Ask John: Why Isn’t There a Magical Girl Robot Anime?

Question:
Why do we have no magical girl robot anime aimed at any age group? Recently animators have been making new works by mixing genres. Sailor Moon + fighting aimed at girls makes Pretty Cure; aimed at otaku it makes Lyrical Nanoha. Is it just a matter of time before we get Sailor Moon + Gundam? Pretty girls, become robots and fight evil!

Answer:
Anime revolving around a girl or girls and robots isn’t entirely absent from anime. Tatsunoko’s 1976 super robot television series Gowappa 5 Godam was the first robot anime to feature a female lead character. 1989’s Mobile Police Patlabor is particularly remembered for being a real robot show starring a woman. The 1985 shoujo-esque romantic comedy Hai! Step Jun revolved around a genius preadolescent girl and her pet robot. 1985’s Iczer-One OVA series also featured an all female cast battling in giant robots. The 1995 Graduation spin-off series Sailor Victory combined dating simulation girls with giant ninja robots. And the 2005 Kirameki Project OVA series may be best described as a bishoujo Giant Robo. However, there’s not exactly been a magical transforming girl robot anime yet. Probably the closest anime has come has been the 1994 Magic Knight Rayearth television series that featured magical girls who summoned and piloted giant robots. But the girls didn’t, by default, always use their mecha nor transform directly into mecha pilots. Despite including both magical girls and giant robots, Rayearth combined the two tentatively.

Toei has begun aggressively promoting its upcoming Toei Robot Girls television series. It’s not clear yet if Gai-chan, Gacky, and Bara-tan will transform from their normal human appearance into their super robot personifications, or if they always resemble robot girls. It’s also not yet clear if the Toei Robot Girls anime will skew toward male otaku (like the robot anime this show references) or primarily shoujo anime viewers (those who watch Toei’s Sailor Moon, Demashita! Powerpuff Girls, and Pretty Cure). However, the early promotion of the Toei Robot Girls anime provides a hint, and a clue about why the anime industry hasn’t yet produced a genuine magical girl robot anime hybrid. The official Toei Robot Girls homepage prominently advertises the DVD release of vintage Toei Robot anime. That implies that the website and series are directed at nostalgic male otaku. Furthermore, this promotional effort serves as a reminder of the commercial necessity behind anime.

Anime gets produced because it attracts viewers who watch the TV commercials aired during anime broadcasts, and purchase the DVDs and merchandise associated with anime. Robot anime specifically stimulates sales of toy robot figures. Magical girl anime increases sales of toy accessories like jewelry toys and light-up, musical wands. A genuine magical girl robot anime hybrid, however, may compromise its own merchandising potential. Male viewers collect expensive otaku-oriented figures of female characters, but don’t buy mass market girls’ toys. Girls typically don’t buy robot toys. I can envision the difficulty inherent in producing mass market magical girl robot anime spin-off merchandise that consumers will actually buy. Animators may be interested in the creative possibility of merging two historically separate genres, but most of the time animators can only produce whatever corporate sponsors are willing to fund.

Shoujo magical girl anime existed for over 30 years before it merged with the influences of Japanese live action sentai and tokusatsu in the form of Sailor Moon and Akihabara Cyber Team. Shoujo anime went even longer before adopting the intense fighting of shonen anime, as it did in Pretty Cure and Lyrical Nanoha. It may be just a matter of time before the influence of robot anime pervades shoujo. I suspect that the absence of such a merger isn’t due to a lack of creativity or desire. Rather, I guess that we haven’t seen a magical girl robot anime yet because corporate sponsors have been hesitant to invest in a production like that with an uncertain potential to earn subsidiary profit.