So I am a long term fan of the genre known as the "Magical Girl" genre, a genre of fiction where in the main character is mahou shojo, or magical girl, a girl with distinctly feminine magic or magiclike powers. This genre has a lot of subgenres that I don't think people know so I'm going to here explain quickly the 10 subgenres of MG as far as I see it. These really break down into 5, which break down into 2 each. The two that are together can be pretty easy melded and works in one can incorporate elements of the other easily. Taking elements from subgenres outside the clusters also happens, but a bit more rarely and with more effort with one of the subgenres usually being dominant.
1: Magical Girl Warrior: The Magical Girl warrior subgenre is what you probably think magical girls all are if you never watch anything from the genre because it is the most popular genre, and the one Sailor Moon belongs to, ie the most popular work in the genre. It's also the cluster I know the best. This breaks down into:
1A: Sentai Magical Girl: Started by Sailor Moon, a team of magical girls transform to fight an escalating hierarchy of villains after transforming into a set of similarly uniformed magic based superheroes. It shares much in common with the Sentai genre. Sailor Moon is here as well as a very large amount of the most popular magical girl series ever made including things like Pretty Cure and Tokyo Mew Mew.
1B: Solo Magical Girl Warrior/Magical Girl Champion: This is somewhat similar to the above but follows the exploits of a single magical girl warrior and is usually though not always a bit more adult and darker. As a general rule the magical girl is also usually a slightly less idealized heroic figure as its not meant to be a role model to children. If the above is Super Sentai, this is Kamen Rider. Examples include things like Codename: Sailor V, Cutie Honey, or Kill la Kill.
2: Classical Magical Girl: This is the old style of magical girl series that typically revolved around a magical girl solving domestic problems with magic or her charm and personality, and didn't really focus on fighting or violence. The first magical girl series were based on live-action sitcoms like Bewitched. They're not as popular nowadays but do still show up.
2A: Cute Witch: The cute witch typically involves a girl for whom magic is normal, and very often involves her going to the mundane human world to pass a test to be queen or to learn to use her powers. Her magic is usually unrefined at the start of the series and causes episodic hijinxs. The first magical girl anime, Sally the Witch, was one of these as was Star versus the Forces of Evil and Magical Princess Minky Momo.
2B: Magic Item: This subgenre has a young girl get a magical item that grants her magic powers, usually after she demonstrates some noble quality like compassion or courage, and which she uses to live out wish fufillment or learn life lessons, based around whatever the magic is. I'd argue Cardcaptor Sakura qualifies as a Magic Item series but beyond that all the Pierrot Magical Girls are Magic Item series and the first magical girl manga Himitsu no Akko-chan was one of these.
3: Slice of Life Magical Girls: Very closely linked in a cluster with the above category to the point that you could argue they're in the same cluster, Slice of Life MG is a take on the classical magical girl formula which typically doesn't have as much a focus on the goal that the prior does. In a Cute Witch series it's usually something like becoming queen of the magic world, and in Magical Item series it's usually some goal they're trying to accomplish with their item. Really you can think of these two subgenres as modifiers on the last subgenres.
3A: Magical Idol Singer: A particular type of Magic Item series where the girl transforms to become an idol singer specifically, a specific type of wish fufillment common for young girls. The pierrot series Magical Angel Creamy Mami and Magical Stage Fancy Lala as well as the non-pierrot Full Moon series are probably the most well known examples.
3B: CGDCT MG: CGDCT (Cute Girls Doing Cute Things) is a specific genre in itself of just enjoying watching an idealized fun depiction of young girls doing cute fun activities, and sometimes overlaps with the Magical Girl genre, most often with one of the two above subgenres. A Cute Witch CGDCT would be something like Little Witch Academia.
4: Dark Magical Girl Series: This goes back way further then casuals seem to think, magical girls have always had darker takes on the genre since the 70s. Typically aimed at an older audience for obvious reasons, with heroines that are signifigantly more flawed then normal. It's kinda hard to say where the distinction starts example with the Sailor Moon manga arguably as dark as the Madoka anime, but generallly the darkness of a magical girl series can be categorized by the age group one can show it too.
4A: Dark Action: The dark equivalent of the magical girl warrior subgenres, this is a genre in which magical girls fight, very often other magical girls. At least one of the characters always uses a gun as their weapon. Can seem quite similar to Magical Girl Warrior at times but can generally be differentiated by how much or little success the magical girls have compared to their enemies. Examples include Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Yuki Yuna is a Hero and Daybreak Illusion.
4B: Occult Girls: The dark equivalent to Classical or Slice of Life Magical Girls, this genre also primarily focuses on a girl's daily life, although usually has a more cynical less cutesy depiction and brings up "dark" subject matter. Note the magical girl herself is often as friendly and positive as any other subgenre, and it may even happily, but it usually has signifigantly more tragic undertones. Fighting still happens in these happen but is often far more stylized then Dark Action MG. Examples include Princess Tutu, Corpse Princess, and Uta Kata. Shamanic Princess straddles the line between this and Dark Action.
5: Parodic Magical Girls: A non-serious take on the genre that's usually not meant to be an actual magical girl series and more so a spoof of the genre, but still technically qualifies under the definition. Very often but not always has meta jokes about magical girls as part of the joke "ah these girls are insane and immoral, this isn't what magical girls are supposed to do!"
5A: Magical Girl Parody: A straightforward example of the above, basically series that are magical girl in aesthetics but whose primary focus is comedy and playing around with expected tropes. This is the only subgenre where I think you could argue non-female protagonists could still qualify for a magical girl series since very often that is part of the joke. Examples include Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, Is this a Zombie, or Super Pig.
5B: Adult Magical Girls: So this is for the Ecchi Magical Girls, or indeed the more explicit stuff. I don't usually consider these when thinking about Magical Girl series but they do qualify for being magical girl, so this is roughly the subgenre they belong too, where they are parodies of magical girl series but whose purpose is primarily titillation rather then comedy. Examples of Ecchi Magical Girl Series include Papillion Rose or Vividred Operation.
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