Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
[Originally published in the Nottingham Anime Society Zine 2019]
One of titan genres of anime, magical girls have been a staple of Japanese animation for over fifty years. In Japanese it's Mahou-Shoujo (魔法少女) and is core to both the identity of anime and otaku in general. The genre however is mysterious. Despite its universal seeming ubiquity, many otaku will only have a couple (or none) under their belt. Instead it acts as a metastory, one that everyone has a vivid image of in there head; but not necessarily an image of a specific show, rather the general idea and aesthetic of it.
To analyse the genre and find the core of what it is, I will run through the outline of a general magical girl show. This isn't any one show but an amalgamation of all my experiences with the genre. To build a picture of this story, I will go over the two pivotal elements: character and story.
Just to address one elephant, while in recent years mahou-shoujo there has been a push for more adult-oriented mahou-shoujo, the backbone of the genre remains the classic long-running kids show, and that is where you will find the very best of the genre. If that turns you off then all I can say is that you're missing out on some of the best contemporary storytelling, however if you have seen one of these more adult-aimed shows (think Madoka or Tutu), then you may be surprised to hear that the difference between them and true-mahou-shoujo is not a lot. Mahou-shoujo is a genre full of thrilling action and dark twists, you just need to take the dive. If you're interested I will be putting a 'getting started' guide in the second chapter of this article.
The main character for our story will be a middle-school girl (~14 years old). It's almost certain this will be the case, since the majority of fiction will try to mirror it's primary audience in its protagonist. She's a 'genuine' person who is bright and cheerful but not confident in her abilities, over the narrative she will overcome her emotional vices, be that anxiety, rashness or something else, and mature as a person. The most important property of the main protagonist will be her childish innocence and naivety towards the world and the concept of good and bad. While she may already have a sense of right and wrong, her journey will force her to understand the reasoning behind those impulses and bring her true justice.
There will also be a collection of friends that join her and form a 'magical girl team' of girls. These can come in many flavours, and colours, literally. To clearly differentiate between the characters and their roles, girls are usually given a primary colour to be symbolised by, and these colours have themselves manifested archetypal versions of themselves. It's basically the narrative shorthand that super sentai shows do, think the spectrum of coloured power rangers.
Here's a run-down of the generalisations for the coloured magical girls:
While this covers the entire rainbow of colours, there exist more colours than lie on a rainbow. Look here at the graph of hue over wavelength of visible light:
This is the linear way of looking at the colour spectrum, and the one that is truest in nature. But as humans we've created the colour wheel instead:
I have placed markers to show the lowest and highest wavelength of pure, visible light. The area in between the red and purple actually cannot be created with just one wavelength of light and thus must be a combination of multiple different wavelengths. This reveals the last, and most prevelant coloured magical girl: pink.
As a rule of thumb, if you plotted the members of any magical girl team onto this diagram, then they would have an even spread across the board. For example: a team with only two members might chose one pink and one blue to give a balanced palette, while a team of three would probably introduce a yellow girl to keep the colours balanced. It would be very rare for a three girl team to consist of pink, red and yellow girls, since this would bunch their palette's structure into one area of the wheel. The girls from Tokyo Mew Mew (pictured at the top of the article) is a good example of a standard and balanced mahou shoujo team.
There are also three extra types of magical girls. These are usually separate from the main team, or play a special role within the team:
One note to take is that not all mahou-shoujo shows contain teams of girls, some only having one or two. In this case it is very likely that the protagonist will be white while her antagonist or rival is black.
The other important set of characters are the fairies. Traditionally taking the form of animate plush dolls or cute animals, they will give the girls their power and act as side kicks and tools. Sometimes there will be one great fairy that gives all the girls power simultaneously, but more often is that each girl will have their own personal fairy that reflects their personality.
^ The fairies from Mewkledreamy and Futari wa Precure. Their designs have shifted over the years from more animal-like beings to more soft-toy-like ones.
This structure of a colour-based cast is a powerful and quick way to communicate a set of characters and their dynamic. It is of course not limited to use in magical shows, and can be found across all media from sitcoms to superhero films, but it can most clearly be seen in the more metaphorical and flashy medium of kids anime. Many anime can be fit into this pattern. Think of Kill la Kill. Who are Ryuuko and Satsuki but red/pink and blue magical girls?
Continued in part 2 where I write about the typical narrative structure of mahou shoujo stories. To read it click here!
