Mahou shoujo is just about my favorite thing ever. I've watched and/or read and loved Sailor Moon, Princess Tutu, Kaitou Saint Tail, Cardcaptors, Tokyo MewMew, Madoka, (are we counting Utena, I feel like it's not really mahou shoujo but obviously I am hells Utena), and probably a lot I'm forgetting right now. I always want to watch more but it's... kind of hard to tell what's actually good. I'm not here for the ecchi or the loli so I'm not about fan pandering or parody series that are mostly about underwear, though if there's a really good reason to watch them anyway, maybe. I'm also not for really kiddy kid's shows (Cardcaptors was way pushing it and I probably wouldn't be there if I hadn't read it when I was young and tbh you should 110% read that one rather than watching it but anyway) unless, again, it's really good (art or plot-wise) or there's some other reason to watch it. I want sparkly transformations and good feels and female friendships and frilly art and fluffy silly positivity. Or, as evidenced by my Madoka/Utena feels, I'm totally fine with going darker/more adult/more serious (Tutu is one of my favorite anime ever made and I will go on and on and on if you let me) but it still has to be magical girl. Sparkly transformations. Friendship and love are the ultimate power. RIBBONS. As for everything if something is just SO GOOD I could try it out anyway. It doesn't have to be 100% what I'm laying out! I just want some more good (either actually GOOD or perfectly pandering, or both) mahou shoujo to want and I'm having a hard time finding some myself. Got favorites? Want me to sell you on my favorites? Let's talk Heart Power.
Nanoha started as a magical girl show, and remains a show about girls and magic and the power of friendship, except at some point the power of friendship becomes a wave-motion gun. It's big on magical combat and magitek, but it's still a show about young girls using wands and incantations to transform into pretty frilly dresses and shoot sparkly pink beams of love at each other.
Am I misremembering something? Because I remember avoiding this because it was a more ecchi show of the 'underage girls' underwear' variety. Have I confused two shows or is it just like, not as bad as I think?... If I'm thinking of a totally different show I apologize >u<
It's not as bad as you think. Beyond the transformation sequence in the first series it's really not that bad. Post first series it improves in that respect. I also don't recall the movie being bad about it? So if you want to get through the first series as fast as possible you could just watch the first film.
Huh. Maybe I have confused two different shows then! That happens depressingly often o_o I'll make sure to check that one out, thanks.
How do you feel about postapocalyptic magical girls? Because there is a webcomic called Magic Remains that may be relevant to your interests. It's just started and updates kinda slow, but so far I'm digging it.
I'm okay with pretty much any 'x' magical girls, genre blending is good! I've noticed that magical girl webcomics tend not to stick around often but there have been some nice ones... Angel Moxie was all kinds of cute and enjoyable. This does look like it could be cool! I'll keep an eye on it, thanks : 3 ETA: searching for more similar brought me http://www.shatteredstarlight.com/ . I'm totally reading that. Hell yes. Hell fucking yes. ...not what I was looking for since I am craving pink sparkly lovey dovey japanese goodness, but I also want this.
If you haven't checked out Precure yet, Princess is actually pretty phenomenal. There's the occasional Special Lesson still, but the primary stuff is actually pretty tight in terms of plot. (Precure is a bit weird in that it is a pretty kiddy show, but also like. People have died on screen.) Magic Knight Rayearth was pretty good too.
I never got around to finishing Yuki Yuna is a Hero, but it was pretty okay for the amount I watched? Not a long series either.
Oh man, RAYEARTH, I forgot about that. Yes, do check that out, it's for when you want your magical girls with a side order of magical Spoiler GIANT ROBOTS [edit: Spoiler: some clarification on spoiler Okay, not giant robots in the traditional sense, they're giant armored magical god-beasts that the girls pilot and... yeah, they're totally magical giant robots ]
The A's movie does cut out some plot points, yeah. But A's is definitely the strongest season, I think. (And what we're watching now in summer camp!) Another good webcomic is Sleepless Domain, though it's not very long yet. And I can vouch for Yuki Yuna being good, though it has a bit of a pacing issue.
@PRelations @Lerxst Oh, I LOVE Rayearth. It just didn't occur to me to list it as mahou shoujo. I guess it is! It's so quality in every single way 0u0 I would read more CLAMP if there was, like, CLAMP I hadn't read. I haven't done a lot of Precure actually. It's something where it's hard to tell where to start but with the huge fan following, I should probably try -u- ....Special Lesson? That looks adorable, will check out. I'll have to make a list, won't I? *u* I must have heard about that and mentally flagged the series. No matter! I know how to handle that sort of thing, I can roll my eyes and ignore occasional fanservice if the show itself is a good enough watch, and it sounds like it is. That does sound like the way to go. Usually if I end up really loving something I go back and watch whatever I decided to skip in order to get into it. Thanks for the info, now I know how to attack this otherwise intimidating series! -starts written list-
The only problem with watching the movie over the first season is, if you then go into the later seasons anime (which you should, because of aforementioned plot edits in the second) then you get animation whiplash. Ah well. The movies are REALLY nicely animated, especially the fights. They're gorgeous.
Me as I started reading Sleepless Domain: : / : ) : D : D : D : D ??? D8 (-clicks rapidly and avidly through pages-)
I know parody series involving ecchi and loli jokes are off the table, but what about parodies involving evil magical girls supplexing their way to victory? Dai Mahou Tenge/Magical Witch Punie-chan is that. It's about an evil magical girl from another dimension who, instead of using magical spells, resorts to fighting all of her rivals and the 'villains' via wrestling and pummeling them to submission. The magical pet mascot is trying to assassinate her to save his race from her family, while all other magical girls are trying to foil her in order to grasp for an extra-dimensional crown, trash the planet earth, or some combination of the two. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/DaiMahouTouge goes into more detail if this sounds appealing. I do not think so, but it is another magical girl anime and it's certainly a memorable choice, especially if you want something that alternates between skewering other magical girl shows and comically-dark deconstructions about how things work.
Okay, how about Agents of the Realm? It's a college-age magical girl story involving two intertwining universes with 5 magical 'agents' in each, only one of which is very similar to our own world. It's relatively early in the overarching story, too, but there's a lot of great worldbuilding and characterization already! Other things it's about: a pair of twins, family secrets, and what happens when an unbroken chain of duty gets snapped. Lots of queer characters! Lots of women of color! Lots of important women, period!
I want all the worldbuilding info for SD so I could RP in it Spoiler: OC SD team Team Theatrical (name pending) based around aspects of Stage Crew! Which is thing I do so. Theatrical [Something] - Stage Manager - Team leader. No offensive powers, but she has a sort of spatial awareness of what's around her, the ability to link her team up telepathically and sync up their movements, enemy analysis scan, and possibly some kind of healing. Undisputed leader. Theatrical Sonic - Aria Meadow - Sound tech. Sound powers, of course! Can create sonic attacks that can either incapacitate enemies or just knock stuff around. Plus she's really good at reproducing sounds for fakeouts and tricks, and hiding the sounds of her teammates moving around. Her name is a terrible involved pun (Meadow=Medo=Medusa, medusa being a sort of sound teching equipment.) Her special offense weapon is a microphone/flail. Theatrical Photon - Aluma Fren - Lighting tech. Lasers attacks, with a backup of electric zappy times. Can fly a bit, but not very quickly or efficiently (well, not really flight, more like... creating a plane that she can stand on above the ground, and increasing or decreasing its height.) Can create illusions as well, though not very complicated ones, or hide someone from sight temporarily. Offensive weapon is a Source Four/lasercannon-thing. Her name pun is lum=light, but also aluminum, because of a stage tech joke (why are trusses made of aluminum? So they don't rust before they gets off the ground) and Fren is from Fresnel, a kind of lamp.) Theatrical Tailor -Penelope [X] Costume design. Can control clothes/cloth with a quite wide range and good precision. She can also modify someone's magical girl costume temporarily for buffs, or give herself talismans or weapons, as long as they are also costume parts. Can shapeshift or change someone else's appearance temporarily, but unless she's prepared such a change it can take a while. Her first name comes from Penelope in the Odyssey, always weaving and unweaving the shroud. Offensive weapon is a needle sword. Theatrical Set - Set design. Can manipulate the terrain around a battle, creating simple structures or, if she's had enough time to focus on their construction, bigger, complex pieces independent of the area around the group. Also generally telekinetic. Offensive weapon is a hammer/hammer. Has a ranged attack (it summons nails, Set whacks them, they fly off and impale someone.) The team each have a personal emblem (that looks like their weapon - Sonic has a microphone with sound waves coming out, Photon has a lamp with a beam of light, Tailor has a threaded needle, and Set has a hammer striking a surface. Manager's is a pair of tied-back curtains with an X behind them, representing four disciplines coming together or something.) They also have shared costume aspects - each of them has a stage-curtain-looking piece of cloth somewhere on them. Manager's has hers on her chest as a traditional magical girl bow, Sonic's is hanging off her headband over her ears Photon's is a shawlcape, Set's is an overskirt, and Tailor's is a scarf around her elbows. They also all have cute matching headsets, and their costumes are predominantly black. There's various other accessories and costume bits, though out of those I only know that Photon has a piece of tieline as a bow in her hair and Sonic has some wrapped around her wrist. Photon's underskirt/petticoat/whatever looks multicolored, because the outside of it is made of fanned-out lighting gels. Whenever they might need to share areas, Sonic and Photon room together. Sonic is the one who is habitually late outside of battle. Photon can arrive on time but takes her time with what she's working on. None of them like being mistaken for Team Dramatical, the acting-themed team. And they don't appreciate the insinuation that they'd prefer to be on that team either, thank you very much.
-shoves literally everything else off the table to make room for that- Sounds like Star Verses, except.... like.... worse. Worse, but a much stronger worse than worse. Yeah, that's going to the top of the to-watch list. Ooo, lovely art! Will check out with Sleepless Domain is devoured and geeked over.
