Magical Girl / Anime & Manga

Magical Girls are a staple for Anime & Manga series.

Examples of Magical Girl works:

• Studio Pierrot. They were best known for their Magical Girl series, such as Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel, Persia, the Magic Fairy, Magical Emi, the Magic Star, Magical Idol Pastel Yumi, and Fancy Lala in the 1980s. Also, the Studio Pierrot pilot film, Yumesekai No Hodgepodge.
• Akazukin Chacha started out as a Cute Witch, but was turned into a Magical Girl Warrior for her anime adaptation.
• Alice 19th features Alice and her friends as Magical Girl Warrior.
• Animal Detectives Kiruminzoo. It is basically Sherlock Holmes with huge animal costume motifs and serious comedy.
• Artiswitch
• Ask Dr. Rin!. The plot at first follows the everyday life of Meirin Kanzaki, a 13-year-old girl with the power to predict the future using feng shui magic. In order to test her powers, she creates a Web site under the pseudonym of Dr. Rin.
• Black★Rock Shooter is a Gothic take on the genre, with the heroines dressing all in black and toting huge guns/swords/scythes.
• Cardcaptor Sakura, easily the second most famous behind Miss Tsukino worldwide.
• Corrector Yui takes an interesting alternative magical source than the other typical series- Yui, Haruna, and Ai's internet avatars (their consciences inside Com Net) are the ones that have "magic" as science and technology is concerned.
• CosPrayers is an 8-episode Magical Girl show with Fanservice.
• Cutey Honey is the Ur-Example for the Magical Girl Warrior sub-genre. While not originally planned as a magical girl series, it pioneered tropes such as the ability to transform and the In the Name of the Moon speech that were adapted by later shows, such as Sailor Moon.
  • The late-90s Cutey Honey Flash anime brings things full circle by being a full on magical girl warrior show. It even showed at the same time slot as Sailor Moon after the latter ended.
• Cyber Team in Akihabara
• D4 Princess
• Day Break Illusion, another one for fans of Darker and Edgier.
• Destiny of the Shrine Maiden combines this with Humongous Mecha and young lesbians.
• Devil Hunter Yohko has Yohko Mano, the most badass one you'll ever see, that banish demons from the Earth as a Magical Girl Warrior in her spare time. Unlike her contemporaries, Yohko isn't afraid to get physical. She'll put the sword DOWN if she has to.
• D.N.Angel. Sometimes called a "magical boy" series, it generally has a lighthearted, romantic comedy/fantasy feel, although occasionally there's hints of darker mysteries and backstories lurking in the shadows.
• In Dokidoki! Tama-tan, Tama-tan is given a magical moon jewel and gains the ability to turn into a Lunar Lady.
• Dream Hunter Rem, an OVA from 1985 about a green-haired supernatural detective who enters other people's dreams and fights the demons who cause nightmares. A very early example of the Magical Girl Warrior sub-genre.
• Earth Maiden Arjuna is a magical girl show with a Green Aesop.
• Misa of Eko Eko Azarak is a darker example - she uses Black Magic in order to enact brutal justice on her victims.
• Esper Mami is about Mami Sakura, an Ordinary High-School Student who one day manifests supernatural powers, including teleportation, telepathy, and telekinesis, which she uses to solve mysteries and help people in trouble.
• Eternal Alice
• Fairy Musketeers
• Fairy Navigator Runa
• Floral Magician Mary Bell is about Mary Bell, a floral sprite who appears to those in need.
• Flip Flappers
• Flying Witch
• Full Moon is about 12-year old Mitsuki Koyama who, with the help of two Shinigami out to collect her soul, is able to transform into a 16-year old Idol Singer called Full Moon to fulfill her dreams.
• Galaxy Fraulein Yuna (by way of Magic From Technology?)
• Getsumen to Heiki Mina combines this with Bunny Girls, aliens, a vegetable theme, and a possible Affectionate Parody.
• G-On Riders
• Hana no Ko Lunlun uses flower power to change her outfit.
• Happy Seven
• Healer Girl: It stands somewhere between Magic Idol Singer and Magical Girl Warrior. The girls drop into song at the drop of a hat, given that its a Broadway-style Musical, so at least adjacent to Magic Idol Singer, but the ability to heal is borrowed from Magical Girl Warrior shows like Symphogear.
• Hime-chan's Ribbon. Nonohara Himeko is a magical tomboy of the cute witch type who can transform into anybody in the human world for one hour. This is due to her getting a magic ribbon from her alternate universe counterpart Erica, who just happens to be a princess in The Magical Kingdom.
• Himitsu no Akko-chan features a girl with a magic mirror. She is a possible Trope Maker for the transforming type; she predates Cutey Honey by about half a decade (by comparison, Sally the Witch was a "magical girl", but she just had magical powers).
• Hyper Speed Grandoll with a more sci-fi vibe than usual.
• I.O.N
• Is This A Zombie? is part Magical Girl, part about ten other things (Unwanted Harem being one of them).
• Jewel BEM Hunter Lime. It's a mixture of Cute Witch and Magic Warrior tropes.
• Jewelpet is about anthropomorphic small animals named after jewels, birthstones and other minerals, who can use magic with the power of their eyes, made of said minerals.
• Jubei-chan is about a girl who wears an eyepatch that gives her the power of the famous Samurai Yagyu Jubei.
• Kaitou Saint Tail is a more mundane example, since all of Saint Tail's "magic" is explicitly stage magic (not that you can tell, given how impossibly awesome her tricks are). She still fulfils other aspects of the trope, such as having a Transformation Sequence and using her "magic" to help others.
• Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel
• Kill la Kill is a fanservice-heavy Fighting Series where the characters' powers come from their clothes and places heavy emphasis on awesome.
• Koi Cupid. The story revolves around three young cupids, Ai, Ren, and Koi.
• In Kurumi-tic Miracle, the heroine discovers a magical bracelet that gives her magical powers.
• Leda: The Fantastic Adventure of Yohko is reminiscent of Magic Knight Rayearth, except with one Magical Girl, not three.
• Magic Knight Rayearth is CLAMP's first crack at the genre, adding Humongous Mecha for good measure (and also results being the first Magical girl series that entered the Super Robot Wars series after 20+ years of debut). Also borrows a lot from Heroic Fantasy quest stories.
• Magic User's Club
• Magical Angel Sweet Mint
• Magical Canan, which got its start as an eroge before becoming its own series.
• Magical Destroyers
• Magical Girl Incident is one of the rare Gender Bender examples that not only plays the genre's conventions straight but has the protagonist's magical form closely match his civillain self's age.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is somewhat unusual in that, rather than young girls, older teenagers and young men are the target audience. It's also much more character-driven, compared to most other series.
  • The manga eventually dropped "Magical Girl" from the title, since Nanoha is now 25 and either still a Captain of an Interdimensional Air Force or higher. She's still Magical, but is a woman, not a girl.
  • At the same time, a Spin-Off manga starring Vivio was released that kept the "Magical Girl" part of the title. Yup, Nanoha's daughter has now officially inherited her mother's role as Magical Girl, complete with Older Alter Ego.
  • Ironically, no one is ever referred to as a magical girl in the series itself. Understandable, as almost every mage is either from Mid-Childa, Ancient Belka, or other worlds where magic is a fact of life and Everyone Is a Super (well, the majority of the cast, at least).
• In Magical Lollipop, Ichigo is approached one day by a strange talking animal who claims to be from the 26th century, and turns her into a magical girl so that she can build up enough magic power to send it back home.
• Magical Meow Meow Taruto
• Magical Pokaan
• Magical Princess Minky Momo which follows a princess who has to restore the hopes and dreams of others to bring her kingdom back, and is infamous for the scene halfway through where she gets run down by a truck before she can restore the final jewel to the crown and has to be reincarnated.
• Magilumiere Co. Ltd. presents a unique take on the Magical Girl— the series takes place in a world where outbreaks of dangerous creatures known as Kaii have become a common phenomenon, and companies employ working women as "magical girls" to wield Magitek to take them out. Kaii incidents are referred to as "exterminations" but are essentially Magical Girl battles. There's plenty of the usual Magical Girl tropes and flashy fights, with the catch that position of "magical girl" is treated mostly like an average career, meaning that it has its own set of workplace politics and conflicts on top of all that.
• Mahou no Mako-chan is a Magical girl adaptation of "The Little Mermaid", in which the magic takes a back seat to the love story.
• Mahou Shojo Lalabel is a classic show about a Cute Witch and a thief she's after who are accidentally transported from Magical Land to our world.
• Mahou Shounen Majorian adds a Gender Bender twist: two boys, one of whom bullies the other, are transformed into girls in order to battle alien invaders.
• Mahou Shoujo Taisen, a 2014 anime that aims to give all 47 prefectures of Japan their own magical girl and mascot.
• Mahou Tsukai Chappy is about the Cute Witch Chappy who, becoming sick of the old customs of her people, leaves the Land of Magic for the human world with her little brother Jun and their pet Don-chan. In many ways an Expy of Sally the Witch.
• Majokko Meg-chan, ground-breaking in regards to the genre with both Darker and Edgier and Hotter and Sexier tones. Included a truly evil character as an antagonist (prior to this, there was a perception that young girls couldn't handle such things), subplots that sometimes touched more serious social issues like Domestic Abuse, extramarital relationships, etc.. and featured Fanservice in the form of upskirt shots and slight nudity.
• Majokko Tickle, created by Go Nagai, features a mischievous fairy who was imprisoned inside a book for playing pranks on people and ends up in the human world having adventures with her foster "twin" sister.
• Makeruna! Makendo
• Mao-chan features three cute eight year old girls using recovered alien technology to turn into these... to stop an equally cute and far less effective force of alien invaders.
• Marvelous Melmo uses magic pills to change her age.
• Miriya & Marie has the titular Miriya study witchcraft under the guidance of Marie from The Aristocats.
• Mei no Naisho is an unusual example. Although it's considered a magical girl series, the manga is the story of a young boy who was raised as a girl by his witch mother and possesses witch powers, a wand, and a talking cat familiar. It also features a perverted girl, as opposed to the usual perverted boy.
• Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch features mermaids who transform into Magic Idol Singers.
• Meru Puri
• Mewkledreamy gives the Magical Girl and the Mentor Mascot the ability to travel others' dreams.
• Mink is another Magic Idol Singer who can transform into whoever she wants by means of a CD from the future, but is not allowed to tell anyone else about this while she's using it or face deletion. The series is often considered to be its author Megumi Tachikawa's Creator-Driven Successor to Kaitou Saint Tail due to it going into similar themes about the psychology behind the Secret-Identity Identity problem.
• Miracle Girls is about Tomomi and Mikage, a pair of twins with psychic powers.
• Miracle Shojo Limit-chan features a cyborg heroine, though a less popular one than its "sister" show Cutie Honey.
• Moeyo Ken—the magical girl genre meets The Shinsengumi.
• Moldiver
• Nanako SOS (although, technically, she's more like a Super Hero, lacking a Mentor Mascot, Transformation Trinket, or most things usually associated with the trope).
• Nanatsuiro★Drops
• Nurse Witch Komugi
• Ojamajo Doremi features The Team of Cute Witches. The girls primarily use their powers to help out and do other mundane things throughout the series. To list each of these would take too long. And when they actually come to fighting evil, they usually do so through unorthodox and impractical means and have to have their powers boosted in order to be successful.
• Oku-sama wa Mahou Shoujo: Bewitched Agnes is about a 26 year old Magical girl.
• Onegai My Melody has a twist in that the lead magical girl and her arch-nemesis are anthropomorphic rabbits.
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is a very sexual, adult-oriented twist on the formula.
• Petite Princess Yucie
• Pixie Pop
• Prétear gives the heroine an Unwanted Harem.
• Princess Comet (a.k.a. Cosmic Baton Girl Comet-san).
• The Pretty Cure multiverse (Futari wa Pretty Cure, Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star, Yes! Pretty Cure 5, Fresh Pretty Cure!, HeartCatch Pretty Cure!, Suite Pretty Cure ♪, Smile Pretty Cure!, Doki Doki! PreCure, HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!, Go! Princess Pretty Cure, Maho Girls Pretty Cure!, KiraKira★Pretty Cure à la Mode, HuGtto! Pretty Cure, Star★Twinkle Pretty Cure, Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure, Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure, Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure， Hirogaru Sky! Pretty Cure and Wonderful Pretty Cure!)
• Psycho Trader Chinami
• Quiz Magic Academy
• Rakugo Tennyo Oyui, a Jidai Geki take.
• Sailor Moon, perhaps the most famous outside (and inside!) of Japan. Many misinformed people will call any other magical girl series a "ripoff" of Sailor Moon, which isn't true in the slightest.
  • Codename: Sailor V, the manga which led to the creation of Sailor Moon.
• Saint October
• Sakura Hime: The Legend of Princess Sakura
• Sally the Witch, the first in the genre (for anime^note Himitsu no Akko-chan was the first in the genre for manga) and Trope Codifier for the Cute Witch subgenre.
• Samurai Pirates
• Sarutobi Ecchan features a girl with ninja powers.
• Sasami: Magical Girls Club is one of the rare Cute Witch ones to actually see a formal United States localization.
• Shamanic Princess is a Darker and Edgier, Hotter and Sexier take on Cute Witch magical girls. It's very conscious of the Periphery Demographic and aimed at an older audience, but remains a straight take on the genre's themes. It has a non-linear narrative that starts In Medias Res, with a lot of oblique, symbolic imagery to go along with it.
• Shadow Lady, Kaitou Saint Tail, and Phantom Thief Jeanne combine this genre with the Phantom Thief genre.
• Shugo Chara!
• Shy takes inspiration from the genre by having not only the Transformation Trinkets but also Monsters of the Week created by the Big Bad's Mooks'' in addition to the usual superhero tropes.
• Six Hearts Princess
• Someday's Dreamers and its sequel Someday's Dreamers II: Sora.
• Spellbound! Magical Princess Lil'Pri
• Stray Little Devil
• Sugar Sugar Rune is about Chocolat and Vanilla. They are two young witches from the Magical World, the best of friends despite being polar opposites.
• Super Doll★Licca-chan
• Sweet Valerian
• Symphogear has Magical Girl Warriors who are empowered by the Power of Rock to fight an Eldritch Abomination. It has a lot of Shout-Outs to another music-themed Magical girl series, Suite Pretty Cure ♪, but it was strongly influenced by Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and it's definitely one of the darker series (although not to the extreme of the 'definitely dark' types).
• Tamagotchi mostly averts the trope, but has two seasons collectively called Yume Kira Dream that play it straight. The characters Yumemitchi and Kiraritchi use their Yume Kira bags to become people of specific occupations (fisherwomen, baseball players, firefighters, etc.) and use their abilities to make other Tamagotchis' dreams come true.
• Tantei Opera Milky Holmes combines this with the detective genre.
• Telepathy Shoujo Ran, if you consider Psychic Powers magical.
• T.P. Sakura: Time Paladin Sakura is a Magical Girl-themed spinoff of the Da Capo anime.
• Time Stranger Kyoko
• Tokimeki Tonight, while not generally considered a magical girl series, does feature a heroine with magical powers (namely, the ability to transform herself into a copy of an object by biting that object).
• Tokyo Mew Mew has an environmentalist theme. It focuses on five girls infused with the DNA of rare animals that gives them special powers and allows them to transform into "Mew Mews." Led by Ichigo Momomiya, the girls protect the earth from aliens who wish to "reclaim" it.
• Tweeny Witches, aka Magical Girl Squad Arusu
• Twin Princess of Wonder Planet starts off with two girls who are given powers to save their unique world. It begins as a Cute Witch series, given their antics and how they help, and slowly evolves into Magical Girl Warrior, cementing the latter position with the second season.
• Ultra Maniac
• Umi Monogatari is unusual among Magical Girl Warrior shows in that the focus is more on emotional development of the characters, the fights are fairly long, the girls' mentor is completely wrong about some things, most of the music is gentle piano music, and the revelation of what the Big Bad really is allows for a conclusion that's more true to life than most shows of this nature.
• Vividred Operation is, bizarrely enough, a Magical Girl show where the girls gain their powers through pure science. Mind you, the science in question is so advanced that it's practically indistinguishable from magic.
• We Are Magical Boys initially looks like a parody at the start yet focuses on themes of self-confidence, coming to embrace gender-nonconformity and You Are Not Alone.
• Wedding Peach has a wedding theme. They are called "Love Angels" but they have the frilly superpower costumes and such.
• Wish Upon the Pleiades
• Witch Hat Atelier
• Witch Watch
• Yadamon
• Yume no Crayon Oukoku
• Zodiac P.I.

Examples of Deconstructions, Dramas and Parodies of Magical Girl Works

• Black Lagoon featured an OVA-only Alternate Universe omake that turned Villain Protagonist Revy into a magical girl called Radical Girl Revy-Chan, who solves all the loser protagonist's problems with guns before returning to the magical land of Hestonworld. This gets him arrested.
• Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan is another comedic deconstruction.
• Brocken Blood is another Gender Bender magical "girl" show, but with the added element of Magic Idol Singer. It's also a parody of the Magical girl genre.
• Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE! is a hot springs-themed Magical Girl tale about the all-male "Earth Defense Club", which doesn't actually do any defending. Only after a surprisingly-realistic pink wombat gives them superpowers do they start living up to their club's name. As you might have guessed, the show is very much an Affectionate Parody of Magical Girl anime and their associated tropes. It later received a sequel series, Cute High Earth Defense Club Happy Kiss!.
• Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA. The original Fate/stay night sequel Fate/hollow ataraxia had one side story where Rin has an interdimensional teacher who trains her by giving her a Magical Girl Rod that "followed rules from a different dimension". This manga takes that notion and runs with it, but Illyasviel von Einzbern, with a side dish of Adaptational Nice Guy and Adaptational Heroism, is the protagonist. The series started out as a parody, but eventually started shifting to a straighter example by 3rei!.
  • The Nasuverse loves to play around with this. Arcueid has 3 different magical girl alter-egos, Caren has one, and both Hisui and Kohaku have one. All are jokes. Saber Lily could be considered to be one as well, but Saber's powers are already kinda magical-girl-ish to begin with.
• Gently mocked in the Gakuen Kino novels, a High School AU of the Kino's Journey series, in which ultimate pragmatist Kino is thrust into the genre.
• Gushing Over Magical Girls is about Hiiragi Utena, an Ascended Fangirl who gets her wish of becoming a magical girl, like her idols Tres Magia. What she did not expect was being recruited to fight for an evil organization, or how it awakens something within her.
• Jungle de Ikou! is about Natsumi, a 10 year old Japanese girl who gains the power to transform into Mii (May in the dub), a super-powered and super-busty flower spirit, from a perverted old earth spirit named Aham (Ahem in the dub.)
• Kamichama Karin started out as a one-shot parody of the genre, but was popular enough to become a series in its own right.
• Magical Girl Apocalypse gives a horror example of the genre, with the Magical Girls as the monsters. They are Humanoid Abominations with the ability to raise any person they kill as a zombie, who unleash a Zombie Apocalypse upon the city.
• Magical Girl Ore is a Super Gender-Bender manga with a twist: it's the heroine that turns into a magical boy. "He" even goes into Magic Idol Singer territory to keep his struggling idol career afloat.
• Magical Girl Site is from the same author as Magical Girl Apocalypse, which especially deconstructs the idea of the Escapist Character. It's even more brutal than Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
• Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka deconstructs it by way of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome. In a world where Magical Girls and the monsters they fight are actually already a well-known concept, the protagonist is a Shell-Shocked Veteran, and there's a bustling Black Market of otherworldly artifacts and weapons. And the government keep asking her to join their special operations team to deal with the terrorists armed with otherworldly weapons.
• Magical Play. It's an affectionate parody of the genre, especially the warrior variety.
• Deconstructive Parody: Magical Witch Punie-chan. The series is a parody of magical princess shows and often uses the juxtaposition of cute characters with brutal violence for humor.
• In Mahou Shoujo Pretty Bell, the magic rod that is supposed to select the next schoolgirl to take up the fight instead chooses a 35-year-old bodybuilder. He's quite willing to take up the mantle, which is a bit of a problem for the demons used to fighting little girls...
• Mahou X Shounen X Days!!!!!: Magical Boys that look like wizards, a classic Magical Boy Kingliness Test as the main backdrop, an owl mascot, two bad guys who don't look like wizards, plus the protagonists' problem of being in the nude if they don't transform together. Despite being lumped in the "parody" section, it's probably the straightest take on a Magical Boy series there is.
• The Mai universe (My-HiME, My-Otome, My-Otome Zwei, My-Otome 0~S.ifr~, and Mai-HiME Destiny) is one of the earlier magical girl franchises to bring deconstructive elements to the fore. Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World is a lot harder when the school is completely trashed by the midpoint and the people you're trying to save the world from are other magical girls with their own ideas about what "saving the world" means, and The Power of Love can just as easily mean "obsession" as a healthy two-way relationship. Also, if magic exists in the world, the military will take an interest, which eventually leads to magical girls becoming the spearhead of the world's militaries in Otome.
• Majokko Tsukune-chan is a surreal parody of the Cute Witch genre.
• Menhera-chan is a Darker and Edgier Reconstruction with older, troubled girls transforming using box cutters and pills to fight demons seeking to harvest energy from humans. Notable for inspiring a Japanese alternative fashion called Yamikawaii.
• Nurse Angel Ririka SOS is about a ten-year old girl named Ririka who must protect Earth from aliens who want to turn it to ruins like they did their home planet Queen Earth. The manga and anime have rather different plots. It gained a Periphery Demographic from fans who enjoyed its darker approach to magical girls than many other series at the time, but the older fanbase is the reason the show was cut short (the toys weren't selling).
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is what happens when you get Studio Gainax (more specifically, the director behind the 5th episode of FLCL) to direct a Magical girl series.
• For the more mature audience, there is Papillon Rose, an ecchi parody which is part Magical Girl and part adult entertainment.
• The manga version of Phantom Thief Jeanne is another deconstruction in a similar vein to Puella Magi Madoka Magica. The anime is less so.
• Affectionately parodied in Powerpuff Girls Z.
• The Pretty Sammy series (which itself is a gentle parody of Sailor Moon).
• Princess Tutu took the Utena crowd back deeper into Magical Girl territory, though it is still unique.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica, another one for the Deconstruction team. It is often considered to be the Magical girl Neon Genesis Evangelion (in terms of Genre Deconstruction and extreme darkness of tone).
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion is similarly considered to be the Magical girl End of Evangelion.
  • See also the spin-offs Puella Magi Kazumi Magica, Puella Magi Oriko Magica, Puella Magi Suzune Magica and the Historical Fantasy Puella Magi Tart Magica.
• Puni Puni☆Poemi viciously satirizes magical girl shows (among many other things).
• Revolutionary Girl Utena downplays this. The goal of the creators was to set up a kitchen sink of shoujo tropes to deconstruct which includes but is not limited to magical girls. But since the director, writer, and character designer jumped ship from Sailor Moon to create the series, comparisons to Sailor Moon made marketable references that came to dominate the discourse about it. Yes, the series does have a transformation sequence of sorts, and yes, it does have a message about The Power of Love and what it can and can't accomplish, but there are a lot of other things going on too. English-speakers are often unaware of the reference pool the show is drawing from - particularly the direct line from its themes of gender-bending and revolution (and rose motifs) to Riyoko Ikeda's foundational shoujo classic, The Rose of Versailles. Its brand of interpersonal and sibling drama owes a debt to Dear Brother, a highly psychological but more niche work also created by Ikeda.
• Suicide Girl is a deconstructive mix of Horror and Tragedy with the main character trying to take her own life with no success. Ironically, her suicidal tendencies made her a hero that will save citizens from ending themselves.
• Super Pig is a parody and an example at the same time, one of the few (perhaps the only) parodies actually aimed at the same demographic as straight examples. Its protagonist is a Magical Girl Warrior who transforms not into a glamorous Frills of Justice-clad heroine, but instead, into a superpowered pig in a cape.
• Uta∽Kata initially starts off playing this trope straight, but then veers off as the 14-year old main character: develops a hatred towards herself, realizes the world is full of cruelty, and becomes a slave to her emotions. The latter point causes her to unwillingly transform and use her Djinn-given powers without mercy towards civilians.
• Yuki Yuna is a Hero rivals Madoka in terms of how dark it gets but is overall more optimistic. It stars the titular Yuna and her three (later four) friends. The government has the girls become "heroes" in order to protect Japan from monsters.

Examples of the Magical Girl trope referred to in other works:

• Lampshaded: The DVD extras of Ah! My Goddess have a gag dub in which a student accuses Belldandy of being a Magical Girl. Belldandy insists that she is a Goddess, not a Magical Girl, and they then debate the crucial differences.
  • This was likely inspired by a situation in the manga when Sayoko witnessed Belldandy's powers and accused her of being a witch. Sayoko specifically referred to Magical Girl tropes, including the Idol Singer.
• Asuka Hybrid has the character Hitomi, who made a wish upon meeting a hooded mage in her teens to become a magical girl, and she still has her powers in her thirties. It's not a detriment, but it's not exactly useful, either — she transforms and gets a frilly outfit, but she doesn't have much in the way of magical powers (her Magic Staff is purely decorative), and her having "100 trillion times the love, courage, and guts" appears to just be a placebo. She herself is rather miffed by the fact her dress is blue (indicating she's the number-two to a nonexistent Pink Heroine) and that there are no supervillains to fight, which she feels defeats the whole point of becoming a magical girl.
• In an episode of Best Student Council, one character is suspected of being a magical girl; both the Magical Girl Warrior and the Cute Witch (complete with Older Alter Ego) versions are brought up.
• One of the Omake of Black Lagoon makes Revy a Magical girl, giving her a cheerful, Moe facade and More Dakka.
• From Bleach, we have a lesser villain Charlotte Cuuhlhourne, The Fighting Narcissist whose Super Mode comes complete with Sailor Moon-esque Transformation Sequence plus a tutu for battle outfit. There's just one problem: he is a huge, muscular Drag Queen; seeing him in a glorious ballerina-princess getup sends his opponent into hysterical laughing fits.
• Pokomi from Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo
• Sharanra's character design in The Brave of Gold Goldran is built around this trope, though she cannot perform any magic.
• Cutey Honey is a forerunner of the Magical Girl Warrior version, which blended fanservice and fun battles in one tongue-in-cheek package. Fans are divided on whether she counts as a true magical girl or a superhero.
  • New Cutey Honey is the sequel, set 100 years after the original.
  • Cutey Honey Flash is a straight magical girl variant.
    • Cutey Honey Tennyo Densetsu is set in 2005, and features a version of Cutey Honey who has time travelled from the 70s to battle Panther Claw in the new millenium.
    • Cutey Honey Seed is set in an Alternate Universe, where a Cutey Honey Otaku finds a beautiful alien girl who, like all members of her species, develops any power necessary to protect herself and others. After watching several episodes of Cutey Honey, she develops "super powers" just like the "real" Honey's, even going so far as to shout "Honey Flash!"
• The Show Within a Show "Ai no Senshi Sweetie Millie" from Charger Girl
• The Doraemon movie, Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure into the Underworld have Nobita asking for the What-If Phone Booth to create a parallel-verse where magic does in fact exist. It's in this world the gang (Doraemon, Nobita, and alternate versions of Shizuka, Gian and Suneo) meets Miyoko Mangetsu, daughter of a powerful wizard named Professor Mangetsu whose appearance, basic outfit, and default magical powers seems directly lifted from Magical Girl shows.
• The Kamikaze Fireballs in Dragon Ball Super are a parody of the trope, complete with transformation sequence. The main one, Ribrianne, turns into an Acrofatic Big Fun fairy with elemets of Gonk - though the members of her universe seem to genuinely consider her beautiful in that form.
• Parodied in episode 9 of Gag Manga Biyori - among other things, it's the heroine's father who gets naked when she transforms, and her magical girl "outfit" is merely a different top and an antennae on top of her head.
• Galaxy Angel has an episode where they are told NOT to use a lost technology wand, as it has been known to start wars.
• From the same TV season, episode eight of H₂O: Footprints in the Sand had an extended sequence revolving around Otoha as a magical girl. That was probably the least odd thing in that episode.
• Parodied in Haruhi Suzumiya; the main characters create a movie in which the protagonist is a bunny girl-waitress from the future whose attacks include shooting laser beams, rifle bullets, and micro black holes (the last two novel-only) from her eyes.
• Ayumi Kinoshita, a bespectacled sickly girl from Hell Teacher Nube, learns from her teacher how to project her astral body as a physical presence, just so she can attend school with her friends. In the process, she learns to transform it into any shape she wishes... including an indestructible Magical girl when said friends are kidnapped.
• In Hetalia: Axis Powers, France turns into Magic Strike, causing him to wear a frilly pink dress and carry a matching bullhorn. (By "Strike" he means not work and picket until your employer gives you what you want.)
• In High School D×D, Serafall Leviathan, one of the four rulers (Maou) of Hell, likes to cosplay as one, and even has her own TV Show, "Miracle☆Levia-tan". Issei nicknames her Maou Shoujo.
• In Higurashi: When They Cry Kira's second episode, Ayakashisenshi-hen, Rika Furude and Satoko Houjou become magical girls in order to battle the evil magic-using generals of the secret magic society, Tokyo Magika (Takano, Teppei, Okonogi & Nomura) and their Ritual Tool Devils with the help of the Rika Cheering Brigade (Keiichi, Rena, Mion, Shion, & Irie) as well as Hanyuu.
• In Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens, after viewing a magical girl on TV, Nagi immediately buys a toy wand and modifies it into an impurity-vanquishing spiritual weapon to compensate for her lack of power. Then she gets really into it and starts doing poses. It looks goofy on an ancient goddess, but Nagi's clearly enjoying herself.
• Kaze no Stigma had a one-shot antagonist which is somewhere blurred between the lines of a Magical Girl played straight or deconstructed, but she doesn't have enough screen time for it to matter.
• Key of Key the Metal Idol becomes more of a Magical Girl as the series progresses, though this used primarily to deconstruct the trope as Key's transformations into her more human form show just how harrowing the powers of a magical girl can be in unwitting (read Naive) hands.
• Kilala of Kilala Princess.
• Kiss of the Rose Princess has Anise, who summons the magical members of her Unwanted Harem via magical cards.
• Kodocha has its main character Sana, a child actress, occasionally dress up as what appears to be a hybrid of Chacha's Magical Princess transformation from Akazukin Chacha and Ririka's Nurse Angel form from Nurse Angel Ririka SOS (as all of these series and Hime-chan's Ribbon were published in the same shoujo magazine and their anime adaptations consisted of much of the same production companies). The most prominent of these appearances is during a Bizarro Episode towards the end of the series, where she has to battle a robotic kaiju version of her best friend's mother.
• Raichou from Kyouran Kazoku Nikki claims to be a magical girl.
• The same situation pops up in Love Hina, where Kaolla Su is compared to a Magical girl because she eats a lot, talks to animals, and can change into an adult. Kentaro Sakata and one of Keitaro's highschool friends vainly struggle to convince the main characters that Kaolla was one.
• My Dress-Up Darling has this genre covered with the In-Universe anime series "Flower Princess Blaze", which serves as the basis for Marin's second cosplay. The cosplayer Sajuna "Juju" Inui in particular specializes in this kind of characters, as she dreamed to become one as a child.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi has the Show Within a Show, "Mahou Shoujo Biblion". The show's resident Cosplay Otaku Girl/Playful Hacker/Meta Guy cosplays as a character from the show. Said girl eventually gets a Magical girl staff as her artifact. It gives her super hacking powers.
  • Asakara, on witnessing Negi's powers for the first time, theorizes that he is a magical girl (boy version).
• Shuichi of Midori Days is a doll otaku, who always carries around a doll of the fictional magical girl Ultra-Marin.
• Nanaka 6/17 has Magical Domiko, a Show Within a Show that 6-year-old Nanaka likes.
• Ninja Nonsense has a parody in the final episode with "Magical Nin-Nin Shinobu".
• The main character in Otaku no Video is able to break into the anime industry with his magical girl series, Misty May.
• The Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! short story "How to Defeat a Kind Enemy" (adapted as an OVA and released with the Season 1 boxset) has Nyarko undergo Training from Hell to become a Magical Girl after being inspired by a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Pretty Cure. What makes this really unusual is, she's already a Henshin Hero (in the Kamen Rider mold); in fact, her first transformation is a combined Shout-Out to Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Kamen Rider Kuuga.
• Behoimi in Pani Poni Dash!. She's not really a Magical Girl, but that doesn't stop her from playing the role. She even gets her own Image Song about her Magical Girl-ness.
  • She now has a spin-off manga, The Alternative Cure Magical Girl Behoimi Chan, where she is an actual magical girl.
• The main character in Penguin Musume Heart is obsessed with Takenoko-chan, a magical catgirl who protects the "holy place" from the evil Bamboo King. There's apparently a sequel as well, Takenoko-chan R.
• Re:CREATORS has characters from different fictional works colliding in modern-day Tokyo, one of them being 'Magical Slayer Mamika', a naive magical girl from a show aimed at grade-schoolers.
• Episode 7 of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei focused on Art Shifts, with the title sequence and parts of the episode devoted to Kafuka, Chiri, and Meru as the magical girl team Model Warrior Lily Cure, and Nozomu Itoshiki as the Big Bad, The Teacher Of Despair. It even closes with an On the Next continuing the plot. This is a drastic change from the usual format of the show.
• The OVA of School Days features a parody on the Magical Girl genre, with several female cast members as magical girls.
• Parodied in the 21st episode of the second season of School Rumble, where Mai Otsuka becomes a magical girl.
• Angol Mois' true form in Sgt. Frog seems to be a parody of the Magical Girl; she has the Stock Footage transformation and special-attack scenes, the costume, and a cute personality, but she's the Lord of Terror from the prophecies of Nostradamus who came to destroy the world with the "Lucifer Spear".
• One of the fictional shows in SKET Dance is an anime called "Futari wa Nervous", which is obviously a parody of Futari wa Pretty Cure.
• Spill it, Cocktail Knights! focuses on the romance between a boy and a magical girl and the inherent comedy of your crush not knowing you know her secret identity.
• Takuto from Star Driver could be considered a magical boy, due to his Galactic Pretty Boy form.
• Amuri in Star Ocean features elements of the Magical Girl Warrior subtrope.
• One of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann's Parallel Works, Kiyal's Magical Time, mixes this with Humongous Mecha.
• The plot of one episode of They Are My Noble Masters is started when Ren discovers that Yume has written a story starring herself as a magical girl.
• Lara Tchaikoskaya / Magical Cat in Tiger & Bunny 2 is largely based on this, capable for using water attacks with or without her cutesy sceptre.
  • Kotetsu T. Kaburagi / Wild Tiger and Barnaby Brooks Jr. had more Magical Girl vibes in their Transformation Sequence along with their Finishing Move compared to previous seasons. Though they could almost be classified as a "magical man" if it weren't for their mecha suits.
• To Love Ru combines this with an Expy. Kyoko Kirisaki from Black Cat is turned into Magical Flame Kyoko, a pyromaniac magical girl.
  • Also, two of Mikan's school friends presumably now believe she's a Magical Girl Warrior after they see her chasing down a criminal while wearing Peke.
• The Show Within a Show Puru Puru Pururin of the anime version of Welcome to the NHK. Only a few snippets are shown, in which we see that Pururin is accompained by a number of animated household objects, including a vacuum cleaner upon which she flies, and that her trademark is to randomly append the word "Purin" to the end of sentences.
• Dark Magician Girl in Yu-Gi-Oh! is largely based on this idea, with several of her summoning scenes looking similar to magical girl transformation sequences. Despite the name, she is not a Dark Magical Girl.
  • Yugi himself uses a lot of tropes that usually indicate a magical girl — a Transformation Trinket, at least one confirmed named attack (Mind Crush), and a Transformation Sequence — that if it weren't for the Super-Powered Alter Ego, one could almost classify him as a "magical boy".
• Yurara has elements of this, as the main character is able to transform and battle evil spirits with powerful magic.
• Show Within a Show Majokko Mirakurun in YuruYuri.
• Pastissier Macaroon from Yuusha Gojo Kumiai Kouryuugata Keijiban. Being a twenty-year-old college student, she considers her frilly outfit, transformation phrase, transformation sequence, poses, and finishing move to be embarrassing, and it doesn't help that her fairy mascots constantly demand sweets and annoy her while she's at college.
• One conversation in Daily Lives of High School Boys has the trio debate over magical girls and whether or not there were any magical boys within the genre. They eventually decided Harry Potter counted as one.

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