usagi literally watches all her friends die over and over again in
sailor moon so the whole ‘magical girls BUT DARK’ thing is so dumb
also I’ve heard pretear is a good magical girl show for people who don’t like sailor moon, and in addition, there’s of course always princess tutu
EXACTLY its so frustrating. Also yeah I never watched much Pretear but what I have seen looks pretty good, so add it to the list of reccomendations I’m putting below which already included, for….
that’s super interesting bc I loved Madoka! You mention that there’s better magical girl genres that are better written and I actually watched Utena bc of you and actually really enjoyed it so I have a lot of faith in your recommendations :‘0 so other than Sailor Moon (which I couldn’t really get into, unfortunately) can you tell me those other magical girl shows like Madoka?
I love Madoka Magica too, don’t get me wrong-I still cry every time I listen to Sagitta Luminis, it’s a very well-crafted show in a lot of respects. And to be fair Sailor Moon is a really long show with some real peaks and valleys-I’d probably recommend season 3 of that above everything else, since it’s where the series is strongest.
Off the top of my head some recommendations are:
1. PRINCESS TUTU –
Super dark, super weird, deals with a lot of the same themes as Utena and Homestuck, there’s a duck named duck. what’s not to love?
2. Mawaru Penguindrum – Only barely a magical girl show, but it’s by Kunihiko Ikuhara, the director of Utena, so I’m blood-bound to talk about it until I die. its exactly as fucked up and surreal as the Utena link implies. Substantially moreso on both counts, actually.
Lots of abuse and incest themes just like with Utena, but just as with Utena I feel its treated pretty appropriately. It features enough lgbt stuff that i’m pretty happy with it on that front, too. It’s even more dense and hard to understand than Utena in some ways, so I’m planning to rewatch this one myself and probably do some videos on it eventually.
Unfortunately its also a lot more overtly fanservicey/sexual than other stuff I’d recommend–Ikuhara seems to have gotten unfortunately trashier with time. I still think its good, the recommendation just comes with even heavier caveats than Utena.
3. Magical Lyrical Girl Nanoha – More episodic and combat oriented so its a pretty simple story, but it deals with a lot of abuse themes and following the series means watching the two main girls literally fall in love and adopt a child together. It’s maybe tongue in cheek, but they literally live together and sleep in the same bed. its canon.
Rating: Moms
I could think of more for sure–the Precure series (wanna chime in on standout seasons, @nelfes ?), Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, theres all sorts of different weird stuff in the genre so it kinda depends on what you’re looking for. These are just a couple shows that hold a special place in my heart for one reason or another.
i always get rly sad because the original ending of rebellion was
supposed to be homura and madoka going to magical girl heaven together,
but some people behind the movie were like nah. the creator was pretty
upset about the change and same. it’s still there in the manga
adaptation.
Oh. That actually makes me feel even more justified in erasing that ending from canon in my head, and makes me feel better about Gen Urobuchi for whenever I throw myself into the Fate/Stay Night franchise, not to mention making me more positive on the actual artistic vision behind Madoka overall.
Thanks a lot for the tip! Do you have a source, by any chance?
A great precure guide for those new to the series imo is this one by @ladyloveandjustice so I advise anyone interested to look there first! I’ll cover some of the more recent seasons not mentioned but first let’s begin with my fave:
Suite Precure is the eighth Pretty Cure season and the fourth stand alone season (all seasons following it continue to be stand alones). It went back to the two cures formula (thus the original seasons “futari wa” subtitle), but added in the magical girl warrior team popularized by Yes! Precure 5 and Fresh which honestly
The only other season to follow this two cure formula going forward is my other faveMahoutsukai Precure but unlike Suite! Maho is a fairly quirky and unique season so I wouldn’t start with it. It IS, however, very gay and heartfelt and healing.
The only Pretty Cure season with a canon love confession (between the two seventeen year old Cool High Schoolers ™ above ) is Kirakira Precure a la Modea suitable mouthful for the name of a season that had a lot of ideas that didn’t quite pan out. So while it’s a lot of fun and Macaron and Chocolat are great chars as well as the rest of the cast we sadly do not see their future together. We are assured they have one, however, so the rest is up to the imagination :’D (the mangaka certainly ships them).
Ultimately, Precure is about all kinds of loving, reaffirming bonds so with that said I would definitely recommend the current ongoing season – Hugtto! Precure
usagi literally watches all her friends die over and over again in
sailor moon so the whole ‘magical girls BUT DARK’ thing is so dumb
also I’ve heard pretear is a good magical girl show for people who don’t like sailor moon, and in addition, there’s of course always princess tutu
EXACTLY its so frustrating. Also yeah I never watched much Pretear but what I have seen looks pretty good, so add it to the list of reccomendations I’m putting below which already included, for….
that’s super interesting bc I loved Madoka! You mention that there’s better magical girl genres that are better written and I actually watched Utena bc of you and actually really enjoyed it so I have a lot of faith in your recommendations :‘0 so other than Sailor Moon (which I couldn’t really get into, unfortunately) can you tell me those other magical girl shows like Madoka?
I love Madoka Magica too, don’t get me wrong-I still cry every time I listen to Sagitta Luminis, it’s a very well-crafted show in a lot of respects. And to be fair Sailor Moon is a really long show with some real peaks and valleys-I’d probably recommend season 3 of that above everything else, since it’s where the series is strongest.
Off the top of my head some recommendations are:
1. PRINCESS TUTU –
Super dark, super weird, deals with a lot of the same themes as Utena and Homestuck, there’s a duck named duck. what’s not to love?
2. Mawaru Penguindrum – Only barely a magical girl show, but it’s by Kunihiko Ikuhara, the director of Utena, so I’m blood-bound to talk about it until I die. its exactly as fucked up and surreal as the Utena link implies. Substantially moreso on both counts, actually.
Lots of abuse and incest themes just like with Utena, but just as with Utena I feel its treated pretty appropriately. It features enough lgbt stuff that i’m pretty happy with it on that front, too. It’s even more dense and hard to understand than Utena in some ways, so I’m planning to rewatch this one myself and probably do some videos on it eventually.
Unfortunately its also a lot more overtly fanservicey/sexual than other stuff I’d recommend–Ikuhara seems to have gotten unfortunately trashier with time. I still think its good, the recommendation just comes with even heavier caveats than Utena.
3. Magical Lyrical Girl Nanoha – More episodic and combat oriented so its a pretty simple story, but it deals with a lot of abuse themes and following the series means watching the two main girls literally fall in love and adopt a child together. It’s maybe tongue in cheek, but they literally live together and sleep in the same bed. its canon.
Rating: Moms
I could think of more for sure–the Precure series (wanna chime in on standout seasons, @nelfes ?), Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, theres all sorts of different weird stuff in the genre so it kinda depends on what you’re looking for. These are just a couple shows that hold a special place in my heart for one reason or another.
i always get rly sad because the original ending of rebellion was
supposed to be homura and madoka going to magical girl heaven together,
but some people behind the movie were like nah. the creator was pretty
upset about the change and same. it’s still there in the manga
adaptation.
Oh. That actually makes me feel even more justified in erasing that ending from canon in my head, and makes me feel better about Gen Urobuchi for whenever I throw myself into the Fate/Stay Night franchise, not to mention making me more positive on the actual artistic vision behind Madoka overall.
Thanks a lot for the tip! Do you have a source, by any chance?
madoka’s pretty damn good overall as long as you forget the last 20 or so minutes of Rebellion (what toxic lesbianism?), so I’m not trying to harsh on the series particularly hard.
But I was over the “Magical girls….but DARK and DEEP!” view it garnered in fandom from the moment it started, because the magical girl genre has always been super varied, often extremely dark, and quite often much better written than Madoka is.
Madoka has extra points in the monster design, admittedly-but it’s honestly got nothing on the character drama and stakes Sailor Moon managed to build up, and it really isn’t meaningfully “darker”-just more dour and mean-spirited towards girls.
And that’s before we get into stuff like Utena which also technically falls into the magical girl warrior camp of the genre. Basically, Madoka Magica is pretty sweet, I just can’t help but want people who got really into it took it as an opportunity to explore one of the best genres in anime, because it’s far from the best magical girls have to offer.
Flying through Storytelling 