. Or Saekano. I haven't seen Shadow Star so I can't comment on that one. Mai Hime is kinda weird in that you can make a decent argument for it in terms of characterization and thematics, I feel, and in that respect I don't think that classification is that crazy. Plotwise it is basically an atypical shounen show, though, so you need to figure out how to weigh those things and overall where it lands may be more a matter of perception. And like, that's around where I put Starlight. Like I think there are some elements where things mesh- I can see where @Sightedjt is coming from and the whole nature of the ending is in the ballpark, and some of the reasons that make Utena and/or Mai-hime valid inclusions make Starlight fit too- but when I was watching the show it just didn't read that way to me, and like when you have a situation where I feel it's more borderline, that's going to matter a lot.
 
Adloquium said:
I admit I've never watched Prisma Ilya, so I don't actually know what it's about, but I was under the impression that it's one of those shows that uses magical girl conventions but adds in a lot of fanservice for the sake of fanservice.
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I did. The first season was mostly a condensed parody of CCS and MGLN TOS, with F/SN lore and content for flavor, and the worst of the fanservice (like the catsuit - which was much worse than you'll think when you read this) was cordoned off into the bonus shorts. This was also the weakest season IMO.

...Then 2wei added a new underage character whose very essence is fanservice and gave her a bunch of SOL episodes - over half of each season - to show off to maximum effect. The end of each half of 2wei, and all of 3rei, dialed things back to serious-mode again, and nobody has time for lolicon-pandering when Serious Plot Happenings are afoot - which was also when the series was at its best. (though the SOL episodes were genuinely funny)

Don't watch it if a) you aren't already familiar with Nasuverse stuff or b) you can't be sure that someone won't sneak up on you while something is onscreen that you really wish wasn't.
 
Mmm, I can see where youre coming from when you say starlight doesnt fit.

Its in that spot where its a lot more dependant on where you draw the genre lines
 
Flibspeak said:
Saekano, Boogiepop, and Narutaru as "unorthodox" dark magical girls shows go roughly unchallenged.
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I missed those being mentioned, because none of those are magical girl shows. Neither is Mai-Hime. Mai-Otome probably isn't, either.

Where this leaves us is that Revue Starlight isn't a magical girl show. Like, it has no features that would make it one.
 
@Broken Base @Ford Prefect I don't agree with the classifications either, though I would agree about putting Mai Hime (and Otome) more into the murky zone with Starlight due to its aesthetics.

For where I am talking about, it was @Shadell's post back on page 2. That sort of listing has a lot of side eye at trying to classify along normal genre conventions.
 
Clearly we must solve these disputes of what counts as magical girl shows in the traditional manner: magical violence followed by friendship.
 
I'll admit to not having watched Revue Starlight yet (soon though) but it sounds, by most accounts, like it has at the very least a strong thematic overlap with the MG genre. So I'd argue that it's more relevant to discuss than schlock like Site that borrows the aesthetics but not the meaning. Or to put it another way, if we're counting Utena as a Magical Girl series, then Revue Starlight probably should be as well; by the same token, if we don't count RS, then Utena should probably be disregarded as well.
 
Flibspeak said:
Gotta say, it feels kind of weird trying to push Starlight outside of Magical Girl discussion when early on the thread we had a claim of Mai Hime as an orthodox dark magical girl show and Saekano, Boogiepop, and Narutaru as "unorthodox" dark magical girls shows go roughly unchallenged.
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To clarify as I think the post was a bit muddled in this description, don't think any of these are 'unorthodox magical girl shows' as the genre is largely being defind, so much as they are shows that arguably share imagery and themes with magical girl shows, and that occupy a darker space in anime. You could attempt to construct an argument that these shows have girls who are magical. Mai Hime (and especially Otome) I'd classify as straighter magical girl shows that are a bit on the darker side in a number of ways (more and less on Otome there respectively), though they have some aesthetic differences from cleaner examples.

Rather, it seems a bit easier to claim Narutaru or Elfen Lied as a predecessor to Mahou Shoujo Site in some respects than Sailor Moon, and these shows also use young women with magical powers (and cutesy aesthetics) as an excuse or backdrop for, whatever our feelings on how well it's done, darker storylines.

Here then, the point was less a strict typology, which is finnicky and hard since the classification is a bit tricky, and more to argue that it's these genre-adjacent darker shows that are more susceptible to any kind of Madoka-effect than the Pretty Cures of the world. After all, a strict genre categorization that doesn't bias against including darker shows (to show their prevalence over time, and the genre's shifting composition with time as well) would have to ignore a lot of thematic concerns.
 
Shadell said:
To clarify as I think the post was a bit muddled in this description, don't think any of these are 'unorthodox magical girl shows' as the genre is largely being defind, so much as they are shows that arguably share imagery and themes with magical girl shows, and that occupy a darker space in anime. You could attempt to construct an argument that these shows have girls who are magical. Mai Hime (and especially Otome) I'd classify as straighter magical girl shows that are a bit on the darker side in a number of ways (more and less on Otome there respectively), though they have some aesthetic differences from cleaner examples.

Rather, it seems a bit easier to claim Narutaru or Elfen Lied as a predecessor to Mahou Shoujo Site in some respects than Sailor Moon, and these shows also use young women with magical powers (and cutesy aesthetics) as an excuse or backdrop for, whatever our feelings on how well it's done, darker storylines.

Here then, the point was less a strict typology, which is finnicky and hard since the classification is a bit tricky, and more to argue that it's these genre-adjacent darker shows that are more susceptible to any kind of Madoka-effect than the Pretty Cures of the world. After all, a strict genre categorization that doesn't bias against including darker shows (to show their prevalence over time, and the genre's shifting composition with time as well) would have to ignore a lot of thematic concerns.
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I figured that was what you were shooting for, though in a lot of cases it feels like the minimum standard was just looking for shows that had dark supernatural themes that had girls as central characters, which I'm not sure how useful that is. Some of the list I can see specific to shows, such as Elfen Lied, Narutaru, and Saikano are more directly related to MSS, but less because of the magical girl connection and more on the dark and edge. It's also my opinion that a show like MSS is just entirely aesthetic draped around a similar core of suffering, which there is an audience for.

Boogiepop and Hell Girl feel more awkward for me in particular because one is so wrapped up in its urban mythos and character drama and the other in Japanese horror that it's hard for me to tie them in. Not judging the purpose of the list but some are a lot more loose and awkward then others.
 
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