Research: Magical Girl Genre

As my idea is starring magical girls, I am researching the magical girl genre in anime/ manga. I am hoping this will give me a better understanding of what kinds of magical girls there are and what one will be most suited to my idea. I am also hoping to gather some anime's/ video games that I can watch/play to inspire me.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MAGICALGIRL

What are magical girls?

Magical girl is a genre of anime, typically featuring ordinary girls who one day receive magical powers and transform in their magical girl forms to fight evil.

From what I can see there are three different types of magical girls, cute witches, magical idol singers and magical girl warriors.

Cute Witch

This seems to be the original Magical Girl type. Sometimes the character is from another dimension, or the whole show could be in a magical setting. There is usually a school for magic.

They typically look like witches, with pointy witch-like hats, witch-like clothes such as cloaks. Cats are usually there for pets.

Some examples of this magical girl type:

Manga / Sugar Sugar Rune (as pictured above)

Anime / Dark Magician girl from Yugioh

Anime / Little Witch Academia

some character designs:

Magical Idol Singer

Idol Singers come in two varieties - either a girl who is already an idol singer gains the ability to fight crime, usually by way of singing, or a girl becomes an idol singer through magic.

This type of Magical Girl is the one that uses the Wish Fulfillment appeal of the genre the most. While the other two types use their powers to do good deeds or fight the good fight, the Magical Girls here use the powers they gain to achieve their dreams of fame, although they can use magic music.

some examples:

Anime / Show by Rock!! (pictured above)

Anime / AKB0048

Magical Girl Warrior

Magical Girl Warriors can be a variety of things; some do more than use their powers to improve or complicate their lives. Some go out and battle evil, usually with a lot of mystic power and battle outfits/armor. The genre's most basic defining trait: a female heroine defeating enemies and going on magical adventures.

Some examples:

Anime / Pretty cure

Corpse Princess

Anime / Puella Magi Madoka Magica

character design - normal selves vs magical girl form

^pretty cure, madoka magica, yuni yana is a hero

Conclusion

I could make my story work for all three types of magical girls, but I think my story is more suited to the magical girl warrior type. When I was thinking of my idea I was already thinking of designing weapons, in fact the first words of my idea were "magical girls with badass weapons saving the world!". For this reason I think I'm going to go with designing magical girl warrior style magical girls. I want my designs to be different to what's already out there, and I want my characters to be taken seriously and reflect who they are. For that reason, I might use the whole "mega kawaii girls" in a subtle way so that all audiences can enjoy my characters weather they like anime or not.

Looking at this research from a perspective of semiotics, magical girls tend to use a lot of pink. Pink can be associated with femininity, sweetness, happiness, romance and innocence, which is almost a perfect description of what a magical girl is. Magical girls look fun, happy and sweet, and mostly seem to be the perfect role-models. Their face shapes are round with no sharp, triangle edges to them, giving the impression they are the good character. They also have wide, sparkling eyes which can add to that. I should keep this in mind when designing my own characters, as I don't want them coming across as evil, and to make sure I'm on the right track, I will be doing surveys for people to give their opinion.

How has this research helped me:

It's helped me discover what different types of magical girls there are and choose the one that most fits my idea. This will help me come up with character design ideas as I know generally what they look like. It's also made me think about colour and shapes within magical girls design and how their colour schemes and shapes reflect who they are. This will surely help me with designing my own characters.

What next:

Research some anime's that I've discovered whilst doing this research.

Have some basic ideas on what I want the girls to look like.

Survey.

Class research.

idea