Happy Pride Month: History of LGBT in Magical Girl Genre

 

Happy Pride month. To celebrate I decided to make a blog talking about the connection between LGBT fandom and the magical girl genre. 

Magical girls have long had a connection with the genre though over the course of it's 6 decades of existence, the genre's exact relationship to it has changed and grown, which is what this will be exploring; going over each "generation" or decade of the magical girl genre and how LGBT characters were depicted within.

This is mostly going to be about lesbian and female bisexual characters. This is because magical girl series tend to be primarily, or sometimes almost entirely female casts, and a notable portion of the male characters are love interests for the female characters; as such queer female characters are signifigantly more common, though if there is queer male or transgender characters of note to my knowledge I will be sure to mention in that section. 

60s Magical Girls/Really Early Magical Girl Series:

As might be expected, in the REALLY early magical girl series LGBT were never referenced as it was the 60s, early 70s for some. It's also of note that most of the time magical girls in this era were young children rather then the teenagers that magical girls would be associated with later, they simply didn't show any romantic or sexual tendency; it was squeaky clean a lot of the time. Most early magical girl series were a plot about a young girl coming from a magic world or having a magic item that either let them do whatever they wanted or let them transform into whoever they wanted.

It is interesting to note I think that, at least for the time, the magical girls did run the gamut of tomboyish to girly. While Sally from Sally the Witch would be considered almost entirely feminine by today's standards, by the late 60s standards she was considered quite tomboyish, even referenced in her theme song, due to her rebellious attitude, mild temper and her outspokenness, particularly in comparison to someone like Akko-chan from Himitsu no Akko-Chan. It is probably fair to say that even at the beginning of the genre, Magical Girls were interested in exploring femininity; such could be even said to part of the definition of the genre. 

The precusor to the genre was Princess Knight made by Tezuka in the 50s, the story of a young princess born with two hearts, the heart of a girl, and the heart of a boy. While not generaly considered a magical girl story, as Princess Sapphire doesn't use magical abilities, it is universally considered a precursor to the genre, and it's premise and plot being so immediatly rooted in gender exploration has been a large influence. Also of note is that Princess Knight is often considered a trans icon in the older anime community, due to the fact that it's story can be seen as paralleling the experience of transgender people, having a heart of one gender born into the body of the others.

70s Magical Girl Series:

During the course of the 70s, Magical Girls changed a lot, particularly with the release of more adult series like Majokko Megu-chan and Cutie Honey. The Magical Girl genre, possibly at least in part in reaction to the 60s girls, suddenly had lots of sexuality, and dark/adult content, and serious real world non-escapist type stories. During this period lesbianism/bisexuality was sometimes brought up but not in a particularly flattering light; more often used for titliation, as a marker of moral corruption, or used for comedy. 

In Cutie Honey for instance, which was not initially understood as belonging to the same genre as works like Sally and Akko-chan, pretty much every female character demonstrates same-sex attraction save ironically for the main character, and mostly for her. This was part of a seperate trend in magical girls; instead of cute little girls the magical girls were more often young women whose hotness was emphasized such as Honey's attractiveness to seemingly everyone. The villainesses attaction to her are characterized as predatory, her teachers' lesbian attraction is characterized primarily as abusive,and so on. 

Another 70s Magical Girl series, Majokko Megu-chan uses lesbianism not as a negative character trait or to establish the main character's attractiveness but for titiliation and comedic purpose. Meg and her rival Non engage in magical battle that tends to get quite heated which the perverted antagonist Rabi finds arousing, used as a joke. This is referenced in out of universe material as well with suggestive pictures presenting the two as a couple.

80s Magical Girls:

In the 80s, especially the mid-80s magical girls were primarily associated with studio Pierrot who attemped to essentially formualize the magical girl genre, and probably created the magical girl as an archetype. Much can be said, both good and bad, can be said about this period, and one of the things one can say about it for better or worse is it was a very safe period. Pierrot went back to the innocence of the 60s magical girls, and arguably went even further. As might be expected from such a description, the 80s magical girls lacked much reference of LGBT, even if the girls often had more of a romantic drive then their 60s counterparts. If anything the series were even more heterosexual then the early magical girl series, as they included heavily romantic subplots universally heterosexual as opposed to the more childish innocent slice of life as the 60s.

Outside of Japan however, things were not quite the same. In the United States She-Ra, retroactively believed to be an American Magical Girl series came out which along with it's brother series He-Man has a large queer fanbase and whose reboot included canonical LGBT characters. I must confess not to be able to comment much further as I am not as familiar with American Magical Girl history.

90s Magical Girls:

At the tail end of the 80s, beginning of the 90s, Pierrot's influence on the genre had waned as ironically shooting for safe is not a safe strategy over the long run. This brought about a revolution in the magical girl genre, a massive shift and a renaissance. The late 80s to early 90s transition in the magical girl genre is rivaled only by the shift from the late 00s to the early 10s. Most of the writers of magical girls in the 90s were women that had grown up watching magical girls in their childhood and wanted to write magical girl stories that were idiosyncratic, on whatever topic they found interesting, and with characters that they related to themselves or the people they knew.

As might be expected, with the sudden individualization of the genre and the return of adult themes (this time from a female perspective), LGBT characters not only returned to the genre, but under the guidance of perhaps more sympathetic writers in a more sympathetic time, writing to teen girls instead to the parents of little girls, they were actually given a more human sympathetic portrayal then before. I can not emphasize enough how huge a shift this was, and could go on and on expressing all the differences.

Obviously Sailor Moon came out at the start of the 90s and completely changed the game. A protagonist who demonstrated attraction to other girls, a pair of explicitly lesbian magical girls who were not treated as villainous or as jokes, but as wise older sister figures, a team of magical girls (which allowed for fandom shipping.) The anime primarily under the guidance of director Ikuhara who is quite interested in LGBT relationships added even more such as a greater degree of focus in the third arc to Sailors Uranus and Neptune, gay male relationships and characters that were coded as transgender. Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune in particular were absolutely insanely huge influences on the 90s queer anime community due to being not just a canonical queer anime pair, but one in one of the biggest anime franchises to have been seen to that date, treated as completely equal and noble and without a tragic end. 

On a similar note the all women mangaka group CLAMP made two magical girl series during this time, CLAMP being known as well for their love of LGBT characters having started by making homoerotic doujin of Saint Seiya and having made shipping fanart of Meg and Non from Majokko Megu-chan. The more famous of the two, Cardcaptor Sakura a magical girl that could rival Sailor Moon had Tomoyo, best friend of the protagonist Sakura, have lesbian feelings for her. The magical girl genre had this idea before with Na-chan and Honey in Cutie Honey, but now instead of being played for jokes, it was treated seriously and wholesome-ly. Likewise CCS has a homosexual male relationship between Sakura's brother and another boy.

There was another series very important to the development of LGBT apperearences in Magical Girl series. The aforementioned Ikuhara after he stopped working on the Sailor Moon anime directed the 1997 Revolutionary Girl Utena anime, an anime for whom the sheer amount of LGBT characters is so all-consuming that it's influence on the LGBT magical girl fandom was assured, even before taking into the fact that it was quite likely the first magical girl series for whom LGBT issues were the primary concern of the text as opposed to simply being a trait of some of the characters.

00s Magical Girls:

Compared to the massive shift from the 80s to the 90s, the magical girl transition between the 90s and the 00s was a lot less dramatic. While there were changes in the genre, they happened more gradually and not so intensely. There is really two periods here; the late 90s to early 00s forms it's own period, with the late 00s being it's own seperate period. The late 90s to early 00s of the MG genre is known for being generally more comedic takes on the genre compared to the more serious and often darker early 90s works. The late 00s is often considered a more dead area when the genre became less popular and the works started to become niche and limited to a few big name franchises or become more action-heavy fanservice series for boys.

For the most part magical girl series in the 00s were fairly similar to the 90s in terms of LGBT content. Shipping of magical girls on a team was still fairly common both in the works themselves and by their fandoms such as Mew Mint's attraction to Mew Zakuro. Two massive magical girl franchises began in this period both having an interesting contribution to the LGBT magical girl fandom.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha's golden age was during this period though it continues past the 00s. One of the things Nanoha is most known for is that the protagonist Nanoha ends up in a lesbian relationship with magical girl Fate Testarossa, the two adopting and raising a child. This wasn't entirely unknown in the genre; Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune were a lesbian couple who at one point in Sailor Moon raise Hotaru Tomoe as their daughter, but what was different was both that this was the main protagonist Nanoha, and the fact that their relationship formed the emotional core of the franchise. In other words, while not a difference in kind, it was a difference in degree, moving it to the forefront, and even today being one of the most notable examples of a canonical lesbian pair in anime.

The other big franchise was Pretty Cure. Since it's inception with the relationship between Cure Black and Cure White being treated in some episodes almost as a romantic relationship, Pretty Cure has had a sizeable LGBT fandom, varying depending on the season in question. 

10s Magical Girls:

If any decade shift overtakes the shift from 80s to 90s it would definitely be from 00s to 10s; Madoka is the single biggest shakeup to the genre since Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura in the 90s, and the genre is reinvented and reinvigorized. 

Without the same level of distance behind us, it is harder to see in context the changes the 10s made to the Magical Girl genre, including in the regard of LGBT themes and characters but Madoka was absolutely massive to the Yuri fandom and is perhaps a reflection of the normalization of the lesbian relationships. It got to the point that Madoka won an award for best yuri title, despite technically not being a yuri title. It's possible that despite the antagonism, Madoka and Homura's relationship will be viewed as the 10s version of Haruka/Michiru and Nanoha/Fate. A signifigant difference may be that unlike Haruka and Michiru who are presented as older and wiser and generally more adult then other senshi, and Nanoha and Fate who got together when they grew up, Madoka seems to have begun magical girls having lesbian romances while still in the youthful stage of life, reflecting lesbianism as a norm, with fallible youthful characters as opposed to more idealized adult characters. In other words it is not just acceptance of LGBT people as entities with agency and humanity in their own right, but normalization of them as just like anyone else. 

It's also notable that this decade may have introduced to my knowledge the first transgender magical girl with Kiyoharu Suirenji from Mahou Shojo Site, depending on interpretation of some earlier characters like the Sailor Starlights. The difference between the 00s and the 10s seems to be one of normalization of LGBT characters and a greater diversity of type, showing LGBT people in a greater variety of perspectives.

Why is this relevant?

This doesn't seem to be as well understood in the west but a magical girl in some sense an idealized figure representing cultural norms and values in a somewhat similar vein as a superhero. Magical Girls are not just girls with magic powers, they are representations of idealized femininity, an exploration of feminine identity, and a celebration of the female locus of power. A Magical Girl carries with her the hopes and dreams of people, she is a figure of internal beauty and dignity, who does the right thing and represents what society holds dear. That is the difference between a girl with magic, any female character with supernatural powers, vs the magical girl; a distinctly feminine coming of age superhero story that enshrines femininity as something powerful and good.

The increased inclusion of LGBT figures in the genre carries with a validating sense of dignity, a recognition from society on the femininity and rightness of LGBT people. The move from ignorance to outcasting to ignoring to accepting and finally to embracing in society is reflected in their appearence in the magical girl genre.