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Magical Land
aka: Magic World

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It's all ooohs and aaahs until you get lost. And those aren't insects.

"Behold! I have emerged from the place of spells and fairies."

The "another world" part of Trapped in Another World. It may be down a rabbit hole, at the bottom of a pool, through a mysterious gate, or inside a wardrobe. What is certain is that people from other worlds will be visiting it. Usually, the Magical Land is in Another Dimension; but it can also be unexplored territory, an Island of Mystery, or a Lost World. The exact type depends on the age of the work, as geography marches on, the trope has shifted from lost continents to entire other dimensions (or in the case of Science Fiction, far off planets or time periods).

Magical Lands are usually based on Medieval Europe, and while they may be vastly different, they usually have a couple of things in common:

The King in the Mountain may be sleeping here, though not necessarily under a mountain.

Vulnerable to Planetville-ism. The rare democracy that falls under this trope will be Crystal Spires and Togas. This world's version of natural laws are usually the Magical Underpinnings of Reality. If it's really magical, it may be Wackyland.

Super-Trope to Land of Faerie. Contrast this with Constructed World which does not have visitors or a gateway from our world. See also Trapped in Another World. And if the travelers do return to the everyday world, they or the reader may very likely end up with a bad case of So What Do We Do Now?.


Examples

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    Anime & Manga 
  • The Sacred Place from 3×3 Eyes was the mystical dimension inhabitated by the Sanzhiyan Humkara (aka the Triclops) and by all the other countless types of demons and monsters, collectively known as the dwellers of Darkness. However, in the present time it's reduced to a dead wasteland composed mostly of rock, stone spires and ruins because of the mismanagement of the Triclops.
  • Digimon has the Digital World which itself has a secondary Magical Land revealed in the cards, called Witchelny. And like the name says, Witchmon, Wizardmon and other magical Digimon come from here.
  • The world of Halkeginia in The Familiar of Zero is an unusual example; it is its own independent world (albeit one with magic), but technically qualifies as this because they keep stealing our stuff (its easier than inventing stuff themselves), and they occasionally get some of our people too, who are Trapped in Another World as a result.
  • Jewel Land from Jewelpet, where the magical titular characters come from. Despite the name, Sweetsland from Sweets Dance Princess isn't this, but a country in Jewel Land.
  • The Kingdom of Astale in Meru Puri, where the main character's ancestor, and one of her love interests' ancestor originate from, as do several other main characters.
  • Mini Moni The Movie: Okashi na Daibōken! takes place on a planet shaped like the Mini Moni rabbit mascot, Minimo, and many of the customers are Minimos of various colors.
  • Tohua Yuan from Ushio and Tora is mentioned by the demon hunter Hyo as a mystic place somewhere in China where time is frozen still and dancing petals always float in the air. He obtained his Magical Eye and his demon-slaying powers there, training under a taoist sage who lives there. A sidestory shows his sojourn there.
  • Gaea from The Vision of Escaflowne is an artificial planet created by the natives of Atlantis to escape the Flood... unless it was All a Dream, or maybe a vision.

    Comic Books 
  • Terrenos in Birthright is the typical fantasy inhabited by mages, monsters, dragons and other demi-humans, but also terrorized by a Evil Overlord. Unusually, the story doesn't take place in this setting but mostly on Earth after the hero returned from his adventures in Terrenos, which are featured mostly in flashbacks.
  • The Homelands in Fables is a composite of every other Magical Land where the titular characters from folklore and legend come from.
  • Hellboy: In addition to a Land of Faerie, there is the Thrice-Nine Land, home of Yggdrasil, the Baba Yaga, and various beings from Slavic myth.
  • The Labyrinth in Lady Death by Avatar/Boundless comics is a Dark Fantasy version of this trope, but it still counts since its a setting populated by monsters and demi-humans that just happens to be an afterlife realm where the main protagonist is sentenced to after making a deal with specters to save her life after being unjustly condemned to burn at the stake.
  • The Maxx imagined several Magical Lands, called Outbacks. Pangaea appeared prominently in the first Story Arc.
  • In Rainbow Brite, like in the source material, Rainbowland is a magical land where color is spread all across the world.
  • In Reborn, the afterlife itself is a magical land split into two parts: Adystria (for the heroic noble dead) and the Dark Lands (for the evil damned) where they are locked into a Forever War.
  • Shazam! (2018) makes the Rock of Eternity the juncture between the Seven Magic Lands (including the Earthlands, which are the regular DCU). The Funlands are a giant Amusement Park of Doom; the Gamelands are a living video game; the Beastlands are home to Funny Animals; the Darklands are a gloom-filled realm of zombies and vampires; the Wozonderlands are a mash-up of the Land of Oz and Wonderland; and the Monsterlands are a Prison Dimension. Each member of the Shazam Family is supposed to be the magical guardian of one of the lands.
  • The Terrain of Testament from the Ulitmate Warrior's self titled and published comic might be this, or maybe a Mental World. It's not really clear.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Paradise Island/Themyscira is written this way by some writers in the main continuity, as a land ruled by a monarchy in a some kind of pocket dimension where time sometimes flows differently and which is host to a large Fantastic Nature Reserve.
    • The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016): This version of Themyscira is unquestionably a magical land, as the island is the place all magic and creatures relating to Greek mythology has retreated to by the start of WWII and is in a small space separated from the real world.

    Fan Works 
  • A Crown of Stars: The Empire of Avalon. It is a kingdom spans several galaxies and even a chunk of The Multiverse, ruled by a couple of deities, inhabited by many humanoid and non-humanoid races and where technology and magic coexist. The story begins when Daniel, God-Emperor of Avalon invites Shinji and Asuka to visit his world, and takes them to Avalon through a magical Portal Door.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Godmothered: The Motherland is where fairy godmothers come from. It's seemingly small (we only see a castle in a valley), and there is no modern technology, aside from a flip-disc display seen near the end of the film. Magic portals can be used to travel to and from the Motherland.
  • Time Bandits offers a beautiful subversion with the "Time of Legends". This time-out-of-time is presented as a world located outside of the normal time-space continuum, a place where wizards and giants exist and where the "most fabulous object in the world" awaits... But when the protagonists do arrive there, it turns out to be a gigantic wasteland made out of foggy seas and empty deserts, populated by creatures ranging from the bizarre (gibberish-shouting elephant-like trolls) to the dangerous (man-eating ogres). And of course, it also where the Embodiment of Evil has been locked up since the beginning of times... But hey, would you have expected something else from a Terry Gilliam movie?

    Literature 
  • Giant Country and Dream Country in The BFG. The book indicates these are unexplored territories on Earth, the visuals in the animated movie seem to imply they are more akin to other dimensions.
  • The Chronicles of Narnia:
    • The series is set in one. Technically "Narnia" is just one country in the world, albeit the one where most important stuff seems to happen. (The Horse and His Boy is the exception, focusing more on its southern neighbors, Archenland and Calormen.) The world of Narnia is also revealed to be flat, and when you reach the edge, you can see Aslan's Country (basically, Heaven) across a chasm. The residents include lots of mythical creatures, Talking Animals and humans, all of whom are descended from people who crossed over from our world.
    • The Magician's Nephew confirms the existence of other magical worlds, including the one where the White Witch Jadis comes from. (Again, called "Charn", but that's technically just a city.) She used a Fantastic Nuke to kill everyone else in that world; once she left, it ceased to exist.
  • The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica: The Archipelago of Dreams. It's usually accessed from the Summer Country (Earth) via several magical ships, and inspired pretty much all of fiction in some way.
  • The unnamed other world from Coraline, which explores the negative connotations and ambiguities of the concept by making the entire land an evil trap.
  • In Devon Monk's Dead Iron, LeFel wants to get back to the land he was exiled from, where he will be immortal.
  • In Rebecca Lickiss' Eccentric Circles, the fantasy realms outside Grandma Dickerson's house.
  • In Everworld, the gods of various mythologies are real and used to live in our world, but then created Everworld, moving there with various magical creatures and some random Muggles that they kept around to worship them. The plot kicks off when Loki decides he wants to come back, and brings over five Chicago teenagers as part of his plan.
  • The Faerie Queene has Faerie Land... which is a real place.
  • Fengshen Yanyi has the various mountains and islands chosen by the various taoist Immortals as their abode and place of training: nearly all of them are described in poetry as gourgeous landscapes filled with auspicious clouds and benevolent light, mists of good luck, ancient trees and rocks, abundance of healing herbs and fungi and a large number of animals, fantastic and not, roaming the place in peace. A few of them, like the Kunlun Mountain Range and Mount Zhongnan are based on Real Life places.
  • In Aaron Allston's Galatea in 2-D, going into a painting (instead of drawing a character out) lands you in a world with the rules that the painter thought of. Lava? Convection, Schmonvection! The painter was not thinking about how the heat would kill.
  • Glenraven, which is also somewhat of a Deconstruction.
  • In Other Lands has it all, from a chosen few 13 year olds being able to enter, to outdated technology, and most importantly, mermaids.
  • The Afterlife World in The Land of Oblivion, which is actually a pretty happy place, except the eponymous land.
  • Oz and its surrounding countries in the Land of Oz books are "fairy lands" separated from the rest of Earth by various means, including a huge and deadly desert. They're the only places on Earth where magic still remains an everyday part of life. There's also a Medieval Stasis because they aren't up-to-date with most technology of the late 19th century and early 20th century.
  • In The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, Whangdoodleland is a small otherworld created by the Whangdoodle as a refuge for himself and the other magical creatures who fled Earth when rationality overtook imagination. It's a monarchy, with the Whangdoodle as king.
  • Terry Brooks' Magic Kingdom of Landover has the titular Landover.
  • The Marvellous Land of Snergs: Joe and Syilvia, together with other children, are taken to the Land of the Snergs, inhabited by a race of hobbit-like people. Beyond the gorge bordering the Snerg's lands, there is a kingdom locked in the Middle Ages and populated by witches, ogres, knights and court jesters (and there used to be dragons, apparently).
  • Greywall'd in Murderess is a parallel world where magic is used much more commonly than it is on "Gæa", and humans who cross over into it and survive often gain strong magical powers. However, local humans generally think of magic and its wielders along the lines of Bad Powers, Bad People.
  • Fantastica ("Fantasia" in the film) from The Neverending Story. Bigger than the real world, however - in fact, as the home of everything ever created by the human imagination, it's supposed to be infinite and still growing.
  • The October Daye series has the Summerlands, which are magic realms anchored to the mortal world, where most pure sidhe live, and Deeper Faerie, which was closed off to the mortal world (and the sidhe) centuries ago when King Oberon left the world and will remain closed until he returns.
  • Jo Walton's "Relentlessly Mundane" has four teens spend a Year Inside, Hour Outside in the perilous but lovely magical land of Porphylia. Only three of them are able to return, and fifteen years later they're still trying to find a way to deal with it.
  • The Secret of Platform 13 has the Island, which has various other names (including Avalon), and can be accessed by a Portal Door that opens for nine days every nine years. (It's technically part of our world, though, just hidden somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.) As a bit of a twist, there are still lots of magical creatures living in the normal world under The Masquerade; when the door between worlds opens, magical creatures migrate from one side to the other at their leisure. Human Muggles live on the Island, including the royal family, but they seem to be a minority.
  • In The Shadow Speaker, the main characters go to a planet called Ginen, which is full of people with magical powers and has Bamboo Technology.
  • This was what the land of the elves was going to be in early versions of what became The Silmarillion. In the finished book, Valinor is this with regard to Middle-Earth after it is removed from the physical world.
  • Sweet & Bitter Magic: Within, or the Witchlands, the domain of witches. It houses their academy and witch government along with many witches themselves of every age, from countries all over the world. There are also many magical objects like talking stones and houses which walk, while strange things such as giant fungi grow there. It's surrounded by a huge Enchanted Forest to enter from the Queendom of Carrow, but may be Another Dimension entirely, with this being just one entrance.
  • The Territories in The Talisman are a smaller version of America, only with magic and monsters and stuck in the middle ages. Sort of. The western half of the country is a nuclear wasteland.
  • Xanth has a lot of elements of this. And it's smaller than the real world due to it being a peninsula of some Earth continent (which one depends on the era, 'modern' Xanth is found mostly off Florida).

    Live-Action TV 
  • Grimm: The Other Place which Nick and Eve enter through a mirror in the final season. It's a forested world with only basic, savage technology and druidic pillars (which act as the entry point into this world), where Wesen are permanently woged and are dominant while humans are prey. It's also ruled over by Zerstörer.
  • Bottom World in The Legend of Dick and Dom (contains kingdoms like Fyredor and Ovendor, full of Wacky Wayside Tribes.)
  • The Magicians (2016): There is an in-universe series of books about the magical land of Fillory, which is basically Narnia without the villains. Quentin Coldwater, the main character, is ecstatic when he finds out Fillory is real. However, it turns out that while there are many wonderful things about Fillory, in the end it has many dark parts, like any other world. Sexism is rampant, political chaos is the order of the day, the gods are hedonistic idiots (albeit well-meaning ones), and Disproportionate Retribution combined with Might Makes Right is the most common law. Sometimes it seems like the only reason people fall in love with Fillory is because the atmosphere is 0.2% opium. There are also practical concerns; because the people have relied on magic for day-to-day tasks for so long, when the magic fails, a famine plagues the land because nobody ever learned mundane agriculture. Eliot, a farmboy (loathe as he is to admit it), has to introduce the kingdom to fertilizer. Also, when he and Margo bring democracy to the land, it turns humans are vastly outnumbered (and outvoted) by the talking animals.

    Mythology and Folklore 

    Roleplay 
  • In The Gamer's Alliance, the Isle of Yggdrasil is a magical place protected by the White Seal where the World Tree can be found in.

    Theater 
  • Many Cirque du Soleil shows involve a character — and by extension, the audience, given that No Fourth Wall is a favorite trope of theirs — ending up in a Magical Land:
    • Nouvelle Experience was their first example of this, and it crosses over with a Cloudcuckooland; fools, angels, devils, and magic-wielding rulers dwell within it.
    • Mystère's world is inhabited by (among other things) clever birds, playful lizards, and sentinent viruses, and the viewpoint characters are two babies played by adult actors. The newcomer to this world, rather than an everyman protagonist figure, is a troublemaker who constantly needles the emcee who's trying to keep everything in order.
    • Quidam goes Down the Rabbit Hole to a melancholy magical land where the heroine learns about the universality of loneliness.
    • "O" is set in a magical theater that is based around water and can shift its form on a whim; a troupe of elegant "zebras" provides the show its Ensemble Dark Horse characters.
    • KOOZA transports an Innocent into a kingdom where, if one isn't careful, a troupe of singing and dancing skeletons can be conjured up at a moment's notice.
  • Tsukipro often has these in their stage plays - either the characters get Trapped in Another World (e.g. Lunatic Party, Yumemigusa, Kurenai Enishi), or it takes place entirely in that world (e.g. Rabbits Kingdom, (which has a frame story that it's a story that Shun is telling Hajime... about themselves...), Natsuyumesai). And they are constantly developing new AU settings that may or may not become future stage plays.

    Video Games 
  • The Dark World of Deltarune is a world that takes form from a Dark Fountain placed in the regular world, or "Light World". Lightners are then able to enter the Dark World by entering a room with a Dark Fountain, but for most Dark Worlds, the only way to escape is to have the Fountain sealed, dissipating the Darkness and returning the space to normal.
  • Dragon Quest III: Turns out that Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II's world Alefgard, later to become Torland, is this of the Another Dimension sort. The Goddess Rubiss actually created said world herself, a Tantegel NPC making mention of people coming from Ailahan meaning that the Hero's world was one that had already existed before it, to boot. Then Zoma and demons happened.
  • Fantasy Quest's world has no definite name other than the "magical land of fantasy." How you got there? No one knows.
  • Final Fantasy
  • Sunova, from Kyle & Lucy: Wonderworld, where magical energy literally falls from the sky in the form of meteorites.
  • The titular Ni no Kuni, is described in-game as Another Dimension existing next to our own. The name quite literally means "second land" in Japanese, and its inhabitants call our universe "first land" (ichi no kuni).
  • The Sacred Realm a particularly dark flavor of Magical Land in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in relation to the more "mundane" Hyrule.
  • The Shantae series has the Genie Realm, the land that the genies returned to after they drained their magic and could no longer sustain themselves in the physical world. In the first game, Shantae actually had the chance to go there to join the full genies, but she refused since doing so would mean leaving her friends. In Half-Genie Hero, Risky's Evil Plan is to corrupt the Genie Realm's magic. Shantae stops her at the cost of destroying the Genie Realm in the process, unless she got all the parts necessary for Uncle Mimic to build a device that can reverse the corruption, in which case the Genie Realm is saved.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Super Mario 3D World has the Sprixie Kingdom, which serves as the game's main setting. Seven of the Worlds are ruled over by seven princesses, all of whom captured by Bowser and must be freed to advance to Bowser's evil lair in World 8, plus unlock four bonus worlds and Rosalina as a new playable character.
    • 3D World's Spin-Off game Bowser's Fury has Lake Lapcat, an archipelago of the Mushroom World where everything— from its residents, whether good or evil, all the way down to the scenery— is feline in form and Cat Shines unlock the Giga Bell power-ups, which are framed as having an ancient tie to fighting off evil.
  • Gensokyo from the Touhou Project games, complete with visitors and occasional artifacts from the "real" world. Its name also literally means "fantasy land".

    Visual Novels 
  • The Nasuverse has "the Reverse Side of the World," which still operates the way this side of the world used to during the Age of the Gods. It's partly based on Annwn, of Welsh mythology; the Fairies and other "phantasmal species" live there, and it's also where Avalon is located. It's different from most examples in that modern-day humans can't be trapped there and live; the ambient magical energy is so dense that they would explode just from breathing. On rare occasion, though, the dead wind up there.

    Webcomics 
  • In Annyseed the magical land is not so much a secret, but goes unnoticed if you aren't looking for it. It surrounds the real world (which in itself, doesn't quite seem like reality), but the most magical area in Annyseed ’s version of the isle of Skye, is the woodland of Skull Valley, which works as a kind of Monster Town.
  • The Echo Chronicles The plane where priestesses comes from could be thought of as this in relation to the 'main' plane; Where The Echo Knights reside and where the story starts.
  • This is where Tara and Andrea, the Griffins, come from in El Goonish Shive. The exact nature of said world has not yet been explored, as Tara insists that it's basically a whole different world, and Andrea insists that it's the same world. What is clear is that it's full of magic.
  • Gillitie Wood from Gunnerkrigg Court is implied to be like this. Only the edge of it has been shown, but it is known to be ruled by the Coyote, peopled by The Fair Folk and Living Shadows, and devoid of technology because its inhabitants are Luddites.
    • 'Luddite' really isn't the right term to describe the people of the Wood. They widely use the Ethereal designs that seem to lose effectiveness if studied too carefully. Hence, the philosophy of the Court, which is to discover how the universe works is detrimental to them, setting them up in conflict.
  • Just about every place in Homestuck that isn't Earth, but particularly the Incipisphere.
  • The character of Erro from Interdimensional Transfer Student Erro comes from one of these realms - Another Dimension, of course, which is populated by a single species of strange, talking mascot animals (of which he is one).
  • Aylia, the titular character of A Magical Roommate, comes from Umbria. This is a bit of a subversion, however; Umbria is just a country in a much larger world, and the only off-worlders that affect politics are understandably those who married royalty. The jury is out on expanding technology, though.
  • The common subtrope involving a child hero is deconstructed by xkcd in strip number 693.
  • Zoophobia's magical World is actually situated in the centre of a colossal forest, isolated from the rest of the "real world".

    Web Original 
  • The (non-Earth) planet in Guts and Sass: An Anti-Epic which features paleolithic to Iron Age technology, giant shapeshifting cats, anthropomorphic bodies of water, extrasensory abilities, a feudal monarchy, semi-domestic pastoralists, and hunter-gatherers.

    Western Animation 


 
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Alternative Title(s): Magic Land, Magic World

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The Boiling Isles

The Boiling Isles is a magical realm beyond the Human Realm hosting a plethora of magical beings, including Eda the Owl Lady.

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