What does the perfect mahou shoujo show have and what does the perfect mahou shoujo look like?

For me it's Nicolara.

>>279934392 (OP)
Card Captor Sakura is the answer to both. Sailor Moon is for nostalgiafags.

>>279934416
trvth nvke

>>279934416
It's my opinion that the Mahou Shoujo genre has yet to peak. I am trying to figure out what anons think about it because I'm attempting to bring it to that peak. There must be something comfy somewhere between Saturday morning happy time and death and destruction deconstruction and suffering. It's like no one takes it serious and they all only seek to push it to either extreme (or ecchi)

>>279934416
I don't have any nostalgia for Sailor Moon since I didn't really actively watch it back then, but now I decided to finally see what it was about.

Yes it's Usagi. The show is fucking hilarious because of her retarded ass

The answer might surprise you.

>>279934769
>It's like no one take it serious
It's just not a very serious "genre" in the first place.
Pretty much only existed to make anime for little girls, it doesn't even have a real definition outside of
>it's about one or more little girls who transform and use magic for reasons

>>279934416
>Sailor Moon is for nostalgiafags.
Sailor Moon is for literal toddlers just like Precure unless you’re talking about the manga and both ruined the genre.

>>279934392 (OP)
Shugo Chara was my favourite Magical girl anime

>>279935631
It is probably why I love chibis so much

>>279935524
Toddlers aren't into romance SOL or improbably short skirts. That's for teenage girls and boys who are "forced" to watch it along their sisters while pretending to not like it.

>>279935714
Sailor Moon 90’s anime was aimed at the same audience current day Precure is though: preschoolers to toy shill. It even had kigs like Precure.

Lyrical Nanoha

Mahou shoujo is a really broad genre which makes this question kind of hard to find a singular answer for. Of course I like girls in frilly outfits and big lasers, but trying to judge shows like Nanoha, Creamy Mami and Saint Tail by one universal set of criteria would yield wildly unreasonable results!

If we're just talking about what makes certain magical girl show elements better or worse though, I think monster fights (if indeed we're talking about a show that has them) should serve not only as progress for the 'saving the world' narrative, but also the episode's plot through being meaningful to side characters and by extension, grant character development to the protagonists. Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura do this to some degree, but I think other shows saw what they were doing and built on that.Heartcatch Precure, Utena and Princess Tutu are very good at this with the way the monster usually directly embodies a character's personal fears and frustrations. While Sugar Sugar Rune and Ojamajo Doremi have monster battles, I think they do a very good job keeping the overarching and episodic plots linked via the quest to steal hearts and the hunt for 'bad items' respectively.

Anyone interested in learning more about mahou shoujo as a genre would do well to read this thesis by Akiko Sugawa-Shimada. It's a really good history of the genre and helpful in making sense of how elements fit together. It only covers between 1966 and 2003, but a lot about modern mahou shoujo can be extrapolated from it: https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/51536/1/WRAP_THESIS_Shimada_2007.pdf

>>279934769
As someone working on a magical girl story myself I'm interested to hear what you're putting together, although I doubt you'd be willing to talk about it here. I'm guessing you're making a comic? I'd like to know how you intend to find that sweet spot.

>>279936258
Somehow I don't think preschoolers would be into anything but the bad fights or some humorous scenes. Unless japanese preschoolers in the 90s were particularly precocious, this shit is clearly for teens at very least. Feels like you didn't really watch it at all.

>>279936558
>this shit is clearly for teens at very least.
Look up some of 90’s Sailor Moon’s Japanese commercials and then get back to me and tell me it’s still for teens.

>>279936688
>commercials
>toys
I'm watching the actual thing.

>>279936558
Kids' fiction tends to feature characters a few years older than their target audience, tackling situatoins that are a bit more mature than they'd deal with. It appeals because they want to feel more grown up.

>>279936688
Would you say that Utena was aimed at an older audience than Sailor Moon, like as a show to move onto afterwards?

This sailor moon was for toddler retard is literally insane

>>279936739
Going by this logic it's accurately teens and older preteens then, since the girls are 8th/9th graders. Unless you call anyone under their age a toddler.

>>279935524
>unless you’re talking about the manga
well yeah, shoujo manga are for preteen and teenage girls

>>279936840
I assumed that the other guy was using hyperbole. I think that it's somewhere between what they and you were saying; I'd say very early teens are the cutoff point, but that the lower threshold for entry is probably slightly younger than you estimate.

I'm not trying to dunk on either of you really! He's right in saying marketing for magical girls targets kids that are very young (perhaps too young!) and you're right in saying a great deal of magical girl content is intended to appeal to much older kids than that. Sugawa-Shimada picks out fourth grade as the middle ground in her research, which is 9-10 and I think if you consider that the middle ground of the target age, that's pretty reasonable.

>>279936785
>Sailor Moon isn’t for toddACK!

>>279934769
Abstractly, I think the genre is about
>having a formula
>playing around with each variable in the formula to keep it interesting
>tying the formula to the overall narrative
>varying the formula gently
For example, the Cutie Honey formula is "Honey fights Panther Claw". The variables are "villain of the week" and "what transformation Honey uses". Then over time you make it more sexy, or more funny, or focus in on the parts that work and ditch the others.
Sailor Moon adds a lot of extra variables (team of girls, tuxedo mask, layered villains). CCS is really good at making the formula fit with its world and themes. Nurse Angel doesn't do any of the elements particularly well conceptually, but makes up for it somewhat with good execution. And so on.
So I think the ideal Mahou Shoujo does all of those things well. But realistically it's just a set of tradeoffs between each item. I have no idea which I like best. Maybe CCS.

>>279936739
>Would you say that Utena was aimed at an older audience than Sailor Moon, like as a show to move onto afterwards?
Yes definitely, Utena is for a teen and I dare say an adult audience what with the themes it explores and HOW it does it.

>>279934392 (OP)
The best mahou shoujo is a mahou shounen.

>>279934416
Card Captor Sakura is also for nostalgiafags. most of it is a snoozefest.

>>279937267
Based fujosister.

>>279937287
You just have abysmal taste. I finished it for the first time three years ago and it was a pleasant experience.

>>279937087
>He's right in saying marketing for magical girls targets kids that are very young (perhaps too young!)
Yeah that can be a thing. At least for Usagi's wild ride, the actual content includes a high amount of episodes dedicated to character development plots that would be lost on a too young audience.
I rememeber actual toddler shows, and that's nowhere near the same kind of writing outside of the fights, which to be fair are consistently the lowest point of the show with a few exceptions, I mean holy shit some actually made me mad.

>>279937162
>phoneposting
>-ACKposting
Thanks for making it clear you are in fact a worthless shitposter.
Now you may go back.

>>279937287
>Most of CCS is a snoozefest
Pleb filter.

>>279937402
>>279937579
>*wah, it's so cute and iyashikei, and she has a crush, and desuwa, hoeh!*
bleh.
cool music and dream sequences, though.

>>279937402
>>279937579
>>279938174
and Kero.

>>279937287
>nostalgia
Just so you know CCS only got about 3 negative reviews out of 108 on MAL. You're in the absolute minority.

>>279938484
>appeal to popular opinion
Glad we could agree that Sailor Moon is peak mahoushoujo then.

>>279938578
It's about statistics. SM has plenty of negative and mixed reviews.

>>279938578
Sailor Moon is for literal babies, see here >>279937162

>>279938753
It's a fallacy either way.

that's just rabi en rose

>>279938933
Precure and Sailor Moon ruined the genre.

>>279936531
>https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/51536/1/WRAP_THESIS_Shimada_2007.pdf
Neat thanks for sharing.
>what are you working on
Full length novel.

It is not a proper magical girl show without plenty of suffering.

>>279935524
Why are the Sailor Moon girls way more erotic than anything in Precure then?

>>279934392 (OP)
Gay little girls.

>>279936558
Sailor Moon was a global phenomena, it was not just japanese preschoolers being precocious.
If anything, it was the opposite. A lot of 80s and 90s anime that are considered "mature" in america were primarily intended for kids in japan and aired in children time-slots across the world back in the day.

>>279939829
That's interesting to hear! I wish you all the best. I won't expect you to say anymore, but I'll keep my eyes on the bookstores. I'm working on a comic, with a volume's worth of chapters planned out and a bunch more thought up. Feedback so far is positive, but I have a ways to go before I try and get it published.

Here are a few more resources I've found; I haven't read all of these in as much detail as the big thesis, but they may be worth your while:

Children of Sailor Moon: The Evolution of Magical Girls in Japanese Anime - Akiko Sugawa
https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a03904/
(I think it's weird that she describes yuri as a newer inclusion with Madoka when Utena and Nanoha exist, but it's a good article nonetheless)

Loss in the Land of Toys: Purikyua and the Marketing of Childhood Nostalgia - Anya Benson
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/229777688.pdf

Entering ever-expanding worlds: Constructions of place and time in contemporary Japanese children’s cinema - Anya Benson
https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/4391/1/thesisfinal12-1.pdf


There are a number of other interesting looking works, but they're paywalled in places like JSTOR and so on. If you have access, these might be worth a look:

Becoming Purikyua: Building the lifestyle-text in Japanese girls’ franchises - Anya Benson
Recipes for textual engagement: Accessing aspiration in girls’ character-based events - Anya Benson
Animation Platforms: Yoshiyama Yū, Tropical Rouge! Pretty Cure, and Sakuga as New Media - Alex Tai
Becoming the Labyrinth: Negotiating Magical Space and Identity in Puella Magi Madoka Magica - Sara Cleto and Erin Kathleen Bahl
Never-ending fights: Reading magical girls in the Anthropocene - Leo Chu
Impression of Characters in the Japanese Magical Girl Anime Metaseries, “Pretty Cure” - Shizuka Oosawa and Masashi Yamada

>>279937203
Is that supposed to be a nostalgia critic reference?

>>279943435
>Children of Sailor Moon: The Evolution of Magical Girls in Japanese Anime - Akiko Sugawa
>no mention of cutie honey, mecha or the toy industry's influence on the genre
What a shit article. The author seems more concerned with contextualizing the genre within western narratives than actually talking about the history of it in japan.
At least they acknowledge toku exists, so I guess it could be worse.

>I think it's weird that she describes yuri as a newer inclusion with Madoka when Utena and Nanoha exist
I think it is an extremely egregious thing to do in an article with Sailor Moon in the title. Pretty much every magical girl show in the 90s is gayer than Madoka. Sailor Moon has one of the most iconic lesbians couples in media, the nerve to call yuri a newer inclusion borders on homophobic.

I didn't even bother with the other articles.

>>279943435
>Utena
>Magical Girl
It’s not though, it’s more a deconstruction of the shoujo genre and even fairytales in general.