Ask John: Is the Magical Girl Genre Dead?

Question:
In light of the fact that Sailor Moon is now ten years old, and looking its age, do you think that the entire “magical girl” genre in anime has run its course, or are there still some tricks left up their sleeves?

Answer:
Sailormoon is, for the most part, a fading star, but the magical girl genre itself still shines as brightly as it ever did. Sailormoon was far from the first transforming magical girl heroine show, and it’s far from the last. While anime shows about witches like Mahou no Mako-chan and Majokko Megu-chan existed in the 1970s, Gainax’s Otaku no Video seems to confirm that it was 1982’s Mahou no Princess Minky Momo that introduced the transforming magical girl to anime. Sailormoon did not premier on Japanese television until a decade after Minky Momo. And now, more than 10 years since the debut of the Sailormoon animation, there are presently 5 transforming magical girl shows on the air in Japan: Ojamajo Doremi Dokkan, Princess Tutu, Tokyo Mew Mew, Full Moon wo Sagashite, and Nurse Witch Komugi-chan. Furthermore, the current Nanaka 6/17 TV series features a prominent magical girl, and the upcoming Pichi Pichi Peach anime TV series will be bringing yet more magical girls to Japanese television.

The transforming magical girl show has never evolved very much. Go Nagai created the idea of a transforming female hero in 1973 with Cutey Honey. Minky Momo took the exact same idea, and simply removed the sexuality from it. Sailormoon adopted the 5 member color co-ordinated team from live action sentai hero shows and adapted it for girls. Wedding Peach, from 1995, simply replaced Sailormoon’s celestial theme with a wedding theme. Last year’s Tokyo Mew Mew is Sailormoon once again, replacing the planet names with food names and switching the celestial or wedding theme with an animal theme. Creamy Mami and Magical Emi, both from the mid 1980s, were revived in the form of Fancy La-La in the late 1990s, then again reincarnated as yet another show about a young girl that magically transforms into a teenage pop singer in 2002’s Full Moon Wo Sagashite. The magical nurse theme of Nurse Angel Ririka SOS from 1995 has found new life in 2002’s Nurse Witch Komugi-chan. Originality, it seems, has never been the strong point of magical girl shows. On the other hand, it is exactly this lack of evolution that is the strength of magical girl shows. The longevity and popularity of magical girls anime lies in the fact that they’re largely all the same. To cite a phrase, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Transforming, magic using teen girls are a perennial favorite. As one generation outgrows them, a new generation discovers them. While the giant robot genre has evolved, and continues to change with time, and the golden period of “art for art’s sake” anime seems to have largely come and gone entirely in the 1980s, the magical girl genre seems to be here to stay, exactly as we know and love it.