The magical girl, a popular genre of Japanese television animation, has provided female ideals for young girls since the 1960s. Three waves in the genre history are outlined, with a focus on how female hero figures reflect the shifting ideas of gender roles in society. It is argued that the genre developed in close connection to the culture of sho¯jo (female adolescence) as an antithesis to adulthood, in which women are expected to undertake domestic duties. The paper then incorporates contexts for male-oriented fan culture of sho¯jo and anime aesthetics that emerged in the 1980s. The recent tendencies for gender bending and genre crossing raise critical questions about the spread of the magical girl trope as cute power. It is concluded that the magical girl genre encompasses contesting values of gender, and thus the genre’s empowerment fantasy has developed symbiotically with traditional gender norms in society.
This is a really interesting article on magical girl anime and the way it interacts with gender norms in Japan.
There’s a lot of argument on Tumblr about whether magical girl shows are empowering by nature or whether they enforce restrictive gender roles. This paper goes into the history of the genre and its capitalistic nature, and discusses a few different landmark shows that exemplify its different eras and their cultural context.
The conclusion is ambivalent - that the genre is contradictory and self-conflicting in its approach to gender norms.
I know a lot of Tumblr likes to deal in absolutes, and to condemn or praise magical girls as a whole, but the truth is much more complicated.
