Basic Trope: An ordinary girl is approached by a Mentor Mascot, and given a Transformation Trinket which transforms her into a pretty-clothed superhero who uses her powers to fight evil.
- Straight: Junko Watanabe is an Ordinary High-School Student, until she is approached by a Cabbitsel (cat/rabbit/weasel hybrid) who gives her a magic ring which she uses to transform into Pretty Ronin Trope-Tan so that she may fight Queen Eviloverlordia and her horde of Monster of the Week minions.
- Exaggerated: Junko as Pretty Ronin Trope-Tan goes into an all out battle to defeat the bosses, which are evil Eldritch Abominations, malign gods and goddesses, and even Death himself.
- Downplayed: Junko's magic ring doesn't transform her into Pretty Ronin Trope-tan so much as lend some of the Pretty Ronin's powers. She can help in the fight against Queen Eviloverlordia and her horde, but not to the extent the pre-established Pretty Ronins can and do, and in any case eschews the elegant clothing costumes because she finds them to be embarrassing Rainbow Pimp Gear. Overall, she is more akin to a reservist compared to the other Pretty Ronins.
- Justified: Junko is a descendant of the one who originally defeated Eviloverlordia, so naturally only someone of her Heroic Lineage can defeat the Big Bad this time around.
- Inverted:
- Instead of The Hero, Junko becomes a Dark Magical Girl who fights an established ensemble of the actually heroic characters.
- Pretty Ronin Trope-tan is a seasoned soldier from a Magical Land who acquires a magic ring that lets her temporarily seal away her magic powers, so that she can disguise herself as an ordinary girl named Junko Watanabe and help the other students with their extensive (but mundane) problems.
- Cabbitsel somehow manages to comically fuck up and select Ryuji Wakamono instead (he saw Wakamono and Watanabe and mistook each other). Ryuji is a pretty crazy guy in general, naturally due to his Osakan Heritage, but giving him cool powers!? It's practically begging for mayhem to ensue!
- Subverted: Junko is given a magic ring, which is said to transform the user into Pretty Ronin Trope-tan. She rubs the ring and chants the magic words... and nothing happens. Disappointed and denied, she throws the ring on the floor and leaves.
- Double Subverted: The ring is activated due to a strong force being applied on it. Said ring teleports to Junko's finger and the transformation sequence begins.
- Parodied:
- When not kicking ass, Junko is actually overweight, nerdy, male, and American.
- The Pretty Ronin costumes and "magical items" are just pink sparkly versions of actual military uniforms and equipment, as the monsters are not Immune to Bullets.
- Queen Overlordia and her Dark Empire are defeated by the end of the first episode, and Trope-tan has to find other uses for her Magical Girl Warrior abilities.
- Zig Zagged: Junko's abilities, competence and chosen heroine status in general are brought into question many times due to the local Redshirt Army being actually better suited for tackling the Monster of the Week.
- Averted: Queen Overlordia and her ensemble of sparkly glam villains are quite surprised to see the prophesized heroine of justice Junko face them in a gritty Diesel Punk Humongous Mecha instead.
- Enforced: The writers reboot a "standard" Magical Girl story into this trope, in order to attract a Periphery Demographic. Junko's star-tipped wand turns out to have a secondary mode where it unfolds into a Wave-Motion Gun, and the situations she faces increasingly require its use.
- Lampshaded: "Isn't that girl a bit too badass to be that magical?"
- Invoked: Upon obtaining an array of remarkably effective, lethal and non-flashy powers, Junko tries to customize them to suit anime-inspired ideals due to being Wrong Genre Savvy. Hilarity Ensues.
- Exploited:
- Trope-tan milks her newfound status for all it's worth to become a national celebrity and a pop figure icon who is being paid humongous sums for product endorsements and has her own anime series with merchandise up the frilly pantaloons.
- Knowing where the Pretty Ronin ring is, Queen Eviloverlordia alters it to have a magical transformation and flashy outfit so she can easily identify who the new Pretty Ronin is.
- The arms manufacturing industry is well aware of the existence and potential of magical girls, and they begin to abduct magical girls and convert them into military weapons.
- Defied: Junko is a Japanese schoolgirl with mystical powers and a secret identity who fights evil. She is also a world-weary Knight in Sour Armor Combat Pragmatist who flat out tells her Mentor Mascot: "Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!". Anyone who refers to her as anything else but a Super Hero gets his ass kicked in decidedly unladylike ways.
- Discussed: "Think making a magic ring with a transformation sequence and pretty outfit would make Junko good enough to fight Queen Eviloverlordia?" "Adding in a transformation sequence and pretty outfit seems really unnecessary." "Well it makes her seem stronger, in case that you don't realize that's just part of the ring."
- Conversed: "Why don't Magical Girls use their powers to solve social problems instead?" "Because flashy battles with evil monsters and megalomaniac villains is cooler to watch."
- Deconstructed:
- No matter what she's called, Trope-Tan is little more than a Child Soldier; the battles she fights are extremely dangerous (maybe even traumatizing); she can't tell if her mascot mentor is telling the truth; the villains seem more like sympathetic Well Intentioned Extremists than monsters greedy for power; she can't tell if her allies are actually her friends; and she's so cut off from the ordinary world by her constant battles that she's slowly becoming more and more unstable.
- Trope-tan realizes that the combat powers of a magical girl are explicitly dependent on seemingly superficial attributes. No matter what, the powers that be can't allow her to grow past mid-teens, change the silly incantation, skip the Transformation Sequence or modify her Embarrassing but Empowering Outfit in any way other than adding even more Frills of Justice.
- To top it all off, it then turns out that Eviloverlodia and her monsters were once magical girls themselves who were turned monstrous via Despair Event Horizon. This is the fate that will befall all Pretty Ronins; including Trope-tan, who is fated to become a monster even more powerful than Eviloverlordia herself! And the Cabbitsel intended for this to happen, as they are actually a Hive Mind alien race who are harnessing the power of despair to save the universe from heat death- no matter who suffers or dies in the process. The queen and her monsters want to destroy Cabby's system and free humanity- by Mercy Killing every last human they can find. And many other Pretty Ronins are also resorting to extreme means to stop Cabby. Even Trope-tan's own friends, especially the Dark Magical Girl, are willing to do some dark things in order to "protect" her. As a result, Junko stops fighting because she can't tell who the good guys and bad guys are anymore.
- Reconstructed:
- Trope-Tan manages to overcome all of the above and triumph regardless.
- Junko is a clinically depressed girl abused by her parents and/or classmates. The Mentor Mascot finds her and told her she could have a more meaningful life as Pretty Ronin Trope-Tan. She agrees, and on the next day, she finds a new home, with the other Pretty Ronins, who scare off the bullies, and with whom she starts to fight opponents pretty much on equal terms, rather than the one-sided fights she got into. They form a bond that cannot be broken. The Big Bad Ensemble might be more misguided than evil, but their plans would still doom the Earth, so they need to be stopped. Fortunately, Pretty Ronins are skilled at non-lethal combat, so the opponents don't even need to be killed. And even better: the Mentor Mascot (or one of the other Pretty Ronins) is a therapist!
- Finally, Junko is able to become a godlike being and use her powers to save all Pretty Ronins before they turn into monsters, replacing the old system with a new one that allows the girls to live better lives. And when Cabby tries to bring the old system back, Trope-tan, with the help of her True Companions and the Dark Magical Girl she has plenty of Les Yay with, defeats the alien menace- for good this time.
In the Name of the Moon — back to Magical Girl Warrior.
