In Depth Analysis of 90's-00's Magical Girl Anime, Madoka, and Precure

[malymin]

Ok, so full disclosure - these are not mine! The author of the blog linked these on Cohost back before it shut down, and I think they're extremely informative and interesting. A lot of context that passes by most of us in Anglosphere spaces gets explained!

Why You Don’t See New Magical Girl IPs the Way There Used to Be (It’s Not Because of Madoka)

In today's post, H.C., having heard the fallacy "Madoka killed the magical girl genre and made everything into ironic parodies or nostalgia milking" one too many times, goes into the actual reasons you don't really see as many new magical girl IPs nowadays and discusses how people who often claim to be "defending" the genre are actually just as guilty of underestimating it.

The Myth of Madoka’s Influence on Magical Girls, and Why It Barely Did Anything Compared to PreCure

H.C. goes into the myth of Puella Magi Madoka Magica's influence on the magical girl genre again, this time tackling how the series was actually received by its Japanese and Western audiences when it aired in 2011, and also goes into PreCure and how its cultural clout is probably way more than you even realize.

The first link also goes into a lot of detail about why the following slew of reboots, sequels, and spinoffs exists:

• Sailor Moon Crystal (2014)
• Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card (2016)
• Saint Tail girls! (2018)
• Tokyo Mew Mew Olé! (2020), Re~turn ♡ (2020), New (2022)
• Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch: Aqua (2021)
• Shugo Chara! Jewel Joker (2024)

I hope people here find them interesting!

Comments

[stepnix]

Excellent articles, very informative, wait there was a Saint Tail reboot???

[malymin]

Sequel, apparently, but yea. It was a manga, not an anime, so that's probably why it flew under the radar.

https://archive.org/details/kaitou-saint-tail-manga-1-7

[sonofgodzilla]

Oh, these articles are good, thank you for linking. I got a bit defensive when I read the titles because I remember Madoka happening live, and I remember the audience that show brought in and how, for a while there, it was impossible to talk about the genre without something wanting to tell you what a genius Urobuchi was, however I can't fault what's being said here.

I am a big fan of the GxH shows too and it was lovely to see those get mentioned, and I absolutely agree with what is said of how big Precure is now, and I continue to act like I'm surprised at this as I regularly drop 16,000 yen a pop in the official store in Tokyo station, lol.

[malymin]

Yea... the way Madoka has been held up as some uniquely good magical girl show (as well as the backlash disparaging it as uniquely bad) really has prevented a lot of people from really taking the genre as a whole on its own terms. It very much reminds me of the way people who are ignorant of mecha anime history tend to hold Evangelion up as a uniquely subversive work "uplifting" a childish and shallow genre for doing things that... works within the genre were already doing. A particularly moody, aesthetically distinctive, and (compared to other works within the genre) relatively short series tends to have a lot of newcomer pull, though, compared to the Precures or Gundams of the world. And so it's easy for people to simply never question that "magical girls never suffer or struggle" or "mech pilots are never traumatized by combat" outside of the one popular series that's been labeled a "subversion" on TVTropes.

I'd love to know more about GxH! I don't hate Precure, but I kind of feel sad that it's largely the only game in town for the genre these days (I kind of miss how some of the 90's-00's media mix series had a more preteen/early-adolescent feeling in their tone and content...), and would like to know more about the recent alternative options. Shame that Covid seems to have caused a small extinction event for Precure's competitors. I'm glad that in the second article, the author emphasizes that it's not so much Precure to blame for the lack of options in magical girl tv shows aimed at girls, so much as the general sexism towards "girl's shows" vs "boy's shows" that we see just as much outside Japan.