Frills of Justice

For the December talking meme, lielac prompted: "Talk about your top 3-5 magical girl shows/anime/manga/things!"

(not that I'm going to be terribly precise about the rankings, here.)


( Top Two: Sailor Moon and Madoka Magica )

( Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne )

Recommended for anyone who likes:

• the identity-porn angle in Miraculous Ladybug
• the Lupin/Zenigata dynamic in Lupin III, but with ladies
• ridiculous off-the-wall Japanese adaptations of Christian mythology
• pre-Madoka takes on "this magical-girl universe turns out to be way darker than it first appears"

( Saint Tail )

Recommended for anyone who likes:

• "let's go steal an X" as a heroic catchphrase
• Steven-Universe-type "whoops, it turns out my mom got up to some shady things in the past, and now I've gotta use what I've inherited from both my parents to make it right"
• Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, but maybe a little less weird, and the romance is cuter
• everything is relentlessly adorable

( Tokyo Mew Mew )

Recommended for anyone who likes:

• Captain Planet, but with Japanese furries
• the Sailor Moon villains in the Black Moon and Makaiju arcs
• Catradora, but the angsty part is temporary and resolved
• unusually good shoujo gender politics
• bird lesbians

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Honorable Mention

I didn't put Revolutionary Girl Utena or Read or Die on the list. Decided they were too genre-adjacent to really rank. And this is already longer than I meant it to be, so I'm not going to do a whole sidebar about them anyway.

Short version: they're also very good, and you should give them a look!