Remove ads

The Power of Love (Magical Girls vs. Mechs)

Reader mode
... I hate being torn on a vote cause it means I won't be satisfied no matter which side would win.

On the one hand Younger and with a Familiar. Leans more towards tradition magical girl stuff and hits her at her most vulnerable stage with her disillusionment just beginning and her not being of age meaning she's still reliant on her parents. Her horribly rebellious parents.

On the other hand Older and possible without a familiar. Leans away from the traditionalism and comes to her when she's already been beaten down and broken. The emotional attachment to the parents might be even more thorough with how long they've been left alone and her realizing she needs them for more than raising her.

Ehh... Yeah, I'll stick to the former I guess. Don't exactly know when votes are going to close, no one else who has voted gave any opinions, and splitting the vote is bad juju.
 
Inserted tally

The Hopeless Bringer of Hope seems to be winning, so I guess we're going with that.

This genre is significantly darker than I thought it was.
Adhoc vote count started by Inkbones on Jun 3, 2020 at 3:44 PM, finished with 25 posts and 11 votes.
  • [X]Plan fuck thematic consistency
    -[X] Parasites| One your parents has a disability and therefore exists only to siphon resources from productive members of society.
    -[X] College Freshman| Sleepwalking through life, trying and failing not to sink into despair, looking for a reason to hope. Luckily, one found you.
    -[X] Aliens| A visitor from another wold decided to lend you the use of its advanced weapons and technology.
    -[X] A magical kid
    -[X] A spiffy suit & tie
    -[X] A small and irate dragon
    -[X] A seemingly normal broomstick
    [X] Plan Power Without Guidance
    -[X] Queer| They dared to violate the sacred and traditional roles of marriage, back when such things were legal.
    -[X] High School Freshman| Back when you were just beginning to realize how broken the world was, and how little you could do to stop it. Or so you thought.
    -[X] Magic| You discovered that you were able to tap into and manipulate the natural energies of the cosmos.
    -[X] A magical girl
    -[X] Mysterious cloak
    -[X] You'll go without| This will make you more powerful right from the start, but you'll have no idea what you're doing.
    -[X] A mystical tome
    [X] Plan Classic
    -[X] Foreigners| Your parents were not born here(although you were). They came here from another country and had the gall to take away jobs and welfare from real citizens.
    -[X] High School Freshman| Back when you were just beginning to realize how broken the world was, and how little you could do to stop it. Or so you thought.
    -[X] Kaiju| The same entity that created the Tribulations granted you a measure of their power in the hopes that you would succeed where they did not.
    -[X] A magical girl
    -[X] Chain mail, with cape and tiara
    -[X] A small and irate dragon
    -[X] You'll go without| This will make you more powerful right from the start, but you'll have great difficulty with control and precision.
    [X] Plan Revenge of the Pantheon
    -[X] Heretics| You are practitioners of a religion that is not accepted by the state's cult.
    -[X] High School Freshman| Back when you were just beginning to realize how broken the world was, and how little you could do to stop it. Or so you thought.
    -[X] Eldritch| You made a pact with an incomprehensible being outside of reality. You still don't know what they got out of the arrangement.
    -[X] A magical girl
    -[X] Mysterious cloak
    -[X] An adorably affectionate spider
    -[X] You'll go without| This will make you more powerful right from the start, but you'll have great difficulty with control and precision.
    [X] Plan Tech Heresy
    -[X] Heretics| You are practitioners of a religion that is not accepted by the state's cult.
    -[X] College Freshman| Sleepwalking through life, trying and failing not to sink into despair, looking for a reason to hope. Luckily, one found you.
    -[X] Technology| You found a seemingly broken piece of government tech in a junkyard that bonded to your skin when you foolishly touched it.
    -[X] A magical girl
    -[X] A futuristic uniform
    -[X] Write-in: A clever ferret
    -[X] A staff engraved with a complex series of runes
    [x] Plan Absolute Destiny Apocalypse
    -[x] Queer
    -[x] High School Freshman
    -[x] Magic
    -[X] A magical girl
    -[x] A glamorous ball gown
    -[x] A traditional smarmy black cat
    -[x] A delicately engraved wand
    [X] The Hopeless Bringer of Hope
    -[X] Radicals| Your parents were there to protest the foreign conquests, the revocations of liberties, the prison camps. If not for fear of your safety, they would be protesting still.
    -[X] Traitors| They willingly harbored the persecuted in our home and helped ferry them to safety.
    -[X] Parasites| One your parents has a disability and therefore exists only to siphon resources from productive members of society.
    -[X] Magic| You discovered that you were able to tap into and manipulate the natural energies of the cosmos.
    -[X] High School Freshman| Back when you were just beginning to realize how broken the world was, and how little you could do to stop it. Or so you thought.
    -[X] A magical girl
    -[x] A glamorous ball gown
    -[X] An excitable ball of light
    -[X] A fancy sword
    [X] The Hopeless Bringer of Hope
Click to expand...
 
Inkbones said:
This genre is significantly darker than I thought it was.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
There are many facets of this genre, but yea. The genre got popularized by shows that featured pretty real problems that a child could face, while at the same time casting it in the light of 'it will/ can get better'.
It gets dark at times and that creates a huge contrast it's light elements, making those incredibly memorable. When I think of Fate from Nanoha their friendship became incredibly meaningful, because the titular character rescued her from an abusive parent, when the show is over we tend to forget and forget the pain, it is hope remains.

You stumbled on the right tone in your OP. It made me curious how someone who is less familiar with the genre would approach it. Sometimes the greatest innovations of a genre comes from people outside of it.
 
It depends on the particular take on it, but the two most common themes are them being Coming of Age stories and Hope in the Face of Overwhelming Despair.

Some drop those, or only briefly visit them. Well, a lot of stories are Coming of Age ones in one way or another, so... *Shrug*

Also Friendship. There's usually a theme of Friendship.

The balance of mundane life vs. hero/magical life and keeping the latter hidden also plays a part a vast majority of the time.

Cardcaptor Sakura is the single most well-done light and fluffy magical girl series I have ever seen, and I only watched it for the first time last year at that. And I mean the original, not the recent continuation. Even then it visits some more serious and dark themes, like literally everyone she knows and her entire town being erased from existence.

Also an illusion of her mom nearly drowning her/making her jump off a cliff.

Yes, really. Those two stand out a ton for how hard they veer into the serious/dark territory though as compared to the rest of it.

Sailor Moon is what I'd likely point to as the Ur-example of a magical girl series though. More the manga than the anime, but the anime is still very good. Err, the original anyway. Crystal is a bit... eh. The main thing it changes between the manga and the OG anime is it makes the monsters less nightmare fuel-ish. In short its a cosmic horror setting that has a nice cosmic horror living as a young middle school girl in Tokyo scold the other ones into leaving.

Well... "scold." Generally with magic blasts of course.

There are other variations of course, the original Precure is very good as well and plays it straight with the effects of collateral damage and such in the later season of the first one I believe.

You've probably seen PMMM memes before, but that one is literally a subversion of the usual Hope conquering Despair with the writer asking, "How much Suffering can I pack into the genre." Hope won anyway cause one of his characters flipped him the bird, but, uhh. *Shrug*

Anyway, your intro was really interesting even with just how unfamiliar you are with it. I'd say try to keep going as is and play with what you know? Hopefully ( :V ) that'll turn out good.

Edit: And of course you're bringing other genres into this which can/will compete with or outright run roughshod over the others.
 
Last edited:
Here's what i would of voted for.

[] plan dapper non binary hero

[ ] Parasites| One your parents has a disability and therefore exists only to siphon resources from productive members of society.

[ ] College Graduate| Stuck in a dead-end job, unable to find anything more than menial employment, still living with your parents as much for their sake as for yours. You had consigned yourself to a life of bare survival, but the universe had other plans.

[ ] Eldritch| You made a pact with an incomprehensible being outside of reality. You still don't know what they got out of the arrangement.

[ ] A spiffy suit & tie

[ ] An adorably affectionate spider

[ ] A set of old-fashioned pistols
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top