Additional Input on the Rise of Dark Magical Girl Series

Yesterday’s post on my belief as to why magical girl series have gone grim and dour got a lot of attention and very good responses from various people. Several of them filled me in on information I didn’t know, and they reminded me that even something as minor as a shift in anime has multiple causes behind it.

D. G. D. Davidson had this to add:

Anyway, as I’ve said before, I think grimdark is a natural, perhaps inevitable direction for a genre to take, and I say that because we’ve seen it in so many other places, where the formulas get established and then (arguably) get stale, and then the deconstructionists come along. Deconstruction works as well as it does because it’s easier to destroy than to build: It’s easier to mock Sailor Moon with a parody or tear it apart with a grim version than it is to make a new Sailor Moon. That’s also probably why so many deconstructions have, admittedly, some high artistic value: The deconstructionists don’t have to create very much, so they can focus on honing their craft instead.

The commenters had plenty to say as well. Xavier Basora explained that the low birthrate goes hand-in-hand with the nihilistic trend in society at large (not just popular culture), and he highlighted the struggles of Japanese women in particular:

I’ve taught many Japanese students especially women and this is what I’ve learnt/discerned
1) Japan is a very patriciarchial society where the moment a women falls pregnant, she’s immeditaley fired. I’ve had students tell me that the company wrote the resignation letter and in some cases forged theirs signatures.
2) Following from (1) many capable and competent women (who in some cases would do a far better job running Japanese companies) are regulated to overglorified coffee servers who simply don’t matter. Those that break the glass ceiling are equivalent to nuns but with no community to support them
3) When they have kids, they’re expected to practically raise them on their own because the husband is litterally forced to go boozing with the office mates and supervisor after work on top of the regular work. Worse is that the moms can never really go back to work even after the kids are old enough
4) The atmoic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki allowed them to regard themselves as victims of WW II rather than come to terms as aggressors who committed war crimes. But deep down they know perfectly well their role and as a form of atonement they’re volunteering to disappear.
5) Japan is a cruel, unsentimental society to those who are odd, eccentric, creative or non conformist.

Hence many of the Japanese students- particularly females- are both frustrated and deeply melancholic. Consequently, it’s not hard to see the dark turn in pop culture.
I dislike a lot of the contemporary animie and manga precisely because the nihilism is so in your face and histrionic.

JD Cowan asks why studios can’t make more optimistic magical girl shows for adults:

Then the question becomes why can’t they create optimistic magical girl shows for adults?

They can make optimistic mecha and sentai for adults then surely they could do the same for magical girl. Something like Heartcatch Precure focused on adults could be very powerful if done right. It has all the right elements and could shift very well to an older audience. But no one has ever done it.

It is as if positivity is for children and negativity is for adults, which is just plain wrong. That nihilism also contributes to why Japanese birthrates are so low to begin with. They should be giving their audience some hope, not grinding their heel down on those who already have their head in the dirt.

I would think Japan would be sick of this kind of stuff by now. It’s been decades of it. A new approach is needed.

D. G. D Davidson answers that Lyrical Nanoha did exactly that and went on to become a highly regarded franchise among adult otaku; however, that still doesn’t answer the question as to why such a show can’t be done for non-nerdy adults.

Finally, Nate Winchester attributes it to a love of contrasts; people just wanted to shake things up for the hell of it.

I do think we should note that humans just have a love of contradictions. For the flip side, go diving into the Warhammer 40k memes and note how much they like to make it light and fluffy. Likewise we’ll take something light & fluffy, and darken it up for the lulz.

It’s good to know that I was able to start some discussion of this phenomenon. As for me, I think the genre needs its equivalent to My Hero Academia — aimed at young people, but well-written enough to attract and retain a non-otaku adult audience. Keep in mind that MHA didn’t have the nostalgia advantage of Dragonball Z and it still hit the big time.