Retraction: Hair Colors

So it seems I fucked up a bit with my analysis of Magical Girl hair colors because there are two heroines whose hair colors I slightly misidentified.

Firstly, Fine from Fushigiboshi No Futagohime. I was convinced that she had pink hair, but on closer inspection, her hair is unmistakably red. This blew my mind when I finally noticed it. MY WORLD IS SHATTERED

Secondly, Doremi from Ojamajo Doremi. Her hair is kind of on the fence. TV Tropes identifies it as red, and it's true that it looks pretty reddish. However, I went into Photoshop with the eyedropper to check the exact color, and her hair is definitely on the pinkish side of red, and has pinkish highlights, so I'm not quite ready to kick her off the pink-haired list.

Anyway, I was holding up those two as examples of the pink hair + pink outfit + pigtails triple-threat, but Fine no longer qualifies and Doremi only barely qualifies. I'd say the first definite and undebatable example of a triple-threat would be Papillon Rose (03), though Nurse Witch Komugi (02) and Hyper Speed Grandoll (97) and of course Ms. Doremi (99) are earlier and less definite examples.

Magical Girl Genres of the 60s, 70s, and 80s

Okay enough of this foofy superficial color bullshit! Let's talk about something more substantial: GENRES.

In the beginning, when Sally and Akko created the Earth, there were basically three genres:

Firstly, the Cute Witch, Sally's genre. The Cute Witch is always a natural magician, born with powers, and she always comes to Earth from some other world, usually a magical one where her powers are nothing unusual. The plot of this genre always kicks off when the Cute Witch travels from her home to visit Earth — sometimes it's to learn about humankind (Sally), sometimes it's to complete a Magical Girl Queenliness Test and prove her worthiness to rule her own world (Meg, Sweet Mint, Sugar Sugar Rune), sometimes it's by accident (Lalabel) or because the Cute Witch is bored with her own world (Chappy), and occasionally it's because she's on a quest to save the world, usually by collecting a bunch of some item (Minky Momo, Onegai My Melody). Once she arrives, the Cute Witch spends most of her time doing good deeds for people in need, hanging out with her muggle friends, and getting into wacky hijinks usually caused by her ignorance of Earth culture.

Secondly, the Object User, Akko's genre. The Object User always starts out as a totally ordinary muggle who is given a magical object. The reasons for why she receives the object vary: oftentimes it's a reward for doing a good deed (Akko, Creamy Mami, Pastel Yumi), sometimes it's necessary to the girl's survival (Marvelous Melmo), sometimes destiny is involved (Lunlun, Hime-chan), or sometimes she just gets it randomly (Magical Emi). The giver of the object is usually a magical entity, often in the form of a cute and cuddly critter. As for the object itself, its magical powers are quite specific and limited (as opposed to the Cute Witch who can pretty much do whatever magic spells she can dream up). Akko's mirror and Hime-chan's ribbon both have the ability to generate perfect disguises. Lunlun's pin can change her clothes to suit whatever task she's trying to accomplish, sometimes also conferring skills relevant to the outfit. Pastel Yumi's wand could make drawings come to life for a limited time period. Melmo's pills could age and de-age her, making her the first Magical Girl to have a consistent Older Alter Ego. The Object User usually used her powers for her own enjoyment, or to help solve everyday mundane problems, though occasionally the stakes were a bit higher — Melmo's age pills allowed her to care for her little brothers after their mother died, and Lunlun's outfit-changing powers made her trek across Europe and quest for the Six-Colored-Flower a lot easier.

Thirdly, there was a genre that I call the Proto Magic Warrior, the partial ancestors of Sailor Moon. This genre was quite different from the other two because it was aimed at an adult male audience and because it had a heavy emphasis on violence and fight scenes. The CWs and OUs might occasionally fight somebody, but the Proto Magic Warrior had fighting as her main schtick, and was battling against seriously nasty enemies with lots at stake. Cutey Honey (73) was the first in this genre, followed by Dream Hunter Rem (85) and Devil Hunter Yohko (90). These shows were also united by a large amount of fanservice — Rem even started out as a hentai franchise.

The Eighties saw the birth of a new genre, an offshoot of the OU: the Magic Idol Singer. Creamy Mami (83) was the first, followed by Magical Emi (85) who was a stage magician but otherwise fit all the genre tropes. Just like the OU, the Magic Idol receives a magic object of limited powers from an otherworldly being, but the difference comes with the object's specific power: to age the girl into an attractive late-teenage version of herself, usually with technicolor hair, and coming complete with a fancy outfit appropriate to idol singing. The Magic Idol uses her powers to pursue pop stardom and also to flirt with the hot older boy she has a crush on but wouldn't have a chance with in her normal child form. Yeah, this one tends to be the most wish-fulfillmenty of all the genres.

Okay, this is getting long. Next time, Sailor Moon creates a new genre and changes all the pre-existing ones!

The Impact of Sailor Moon

Okay, so let's talk about Sailor Moon and how she overhauled the Magical Girl genre.

Actually I think some Westerners give Ms. Moon a tad bit too much credit — hers is usually the earliest MG show they're familiar with, so they tend to dismiss everything else as a Sailor Moon "ripoff." Sailor Moon certainly didn't invent the MG genre, nor did it invent most of the tropes it used, since most of those were borrowed from earlier MG shows. No, what made Sailor Moon revolutionary was the way in which it combined all those tropes, the result of which proved so popular that it became the de facto guide on How To Construct A Magical Girl Show.

Sailor Moon is a cross-pollination of the various pre-existing MG genres. From the male-oriented Proto-Magic-Warrior genre, it took the focus on fight scenes, the "save the world" high-stakes plotline, the nude transformation sequence, the "I am so-and-so"/"In the name of the moon" post-transformation speech, the Cutey-Honey-initiated trend of having all the baddies be scary-looking females, and the overall theme of the Magical Girl as a badass superheroine. From the girl-oriented Object-User genre, it took the endless parade of foofy outfits, the sparkles, the PINK, the blinged-out magic items that look suspiciously like plastic merch, the basic origin story of "muggle girl gets cool magic trinket out of the blue," the cutesy otherworldly critter who gives the girl her magic trinket and serves as her mentor, and the overall idealistic outlook and tone.

To this mixture, Sailor Moon added something that was totally new to the Magical Girl genre: the Girl Posse. Up until that point, each Magical Girl heroine was the sole Magical Girl in her universe, with only the muggles for company. Occasionally a MG heroine would have a single MG rival (Meg-chan, Sally 2), but that was about it. But then Sailor Moon took some cues from the sentai genre and gave us not one, not two, but five Magical Girls who fought together as a team, which later grew to six seven ten thirteen. Ish. Since then, the concept of a team of Magical Girls, each with her own signature color, theme, and combat specialization, all inducted into Magical-Girl-hood via the same systemized ritual, and all bonded together by the power of FRIEEEENDSHIP has become an idea strongly associated with the genre.

Speaking of girl-bonding, the next thing Sailor Moon introduced/enhanced in the genre was lesbian subtext/text. It makes sense: when you have a group of girls who all share intense friendships and who frequently find themselves in life-or-death situations and make heroic sacrifices to save each other and die dramatically in each other's arms etc etc, you're inevitably going have lots of LesYay, whether intentional or not. I can't be totally sure of the gayness level of the older MG series, but from what I've seen, none of them approached the canon-gay of Uranus and Neptune, or Uranus hitting on Usagi, or Seiya hitting on Usagi, or all the subtext between the Inner Scouts, etc etc. At any rate, LesYay is something you often find in Magical Girl shows today — especially blatant examples being Galaxy Fraulein Yuna, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Cardcaptor Sakura, Puni Puni Poemi, Tokyo Mew Mew, Futari wa Precure, Nanoha, Uta Kata, Mai-Hime, Getsumen to Heiki Mina, Heartcatch Precure, and PMMM — and I'm inclined to point to Sailor Moon as the one who started that trend.

Thirdly, Sailor Moon did much to codify the Magical Girl transformation sequence. The details are going to require a whole other post, but in short, Sailor Moon invented/popularized a number of henshin tropes that became popular standards of the genre, and especially popularized the stock footage henshin as a way to save time and money. Prior to Sailor Moon there were a few MGs who used stock footage henshins (Minky Momo, Magical Emi, Sweet Mint) but more often, they'd have newly animated henshins for every occasion — Cutey Honey, Marvelous Melmo, Lunlun, Creamy Mami, and Persia all did this. Post-Sailor Moon, it became standard to have one piece of henshin footage used over and over, to the point where shows that avoid this (Uta Kata) are considered unusual.

And finally, due to the cross-pollination I mentioned above, Sailor Moon was the first Magical Girl show that a) was made for girls and b) had a badass world-saving heroine. Previously, the only superheroines were in the adult-male-aimed shows, and the girl-aimed MG shows tended to be pretty low-key and devoid of violence, for reasons that aren't hard to guess. However thanks to Sailor Moon's influence and success, these days it's the norm for a Magical Girl to be a badass lady.