Magical Girl Cliches

So far, the things I did hear and read about Magical Girls are these.

• The main lead's primarily color is pink.
• They are clumsy, klutzy ditzes.
• They love to eat snacks and sweets.
• They destroy enemies with hearts, stars, and other, uh... "girly" stuff.
• Clothing consists majority of red, white, and pink with lots of frills.
• They don't have many real world hobbies.
• Have cute and annoying familiars.
• Always in love with someone
• They fight as a team.

If any of these are true, then I want to know who are the biggest offenders, as well as the sole exception.

edited 6th Jul '12 10:01:50 PM by asiacatdogblue

Symphogear messes with a lot of those:

• Lead's main color is orange.
• The lead gets into trouble for being too nice, but she isn't clumsy. The other characters aren't anywhere close.
• Sweets never come up in the story.
• The lead uses Good Old Fisticuffs. The rest of the characters use spears, katanas, machine guns...
• Everyone wears more normal clothes. The combat wear is more tight-fitting stuff, no frills. One character wears red, and another wears white. The others are primarily orange, blue, etc, with some black, white and purple making it onto everything.
• The lead's hobby is helping people. The rest of them are too busy with work or other stuff to have hobbies, making it Justified.
• No familiars, period.
• Lots of Les Yay. Otherwise, no.
• They fight as a team after some convincing.

And yet it's considered very generic. You see, those things you mentioned are only perceived as common factors. You just see them so much that it seems that way.

edited 6th Jul '12 10:22:45 PM by burnpsy

If they are seen so much, doesn't that make them common factors?

Not when there's more than a handful of exceptions. Or when something is easily identifiable as a magical girl show without using most of the elements on that list.

Then it's just something very common.

It's like saying All Animation Is Disney.

edited 6th Jul '12 11:09:45 PM by burnpsy

@OP: While these themes are common, it's easy to give counterexamples.

Take Puelli Magi Madoka Magica, for one:

• Madoka's primary color is pink, BUT: she's not a magical girl until the last episode.
• Destruction of enemies: With magical versions of real-world weapons (muskets, swords, spears, bow&arrow, not even going into what Homura does).
• Always in love with someone: debatable. Some are, in fact in love, but no canon love interest for Madoka, Homura (although the fans see a lot of Ship Tease) and Mami at least.
• They fight as a team: Sometimes, but not always. Homura and Kyouko prefer working alone, for instance.

Another example: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha:

• No pink here. Nanoha is known as the White Devil for a reason.
• Clumsy, klutzy ditzes: totally averted.
• Destruction of enemies: Starlight Breaker may be known as the Beam of Friendship, but it's more a energy beam weapon that would fit in a mecha series.
• The familiar disappears fairly quickly.
• The main characters are mostly married to their job (not counting the copious Les Yay).

The "fight as a team" bit only works in Magical Girl Warrior shows; I haven't seen Card Captor Sakura, but as far as I know, she works mostly alone.

burnpsy pretty much summed up all of what I have to say. Magical girl shows were actually started from (if you've done SOME research at all) something a lot darker. Then broadcast executives decided to parse the genre a bit, breaking it down into digestable genres with flexible demographics.

In such demographics, some tropes are actually required to be aired, and said tropes are in direct conflict against the incompatible ones. Subjectively, you can view them as cliche, but then they are also part of animation. Magical Girl shows aired outside of shoujo timeslots / demographies aren't necessarily the cups of teas for people who enjoy the genre AND those who want a gateway for it

Most of all and finally, 'cliche' is a dangerous word here. I can say reading is cliche and rant about who needs paper and why, but it can't really go anywhere. Likewise, a certain type of viewer base can rant about why should girls be allowed to become magical and made as shows, and that will be a real detractor

@jkbeta: You mean it's not written with Homura having a one-sided crush then?

Also, Nanoha's magic is pink.

edited 7th Jul '12 6:32:33 AM by Deadbeatloser22

Um, Girly Girl = Mage and Tomboy = Fighter? Of course, the leads and some characters have shades of The Red Mage or the Magic Knight.

edited 7th Jul '12 7:22:28 AM by judasmartel

Card Captor Sakura! Although she doesn't fight in a team. Aaand she's definitely not clumsy.

edited 7th Jul '12 11:08:57 AM by Ruise

Well, let's go with something a bit more in the shoujo demographic and airing at the moment; Smile Pretty Cure

• Miyuki's primary color is pink
• She's a klutz
• She likes sweets
• Varies; Miyuki, Yayoi and Reika have very magical and sparkly finishers while Nao and Akane have more physical-but-magic finishers. I think this ties to the Girly Girl=Mage and Tomboy=Warrior thing. Rainbow Healing is a sparkly finisher though. Since this is Precure, there's also a good amount of physical fighting by everyone.
• They follow Color-Coded for Your Convenience, so not really.
• Every one of the Smile girls aside from Akane has a hobby.
• Candy
• No love/crush, unless you count Peter Pan.
• Yes.

So I think this is more a set of things that tends to happen due to familiarity in the shoujo Magical Girl genre, but you can't just say all Magical Girl shows are like this or have to have these cliches to be considered Magical Girl.

Doesn't Korezom have a Magical Girl with a chainsaw?

edited 8th Jul '12 4:09:42 AM by fourteenwings

@deadbeatloser: Homura may have a one-sided crush, I'm not disputing that. It's just that I think there may be other explanations for her behaviour as well (extreme levels of thankfulness or friendly love, for example), so I think it's debatable. FWIW, personally, I'm going with one-sided crush as well, but unless there's Word of God confirming it, I'm open to other possibilities.

Magical girl anime is still evolving. Hopefully the new Sailor Moon coming out next year will be a good gauge of how far we've come.

Sure, they may make minimal changes to the character traits mentioned in the OP that fit Sailor Moon pretty well, but for all that it doesn't really affect what you can do with the plot. It isn't really a bad thing, it's just how some characters are.

Here's my interpretation of the general reason for those choices:

• The main lead's primarily color is pink - Girly, fits with the theme, keeps the pallette cute as well as the characters.
• They are clumsy, klutzy ditzes. - A way to create an everygirl with moe appeal. Possibly ties into the multiple demographic appeal by being a character that shoujo-familiar familiar girls will like and the male audience will desire to protect.
• They love to eat snacks and sweets. - Real Men Hate Sugar, therefore real girls must love sweets. Don't ask me, I can't stand this particular hang-up.
• They destroy enemies with hearts, stars, and other, uh... "girly" stuff. - this is for the younger female audience and perhaps so the male audience will still consider the magical girls innocent while they're blasting their enemies into dust.
• Clothing consists majority of red, white, and pink with lots of frills. - Don't they usually base the Magical Girl outfit on the School uniform? In Sailor Moon it was a Sailor Fuku, which was red and white. In any case, they're all nice primary colours. This can vary quite a bit anyway.
• They don't have many real world hobbies. - Probably as the result of making them a generic everygirl, and so that their actual hobbies wouldn't get in the way of the plot. I could see it not being something that needs attention drawn to it,
• Have cute and annoying familiars. - YMMV on cute and annoying. Cute mascots are both merchandising opportunities and cuddly characters which the younger audience could theoretically become more easily attached to.
• Always in love with someone - Love interests are a staple of Shoujo works. Also if used right, this can play into the multiple demographic appeal by both having an older more powerful man for the younger audience to look up to and an older male for the older males to identify with. Or, Yuri Genre if they want to go all the way and pander that way.
• They fight as a team. - It's the whole friendship thing prevalent throughout Shoujo and Shounen in Japan. Also they seem to be bigger on team heroes, rather than individual heroes.

But really I wouldn't let that get in the way of actually watching Magical Girl shows I like.

Speaking of Precure...

Heartcatch Precure

• Tsubomi is Pink, yes.
• In the case of Tsubomi and Erika, perhaps. But for Itsuki and Yuri, not in the slightest.
• Only applies to Erika
• Yes, they defeat their enemies with heart and flower motifs, coupled with some pretty impressive explosions. Later in the series, the Heartcatch Orchestra takes on the form of a giant woman who defeats enemies with a single punch from her giant fist
• It's Precure, so it's aimed mostly at girls, so they probably have to conform to this to sell the Precure merchendise.
• Tsubomi and Erika both have hobbies. In fact, Tsubomi is a member in two clubs (Gardening and fashion) at her school. Itsuki also has two hobbies (fashion with Tsubomi and Erika and martial arts). Yuri isn't shown as having any hobbies, but she seems to enjoy studying and reads a lot of books.
• Again, some things need to be conformed to when a series is part of a Cash-Cow Franchise aimed at preteen girls.
• Tsubomi has a few crushes over the course of the series. One is with Itsuki, another is with the transfromed form of a fairy called Coupe. The (probably) canon partner only appears in one episode, though. It doesn't apply to Erika, though. The same goes for Itsuki*
  depending on how you interpret her relationship with her older brother
  and Yuri.
• Yeah. Yuri's backstory shows why.

And for the original (from what I have seen so far).

• Nagisa transforms into Cure Black, so it subverts this (though her costume has pale pink frills)
• I suppose. Nagisa is a somewhat ditzy tomboy. Honoka mostly avoids being a Ditzy Genius, though.
• Yup. Nagisa loves chocolate. Doesn't apply to Honoka, though
• "Cure Marble Screw" is an attack which consists of black lighting and white lightning intertwining. So, apart from the rainbows/aurora that accompany the transformation and attack prepration, it actually avoids this for the most part.
• Both Precure have frilly clothes. As already mentioned, it is subverted with Cure Black, as her outfit is mostly black with pale pink frills. Played straight with Cure White, though.
• Nagisa has lacrosee. Honoka has science. I guess that the majority of Precure have hobbies, and since Precure is the mainstream mahou shoujo series in Japan today, this may be something of a Dead Horse Trope.
• Yes.
• Nagisa has a long-standing crush with the soccer team captain. Honoka hasn't found anyone yet, apart from some Foe Yay with one of the members of the Dark Zone's Quirky Miniboss Squad for a while, but he "returned to the darkness" (I'm 25 episodes into the first season)
• Yes. They can't even transform when there's only one of them around.

edited 8th Jul '12 4:05:46 PM by flygon250

As I have posted above, new Magical Girl shows now tend to have the Tomboy and Girly Girl variation of Guys Smash, Girls Shoot, where the girlier girls tend to be spellcasters while the tougher girls tend to be warriors. There are also cases that either type of girl have properties of either The Red Mage or the Magic Knight.

That said, the Magical Girl genre is pretty much the only place I look for when I want a story with a non-Magic Knight spellcaster protagonist if anything, considering that females tend to be almost always portrayed as magicians or archers.

well...i could say that my series tweaks, downplays, and subvert them soo ok. minus the whole romance thing or the color red, it's there to usher in character development because my character is a kuudere to most of his friends except for his role model

edited 22nd Feb '16 4:32:57 PM by ewolf2015

@Opening: Most of it could be blamed on Sailor Moon 1st animation, though. It ticks most of the box in opening's argument.

Except maybe "doesn't have hobbies": Girl Talks counts as hobbies, I guess....