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Ah, Mahou Shojo, the cute dresses, the airhead but kind heroines, the cute-but-get-over-it-already transformation, the crude fact that the girls are more or less child soldiers in pretty dresses and that reallistically both the civilians and the girls themselves would be bolognesa sauce if no plot armor were involved... wait what was the last one?
WHAT HAPPENED HERE?
There is a huge myth around the mahou shojo fandom that the genre was murdered in 2011 with the debut of Puella Magi Magica Madoka, a gritty show about how in reality Usgi Tsukino would be either
A) A corpse before she could finish transforming
B) Traumatized beyond reason after just a Minion of the week or
C) Missing her idealism and becoming a harsh shell that would turn worse than the villians in this endless war
Granted the show is hardly as dark as it is sold by internet, yeah it get dark, but also Madoka, our protagonist, despite getting constantly broken by the fucked up Mahou Shoujo System she never stops believing in hope, and oh boy that pays off in a relatively happy ending
The show did sell well, mouth by mouth about how different it was of yor usual Pretty Cure season made the show a nice subversion of expectations, and with success, it comes:
IMITATION, THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY
With the subversiveness of the cuteness of the genre lots of writers tried to get some of the lion's share, some did it rigth (Magical Girl Ore, being more of a satire rather than a plain deconstruction) but some... just focused on shock and ketchup (Mahou Shoujo Site)
The Genre was deemed "dead" since from 2011 onward, Mahou Shoujo Anime were either Deconstruction (Mahou Shoujo Site, Majou Shoujo project) parodies and/or satire (Otasuke Miko Miko-chan, Kill La Kill) or simply another installment of an already existing IP (Pretty Cure, Jewelpet) with some rare new examples, you may think this is the end of the fluffy genre, but...
BROKEN PHONE, ACTUALLY...:
The truth is that Mahou Shoujo was never that sappy, in fact they are many MS shows that could outedge Madoka, Revolutionary Girl Utena feels less like a Morning Cartoon for a daughter and more like meta terror, Cutie Honey gets adult topics at times, and let's not forget the... crashy ending of Minky Momo
As you can see, darkness in the genre was never a novelty Madoka Invented, neither dissecting its tropes and playing them realistically, come to think about it, Deconstruction has become a simple word to conflate the genre in ways that is easy to explain, even on anime that doesn't really fit there
SO IS DEAD OR NOT?
As i forewarned in the article's title... not really
All the genre did was swap demographic priority and simply evolve narratively
¿Does Mechas stopped being action packed just because Evangelion made them gritty, Does Medal Of Honor evolving the FPS killed the genre just because it stopped being DOOM like, Does episodic cartoons were killed by serialized cartoons? the answer is not, they simply branched, and for better or worse, the branch of "Realistic" Magical Girl Anime is simply another genre, one that became the norm
TLDR: No, it simply swapped audience priority
WHAT HAPPENED HERE?
There is a huge myth around the mahou shojo fandom that the genre was murdered in 2011 with the debut of Puella Magi Magica Madoka, a gritty show about how in reality Usgi Tsukino would be either
A) A corpse before she could finish transforming
B) Traumatized beyond reason after just a Minion of the week or
C) Missing her idealism and becoming a harsh shell that would turn worse than the villians in this endless war
Granted the show is hardly as dark as it is sold by internet, yeah it get dark, but also Madoka, our protagonist, despite getting constantly broken by the fucked up Mahou Shoujo System she never stops believing in hope, and oh boy that pays off in a relatively happy ending
The show did sell well, mouth by mouth about how different it was of yor usual Pretty Cure season made the show a nice subversion of expectations, and with success, it comes:
IMITATION, THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY
With the subversiveness of the cuteness of the genre lots of writers tried to get some of the lion's share, some did it rigth (Magical Girl Ore, being more of a satire rather than a plain deconstruction) but some... just focused on shock and ketchup (Mahou Shoujo Site)
The Genre was deemed "dead" since from 2011 onward, Mahou Shoujo Anime were either Deconstruction (Mahou Shoujo Site, Majou Shoujo project) parodies and/or satire (Otasuke Miko Miko-chan, Kill La Kill) or simply another installment of an already existing IP (Pretty Cure, Jewelpet) with some rare new examples, you may think this is the end of the fluffy genre, but...
BROKEN PHONE, ACTUALLY...:
The truth is that Mahou Shoujo was never that sappy, in fact they are many MS shows that could outedge Madoka, Revolutionary Girl Utena feels less like a Morning Cartoon for a daughter and more like meta terror, Cutie Honey gets adult topics at times, and let's not forget the... crashy ending of Minky Momo
As you can see, darkness in the genre was never a novelty Madoka Invented, neither dissecting its tropes and playing them realistically, come to think about it, Deconstruction has become a simple word to conflate the genre in ways that is easy to explain, even on anime that doesn't really fit there
SO IS DEAD OR NOT?
As i forewarned in the article's title... not really
All the genre did was swap demographic priority and simply evolve narratively
¿Does Mechas stopped being action packed just because Evangelion made them gritty, Does Medal Of Honor evolving the FPS killed the genre just because it stopped being DOOM like, Does episodic cartoons were killed by serialized cartoons? the answer is not, they simply branched, and for better or worse, the branch of "Realistic" Magical Girl Anime is simply another genre, one that became the norm
TLDR: No, it simply swapped audience priority
Bakuma OUT
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