Magical Boys: Do They Exist?

How about Saint Beast?

edited 27th Apr '11 9:44:06 PM by sabrina_diamond

In an anime, I'll be the Tsundere Dark Magical Girl who likes purple MY own profile is actually HERE!

Though it doesn't feature a team like Sailor Moon, I'm going to have to third DN Angel*

. I don't know if I'm the only one, but I always thought it was pretty much just a gender swapped version of Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne...or rather, KKJ is a gender swapped version of DN Angel, because the latter was released first.

edited 27th Apr '11 10:23:36 PM by NinjAngel

Maybe I'm missing some nuances here, but my understanding was that Magical Girl just meant "a superheroic character who is a girl".

You need a rather large amount of Magical Girl Tropes, Magical Girl character types, and plot devices really to fit as a Magical Girl. Anything else is usually just a Magical Girlfriend (when it comes to anime).

edited 28th Apr '11 4:47:27 AM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

But...what if you aren't a girlfriend?

If people learned from their mistakes, there wouldn't be this thing called bad habits.

There is one called Otox Maho but... no it doesn't count, the MC is crossdressing as a magical girl.

There is Magical Girl Cute Witch, Magic Idol Singer, Magical Girl Warrior, Dark Magical Girl, Magical Girlfriend Very good chance that are they are covered there.

If they don't fit those though it would go to Black Mage, Lady of Black Magic, Black Magician Girl, White Mage, and assorted tropes.

Simply using magic does not make a Magical Girl. Key tropes include By the Power of Grayskull!, Transformation Sequence, The Powerof Friendship, Mentor Mascot, Costume Porn, Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World ect.

Also it really depends on the demographic Magical Girls target the young Shōjo crowd and the Seinen as a Periphery Demographic, Sentai can share quite a few tropes but it is pretty much for the Shounen crowd.

edited 28th Apr '11 6:32:51 AM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

Well, the obvious example would be Captain Marvel.

edited 28th Apr '11 5:08:28 AM by Arilou

"No, the Singularity will not happen. Computation is hard." -Happy Ent

Wikipedia used to have an article on this. I guess they're too rare to be notable or something.

something

Magical Teacher Shounen reporting in.

"Our Magic is not omnipotent... a little bit of courage is the real magic."

This entire thread pretty much reflects my own thought processes on the subject. The concept of a "Magical Boy" has always been something I liked...though I guess male Power Rangers / Super Sentai sort of count, I mean it as in an actual Magical Girl Lance Counterpart...

I ended up making up somethin' about Magical Boys. :/ Main character was a 40-something, unemployed deadbeat who ended up becoming an interdimensional cop. WHY, PIRKA.

edited 28th Apr '11 10:14:56 AM by Pirka

~Pirka

The reason that "Magical Boys" don't exist is because the market for them is...minimal.

Magical girls have two main demographics, young girls (original intended audience) and older males (Peripheral Demographic). By and large the desires these two groups have for the genre are compatible, though shows of the genre aimed explicitly at the latter have increased dramatically, and even some of the ones that are aimed at the young girl demo have...bonus features. Heartcatch Precure and Suite Precure are both good examples of this in action.

On the other hand, the equivalent genre for young males was the Giant Robot show, in all its various incarnations. And its peripheral demographic is...older males. On the other hand, young males have never shown much interest in having a genderswapped version of the Magical Girl show (for reasons that boil down to "ewww cooties"). The Peripheral demographic for that genre, or at least what exists of it, is primarily going to be female. Thats why the few that exist are, almost always, aimed at girls to begin with.

On a side note, someone mentioned that aren't "Magical Girls" just "Female Superheroes", and well, one major aspect of Magical Girls is that they almost never "Fight Crime". In fact, a Magical Girl is statistically more likely to commit crimes rather than going out and stopping mundane criminals. (Edit: fixed for grammar issues)

edited 28th Apr '11 10:31:20 AM by SakurazakiSetsuna

Before?

If people learned from their mistakes, there wouldn't be this thing called bad habits.

Clarified

Yeah, that's true, isn't it? They always seem to be "chosen", often by a Mentor Mascot or other sort of mentor character, to fight a specific, magical enemy force. They don't go after people robbing banks, they beat the crap out of giant shadow things.

~Pirka

Most of what the average superhero does is illegal

Not my point.

There are at least two magical girl shows I can think of off hand where the entire premise is that the girl in question goes and steals valuable objects.

This is also a nice discussion on what "magical girl" genre is about (scroll down to the second part of the article). Not coincidentally, it was written when Madoka Magica first appeared.

edited 28th Apr '11 10:37:59 AM by Musicalcroc

On superheroes and fighting crime: So, magical girls are like some Kamen Riders, they don't fight evil in general, more that they fight a specific set of villains and/or monsters. Is this accurate?

something

That magical girls don't fight unspecified crime is, I think, mostly the result of differences in eastern and western storytelling. Episodic, open-ended stories are rare in general in the east. I'm not certain it's use or lack there of is inherent to either genre

Madoka Magica should be praised for having most of the magical girls avoid significant property damage for most of the episodes.

Then again, I haven't watched much Magical Girl anime, so I don't really know how often extreme property destruction is.

edited 28th Apr '11 10:44:37 AM by Edmania

If people learned from their mistakes, there wouldn't be this thing called bad habits.

Kamen Riders are actually much closer to being "Magical Boys" than the Super Sentai shows, if for no other reason than that female Kamen Riders are quite rare.

There's an entire genre of episode detective fiction in anime/manga. See Detective Conan for the most iconic anime example.

edited 28th Apr '11 10:44:49 AM by SakurazakiSetsuna

Property Damage in Magical Girl shows is almost always completely handwaved. Even when there is no barrier involved, frequently the damage will just repair itself anyway after the monster is defeated (this happens all the time in Precure)

The only Kamen Riders I can think of that fight crime in general are the W riders, and that's just an assumption based on their day jobs. Also, wasn't Magical Girl once a genre dominated by Toei series? Then I guess it makes sense that Kamen Rider is like... Magical Men.

something

Kind of still is, what with Precure