Massive Decay: Dark Magical Girl

So this trope is about a Dark Magical Girl which is the rival to a Magical Girl... The trope has decayed so much its getting examples from things like Babylon 5 of all places. Its a genre specific character type.

There are a few outside the Magical Girl genre that these might fit like Sentai. But most if not all the western ones are misuse and should be on things like Black Magician Girl or Dark Action Girl.

edited 13th Sep '11 2:00:34 PM by Raso

I understand where you're coming from, especially considering you've got a Nanoha-related quote there. But our Glorious Leader has decreed that there's basically no such thing as an anime trope. So we're stuck with it.

I mean seriously, he's got Five Man Band extending past Gatchaman and Voltron.

That is not what he's declared. He declared that general tropes can't have Japanese names. Completely different things there.

Let's not drag all that mess in here, shall we? Magical Girl, mahou shoujo, is obviously-if-you-look-at-it distinctive from other superheroines and magic users and its anime/manga roots aren't in question. This is an offshoot of Magical Girl being cleaned and clarified to cement its place on Stock Japanese Characters via its Special Efforts thread.

However, one of the first questions I was going to bring up here is whether we might be missing a supertrope that leads people to keep putting those other examples under Dark Magical Girl.

Is there a theme to the misuse? Figuring that out might help sort out why the decay is happening and how to prevent it.

Most from what I see are from series with magic like Buffy, Angel, Charmed, Merlin, Fire Emblem type shows Magic yes but not Magical Girl (B5 is really gd out of place no way thats remotely correct she is psychic and crap.)

"Anti-Villain who uses magic" are being shoehorned in.

EDIT: doesnt help that Dark Action Girl is using it wrong in a completely other direction.

edited 13th Sep '11 2:21:39 PM by Raso

Just for the sake of argument (not a serious push), is there something else we could call this that could make it more clear? "Magical Girl's Rival"?

Could we broaden the trope so that non-Magical Girls would be acceptable? What's the difference between the western and non-western examples other than being Magical Girl characters?

edited 13th Sep '11 2:37:16 PM by Elle

They are literally called Dark Magical Girl s in-universe in quite a few works Dark Pretty Cure◊ Dark Pretty Cure 5◊ There are alot of specific tropes too mostly what the page talks about

And costumes... they also get way less frills (Complete opposite of Frills of Justice) than the Magical Girl Warrior till their Heel–Face Turn then they get frills [1]◊ to [2]◊ or [3]◊(unless its a work aimed at adult men then its base form is usually fetishised and stays that way IE Fate in Nanoha.) Rivals Team Up and alot of stuff.

edited 13th Sep '11 2:52:02 PM by Raso

One option is to start the article off with "The rival of the Magical Girl, the Dark Magical Girl..." and then everything else.

Like shima said, what's the misuse look like? Is it just mistaking it for Black Magician Girl?

The Live action section Pretty sure almost all of this is wrong and shoehorned in. (the power rangers ones I can see and maybe the second buffy bullet.) Video games is just as bad, Western animation has things like Poison ivy from batman and Rogue from Xmen. unfamiliar with the comics but Illyana from Xmen isnt this as well.

• Faith from Buffy The Vampire Slayer is a good Western example of this trope, with a healthy dose of Dark Action Girl. Besides that she's a fighter, not a magician, she is a very lonely character, and has a father/daughter relationship (to mirror Giles and Buffy) with the season's Big Bad, one strong enough and real enough that Buffy's Power Of Friendship doesn't pull Faith back to the good guys (And, unlike your average DMG, this bond goes both ways: the only time the Big Bad in question sheds his Affably Evil persona and gets really pissed is when Faith is put in a coma by Buffy). Though Faith is eventually redeemed, she never develops the normal DMG devotion to Buffy (probably since Angel's the one who actually gets through to her); although they do establish a close ally relationship by the end of season 7.
  • And of course, there's "Dark Willow" during her magic-fueled Roaring Rampage of Revenge, who even falls into the Dark Magical Girl pattern of jealously trying to prove that she's stronger than the heroine and her former best friend Buffy, before moving onto bigger plans. And like most Dark Magical Girls, she's eventually redeemed by The Power of Love.
• Gwen Raiden from Angel, whose power prevents her from being intimate with anyone because it will kill them.
• Elle in Heroes is even closer to this: she's a bit more confident on the surface than the average example but she's deeply insecure and has a dysfunctional relationship with her father. Especially since he may even have brain-damaged her through persuading her to experiment dangerously with her power when she was a kid.
• Power Rangers usually prefers the Dark Action Girl route, but Marah & Kapri from Power Rangers Ninja Storm, Lothor's bumbling nieces, are more DMG-ish. They don't really want to be evil; they just want to be normal teenage girls, valued by their uncle ("By marriage," Lothor points out.). He finally leaves them to be destroyed in the Grand Finale, but Cam, Lothor's biological nephew, reluctantly decides to save them "because they're family." In the Reunion Show, they pretended to rejoin Lothor, but actually worked behind the scenes to free Cam's father, Kanoi... who then went on to save Cam, Hunter, and Blake... who then went on to save the Dino Thunder Power Trio from being wiped out by Ninja Storm's Three Amigos.
  • Also, Nadira from Power Rangers Time Force. She was a mix of Dark Action Girl and Spoiled Brat, but the Grand Finale gives her a more sympathetic role as she starts to really value life and this triggers her father Ransik's redemption
• Lyta Alexander of Babylon Five gradually becomes this over the run of the show, reversing the usual trajectory, thanks to a long run of Break the Cutie (effectively every person or organisation she successively puts her faith in turns out to be only interested in her as a tool, until the last ones commit cult suicide). It is hinted that at the end of the show she may be on the path to redemption, although Word of God has it that she eventually died horribly anyway.
• Aviva from the Charmed episode "The Fourth Sister". In a rare play on the trope, her powers are given to her by a demon and she loses them once the demon is vanquished. She's much happier afterwards though.
• Morgana from Merlin especially in the second season, when she grapples with her out-of-control magical powers that she's desperate to keep secret from her foster-father the king who has outlawed magic and she believes would have her executed if he knew. She grows in confidence after meeting her half-sister Morgause, but by season three in which she is an unrepentant villain without any clear understanding of why.

edited 13th Sep '11 2:58:36 PM by Raso

Yeah...that looks like "Black Magician Girl but with angst." Maybe that's a trope, but its definitely not this one.

What they're asking for is if there's a pattern.

What I see from that:

• Faith from Buffy: The Rival, not magical, dark counterpart to the heroine
• Gwen from Angel: Unsure, sounds like just Angst
• Elle from Heros: Not The Rival AFAIK, just Angst.
• Power Rangers: Don't know enough to understand the first example, but the second one seems close, especialy if she's a Sixth Ranger
• Babylon Five: Magical, antagonistic, but not The Rival?
• Aviva from Charmed: Magical, antagonist, redeemed, but not much else known
• Morgana: Magical, antagonist, but mostly general Angst.

Of those I think Faith is actually closest to the spirit of the trope: The Rival who is a Dark Counterpart being used by the villains. (Do we have another trope that means Dark Counterpart?)

edited 13th Sep '11 3:16:18 PM by Elle

Yeah, those are all wrong and there really doesn't seem to be much of a theme. The only real live action example I can think of is Dark Sailor Mercury from Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon and don't tell me that's not a magical girl series.

Well yeah, given it's the Live-Action Adaptation of a major Trope Codifier ;) But I'm not sure Brainwashed and Crazy alone this trope makes? (Dark Sailor Mercury and Black Lady!Chibi-usa were both that).

Some Brainwashed and Crazy Magical Girl s would fit the bill, more so in that they are more than likely the targets of the "Befriending" process and in the internal conflict these always have (maybe I Know Your In There fight) more so if they get a corrupted Transformation Sequence.

Notably more than a few Dark Magical Girl s get brainwashed back into loyalty or beaten after they start showing signs of Heel–Face Turn requiring more befriending to get the full turn or akin to getting rescued.

edited 13th Sep '11 3:32:49 PM by Raso

Sure, but they start the series as a Dark Magical Girl, Dark Mercury and Black Lady were converted forcibly from the protagonist side and had to be won back.

edited 13th Sep '11 3:33:52 PM by Elle

Doesn't exist. A superhero, to use an example from another thread, can exist outside of the superhero genre. A character type is genre-neutral. It may be far more predominate, or even only exist within, one genre, but that doesn't preclude it from being in another genre entirely.

If there are some that don't fit the criteria regardless, axe them. But saying it's genre-specific is ridiculous because that isn't even a real concept...

Say that to Most Common Super Power.... there are plenty of super hero specific tropes also most of the examples outside specific references to the genre actually fit the character type used in the Magical Girl genre.

It really depends on the situation I have never seen Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon but Chibi Usa was a example of this when she was transformed especially in the make her master happy way and other things.

edited 13th Sep '11 3:40:47 PM by Raso

Most Common Superpower isn't genre-specific, insofar as I care. I'd say it's medium-specific, though. You can't really have the Most Common Superpower in real life because that's actually natural. I suppose you could argue that breast implants would count, but I'd have to look at the trope definition.

Your not reading Most Common Superpower trope right then...

Outside of the Magical Girl Genre there are very few examples on the page that would fit. Rose in Legend Of Dragoon, Maybe Shadow from the Sonic The Hedgehog and Riku from Kingdom Hearts. (those are close but not 100% on the mark)

edited 13th Sep '11 3:47:04 PM by Raso

That doesn't mean it's genre exclusive. It just means it doesn't really exist at present outside of the Magical Girl genre. Hardly the same thing.

edited 13th Sep '11 3:46:25 PM by nrjxll

Most Common Superpower is western superhero specific because it's only a trope in aggregate. It's basically a genre convention, but it can show up where ever western style superheroes do.

That said, I think this is Magical Girl specific in that you need multiple magical girls and you don't tend to get enough magical girls outside of a magical girl series. While in theory it could exist outside of it's genre it's amazingly unlikely to. I think the only place outside of the genre where it happens is in BESM or other large scale parodies of anime in general.

edited 13th Sep '11 3:51:59 PM by shimaspawn

The first paragraph of Most Common Superpower even notes that it's not superheroine-specific.

And, indeed, "barely occurs outside this genre" =/= "can only be in this genre."

Shadow and Riku would definitely be served by a Dark Counterpart trope, I think. Are we sure we don't allready have it?

edited 13th Sep '11 3:57:45 PM by Elle

Yes, it also applies to western style supervillians. That's it.

A dark counterpart supertrope might not be bad.

edited 13th Sep '11 3:52:54 PM by shimaspawn