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Basic Trope: Needlessly long, flashy change in appearance.

  • Straight: Our heroine transforms into a Magical Girl with flashy clothes, saves the day, etc.
  • Exaggerated:
  • Downplayed: Our heroine spins in place to change her costume.
  • Justified:
    • She must be another gender or species to use her powers.
    • The transformation works as a Power Limiter to dissuade the heroine of abusing her power.
    • Meta Justification: The transformation only takes a few seconds in-universe, but the viewers see the entire sequence for exposition or padding out screentime.
  • Inverted:
    • The villain is the one with the overly-long and elaborate transformation sequence... Except it's creepy instead of flashy, and it turns him/her into an One-Winged Angel.
    • Our heroine completes the transformation to battle-form in about a second, but goes through a flashy transformation sequence when she changes back to normal.
  • Subverted: The transformation is a waste of time as she can use her powers at any time...
  • Double Subverted: ...except for being properly dressed for battle within a second.
  • Parodied:
  • Zig Zagged: The Magical Girl has an long flashy transformation sequence, but it turns out to be an actual power of hers that's simply optional. However to access her Tier 2 abilities she has to perform a second transformation sequence during the first one, though decides to instead get a mage to alter the requirement to make the second sequence unnecessary. Said mage has to perform one to activate the necessary magic to do so.
    • Or it could be a stylistic choice, the transformation sequence being a representation. To outsiders it's simply a flash of light.
  • Averted:
    • The girl simply changes clothes like a normal person, no transformation.
    • The transformation takes place in a flash of light that you can miss by blinking, no sequence necessary.
  • Enforced:
  • Lampshaded: "Under different circumstances, I'd not hesitate to go and attack that girl!... But all that stuff she's doing is really mesmerizing"
    • "We abandoned the overly long sequences to get in the fray quicker."
  • Invoked: A Magical Girl who doesn't quite know how to activate her powers tries yelling a catchphrase and doing a twirling jump into the air to see if she can make herself transform.
  • Exploited:
  • Defied:
    • "She's transforming! Now is our chance to kill her!"
    • "She'll be at that for ten minutes! Grab the loot and hostages!"
  • Discussed: "You know girl, it's not like I have all day, I've got kids at home and stuff to do. Could you just make it a bit quicker?"
  • Conversed:
    Bob: "This transformation sequence wouldn't bother me so much if it weren't so long!"
    Charlie: "Hey! It's not that bad; I can even state two good reasons that make it rock!"
    Bob: "DUDE!! She's not even thirteen! What the hell, man?!"
    Charlie: "Well, she doesn't look like thirteen, so it's actually not creepy! ...Right?"
  • Implied: The villain is surprised by the newest Magical Girl being fully in uniform, briefly commenting "The others before you were a lot slower getting ready".
  • Deconstructed:
    • The villains kills the Magical Girl while in her Transformation Sequence. Do you think they're just gonna wait?
    • The villains use the delay to carry out their nefarious deeds and escape, leaving her to deal with the carnage when the transformation ends.
    • The transformation is a horribly painful experience, requiring instant growth, transformation and/or disappearance of body parts and skeleton, thus making the sequence a slow and painful torture that must endured on a regular basis.
  • Reconstructed:
    • Well, they try to kill her... But the transformation is protected by a barrier that reflects their attacks.
    • She transforms outside the enemy lair then comes in transformed.
    • While early transformations are horribly painful and violent, as she does this repeatedly her body adjusts and becomes stronger in her normal state while suffering less pain during the transformation. Eventually her two forms will be the same aside from activating her battle armor.
  • Played For Laughs: The heroine is a Reluctant Fanservice Girl and screams at her enemies to stop looking when she transforms.
  • Played For Drama: ???

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