Basic Trope: A Magical Girl work showing the problems that would arise with tropes common to the genre.
- Straight: Kimiko becomes a Magical Girl Warrior, and thinks it's going to be all sunshine and roses at first, but it quickly becomes obvious that magical girls are just Child Soldiers in pretty clothes. The death toll is high, and most of the survivors end up with PTSD.
- Exaggerated: Magical girls are drafted into the military, used as living nukes, and end up destroying the world.
- Downplayed: Kimiko gets seriously injured at times, but for the most part it's a typical magical girl show.
- Justified: Kimiko got transported from a Sugar Bowl dimension to Earth, where things work very differently.
- Inverted: The show is a Reconstruction of the magical girl genre from the get-go. There's a support system in place, the girls' outfits are Stylish Protection Gear that significantly lowers their chance of sustaining serious harm, and the challenges are tough but can be overcome.
- Subverted: It turns out the show is a Decon-Recon Switch; for all the hardship and sacrifice, the war is winnable, and Kimiko decides being a magical girl is Worth It.
- Double Subverted: After the war is won, the sequel explores the consequences of magical girls having nothing more to do, and some of them create monsters to fight just to have a sense of purpose again.
- Parodied: Magical girls all look and act like nineties anti-heroes, complete with guns, scars and over-the-top violent tendencies. Instead of Frills of Justice, they get trenchcoats.
- Zig Zagged: The show deconstructs magical girl tropes or plays them straight Depending on the Writer.
- Averted:
- No magical girl tropes are deconstructed.
- There are no magical girls.
- Enforced: The author likes the magical girl aesthetic, but thinks the tropes typical to the genre are too saccharine.
- Lampshaded: "Being a magical girl isn't all it's cracked up to be."
- Invoked: Queen Evulz of the magic dimension Troperia, unable to defeat the magical girls, sends them to Earth in the hope that the laws of reality there will destroy them.
- Defied: "I don't care how trendy it is to rip these shows a new one, they're supposed to be idealised, dammit."
- Discussed: "What did you expect when you signed up? That The Power of Friendship would always save the day?" "Well, yes..."
- Conversed: "Why do writers keep shitting on kids' fantasies these days? It's getting more pointlessly edgy and mean-spirited than clever." "Well, if it's done right, it can be a good way of looking at the genre from a new angle, and it doesn't even have to be dark. That said, we could use more reconstructions."
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