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"It's a 'magical' land. I think 'magical' is ancient Greek for 'pain in the butt'."
The "another world" part of Trapped in Another World. It may lurk down a rabbit hole, at the bottom of a pool, over a mysterious mountain range, or through a wardrobe. What is certain is that people from other worlds will be visiting it. Usually the Magical Land is Another Dimension or time period or some sort, but it can also be a mysterious "unexplored territory", uncharted island, or Lost World, which is more common the farther you go back. ( Geography marches on.)
Land of Faerie is a sub trope of Magical Land.
Constrast this with Constructed World which does not have visitors or a gateway from our world.
Magical Lands are usually based on Medieval Europe, and while they may be vastly different, they usually have a couple of things in common:
Vulnerable to Planetville-ism. The world's version of natural laws are usually the Magical Underpinnings of Reality.
The King in the Mountain may be sleeping here. (Not necessarily under a mountain.)
If it's really magical, it may be Wackyland. See also Trapped in Another World.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- 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.
- Marchen Awakens Romance, Marchen even means 'fairy tale' in German.
- The Twelve Kingdoms.
- Every single homeland of the Mentor Mascots in the Pretty Cure series.
- Fushigi Yuugi is set in the Universe of the Four Gods.
- El-Hazard: The Magnificent World.
- Cephiro from Magic Knight Rayearth
- Mahou Sensei Negima! has Mundus Magicus.
- Gaea from The Vision of Escaflowne
- The Witch World from Magical Doremi.
- The Magical Kingdom that Arcs and Karts came from in Moetan.
- Fandavale in Otogi Juushi Akazukin
- The world of Zero No Tsukaima 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.
- Oku-sama wa Mahou Shoujo has two: Realm, the world the Magical Girls come from, and Wonderland, which while not magic in itself, was created with magic.
Comic Books
- The Valley from Bone.
- Tellos from The World of Tellos
- Abadazad, a pastiche of Oz, from the comic book (later illustrated children's book) series of the same name.
- Gemworld, the setting for the Amethyst Princess of Gemworld series in The DCU.
- The DCU also has Skataris (setting of The Warlord) and Myrra (setting of Nightmaster and part of Nightmaster's arc in Shadowpact)
- The Maxx imagined several Magical Lands, called Outbacks. Pangaea appeared prominently in the first Story Arc.
- Meridian - Remember, W.I.T.C.H. was originally a comic book. WITCH readers will also remember Arkantha, amongst others.
- The Homelands in Fables is a composite of every other Magical Land where the titular characters from folklore and legend come from.
- 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.
- 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.
Film
Literature
- The Land of Oz and its surrounding countries.
- Narnia from The Chronicles Of Narnia.
- Alice in Wonderland has the eponymous Wonderland.
- Peter Pan has Neverland.
- The Kingdom of Wisdom from The Phantom Tollbooth.
- Dinotopia.
- 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.
- 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.
- Glenraven, which is also somewhat of a Deconstruction.
- Terry Brooks' Magic Kingdom Of Landover has the titular Landover.
- 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).
- The Faerie Queene has Faerie Land... which is a real place.
- The Dresden Files has Nevernever.
- The un-named other world from Coraline, which explores the negative connotations and ambiguities of the concept by making the entire land an evil trap.
- Everworld.
- 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.
- The Afterlife World in The Land of Oblivion, which is actually a pretty happy place, except the eponymous land.
- 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.
- In Devon Monk's Dead Iron, LeFel wants to get back to the land he was exiled from, where he will be immortal.
- 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.
Live Action TV
Theater
- Many Cirque du Soleil shows involve these.
Video Games
- Final Fantasy IV has the Land of Summoned Monsters. In the DS remake, it's referred to as the Feymarch.
- Final Fantasy VI has the world of the Espers, the place they fled to and sealed away from the normal world.
- Final Fantasy X has the Far Plane, where pyre flies (souls) go to rest.
- Ivalice from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.
- Gensokyo from the Touhou games, complete with visitors and occasional artifacts from the "real" world.
- The Legend of Zelda series has Hyrule itself. Additionally, the Sacred Realm, the resting place of the Triforce, is somewhere in Hyrule.
- Fantasy Quest's world has no definite name other than the "magical land of fantasy." How you got there? No one knows.
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.
- 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.
- 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 Radical Land in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja.
- Bird Boy: When Bali chases the spear into the forest, it turns from winter to summer
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- Just about everyplace in Homestuck that isn't Earth, but particularly Prospit and Derse.
- 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
Western Animation
- Equestria from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
- W.I.T.C.H. has Meridian.
- "As the Universe is to real people, so the Fantaverse is to imaginary," says Puff The Magic Dragon in Puff and the Incredible Mr. Nobody.
- Avalon fulfills this trope in Gargoyles.
- The Battle Nexus is one of these in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, albeit one based more on ancient Japan than ancient Europe.
- Most kingdoms/planets in Winx Club, though most of them have advanced technology.
- All of the magical lands explored on the final season of Babar, leading up to the Land of Happiness.
- Ledgerdomain in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien.
- In Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms, Hellboy gets pulled into a magic land inhabited by youkai from Japanese Mythology.
- In Adventure Time, Finn spends the episode "Puhoy" trapped in a Pillow World. He spends his entire adult life there, eventually marrying a girl and raising a family, causing him to choose to stay there until he dies, when it is revealed that the whole thing was probably just a dream.
Real Life
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