History of Magical Girls (Sailor Moon, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Cardcaptor Sakura + MORE )

0:00 I'm gonna go back to my world now. Crunchy Power! HENSHIN! Hum. Mahō Shōjo aka. Magical Girls. from Moon, Sakura, Cure, Madoka and that dude. Magical Girls are stapled to anime like peas in the a pod and jelly to a donut. Like most famous anime genres, magical girl, or Mahou Shoujo has a storied history. Where Isekai has its roots an 18th century Japanese folk tale of my man, the humble fisherman Urashima Rambo visiting a magical underseas Dragon Palace after saving a turtle

0:45 and Western literature that made its way to Japan like Alice in Wonderland and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Mahou shoujo has more recent but no less culturally important origin in popular folk tale. The beloved 1960s American sitcom Bewitched. Maybe? That's the popular narrative at least, but Fujio Akatsuka's manga Himitsu no Akko-chan, considered the first true magical girl work in Japan, first appeared in Shueisha's ribon magazine in 1962, beating the air date of Bewitched by two years. If you haven't heard of Fujio Akatsuka, he also created these six guys. It is the story of a girl who is given a magical mirror by a resident of the mirror kingdom that lets her transform into basically whatever she wants when she looks into it and speaks the magic words

1:31 which she uses to get in all sorts of comedic hijinks. Akko-chan established a few lasting tropes for the magical girl genre as the origin of the magical girl accessory, magic incantation, and a least the idea of transformation. Akko-chan would use the mirror and chant "Mirror Mirror" followed by the name of whatever she wanted to turn into backward, also beating the famous Western magical girl Zatanna to the punch by two years. I'll also give Akko-chan the first talking magical girl mascot animal. Shippona is basically just a normal cat but during some cat focused episodes we learned that cats can talk to each other in fluent Japanese so, um, there you go. Despite Akko-chan's influence, we may still have Elizabeth Montgomery's Wiggly nose to thank

2:17 for bringing magical girls to our TV screens. Bewitched was POPULAR in Japan. I'm talking paying for the lead actress to headline in Japanese cookie commercials, remaking the series almost fourty years later with Japanese actors under the title Okusama wa Majo, and having the famous voice actor Mamoru Miyano act out an episode playing all the characters. So yeah it's popular. Although beaten to print, the 1966 manga Sally the Witch by Mitsuteru Yokoyama, another famous mangaka who is often created as the creator of the mecha genre, but we'll leave that for another video, received an anime adaptation this same year to become the first magical girl anime. Yokoyama specifically cited Bewitched as his inspiration for Sally. The manga might also be the first reverse isekai Japanese media,

3:05 Sally being from a magical kingdom separate from our world but became so enamored with earth that she decided to visit. Sally was basically a slice of life with her mischievous shape-shifting frenemy and fake younger brother Kabu (or Cub) using his magic to commit all sorts of heinous criminal acts that Sally has to resolve. It was also popular and possibly be very first TV anime created specifically to appeal to younger girls. Sally and Samantha Stephens set the stage for Akko-chan to get her own TV adaptation three years later. Joke's on Sally, by 1969 that were making color anime so the entirety of Akko-chan got the full Technicolor treatment. Good job, Akko-chan. Over the course of several prints and the anime Akko-chan underwent some serious changes.

3:52 By the time the anime rolled around her mirror had become a magical compact which had that sparkly bejeweled appearance you know was designed to be sold as a plastic toy These two anime probably sounds strange those familiar with the common tropes of modern-day "Mahou shoujo" anime but, well, technically they weren't. The term "mahou shoujo" hadn't even entered common lingo yet and the emerging genre of girls with magical powers was called "majokko" which also means magical girl. Early Majokko-era girl series were defined by the misadventures of Sally and Akko as comedic, mostly episode, slice fo life anime which would carry the genre for decades before a certain series changed the genre forever, more on that later. Also both Sally and Akko, as well as almost all magical girl anime before the 80's

4:39 were produced by Toei animation, which is referred to by magical girl scholars as the "Toei Period" during which the Cat in the Hat would hold a stranglehold over the genre until its dethroning by another popular animation studio. Toei's next project was Mahou no Mako-chan, a loose adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid that premiered in 1970 beating Disney's like cool nineteen years. I got my eye on you Walt. The Mermaid, Mako-chan takes a trip from a sea kingdom to the surface where she spots a hot guy and decides the land might be a nice place to spend some time. She makes a deal with a witch to swallow one of her own tears and rip her tail in half to make a pair of legs and then gets adopted by an old Japanese man his twin sons and their pet bear. huh

5:25 One key difference between Mako and many magical girls of her era was her age. While most of the majokkos at the time look like they were pushing 12, Mako appeared to be in their late teens. And there is a lot of action and fatal car crashes in Mako-chan. I guess Toei was...um y'know trying out something new... I guess. Not sure I'd even call Mako a magical girl except her dad does give her a magic pendant that is just like a plot device to pull her out of trouble sometimes. It's like a get out of jail card. That's a... that's a monopoly reference Mako-chan was also an anime original production. No source material it was directly based on beyond some inspiration from Mr. Hans Andersen. which makes maka the first original magical girl By now magical girls had built enough of a profile that a certain someone

6:10 who couldn't help dabbling in whatever media is most dejour at the moment had to get in on that action. That someone is Osamu Tezuka, the god of manga The god of manga made the flagship anime of his newly minted Tezuka Productions a magical girl series in 1971, titled Fushigi Merumo. Tezuka seriously loved killing off characters, so Merumo got her magical powers when her mother is killed in an automobile accident and manages to convince a bunch of guys up in heaven dressed like Colonel Sanders to give her some magic candy she then takes the candy down to her daughter on earth and obviously the candy's magical. Blue candy to age ten years and red to go back ten years. Eat both of them and she could turn into a fetus which could become any kind of animal she wanted to

6:58 because... that's how fetuses... work? It isn't actually, which is kind of disturbing since apparently Tezuka thought of the anime as a good opportunity to provide some much-needed introductory sexual education. Merumo may have also been one of the first anime to feature what we'd now call fan service. Probably goes without saying that parents weren't big fans of this anime since it forced them to have some uncomfortable conversations about the birds and the bees with their kids. Also adult men chasing down Merumo for her good looks when she's a nine-year-old masquerading in the nineteen-year-old's body is a little... uncomfortable... Premiering the day after Merumo in October 1971 was another Toei magical girl series, Sarutobi Ecchan Based on the manga Okashina Okashina Okashina Ano Ko by Shotaro Ishinomori,

7:47 another manga luminaire of the era who also created Super Sentai, which was localized in the US as Power Rangers. The basic premises is Ecchan is a descendant of the famous ninja of Japanese folklore, Sarutobi Sasuke. It is up to you whether or not you think superhuman strength and ninja techniques qualify as magic, but she also makes a pigeon appear from under a handkerchief and that some... that's magic my books. Ecchan is another slice of life type magical girl series which is mostly remarkable since it might have the first talking animal mascot The year 1972 brought Mahoustukai Chappy, yet another Toei magical girl series probably most popularly known for being almost exactly the same anime as Toei's Sally the Witch.

8:33 Same premise, events, almost the entire first episode, Disney references, characters, and even their voice actors. It's like a living breathing "can I copy your homework" meme. But I guess you don't have to worry about a lawsuit from your own studio. Just click that card in the corner to take you back to the Sally timestamp if you'd like a summary of the series. But I have to give Chappy credit for bringing wands into the magical girl game. 1973 was the year that magical girls got high-tech with two cybernetic magical girls series destined to cross wires in mortal combat. Toei had two upcoming magical girls series competing for the TV Asahi time slot typically reserved for Majokko shows set to open up in October, Mirakuru Shoujo Rimitto-chan or Miracle Girl Limit-Chan and the series being produced in collaboration with the anime troupe master himself,

9:22 Go Nagai, called Cutie Honey. Limit-chan ultimately won the magical time slot. Despite its plot being straight outta Robocop or maybe Astro Boy, with its protagonist suffering a fatal injury in a plane crash and her genius father building her a robot body to save her life. The set up was along the lines of a traditional fare for that era. With the series falling into episodic slice of life where Limit-chan would use a robot powers to solve everyday problems for her friends and family. Cutie Honey was originally conceived by Nagai's desire to make a story featuring a hero with seven transformations. The original concept was aiming for a shoujo audience with plans to establish their accompanying manga in the shoujo magazine Ribon complete with the line of costume change Honey dolls. When they didn't get the time slot, the story was retooled further

10:07 to appeal to a shounen audience, making it the first magical girl series written with boys in mind, it included a lot more fighting and became a lot more horny. Switching its magazine to Weekly Shonen Champion and broadcasting on the shonen Majū Kaijin Daihenshin time slot which previously aired Nagai's Devilman. The resulting Honey was a catholic schoolgirl (come on Nagai!) who discovered she's actually an android built by her father containing a device that can transform air and to other matter. When her father is murdered by a criminal organization called Panther Claw, Honey goes on the quest to track down his killers utilizing her biker, stewardess, model, singer, camera woman, and sword wielding heroine forms. Also Nagai's a pretty horny dude and the series was famously racy so the nudity was definitely intended.

10:55 Limit and Honey both to use their robot powers to change their appearance in a sequence but Limit's included the background becoming a screen of scintillating light and Honey's has an incantation with "Honey Flash", a choreographed movement and a musical theme Put together they would make what we'd recognize as a traditional magical girl transformation. Honey was also the first magical girl to kick some ass. Other magical girls got into scuffs but not with the frequency and intensity of Honey. She had combat-specific transformations and was on a quest for revenge against a criminal organization making her the first fighting magical girl. Cutie honey may have lost the time slot but definitely had a greater cultural impact of the two series, probably getting more manga and anime spin-offs than even many of the much recreated series in this timeline. The 90's series Cutie Honey flash even attempted to tell a story

11:43 much closer to the original shoujo origin of the series. Most devastating was Limit-chan getting snubbed in the Toei magical girl crossover fighting game Majokko Daisakusen: Little Witching Mischiefs. The next year 1974 brought Majokko no Megu-chan. If you think Madoka was the first dark magical girl series Megu-chan's got Madoka beat by like forty years. In addition to having an evil magical girl rival, the series just generally got into some dark territory with subplots about domestic abuse, suicide and adultery. Megu also had a few stalkers that were constantly trying to sneak peeks under her skirt or catch her in her nightgown. Megu-chan didn't really do anything new visually with the medium but set up a template that many magical girls series would later follow. Megu-chan had to face off against monsters and other witches

12:28 but many of the greatest conflicts in the series were the results of her interaction with normal characters suffering from real-life stress or personal tragedy. In 1979 came Hana no Ko Lunlun, a magical girl series set in France. Lunlun a normal girl who is the destined "Flower Child" set on a quest to save the magical Flower Star where forest spirits fled when human greed and consumption set them out of balance with nature. To do so she must find the magic flower and is given a magic pen that lets her change into different outfits that help her on a journey. Lunlun's greatest contribution to the genre came in talking mascot animals in Nouveau and Cateau as the talking cat and dog sent from the Flower Kingdom. Not only do we see other characters communicating with them implying they can actually talk but the two also mentor Lunlun.

13:16 1980 then saw Mahou Shoujo Lalabel, the story of a magical girl who is accidentally transported from her world to ours along with a thief's Biscus. She's taken in by a Japanese family and decides to stay in our world until she can capture Biscus and take them both back. Don't really have much to say about this one except its title was the first usage of "mahou shoujo" after which that term entered popular usage over "majokko". Lalabel also marked the end of the Toei Period of magical girls. The studio wouldn't produce another magical girl anime until 1998, and wouldn't start up a new magical girl anime until a certain point series in 1992 Why? Magical girl had been a reliable cash cow for Toei but they were starting to believe their target demographic of young girls was more interested in romance and magic.

14:01 They were extremely wrong. The very next magical girl to appear on the scene in 1982 is Magical Girl Minky Momo, the biggest magical girl yet. It didn't really innovate with the formula, although it was a good comedy series in its own right that utilized the Momo's magic to make tons of anime and pop-culture references. I'm mostly including it in this list because I want to discuss how absolutely cursed it was. First some background. Minky Momo was one of the first magical girls since Tezuka's Merumo that attempted to wrest the genre from the iron grips of Toei Animation. Made by Ashi Productions in conjunction with the toy manufacturer Popy to sell a s*** ton of merchandise. Minky Momo is kind of a combination of all the magical girls that came before her.

14:48 A younger girl visiting our world from a magical kingdom like Sally and Megu-chan and using her candy cane looking "magic stick" she can turn into an adult like Merumo but also adopting one of the number of professions like a Veterinarian or Stewardess to solve problems like Cutie Honey. Momo just had one big problem. Despite the huge popularity, the toys weren't selling. This might have been because the audience for the show wasn't quite the young girls to show creator had intend. Maybe was the frequent reference to other popular anime, but Momo developed a huge fandom with older males. Nowadays is credited as being one of the first anime to launch the Lolicon fandom. ...so...yeah... Anyway, so they weren't pushing any toys so Popy pulled their funding and left Ashi in the lurch,

15:35 so in retaliation the staff KILLED MOMO. Yes, in episode forty-six Momo had lost her magic and she tries to save a young girl from getting hit by a speeding toy truck she saves the girl but it struck herself and killed. The toy company pulled funding so Momo got killed by a truck full of toys. Not subtle at all. But don't take my word for it. Series writer Takeshi Shudo penned an open letter in OUT magazine basically stating that Popy couldn't sell it's awful toys so it's screwed them and Momo's death was on their sour grapes. Shame on you Popy. Turns out you've got a pretty big problem on your hands when you suddenly killed off the magical girl in your hit magical girl anime in episode forty-six when it was greenlit for sixty-three.

16:21 Ashi brought Mickey Momo back from the dead with a resurrection subplot to finish the run but then, as the last episode was airing in May 26, 1983, the historic Sea of Japan Earthquake struck. That's some real dark magical girl s***. Now, the one big innovation Minky Momo brought to the scene was crossovers. But magical girl crossovers were all the rage in the 80s. Many of the Momo's OVAs featured other popular magical girls such as Magical Angel Creamy Mami who first aired in 1983 and represented a lot of the firsts in magical girl genre. She was the first idol magical girl and the first magical girl ever by Studio Pierrot and the beginning of what would become known as the "Pierrot Period".

17:07 The story of Magical Angel Creamy Mami revolves around a ten-year-old Yū Morisawa who comes across an UFO and helps the magical alien inside who gives her a magic wand that lets her turn into a sixteen-year-old and two cats to make sure she doesn't go too nuts with their new magical powers. Creamy Mami upped the transformation game as well, Her older persona ends up singing on TV and she becomes an overnight success as an idol under the alias Mami. This would be the start of what's known as the "media mix" movement, which has grown into a marketing chimera of cross medium promotions but started out as a relic of the 80s magical girl anime. Basically this is how it works. The studio got the upcoming real-life idol Takako Ōta to voice the main character Mami.

17:53 She's sang all the songs in the anime and wrote and performed the opening theme, all of which were released in the real world. Ōta and Mami mutually benefited from each other's popularity to build a huge name recognition. This formula was copied a ton during this era and quickly moved out of the magical girl genre to pure idol anime and adjacent works like Full Moon o Sagashite, Idolmaster and Love Life were also huge in Japan and the upcoming Nanabun no Nijūni anime, featuring my girl Sally Amaki, follows a similar formula. Pierrot went absolutely nuts with magical girls in the '80s Following up Mami with Magical Emi, Persia and Pastel Yumi then throwing them all together in the huge crossover OVA Adesugata Mahou no Sannin Musume and

18:38 Majokko Club Yoningumi A-Kukan Kara no Alien X which were technically the first team ups in magical girl history Mami even faced off against Minky Momo in Mahō no Tenshi Creamy Mami VS Mahō no Princess Minky Momo Gekijou no Daikessen which might be the only magical girl head-to-head ever and the most ambitious crossover in history since the two characters weren't even from the same studio. And Jesus! Those names are long as s***! All these team ups would have been an appetizer before the magical girl squad which would change the game and the world forever. In an anime that premiered in 1992 based off the manga by the legendary Naoko Takechi. Sailor Moon Toei returned to the magical girl series with a boom. Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon probably has the most first of any title in the genre.

19:27 The story of the resurrected moon princess Tsukino Usagi fighting the forces of evil with her four best friends and a dapper guy that throws flowers completely changed the magical girl game and Takeuchi pulled it off by pulling inspiration from the most unlikely places. An entirely unrelated genre of popular media in Japan. Tokusatsu. That's right I'm talking about sentai baby. By now Super Sentai had been tearing it up for years and was hugely popular in Japan. Takeuchi borrowed its color-coded outfits, storytelling conventions villains and elaborate posing for squad glamor shots to help her shoujo series about five girls defending the earth from evil gem-inspired villains. Where Mami's crossover had put magical together, the Sailor Scouts were designed as a coordinate squad

20:13 both to fight evil as a unit and bounce off one another narratively. The combination of monsters of the week storytelling diverse personal coming-of-age narratives, the power of their feelings and the strength of their friendship transforming into actual power was all *chef's kiss* the perfect recipe. Sailor Moon landed in 1992 and was an insane hit selling millions in toys in its first year and putting on the fast track for every anime licenser on the planet. Today it's one of the top 50 highest grossing media franchises in history with an estimated 14.3 billion US dollars in total revenue. Fun fact: the fishy magical girl Spongebob Squarepants just recently made more money than Sailor Moon. Basically can't say enough about how much Sailor Moon set the standard for future magical girls series.

21:00 After Sailor Moon, magical girl series almost universally featured magical girl teams using their powers to fight off some sort of extra dimensional evil It also had the first true magical girl transformations, or at least as we know them now. Rushing lights, hit the music girl is naked but there's light so it's still PG and outfit appearing in sections on the character one piece at a time using recycled animation that never gets boring no matter how many times you watch it Another area of a Sailor Moon changed not only the magical girl game but the global reputation of anime was by introducing a huge amount of LGBTQ representation into what had become an international mega hit. You got Gay villains, a trans villain and an openly lesbian couple. And no, no amounts of cousining the truth from fans

21:48 This had a huge influence not just on magical girl series but anime as a medium. The amount of LGBTQ coding and themes pre and post Sailor Moon isn't even comparable. But I saved the best for last. The craziest first Sailor Moon landed in the history of magical girls is that it's the first to have a female creator. Yes! 30 years of magical girl anime and every single one was either from a manga written by a man or more often an original anime conceived by the production studio. Okay so let's keep this rolling, next up we got another magical girl megahit in the Cardcaptor Sakura in 1998, the brainchild of the all-female manga circle CLAMP. Elementary schooler Kinamoto Sakura finds an old dust book in her basement

22:34 that holds within it the mystical CLOW cards. When she opens it they fly to the four winds and start causing havoc. Their guardian Cerberus gives Sakura a magic key that allows her to seal their magic back into a card and Sakura's unnerving intense friend Tomoyo pressures her into collecting them so she can do costuming and film the entire thing. Tomoya you were always a weird girl. It's hard to pick out anything Cardcaptor really revolutionized so much as it capitalized and played with many of the strengths of the genre. First of all the merchandising opportunities with all of the Sakura's outfits, the key, Cerberus, and an entire deck of cards? CLAMP really knows what they're doing. The high production values of Madhouse in its prime sent the anime skating right on the heels of Sailor Moon

23:19 to international success that made it clear Sailor Moon wasn't a one-off success. Magical girls are a serious business. The very late 1990s and early 2000s are what I like to call the Toei redemption arc. They'd proven they have still major magical girl chops with Sailor Moon but they would launch two more hugely successful franchises using magical girls in two very different ways. First was another project by Toei, Ojamajo DoReMi in 1999. A frankly genius take on the magical girl genre if you ask me. And no, know nobody ask me. It plays the genre back down to elementary school kids with a simplified and colorful cartoony style. It had the components of a magical girl story where a titular Doremi is forced to become a magical girl to learn how to undo a curse

24:05 when she actually cast on a kid witch that's turned her into a frog. But that was really just a setup for a school slice of life comedy series about a group of friends who happened to have magical abilities. The formula had a broad, Saturday morning cartoon like audience appeal that could entertain both kids and parents and two years after it appeared in the top fifty of TV Asahi's 2005 online popularity poll, proof that magical girls had a lot of flexibility as a genre. Maybe no series tested the limits of magical girl harder than 2002s Princess Tutu, the brainchild of character designer, animation director, and Sailor Moon allumni Ikuko Itoh that beat a certain popular magical girl anime to being dark and destructive by nearly a decade. It's about a duck named Duck who can turn into a ballerina.

24:52 This series used fairy tale tropes to step back and look at the act of storytelling itself, the nature of canon, and the relationship we have with stories. Deep stuff. Duck didn't so much fight bad guys as getting high stake interpretive dance offs with individuals who had their personal angst infected by some seriously bad vibes as a bigger meta-narrative about death of the author played overhead. The series was nominally successful but has received a lot of critical acclaim in the retrospect for its artistic ambition. Magical girls can now also be high art. In 2004 Toei launched the anime original series Futari wa Pretty Cure, focusing on Nagisa Misumi and Honoka Yukishiro who are approached by mentor mascot Mipple and Mepple and given the power to transform into Cure Black and Cure White

25:39 to fight the evil forces of the Dark Zone. The series had all the mainstays of magical girls set up by Sailor Moon except rather than using mostly recycled animations of sparkly rays of light to defeat their enemies, these girls kick some serious ass. Using martial arts and magical super strength sufficient to put boot prints and metal or jump into the stratosphere, they beat up villains who usually look like rip glam rockers in skin tight bodysuits. The series did well but got diminishing interest so it was relaunched in 2007 as Yes! PreCure with all the same elements but a different cast of characters, and again as Pretty Cure in 2009. The series became a lasting franchise that launches a new generation every year, recently celebrating its fifteenth anniversary with fifteenth generations of magical girls and almost 800 combined episodes to its name.

26:29 The components of magical girls stories had grown so iconic that they could basically be adapted into any genre piecemeal and remain recognizable. Imaishi had long been a fan of that, making his raunchy comedy Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt on the way out of the door from GAINAX in which the to lead angels use an elaborate pole dancing transformation scene to turn their unmentionable into deadly weapons. TRIGGER's first TV anime Kill la Kill also borrowed heavily from magical girls in what was essentially a high school combat series that somehow ended up in space. And in case you're wondering, no I don't consider a Little Witch Academia magical girl. They all go to witch school and they don't transform. It's more like if Harry Potter is a genre. If Little Witch is a magical girl then you know I got a call Negima magical girl as well. Do you want me to do that?

27:14 You know what? I'll do that. Negima is a magical girl. Now the part you've probably all been waiting for when magical girls became dark. In 2001 a group of creators known as the Magical Quintet came together to produce Puella Magi Madoka Magica, performing a classic anime bait-and-switch that makes its audience lose their... ...heads? mm-hmm Where Princess Tutu attempted to deconstruct storytelling as a larger art, Madoka had laser focused on the genre itself, pulling apart the genre tropes that we the audience took for granted. SPOILER ALERT. Skip to mmm to skip a spoiler for a nine-year-old series. Now the girls blind trust in the mascot character who had granted them powers turned out to be misplaced as he was using them as an end to his own means.

28:01 The now typical role of the power and innocence of the magical girl feelings and their bonds of friendship serving them as the source of their power was turned in its head with what may have been a criticism of the industry at large as their naiveté ultimately led to their self-destruction as their emotions were being commodified by untrustworthy paternal mascot character. It was also a gorgeous anime. SHAFT put their name on the map by pulling out all the stops with Shinbo's crazy visual style, using a variety of techniques to perfectly set the paranoid tone of series and give the villains an otherworldly feeling. *Chef kiss* delicioso. Now Madoka was huge. It launched writer Gen Urobichi's career into orbit and, while far from the first, Madoka inspired an entire generation of dark magical girls series

28:47 looking to take the bright innocent and optimistic tones of the genre and twist them up into more bleak and edgy tales. Madoka stratospheric popularity is one of the two things it has common with Sailor Moon, the other being it's heavy influence from tokusatsu. Gen Urobuchi has admitted in interviews that Madoka was inspired by Kamen Rider Ryuki right down to the infinitely resetting time to save a loved one. So I'm gonna call this "The Dark Magical Girl Period". In 2012 we got another take on magical girls, a major call back to its early idol period of the '80s, it's called Senki Zesshō Symphogear. Story is that idols are recruited into an international military organization which use ancient weapons known symphogears to harness the harmonic power of their voices

29:32 and transform it into combat prowess to fight Bavarian Alchemists. Yeah, they literally sing about kicking your ass to make their ass-kicking even more powerful. 10 /10 *Chef Kiss* Having their weaponry based in technology just as much as magic also gives the series free license to put the magical girls in pseudo mech suits complete with laser cannons and jet packs. Each girl also has their own genre music. The series just ended its run in 2019 with its fifth season. The series has sold a ton of music bringing in famous voice actresses to show off their musical chops singing their character songs and also entered a gacha market with a new mobile game. Then came the new dark magical girl series starting in 2014 with Yuki Yuna is a Hero, the story of a school hero club

30:18 who gains the ability to transform into magical girls through a phone app so they can protect their reality from the extra-dimensional threat of the alien Vertex. Using their powers begin to eat away at the girls bodies, which will eventually render them paralyzed or even cause death. Some critics have said that conflict works as an allegory for PTSD but the series pushes the personal sacrifices that girls are making, even if just in not being able to study because they're fighting so hard to ensure that their teacher is still there tomorrow to chew them out for not doing their homework. Another more literal take on this appeared in 2019s Magical Girl SpecOps Asuka. which looked at the magical girls through a lens of a child soldier in which, after the evil world threat was defeated, governments still continue to exploit magical girls to achieve military supremacy.

31:04 What a weird sentence I just said then. Then there are some series which was just dark. Magical Girl Raising Project in 2016 basically set magical girls against each other in a battle royal setting and 2019s Magical Girl Site is like Hell Girl of magical girl series with the protagonist, Aya Asagiri being given magical powers from a mysterious online benefactor to get back against her school bullies and abusive older brother Basically it's really dark right now. I would love some, uh, pastel colors and the uplifting speech about the power friendship ...right, right about now...please Luckily it's not all doom and gloom right now though. We recently got the super bizarre Magical Girl Ore, a tongue-in-cheek comedy where girls signed cheeky back-alley contracts with Yakuza-like mascots to turn into beautifully dressed male bodybuilders that can crush the unnervingly cute muscling demonic invaders.

31:53 And Noelle recently powered up in Black Clover with her new spell using a pretty familiar transformation sequence. Also another season the Sailor Moon Crystal is on its way in 2020 and the recent conclusion of many flagship franchises leaves open ground for a new series to break into the market. Oh! That is the history, the long history of magical girls. Thank you everyone so much for watching this and please check out all these magical girls series that we have in our library at Crunchyroll.com. Be sure to subscribe, like and press that magical bell icon. Hime, Hime! Signing out.