top 5 magical girls of all time, ranked. Go go go go go og
This is a more interesting challenge if I limit myself to one per franchise so as to not have loads of Madoka rep, so we're doing one per franchise. Also finding an order for this was fucking hell. Also finding and taking my own good images for some of the girls was also fucking hell. Okay let's go.
5. Cocona Cocomine
It's been so long since I did a top 5 that I don't actually know how to introduce each segment. Anyway we start with Cocona, from Flip Flappers! Really hard not to love Cocona honestly - she's very down to earth and relatable, especially for the genre she operates in, but still ends up on an arc all about becoming proactive in her life and making her own decisions for herself and all that based shit I love a bunch. Being very very cute and very very cool and very very gay on top of that enhances her even further. Watch Flip Flappers.
4. Ami Mizuno
Ami is perhaps the simplest character we'll be talking about today - Sailor Moon of course having quite simplistic character writing and a structure that lends itself less to long form character arcs and more so to just kinda vibing with a familiar cast that don't change all that much, but hey we love that structure a bunch so! Ami is a very smart and sweet and nice girl who's a little socially awkward and struggles to interact with others, but she tries her hardest and people are very touched by how kind she is and it's the best and I love her and the literal best episode of the entire series is about Ami so hey. Also blue is my favourite colour and Ami is one of the most blue girls ever, we love.
3. Fate Testarossa
Fate is similarly a fairly simple character, although hey she does actually have a longer form character arc across s1 of Nanoha and then the rest of the show having actual meaningful timeskips means we get to see what sort of person Fate grows up into as well and it's awesome! Poor little girl was like the sweetest person alive but forced into being a bit of a dick thanks to an abusive mother, though with the help of Nanoha, Fate is saved from her mother and herself, and starts being able to live truly to herself and all that good stuff. From then on she is literally the most genuinely kind and sweet and loving person in the entire fucking multiverse, on top of being an absolute fucking badass too. And then in StrikerS and shit she's just like ready to adopt every single orphan in the universe and she likes to drive cool expensive cars and aaaaaah she's just so cool man. Need to rewatch Nanoha soon.
2. Hibiki Tachibana
I literally don't actually know where to start with Hibiki, right. Because there's literally so much to love that what are you even supposed to say? In many ways she's the genuine platonic ideal of what a magical girl is and should be and ends up being a literal perfect protagonist for Symphogear as a series as well because of that. The character arcs she goes through and how she comes out on top of it all having learned and applied whatever lessons are relevant that season is fucking gripping as shit, by the end of it all we have a girl who's as based as you can possibly get, someone who can create a history with the light God could not know. I absolutely adore her. Also, she punches things. She holds a determination to fist. This is objectively better than any other magical girl weapon and more magical girls need to just literally throw hands. Plus Aoi Yuuki is perfect casting for her and Hibiki is literally one of the best voice performances I've heard in any show ever. Stan Hibiki.
1. Homura Akemi
The sheer baggage surrounding Homura as a character is such that one could very easily write a full length novel going into just her specifically. And I'm not about to be the person doing that! So I'm gonna try keep this brief. In many ways, Homura is kind of the antithesis of everything all these other characters embody and represent, but in many ways she's also a twisted exaggeration of some of those elements too? Hibiki wants to protect Miku so fights gods as an example, meanwhile Homura wants to keep Madoka safe so rewrites the universe and declares herself a Demon for it. Fate did horrible things under her mother, but tried to make up for it through the rest of her life, meanwhile Homura did horrible things trying to help Madoka, and decided that she's evil and doesn't even deserve to stay friends with that same Madoka. At the same time though calling Homura a twisted exaggeration seems unfair since that's just, by and large how she sees herself? Homura is a wounded 14 year old girl who got thrown into an inescapable labyrinthian time loop and got increasingly mindbroken from the whole thing, crushed so deeply by the experience that she doesn't even register herself as human anymore, she can't even think of her feelings as valid. In the truest sense imaginable she is a magical girl operating inside of a perfect yet painful tragedy. It's a tragedy that reveres the magical girl genre but Homura wants to cut herself out of that entire equation, declaring herself an inhuman devil that doesn't deserve Madoka's love. It's tragic. It's painful. It's compelling as all shit though. Homura is nothing like any other magical girl and we adore her for it. Hope in movie 4 she can forgive herself.
Anyway think that's it. Homura in #1 will likely never change but honestly with the rest the order is fairly loose and I might not even agree with it like an hour from now lol. But hey that was fun, ty for asking.
