With last week’s article defining what Anime is, I felt that I might go ahead and begin getting my hands dirty. This week, I felt that it would be fun to take a look at one of my least favorite sub-genres of Anime, the Magical Girl sub-genre, Maho Shojo. To me, there is not much else that can compete with the Magical Girl sub-genre in terms of how unpleasant to the senses something can be. This meaning, I will go out of my way to avoid this sub-genre whenever possible. That being said, I should point out that there is still a reason to pay any attention to it at all. After all, it is a very popular genre, and makes a lot of money.
For anyone not familiar with this sub-genre, I will describe it in brief as unbiased as possible: The Magical Girl sub-genre is a type of story that is appropriate for female viewers or readers between the ages of seven and seventeen. It is also appreciated by many creepy, unshaven, sexually deviant freaks who get their jollies from little girls. The basic construction of the sub-genre involves one young female (usually a schoolgirl), some magical item by which she can cause a transformation into a magical girl, and copious amounts of pink. To explain a little further, the aforementioned magical item can be anything from a ribbon, a bell, a stuffed animal, a real animal, jewelery of all sorts, and hell, probably even food. In fact, the only item I have not seen being used as part of such a transformation is a dildo (and it’s just a matter of time.)
These magical girls often are seen fighting some sort of evil, protecting their loved ones, or just pigging out on sweets. When they are not fighting off demons, fighting their way through schoolwork, getting raped by tentacles etc, there is usually a love interest, and this is where things begin to get oddly familiar for anyone familiar with American comics.
As mentioned in the title of this article, the Man of Steel (aka, Superman) seems to have some qualities similar to that of these Magical Girls. It is interesting to note the similarity between them, especially given how old Superman is. While Magical Girls have been around in Anime since the 1960s, with Sally, The Witch being one of the earliest if not the first, Superman has been fighting bad guys, stopping bullets with his manliness, and having problems with his love life since the late 30s.
The most note worthy of the similarities between these two is one of particular interest. Everyone who knows about Superman also knows that he cannot simply run around in his blue spandex with a bright symbol on his chest, beating people up. No, it’s well known that if you saw someone in tight spandex, trying to stop a bus with his fist, you’d assume him to be insane. For this reason, Superman lives two lives: Clark Kent and Superman.
This is not unlike Magical Girls, who also often live two lives. A Magical Girl will not run around the streets in a skimpy skirt, wearing little to hide their underdeveloped girlish figure and beat people up. If not for the sheer amount of embarrassment one must endure in such a state, the breeze cannot help the comfort levels at all either. So instead, it’s common to find Magical Girls spending most of their day in school, doing their chores, and learning to be a proper Japanese Woman (I’m not lying and I don’t mean to be sexist. I didn’t make up the Japanese Culture). But in their off time, and sometimes interjecting into their personal life, the evil tentacle monsters, or Capitalist American scum will attack unprovoked and force the Magical Girl to transform without being seen in order to fight off whatever. This is similar to the way Superman would have to find somewhere out of sight to take off his Clark Kent clothes and “transform” into Superman to fight off the Commies.
There are other reasons why these two both must conceal their identities from the general public. As people who fight crime or “bad guys” in general, it’s important to realize that what they are doing is legally wrong. The term for what they are is Vigilante, which is someone who fights and/or seizes criminals of their own accord, not as part of the law. For this, Superman and Magical Girls alike have good reason to hide who they are, and to avoid confrontation from the police.
Finally, it is also not at all surprising to find that both the Magical Girl and Superman have a love interest. What becomes interesting in comparing the two though is the difficulties of dealing with this significant other, and what they must do to preserve what they can salvage out of the relationship. I think that Superman has it better off though, in the long run. While Louis Lane will swoon for the heroic Superman, the Magical Girl is more likely to attack the waylay pervert, trying to look up her tiny skirt. Even in the event that a Magical Girl would give away her identity to her love interest, he would most likely run for his life, frightened to death of the girl who can level a building with some fancy hand movements and some sappy lines.
In closing, I would like to mention another reason why the topic of the Magical Girl was chosen for one of my first articles. As is often the case, some of the first exposure that newcomers to the genre have is the Magical Girl sub-genre. In this situation, Anime is left giving the impression that it’s purely for children, it’s all light hearted, silly, and damaging to the spleen. Anime eye do not always rival the lens on the Hubble Telescope, not all Anime girls are donned in pink frills, and pink is not the only color that inkers are allowed to use. No, I assure these unfortunate souls, who have had the Magical Girl genre to be their first experience that there is much more to Japanese Animation. And for those who are more familiar and/or would like to delve deeper into some of the finer aspects of this media, I will gladly lead the way.
Allow me, next week to truly begin ferrying you across the river Styx, into the great abyss. It’s not as bad as it sounds, really.
See you later, Space Cowboy.
