Rating my Favorite Series on their Girl Power

 Happy International Women's Day! As a celebration I decided to rank all my favorite series into terms of how much girl power they have. This list is going to be a bit more.. subjective as girl power isn't really defined by any one or two elements in the story itself but moreso how the audience is supposed to feel watching it, so these are ordered roughly in how much they give me that feel. When a franchise has multiple series on this list, I'm focusing on the series within that I personally consider favorites.

Tier 5:

These are series which depict power in a very specifically masculine way and are kind of the opposite of girl power

33: God of War: The original Greek Saga of God of War operated on manliness and testosterone.

32: Yu Yu Hakusho: Has some strong female characters, but broadly is about a troubled young man's attempt to integrate his aggression in a positive way with almost all the fighters being male.

31: Saint Seiya: Basically a "knights rescue the princess plot" themed around mythology, where Saints are all male or have to cover their femininity in masks. That's not me saying that, that's literally how the series frames it. Saintia Sho is a feminine version and is the sole reason it's at the top of this tier.

Tier 4:

These are series I feel are pretty neutral in terms of girl power, usually because they have a predominantly male cast. 

30: The Stanley Parable: Technically there are female characters but there are really only two characters, arguably only one, and both are male.

29: Magicka: The gender of the protagonist wizards are ambiguous, but all the major characters outside that are male.

28: Over the Garden Wall: Of the four major characters, only one is female and Beatrice is probably the least major. Not a strong female influence in general.

27: Yu-Gi-Oh!: There are some female characters of note in the original series but Anzu and Mai serve primarily token archetypal roles of love interest and specifically feminine antagonist. All the major characters are male.

26: Hetalia: Hungary's great but all the major characters are male. Male nations outnumber female names by a wide margin.

25: Commedia: This comes from a very different time period and while the work is respectful towards women for its time, and one of the female characters is one of the most important characters in the story with a lot of agency (Beatrice), she only shows up herself for about a third of the story, with the majority just being Dante and Vergil. It DOES show a significant amount of respect though. 

24: Xiaolin Showdown: One of the heroes is female, Kimiko, and one of the major antagonists is female, Wuya, though it is a heavily male predominated cast.

23: Ouran High School Host Club: While the cast is almost entirely male, the protagonist herself is female, and in particular one who is shown to be very intelligent and full of agency. 

Tier 3: 

These are series that have a more even mixture of female to male characters and generally do a better job of giving the female characters agency and power.

22: Freedom Force: Despite taking place in and being an homage to storytelling mostly from the 1960s, Freedom Force has some superheroines with one being the arguable main character of the story (Alchemiss) with the most agency, and several major female antagonists with the second game having a main villainess (Entropy.) Still a series with a larger male to female cast, but less dramatically so.

21: Danny Phantom: While still a story mostly focused around a teenage boy and his struggles, has a roughly even female to male good guy ratio, as well as numerous female antagonists and a roughly even mixture of female to male supporting cast. This is roughly around the average for most series. 

20: Wander over Yonder: Another roughly evenly split cast with the two main heroes being a girl and a boy, and two major antagonists one being a villain and one being a villainess. While the supporting cast is mostly male, Lord Dominator is treated as the undeniable unstoppable character with the most agency in the story and the story takes pains to emphasize her gender.

19: Undertale: Almost perfectly even cast mixture by gender, with female characters ranging in archetype and having both power and agency in the story. Toriel is stereotypically feminine in archetypal being a maternal figure but has an iron will to her and both Alphys and Undyne are non-traditional female archetypes with major influences on the story.

18: xxxHolic: Once again, the major cast is evenly split in gender, though the supporting cast is primarily female. Yuuko is also just such a cool character while also being feminine in iconography that she pulls the series upwards.

17: Cardcaptor Sakura: Similarly, major cast is evenly split in general, though the supporting cast is primarily female. However the supporting cast of female characters is a lot important, and the story is about a girl, Sakura, as opposed to Watanuki, and her relations with everyone in her life.

16: Shamanic Princess: Outside of the antagonist which is a non-gendered eldritch horror, all the characters with the most importance in the story are female and are presented as awesome and full of agency. Tiara, Lena, and Sara are probably the three most important characters, all have huge importance to the story and make important decisions.

Tier 2: 

These series are ones that do give me the girl power feelings and which depict a specifically feminine form of power or the main character being a girl I felt was a meaningful choice to depict the positive traits of femininity. 

15: The Owl House: Fairly evenly divide of important male and female characters, tending towards female but the most important are the main character and her girlfriend who are witches which in the real world is a type of magic that are often associated with femininity, though in TOH it is used for both genders.

14: Okami: Not especially explicitly girl power-y, but Okami is about the goddess Amaterasu, the supreme goddess of Japan and her unique power which is often couched in feminine language, with the series never showing Ammy as remotely unfit in her capacity to rule the universe. Admittingly this may only be as high as it is due to my feelings on the real world Amaterasu being one of the few supreme deities of any religion to be explicitly female. 

13: Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt: Even though it's a very fanservice-y series, P&S is not a series about two shrinking violets getting sexualized against their will but about two bad*ss, if obviously heavily flawed comedic protagonists that are completely confident in themselves and are depicted as shameless and confident in their desires.

12: Tokyo Mew Mew: Like a lot of Magical Girl series, Tokyo Mew Mew is about a team of girl using feminine magic, wearing feminine outfits, and using feminine iconography. The theme song is even explicit about it being girl power-y saying "any girl can become fearless, by knowing a special kind of magic!

11: Magic Knight Rayearth: Magic Knight Rayearth is similarly another Magical Girl series with feminine iconography. While it's less girl-y then TMM, it is more power-y as the characters are depicted as cool and venerable. Also the secret antagonist of the first arc is female as is the main antagonist of the second in the anime.

10: Yuki Yuna is a Hero: Another Magical Girl series, this one darker. I've heard argument that these darker magical girl series are less Girl Power-y because they feature the girls not achieving their goals and suffering more and while that is true for some of them, for these darker MG series Yuki Yuna is on the least dark side, having the friendship between the girls ending up saving the world multiple times over, reverse all the effects of Sange upon them, and ending the hero system that had caused so many to suffer. There's also a whole thing about how pure maidens are the only used as sacrifices but how this system was broken by the girls friendship and trust in each other, coming to believe more in their friendship then Taisha or the Shinju. 

9: Cutie Honey: While some of the Cutie Honey series are clearly meant for guys, my favorite Cutie Honey series is Cutie Honey Flash which is the Shojo one. When Cutie Honey was made, it surprised the creator that it attracted a younger female audience who appreciated the awesome action-y female protagonist who was confident in her body and treated as ultra-capable, so a Shojo version was made, making Cutie Honey Flash kind of an emblem of girl power in its own right. 

8: Princess Tutu: Of my favorite series I would say Princess Tutu is the msot feminine of them temperamentally, and presents power and competence in a distinctly feminine way, appropriating a lot of fairy tale imagery to depict the heroine's journey.

7: Metroid: For Metroid it's not so much the content itself which typically doesn't mention Samus' gender in anyway, it's moreso symbolic of what it represents, being an 80s action game of a female protagonist in power armor. People have talked to death about the revolutionary genius of it, having the player play the whole game thinking Samus was male only to show they had been playing a female character the whole time, attacking the notion that the default hero was always masculine. Every series prior to 9 was girl power-y only really incidentally, and while Cutie Honey Flash and Princess Tutu had a self-conscious element Metroid fully invoked the idea. I like how Samus can be a female protagonist whose relatively emotionless yet isn't depicted as tomboyish or somehow masculine for it. She's simply highly composed and stoic. 

6: Puella Magi Madoka Magica: My favorite Madoka series are original and Tart Magica. Madoka is a series that pulls one of the most effecting reversals I've ever experienced. Magical Girls are representations of idealized femininity, of the wishes and dreams of young girls. Madoka is about the painful clash between that and the darker parts of reality, the foolishness in people, a world that is uncaring towards gentle feelings. However the climax holds that even in the face of ultimate suffering and death, girls feelings' dreams and wishes are meaningful, that if the world contradicts it, we will break it down and rebuild it, that the feelings of a young girl are both so important that the universe's laws seem to harvest it for energy, and it can change those laws. Granted it's not very Girl Power-y for a lot of it, which is why it's 'only" 6. 

Tier 1: 

These are the series that I really think of when I think of Girl Power. These five really could be in any order.

5: DC Comics: It's hard to talk about DC Comics "in general" because DC is such a massive franchise with so many different tones, themes, and content. However one of my favorite DC series is Wonder Woman which...should speak for itself. Wonder Woman is an icon with a massive historical legacy representing female empowerment. My favorite DC series also includes Starfire, Zatanna, and Harley Quinn all of which have girl power-y elements to them. It's the bottom of Tier 1 because, once again, DC's kind of inconsistent just from pure size.

4: The Powerpuff Girls: VERY similar in this regard to Pretty Cure, it's about three little girls using Kryptonian superpowers to beat up usually kaiju as well as supervillains. This series is very clearly a girl power series both in and out of universe with episodes that are meant to show that such as Equal Fights and Members Only.

3: Pretty Cure: Pretty Cure is such a clear example of Girl Power, I'd find it hard to explain. It's about young girls given Magical Girl Powers punching around villains with the magic of friendship. Pretty Cure is what I think of when I think of "Magical Girl Anime", a genre with a heavy emphasis on girl power. Pretty Cure vs PPG is probably the hardest comparison in this whole list. Pretty Cure's powers are usually depicted as more explicitly feminine, and it arguably has a higher proportion of female antagonists. 4 and 3 really could be swapped.

2: Sailor Moon: Ah, my favorite series! Sailor Moon is another series that's explicitly girl power-y, Naoko wanted to make a magical girl that was a relatable everygirl and took the negative stereotypes about girls making them into the sources of Usagi's strength, her heavy emotionality is the source of her powers. It's very explictly about putting femininity together with power hence the title "Bishojo Senshi", Pretty Girl Soldier. I could write many paragraphs on it, but Sailor Moon is a series that wanted to express to its young female audience that they could be feminine and a cool hero, that being flawed didn't mean you couldn't save the world. There is a series I think could arguably be more girl power-y. 

1: Bayonetta: Once again, I could go back and forth on 2 and 1. Sailor Moon was intended to be more girl power-y then Bayonetta but I think in actual content Bayonetta is, albeit both are high in both. Bayonetta is a series about the Umbran Witches, making the traditional feminine scapegoat into the protagonists, using feminine magic and iconography such as fashion, dance, long hair, butterflies and more while also being a series as action-y and over the top as God of War. Bayonetta is a series predicated on being a stylish bad*ss women whose awesome in ways that are explicitly powerful and feminine at the same time, in harmony, completely confident in her sexuality and competence. I find it hard to imagine a more girl power-y idea then that.