mahounomanga

[mahounomanga]

Programming note

Before revisiting previous decades, I want to talk about a magical girl or magical-girl-adjacent manga from the 2010s, but there are so many to choose from that I'm not sure where to start. I don't know much about any of these but I tried to choose a fairly representative sample of what was going on within the decade. Ideally I'd like to get around to all of these eventually but which would you like to see first?

#my posts #programming note #polls #compilation

[mahounomanga]

Majokko Carnival

So far on this blog I've covered several titles already that didn't last very long, and there are many more in that vein I plan to cover later. The magical girl genre is quite flexible, so longevity isn't inherently an indicator of quality. You could even, say, compile a bunch of shorter magical girl works into one publication. And on that note, today I want to look at one of the only anthologies of magical girl manga I've been able to find.

Majokko Carnival is a manga anthology published by Rapport Comics on April 20, 1991. It contains 16 standalone chapters by as many different artists, all centering witchy or otherwise magical girl protagonists.

Rapport has a really interesting history unto itself, but that's largely outside the scope of this blog. To give you the short version, they started out as an event planning company before pivoting to anime merchandise, originally distributed through mail order before eventually establishing their own storefront. They went defunct in 2003 and now seem to be best remembered for their manga anthologies, such as this one, as well as their manga magazine Fanroad, which was first published in 1980.

I haven't gotten to read this anthology for myself, nor have I been able to find much information about the stories contained within it, but I have found a listing of all 16 chapters and authors, so I'd like to go through what little I know of them one at a time. Note that I had to rely heavily on machine translation in order to make sense of this list, so apologies if some of these names are presented incorrectly.

Majokko Pomuru by Tsukasa-sei Takasaki

The manga whose protagonist is featured on the front cover. I wasn't able to find any synopsis of the plot but it was included on a list of magical gender bender manga in which male protagonists become magical girls, so make of that what you will. Tsukasa-sei Takasaki (who I've also seen referred to as Shiro Takasaki) is a doujinshi artist who seems to have mostly been active in the 90s and published at least one other work through Rapport.

Catty Black by Omoi Ataru

This is actually the first chapter, but for whatever reason the list linked above flipped the order of the first two. I haven't been able to find a plot synopsis for this one either, but the pictures I've found from it seem to present a slice-of-life comedy about a catgirl witch. The artist, Omoi Ataru, mostly worked in smaller scale manga, including some doujinshi, and she has more recently pivoted to doll customization.

Trouble Maker by Hirano Ramu

I haven't been able to track down plot details or even images for this one (or the next few) and the author is pretty elusive too. The only other work of theirs was published sometime between 1989 and 1992, all of it somehow more obscure than Majokko Carnival.

Hirune by ○Mikan

Hirune is the Japanese word for nap. This is the first installment of a series called Sora no Majo (or Witch of the Sky) which would continue publication in Fanroad until 1994. The artist has gone by a number of names over the years and is still active on Pixiv, having pivoted to hentai. ...'Kay.

Majo Monogatari by Tawashi

The title translates to Witch Story. Tawashi (who I've also seen referred to as Tsukako) is a part time manga artist who also works as a nurse, and has even written a manga called Nurse Story, published by Rapport in 1993. She's written about witches a couple other times, but sadly I haven't been able to find any information about any of them, including this one.

Manatsu no Yozora ni Zebra ga Tobu! by Hibino Mariya

The title approximately translates to The Zebra Flies in the Midsummer Night Sky. I would love to know what that means in the context of the story but, predictably, searching turned up few useful results. I've also had difficulty transcribing the artist's name, 日比野魔俐婀. I've seen it translated a bunch of different ways, so if anybody is able to contribute a more accurate reading of it, it would be much appreciated. They contributed illustrations to two other manga I was able to find: Halloween, written by Marialle, and Babylon, written by Tact.

Kenage na Amulet by Hokoi Satoshi

Title translates approximately to Healthy Amulet or Amulet of Good Health (I think). While I haven't found any details about this manga, I was able to find a review for another Satoshi Hokoi manga that may shed some insight as to the author's style. Portrait, a 1992 manga also published by Rapport, has a very dark tone and heavy story elements despite its' cute art style. This artist has since pivoted to erotica published under the pseudonym Gyro Amarume.

A Kuvira! Dark Princess by Fujisawa Naoto

Another one without any pictures or plot details. Apparently this one was reprinted on May 1, 1994 in another Rapport anthology called Pretty Daisakusen (Pretty Operation), but there's even less information out there about that one than there is on Majokko Carnival. Naoto Fujisawa would publish two other manga through Rapport in the 90s, both of them shoujo: Death Rocker in 1993 and Gargoyle in 1996. The former ran for two volumes until 1998 and even got reprinted in June of 2004 as a single-volume omnibus by Daito Comics.

Chotto Matte ne by Tokumi Yuiko

The title is a slightly more casual and familiar variation on the phrase "wait a moment". Yuiko Tokumi is a renowned illustrator who has contributed to various visual novels, card games, and even done character design for at least one anime figure, as well as plenty of doujinshi (including a Sailor Moon doujin in 1996). She is best known for creating Binzume Yousei (Bottle Fairies) and Slow Start which were released as anime in 2003 and 2018 respectively. (You would think her notoriety would mean there's more information available about Chotto Matte ne, but alas.)

Mahou Soudou by Nantoka Fumihiko

Title translates to Magic Commotion. Fumihiko Nantoka also contributed a manga titled Suna no Majo (Witch of Sand) to Pretty Daisakusen, but I haven't been able to track down any information about that one either. For that matter, all of their manga is pretty obscure. Much of it was published by Rapport and everything I could find publication dates for is from the 90s.

Beginner's Ray by Tashiro Takuya

Takuya Tashiro has mostly worked on action manga, particularly ones with sexy female protagonists, and he was active into the 2010s. His series Najica Dengeki Sakusen was published in English as Najica Blitz Tactics and Atori Shou is his longest running manga at seven volumes.

Wiz Master by E=MC2

Of everything on this list this is THE single hardest combination of words to find anything relevant with. All I have to go on is a where-are-they-now type roundup of smaller manga artists in a blog post from 2014. That post indicated E=MC2 isn't as active as some of the others and mostly does manga about catgirls.

Kurayama Otome by Yokoyama Hiroko

Title means Kurayama maiden, with Kurayama being a Japanese surname that apparently has a variety of meanings. I wasn't able to find much about Hiroko Yokoyama's older work, but she is still active on Pixiv (though fair warning: a small number of her art there is NSFW). She even has some of her newer comics available in English, which is way cool from an accessibility standpoint!

A Looking Glass by Takekura Riku

Riku Takekura is another obscure artist who mostly seems to have been active in the 90s and heavily associated with Rapport. They won a "special award" when they placed 3rd in the FR Contest in 1990 (though I couldn't find what for). A manga of theirs titled Aoi. Hyouma Ran (Blue. Possession) was published in the horror themed August 1991 special edition issue of Fanroad, titled Nightzone. The most recent work of theirs I can find, a manga titled Leaf, was published by Rapport in April of 1996.

Rinji Majo Baita Yukiko! by Yumenohashi Kouichi

This title approximates to Extraordinary Witch Bitch Yukiko!... I think. Kouichi Yumenohashi (who also goes by Koichiro Takahashi) is still active in the industry and seems to specialize in sports manga.

Sore Ike Sen Hitoshi-chan by Hirano Masahiro

My understanding is sore ike means something like "go ahead!" and I'm guessing Sen Hitoshi-chan is the main character's name. This is one that the machine translations really struggled with (the original text is それいけ千仁矢ちゃん for the manga's title and 平乃眞砂廣 for the artist's name if anybody wants to take a crack at it) and, once again, I haven't found any information about the manga itself. Even the mangaka is very obscure, his only other original work being a manga titled Africa that I couldn't find any info on either. Apparently he also contributed to a Fire Emblem anthology, so that's neat.

So... what have we learned?

One of the things that really interested me about Majokko Carnival is that it came out at the tail end of the pre- Sailor Moon era. I know we can be pretty reductive when talking about Sailor Moon's influence on the magical girl genre, but it is notable how much more popular the magical fighter archetype is after her debut than before it. Plenty of older magical girls were either witches or just girls who happened to use magic, and that's something this anthology perfectly encapsulates, based on what little I could find about it.

Beyond that though, I was surprised by how in-house this was. Many of these artists had their other work published by Rapport, either in Fanroad or other anthologies. While some of them went on to find broader success after their time with the company, I get the sense not all of them wanted to. There's actually something weirdly heartening about how Rapport was able to be this sort of platform for smaller artists who may not have had other, better resources at their disposal. The rise of the internet has made it easier to get one's creative works out there (though that certainly comes with its own pitfalls), but I still think it's worth taking a look back at the kinds of stories people were trying to tell before that framework had been established. I would love it if there were more magical girl anthologies like this one. I would love it if more information about this one became available. But if nothing else, I'm glad Majokko Carnival exists.

#my posts #long post #Majokko Carnival #魔女っ子カーニバル #90s #anthology #I'm unclear on the demographic for this one. Some of these artists are known for shounen and others for shoujo so I'm not tagging either. #( Also I'm putting the artists at the end in case tumblr cuts some of them off.) #Tsukasa-sei Takasaki #Shiro Takasaki #高崎吏生 #Omoi Ataru #思い当たる #Hirano Ramu #平野裸夢 #○Mikan #○蜜柑 #Tawashi #Tsukako #束子 #Hibino Mariya #日比野魔俐婀 #Hokoi Satoshi #矛井さとし #Fujisawa Naoto #藤沢直人 #Tokumi Yuiko #篤見唯子 #Nantoka Fumihiko #六���文彦

[mahounomanga]

Kurumi-tic Miracle

In the early days of the genre, it was relatively common for magical girls to have more open-ended power sets. Rather than having one or a few set applications, their magic could do just about anything. Since the turn of the millennium, most magical girls have powers designed for a specific task, such as fighting evil, but today I want to take a look at a character from the early 2000s whose powers can do anything she puts her mind to.

Kurumi-tic Miracle is a 2003 manga by Chitose Yagami. It stars a run-of-the-mill schoolgirl named Kurumi Nanami, who lives with her grandfather in the oddities shop he owns, together with her pet hamster, Momo. One day, while helping clean the shop, Kurumi discovers a mysterious magic stone that affixes itself to her wrist in the form of a bracelet. With this magic bracelet, any wish she makes will instantaneously come true. Initially she uses this power to pursue her crush, Naoki, but as the two gets closer, it becomes clear the magic stone has a bit of a history, and the potential to cause problems.

Kurumi-tic Miracle was serialized in Ciao magazine from the February 2003 issue to the April 2003 issue: a three chapter run. These chapters were compiled into a single tankobon volume on June 21, 2003 by Shogakukan under their Flower Comics imprint, along with a couple of Yagami's older one-shots. A digital re-release, also by Shogakukan, was made available on July 10, 2015. Official translations were released in Indonesian and Chinese, but not English. However, a fan translation by the group Da Gurlz Translationz is available for all five chapters, including both one-shots, and can be found on various unofficial manga sites.

The series was created by Chitose Yagami, a shoujo manga author who debuted in 2001 with Magical Project, a one-shot which was later included in volume 1 of Manga Mitaina Koi Shitai! a.k.a. Fall in Love Like a Comic, one of her more popular works which was even officially printed in English by Viz under their Shojo Beat imprint. Much of Yagami's work contains elements of romantic comedy, middle/high school slice of life, magic and the paranormal, and working in the entertainment industry, be it modeling, music, or manga. She is still active to this day, both professionally and on social media. Her most recent manga, a BL series titled Shoujo Manga no Hero ni naritai no ni Heroine Atsukaisareru Ore., began serialization in 2021 and is still ongoing. None of her works would get career-definingly popular, but Kurumi-tic Miracle was successful enough to land her her first autograph session, so that's cool. It seems she didn't do much adapting of existing work, save for contributing to a shoujo Inazuma Eleven anthology in 2011. That same year, her manga Oresama Kingdom (Kings of My Love) got picked up for a direct to video anime adaptation, running for 14 episodes of 11 minutes apiece until 2013. This was the only manga of hers to get an anime adaptation, and it got a Nintendo DS game too, also in 2011. This was the second video game based on a Chitose Yagami manga, the first being Kiss x Kiss for the GBA in 2004.

Speaking of video games, this came up a lot in my research so I just want to point out that this series is unrelated to the 1997 Playstation game Kurumi Miracle, in which a young witch whose name is also Kurumi goes to an island to hone her magic by helping the local townsfolk.

Because Kurumi-tic Miracle is so short, it's difficult to recap the plot without giving spoilers, so if you'd like to go into the series blind, I advise you to do so before reading the rest of this post.

The manga starts off as a pretty straight forward slice-of-life romcom with magical hijinks, but the more we learn about the love interest Naoki, the clearer it becomes that something is amiss. He has a rather distinctive ring, and he seems very interested in Kurumi's bracelet. It turns out there is another magic stone, and the person who controls it wants them both to himself. The plot reveal is that this person is not Naoki, but his little brother, Satoru, who found the other stone by chance and became corrupted by its' power. He has bequeathed unto Naoki a fraction of that power for the purposes of collecting the other stone.

The magic systems in Kurumi-tic Miracle are really interesting to me. Because the scope of what they can do is so broad, the characters are limited only by their imagination, which gives us a stark contrast in how Kurumi and Satoru use their powers, despite those powers deriving from the same source. Kurumi's magic tends to be cuter, more harmless, and at times downright childish. Satoru's magic is scarier, emblematic of his ruthless attitude, and representative of a genuinely serious threat.

To pad out the tankobon release, two of Chitose Yagami's one-shots were included. The first, 2003's Dokitto Boys X Love (just Boys X Love in the fanslation), is sort of a comedy-of-errors in which a teenage girl accidentally switches bodies with her favorite male idol, and the two have to stick together as she learns his routine. It's not especially groundbreaking, but it's cute. The second is titled Otokomae!? Jajauma Musume, which I thiiink roughly translates to Boyish Selfish Girl. The fanslation uses the title I Love Tomboy. It was originally published in 2001 and according to Weblio was Yagami's second ever manga after Magical Project. It's a romantic comedy in which a tomboy attempts to become more feminine to win over her bully... which sucks. It sucks so bad. This one-shot is infuriatingly gender essentialist and sexist. A lot of effort goes into categorizing what separates girls from boys, all of it very stereotypical, and even though the resolution is that the protagonist is more comfortable being herself, the message is lost in all the steps it takes to get there. She does have some personal struggles with wondering if she's really a boy after all, and there's a plot twist that the elder sister figures who helped her throughout were actually crossdressers the whole time, so I'm sure you could read some queer subtext into this if you wanted to, but that is VERY clearly not what was intended. I hate it.

Taken on its' own, Kurumi-tic Miracle strikes me as a diamond in the rough. Most of the flaws I can point to in the main story could easily be alleviated if it were given more room to breathe. Three chapters just wasn't enough for me to get fully invested in these characters or their world. Despite this, the core concept shines through. This manga had some genuinely intriguing ideas about its' magic systems and how they can be applied for creative problem solving at a time when that modality of magic was becoming increasingly rare, despite the magical girl genre as a whole reaching market saturation at around this time. It's short and cute, even if it's not particularly substantial. It's very of a type, but if this is a type you tend to enjoy, I highly recommend checking it out.

#my posts #long post #Kurumi-tic Miracle #くるみちっく☆ミラクル #Chitose Yagami #八神千歳 #Ciao #shoujo #00s #By the way I just hit 100 followers! Thank you so much!

[mahounomanga]

Hello! may I ask which manga are in the banner? I recognize Kurumi-tic Miracle, Nico in Fairyland, Cinderella Knight, and Mako ni Omakase but not the other two. also patiently waiting for the return of posts 💕

First of all, props to you for recognizing the ones you did. I didn't know other people knew about Nico in Fairyland! Yippee!!

Top right is Angel Lip. I've only read a couple of chapters, and I'm still on the fence as to whether I'd count it as a magical girl manga, but it's by Kiyoko Arai, who also created one of my favorite underrated magical girl series: Ask Dr. Rin. (She also did the manga for a couple of the Pierrot girls.)

Bottom right is Kiss kara Hajimaru Majo no Sensou. I actually haven't read it yet but the artwork is so pretty!

And thank you so much for your patience! Life is... a bit hectic right now, but I'm hoping I can resume posting in January. I really appreciate everyone's support! ✨

#letters to the editor #mooniehilton

[mahounomanga]

i just wanted to say thank you SO SO much for this blog. legitimately one of the best magical girl related resources i've seen with how detailed the posts are

Thank YOU, Anon! I hadn't been planning to put this blog on hiatus for nearly so long, and I still don't know when I'll properly pick it back up again, so hearing that it continues to resonate with people really warms my heart. I appreciate your kind words, and I hope you have a spectacular day!

#letters to the editor #anon

[mahounomanga]

Programming note (the sequel)

Hello again! Thank you so much to everyone who voted in my recent poll. By far the most popular option was for me to begin posting manga out of chronological order, based more on my own preferences than any other more predictable factors.

As such, I'll be putting the rest of the 80s on hold and skipping ahead to a handful of titles that have intrigued me from the very beginning. Interspersed throughout this I do intend to incorporate some older titles since there are some that, realistically, I'll likely never want to talk about but I still probably should (at least if I want to have some sense of completeness). I'm hoping this will result in me posting at least marginally more often and having a renewed passion for the project, even if the flow will be more choppy.

Another consideration is that Pride Month is right around the corner. I would love to post about one or two magical girl(/boy/etc.) manga that feature lgbtq+ protagonists, and while I have a couple in mind, I would love to hear any recommendations y'all might have that handle their subject matter well. (While following the parameters I laid out in the beginning of course.) And obviously you can still send me any other suggestions for magical girl manga you'd like me to take a look at.

Thank you as always for your continued support and I'll see you in the next one. Ciao for now!

#my posts #programming note

[mahounomanga]

Programming note

Hello, everyone. I wanted to give you all an update regarding the future of this blog. As you may have noticed, I haven't been very active on here this year. That's in part because so far, 2023 has been a bit of a challenge for me. This blog is run by just one person, and I work full time. While I don't want to go into much detail, work has been more stressful than usual lately, and that's on top of some family matters that have been hard to deal with.

As of this writing, I fully intend to continue Mahou no Manga for as long as I can. But it would behoove me to be strategic in how I go about doing that. I planned this blog as a chronology, but what that means is when I reach a manga that takes a lot of time and effort to look into, I just have to keep throwing myself at it until I clear the hurdle. The last two manga I've posted about were fairly hefty, and with everything else going on, I didn't always have the mental bandwidth to give them the attention I feel they deserve.

I started this blog as a fun side project, and at the time there were two eras I was really looking forward to covering: The late 1960s, a time when the genre still was in it's infancy, and it was exciting to see how the more obscure manga handled these budding story concepts, and the early 2000s, a time when the genre had saturated the market, meaning there were some conceptually bizarre shoujo titles that slipped through the cracks. I have now moved past one of those eras, and while there's plenty of interesting magical girl manga in the 90s and what remains of the 80s, it's manga I'm not quite as personally passionate about.

Still, the response from my readers has been very heartening. I am truly grateful to you all for your time and support. So now I turn to you to decide the fate of this blog.

As it stands, I have a few ways to continue writing for Mahou no Manga, but they fall into two broad categories: either I continue in chronological order, or I start jumping around the timeline. This decision is complicated by the discovery of magical girl titles from eras I've already covered, meaning this blog is already out of chronological order in the strictest sense, and I'll have to backtrack eventually regardless. Skipping around to whatever seems most interesting in the moment will likely mean posting more often, but even then there will inevitably be periods of inactivity due to my circumstances.

But in general, I want to know which option best reflects the priorities of you, my readers.

If you have any other feedback about the blog, I'd love to hear it. Are there particular manga you're looking forward to seeing here? Do you have constructive criticism about how my posts are formatted? Are there other types of magical girl content you would be interested in seeing me branch out into?

In any case, thank you as always for reading, and have a magical day.

#my posts #programming note #polls #Yes I know the vanilla extract meme is old as dirt by now but I wasn't ready to make this post when polls first dropped #and I still want to feel included.

[mahounomanga]

Chikyuu Bouei Shoujo Iko-chan

One of the interesting side effects of defining this blog's scope in the way that I have is that, for better or for worse, only focusing on magical girl manga that don't have anime adaptations automatically filters out almost every multimedia franchise. Sure we've talked about a couple manga adaptations of big live action productions, but there's a difference between that and a series that spreads itself across a handful of mediums simultaneously. Most magical girl multimedia projects from Japan will throw an anime of some form into the mix. Which is to say most, but not all. Today we'll be taking a look at a series which, throughout the late 80s and early 90s, released manga, a video game, a live action series, and more, but has no anime.

Chikyuu Bouei Shoujo Iko-chan (Terrestrial Defense Girl Iko) started as a live action direct-to-video series in 1987. The protagonist is Iko Kawai, a middle schooler who one day helps a member of the intergalactic police she sees lying unconscious on the pavement, and as a reward she is gifted a high tech headset called the Super Incom. The Super Incom allows her to use ESP to do what she believes is right, giving her abilities including but not limited to instant outfit changes, teleportation, leaping tall buildings in a single bound, shrinking, and communicating with beasts. In using her newfound powers, she catches the attention of an Earth defense squad known as the Light Terrestrial Defense Team, LTDT for short. They recruit Iko as a new member, and now armed with her Super Incom and gadgets from the LTDT, it is her duty to protect Earth from extraterrestrial threats.

The first entry in the series, an approximately 47 minute movie, was released on February 28, 1987. The monster designs were done by Toru Narita, who had done special effects work for Godzilla, and co-created Ultraman; so his involvement helped draw attention to the project. The series even has an Ultraman parody character in the form of Miracleman, who can grow to enormous size, but passes out when he does so.

A second movie was released on July 14, 1988, at the start of which Iko bequeaths her Super Incom to a new girl, coincidentally named Iko Sugekawa, who also goes on to work for the LTDT. While the original Iko was played by Akiko Isozaki, a relatively obscure child actress, the new Iko was played by Mia Masuda, a popular idol who was just getting her start around this time. This meant many Iko-chan fans were also Mia Masuda fans, and vice versa. Even now many people seem to know of the series predominantly through her involvement. This movie gives Iko a new (and more iconic) outfit, plus a spectacularly intelligent and accomplished rival named Runna Hakuba. Mia Masuda would stay on as Iko for the third movie, released on June 22, 1990, but each subsequent production would cast a different actress in the role. As for the series director, Minoru Kawasaki is known for producing tokusatsu parodies on the cheap, with Terrestrial Defense Girl Iko being one such example.

Due to the success of the original movie trilogy, a video game based on the series was released for the PC98 engine on December 4, 1992. Titled Chikyuu Bouei Shoujo Iko-chan ~UFO Daisakusen~ (Terrestrial Defense Girl Iko ~The Great UFO Strategy~, this is a turn-based battle game with visual novel elements, in which the LTDT face off against various aliens. Unfortunately, the game didn't sell well. It's speculated that the gameplay style didn't capture the appeal of the title's tokusatsu origins. The in-game art is very pretty though, for whatever that's worth.

Iko would continue starring in live action sequels and spinoffs after that, and a number of companion books were released for the series as well, but the release most relevant to this blog is the Iko-Chan manga.

Running in monthly Comic Comp from the May 1988 issue to the May 1991 issue, this manga was created by Yoshito Asari, with writing input from Minoru Kawasaki, the original director. Asari is best known for his involvement in the production of the original Evangelion anime, for which he was an assistant character designer, and he penned a 4koma spinoff titled Evangelion Yonkoma Zenshuu. However, he is an accomplished mangaka in his own right, creating works such as Wahhaman, Manga Science, and Space Family Carlvinson, the lattermost of which would get an OVA adaptation in 1988.

Over the course of its' run, the Iko-chan manga would amass a total of 32 chapters. The first tankobon volume, containing chapters 1 through 18, was published by Kadokawa on September 13, 1990, but the remainder of the series would not be compiled until a new edition of both volumes was released by Hakusensha under their Jets Comics label on December 25, 1999. A digital rerelease, also by Hakusensha, was made available on December 26, 2014.

This manga makes some changes to the original plot, particularly in Iko's backstory. In this version, Iko already works for the LTDT part-time at the start of the series, and she gets the Super Incom after helping Miracleman while he's drunk. It's less momentous, but I actually prefer it given how poorly the original Iko's buddying up to cops has aged. The way the Super Incom works is slightly different too: it activates when she says please, enunciating each syllable (o-ne-ga-i). This makes whatever she thinks will help happen, but if she attempts to use this power for selfish reasons, the device will malfunction.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to read very much of the manga, and the language barrier made it difficult to get into any version of this series. Huge shout-out to the surprisingly detailed Japanese Wikipedia page, which was a tremendous help in researching for this overview. They also have quite a bit of information on later installments in this series I glossed over. There is a lot more I could get into, but I wanted to mainly focus on the meat of the franchise, and this post is long enough as is.

I really hope fan translations of the series become available one day, because Terrestrial Defense Girl Iko seems like a lot of fun, and I would definitely recommend it to fans of older tokusatsu. There are elements of it I don't vibe with, but still, it has an interesting premise, some decently entertaining humor, a super catchy theme song, and a killer aesthetic.

#my posts #long post #Chikyuu Bouei Shoujo Iko-chan #Terrestrial Defense Girl Iko #Earth Defense Girl Iko-chan #地球防衛少女イコちゃん #Minoru Kawasaki #河崎実 #Yoshito Asari #Yoshitoh Asari #Yoshitoo Asari #あさりよしとお #Monthly Comic Comp #shounen #80s #live action #video game

[mahounomanga]

Thank you so much for this perspective! I was on the fence given that I knew so little about the series, so it's great to hear from someone who has more experience with it!

One place I’ve linked people to for reading even just a little bit more about Super Mimiko (スーパー・ミミ子) is Mahou no Manga’s entry on it here. Unlike that author, though, I feel very little ambiguity about including Mimiko as a magical girl given her magical ninjutsu scroll(s).

#reblogs #Super Mimiko

[mahounomanga]

Mai (a.k.a. Mai, the Psychic Girl)

I am extremely grateful to live in a time where English translations of manga are as accessible as they are. There are plenty of titles I either plan to cover on this blog, or have covered already, that would not have been accessible to me just fifteen years ago. Even if we're only talking about official releases, we are in an era when I can walk into my local Barnes & Noble and buy volumes of semi-recent magical girl titles like Cosmo Familia, Machimaho, and Nirvana. Today I want to take a look back to the beginning of that legacy, and examine what was probably the first magical girl manga ever to get an official English release.

Mai is a 1985 manga written by Kazuya Kudo and illustrated by Ryoichi Ikegami. The story revolves around Mai Kuju, a 14 year old girl with powerful psychic abilities, especially psychokinesis. At first she mostly uses her powers to amuse herself when bored; however, she catches the attention of the Wisdom Alliance, a shadowy organization tracking young psychics worldwide. Mai is one of five teens the Wisdom Alliance has taken an interest in, and once she realizes she's being followed, she has no choice but to go on the run. Encountering danger at every turn, Mai accepts help from those willing to offer it, but when the going gets tough, the tough get psychic.

The story is highly serialized, gradually building on itself and undergoing major status-quo changes along the way. Usually these changes have to do with who Mai's allies are at any given time. One of the things that stands out to me about this manga is the number of people who come to Mai's aid. Ordinarily this kind of character-trying-to-escape-from-a-myserious-group story carries a message of "trust no one", and I was honestly glad to see that subverted here. These supporting characters (usually) don't detract from Mai's story, but reinforce her as the emotional core of the narrative. Oftentimes, Mai's reaction to the events unfolding around her are given as much focus as the events themselves, especially early on. I found this series more compelling than I expected, and even with a chapter count higher than any other manga I've read for this blog yet, it was decently easy to get through. It helps that the chapters were short and well-paced. Lavishly detailed panel compositions draw out the action in some scenes and sell the more tender moments in others.

Not everything about this manga is great though. A content warning is in order for violent and erotic imagery. The violence is used sparingly, and it often conveys the emotional impact and stakes of the narrative, but still, the headsplosions felt unnecessary and caught me off guard. The horny stuff is generally pretty tame, but it does show up more frequently near the end. There's some occasional nudity and inevitable panty shots during the flying scenes, which, whatever, but Mai sustaining outfit damage during the final battle felt completely uncalled for. The political implications of this story are a bit messy as well. Not just in the sense of dated gender relations and gender stereotyping (though there is plenty of that too). The Wisdom Alliance alludes to real-world political systems and historical events in ways that can be hard to parse what the author was implying. They even go so far as to draw comparisons to the Third Reich in terms of the amount of power the Wisdom Alliance holds, which feels questionable. Not to mention, there's some racial stereotyping going on with the psychic kids from other countries. Japanese and white characters in this manga are almost always drawn attractively and/or with realistic proportions, while the Mongolian and Vietnamese boys are... visually distinct let's say. Almost everything about the way they act and talk feels like it's designed to other them, and it's really uncomfortable to read honestly.

The series was co-created by Kazuya Kudo and Ryoichi Ikegami, with Kudo on writing duty and Ikegami drawing the manga. Both worked with Kazuo Koike early in their careers; Ikegami providing illustrations for Koike's 1973 manga I Ueo Boy, and Kudo being one of the first students of Koike's renowned story writing course, Gekiga Sonjuku, in 1977. Both men also worked predominantly in adult-oriented manga with dark and mature themes. From what I can tell, Kazuya Kudo never illustrated any manga, all his stories I know of were drawn by other artists, but he continued writing manga well into the 2000s. Mai is perhaps his best known work, though he is also remembered for Pineapple Army and Nobunaga, the latter of which was also illustrated by Ikegami. Ryoichi Ikegami has been making manga since age 17, and he is still active in the industry as of this writing. Like Kudo, he usually collaborates with other mangaka, drawing rather than writing. One of his earliest works was the 1970 Spider-Man manga co-written by Kousei Ono and Kazumasa Hirai. Three of the manga he drew for have been adapted into OVAs: Kizuoibito in 1986, Crying Freeman in 1988, and Sanctuary in 1996.

Mai was originally published in Weekly Shounen Sunday, a Shogakukan publication, from March 20, 1985 to April 2, 1986, for a total of 53 chapters. The series was reprinted by Shogakukan in six tankobon volumes between July 1, 1985 and July 18, 1986. Media Factory reprinted the series twice in the 2000s, first as three volumes between 2002 and 2003, then as two volumes in 2006. Most recently, Shogakukan published a digital version of the original 6 volumes on April 28, 2020.

But of course, that's only the manga's Japanese run. This series was also translated into Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, and most famously, Mai was among the first manga to be officially published in English. Viz Media collaborated with Eclipse Comics to release the series as Mai, the Psychic Girl from May 19, 1987 to July 12, 1988. Mai (, the Psychic Girl) would prove popular enough with western audiences to warrant multiple reprints, which Viz continued to handle after Eclipse went defunct in 1994. The chapters were compiled into four volumes in 1989 (this time by Titan Books), and a three volume Perfect Collection was published by Viz from 1995 to 1996. Such a widescale release at the dawn of the North American anime and manga boom means that this series is decently well-remembered, seemingly moreso in America than in Japan. (Though that could also have to do with the Japanese title being so nondescript it's difficult to search.)

In fact, Mai, the Psychic Girl was so beloved that there were talks of adapting the manga into a live-action film. This project languished in development hell for decades and ultimately wouldn't see the light of day, despite a script being written and a soundtrack being completed but never released. Over the course of the film's troubled and inconclusive production, it was worked on at different points by Sony, Columbia Pictures, Tim Burton, and Francis Ford Coppola, with Burton expressing interest in the project as recently as 2010. It's unlikely a Mai, the Psychic Girl film will ever happen now, but still, it's kind of a cool side note.

Anyway, back to the manga's English release. I had my concerns going into this, given some of the xenophobic attitudes of the time, and especially because of the tagline on the cover that reads "She is pretty. She is psychic. She is japanese." (Lowercase j? Really?) Thankfully the translation job doesn't seem to lean too heavily into that kind of orientalism. I don't have a secondary translation to compare it to, or a copy of the raw Japanese text, but at the very least the character names are unchanged and the localization team didn't try to hide that the story is mostly set in Japan, in contrast to later and more infamous localizations. There are some nods to American pop culture, such as Mai singing Walk Like an Egyptian by The Bangles in the first chapter, and cameos from recognizable cartoon characters like Snoopy, Garfield, and Mickey Mouse throughout, but from what I can tell, these were in the original. As far as I'm aware, there were only two visual edits made. One was a nude scene being removed from the initial run, which was restored in later printings. The other, and more substantial edit, is that the whole manga is "flopped", a term that refers to the mirroring of pages and panels. Flopping was a common practice in early manga localization given that Japanese books read right to left whereas English books read left to right. Weirdly enough, the flopping here seems a little inconsistent. There were a couple of times I caught details switching sides from one panel to the next. It's not egregious but it is noticeable.

No magical girl manga was officially localized in English before Mai. But I did specify at the beginning that this is probably the first magical girl manga ever to get an official English release. Which raises the question: is Mai even a magical girl manga in the first place? That's... debatable. I talked a little bit about psychic magical girls before in my post on Sennome-sensei, and I stand by the assessment I made in my initial post defining the boundaries of this project that the magic in a magical girl series doesn't have to be literal. It can instead derive from sci-fi or supernatural elements such as E.S.P., so long as the story otherwise meets the criteria of the genre, namely that the story is female led and driven by her using her powers. Therein lies the disconnect with this series. The number of supporting characters in Mai, the Psychic Girl is staggering. That's not a problem in and of itself, after all, many of these characters are pretty fun. Hands down my favorite is Intetsu, a university student with a big heart who might not be a full-on himbo but is at least himbo adjacent. But the sheer number of other characters means there are some chapters, particularly in the middle section, where Mai doesn't appear much. She's still the main character mind you, (no other character gets more focus, and the story manages to continue being about her even in her absence), but it's still a noticeable difference from other titles we've covered. It doesn't help that even when she does show up, there are a couple of stretches of time during which she refuses to use her psychic power to avoid inadvertently hurting anyone. All of this is without even taking into consideration authorial intent: i.e. I doubt the creators intended to make a magical girl manga. Mai, the Psychic Girl draws influence from a lot of different genres. It's an absolute kitchen sink of tropes ranging from martial arts and sword fights to international espionage and government conspiracies. If Kudo and Ikegami wanted to throw in a power trinket or a transformation, it would not have felt too out of place. And yet, this series does not contain any recognizable magical girl signifiers of the time, nor does it draw any influence I can identify from magical girl works that came before it. That's just not the kind of story they were trying to tell.

But despite everything I just said, there are plenty of moments in this manga that feel magical girl-esque somehow. There are certain narrative and visual cues that are not exclusive to the magical girl genre, but are still very prominent within it, which do show up in Mai in some capacity. For one thing, Mai has a puppy named Ron which spends so much time with her, he ends up developing latent psychic abilities of his own. This manifests as extrasensory perception of danger, which he uses to warn Mai of incoming threats, much like some mascot characters do in certain later magical girl works. Mai also has two best friends (named Yumiko and Rie) who are average schoolgirls from whom she has to keep her double life a secret. I was actually pleasantly surprised by how often they reappear in the story, as they and Mai genuinely care for one another, and their friendship very effectively establishes that despite her abilities and the danger she consistently finds herself in, Mai is an ordinary girl. Speaking of how Mai relates to others, the Wisdom Alliance eventually calls in one of the other teen psychics, a German girl named Turm Garten, to help eliminate Mai. A major story arch revolves around the one-sided rivalry between Turm and Mai, the latter of whom just wants to be friends, and it's very much evocative of the dark magical girl archetype. I also feel the need to point out that the series starts with Mai having a prophetic dream, something that jump starts the plot of a few high profile magical girl works. And lastly, we find out early on that in the Kuju family, psychic powers are passed down matrilineally. Mai comes from a long line of female protectors, and this revelation influences the way she thinks about her destiny.

Mai, the Psychic Girl is a mixed bag in just about every way. Some aspects of it are deeply artful, other aspects are atrociously tacky. There are things about it that have aged like milk, and yet it does boast some historical significance. I like it for what it is, even if it's not my usual cup of tea. It's not what one might expect from a magical girl manga, but if you enjoy magical girl stories, you might enjoy this.

#my posts #long post #Mai #Mai the Psychic Girl #舞 #Kazuya Kudo #Ryoichi Ikegami #工藤かずや #池上 遼一 #Weekly Shounen Sunday #80s #shounen #official English translation #dubiously magical girl #Extremely thankful I was able to get this out before the end of the month. #Sorry the wait was longer than expected.

[mahounomanga]

Ever heard of sleepless domain?

I know vaguely of it, but I've never read it myself. The designs are interesting though. Based on a cursory web search it appears to still be updating, so I'm glad for that!

#letters to the editor #sharkrad08222222 #American webcomics #Sleepless Domain #If any other readers want to know my thoughts on a given magical girl work‚ feel free to ask! #And apologies for the long hiatus. #I'm hoping to make more progress in January. #Happy New Year's Eve!

[mahounomanga]

Programming note

Hello, everybody. I've got a couple of important updates regarding the near future of this blog.

First thing's first though: I want to wish you all a happy Pride Month. Given the recent attacks on the transgender community in the American legislative system, I feel now is as good a time as any to make explicitly clear that this blog unequivocally supports the fight for equal rights for transgender people. Transphobia has no place here, nor does any other form of bigotry.

In other news, it just so happens June also marks the one year anniversary of me starting this blog, specifically June 22nd. It's incredible to me that in just one year I've already covered every animeless magical girl manga I know of from the 60s and 70s. By this time next year, I'm hoping to be well into the 90s, but of course only time will tell how well I can keep up the pace.

And that brings me to the main update I wanted to share in this post. The next manga in my timeline is a doozy, and while I intend to get through it at a decent clip, I unfortunately cannot offer a ballpark estimate of when the post will be out. This next series is the longest yet out of all the ones available to me in their entirety. To give you a sense of scale, Cinderella Knight is the longest one I've read so far at two volumes long. The next manga I'm covering is three times that length. I am extremely thankful the series is available in full, but it does mean reading it and then writing about it will take longer than usual, which is saying something when I'm well aware I haven't been the speediest blogger thus far.

I don't want the blog to get too stale while I work on my next write up, so if anyone has anything they would like to ask, feel free. You can refer back to the ask game I reblogged a while ago, you can ask anything else you want to know about my magical girl preferences, you can let me know what manga you're hoping to see here at Mahou no Manga someday; the sky's the limit.

In any event, thank you for reading. I look forward to regaling you all with more tales of old magical girl manga, and until then, have a magical time!

#my posts #programming note #trans rights

[mahounomanga]

Magical Mami

One of the fun things about doing research for this blog has been finding obscure magical girl manga by artists who are better known for other works. Sometimes these can be other magical girl works. For example we've already discussed Yousei Nana-chan by Mitsuteru Yokoyama of Sally the Witch fame, as well as Cinderella Knight by Go Nagai of Cutie Honey fame. But it's also cool to see takes on the magical girl genre by mangaka who don't really have a well-known magical girl series under their belt, such as Gorgeous Irene by Hirohiko Araki a.k.a. that guy who created Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Today we're going to swing to the opposite end of that same spectrum and talk about a magical girl by a recognizable figure in 70s and 80s shoujo.

Magical Mami is a 1983 manga by Yumiko Igarashi. The protagonist is Mami Amanogawakouji, who has just turned ten years old. On her tenth birthday, it is revealed that her mother is a witch, meaning Mami herself is also a witch, and witches develop magic powers when they turn 10. Mami begins using her new magic to help her classmates in order to earn the respect of her senior witches, but unfortunately, it turns out she is not the only witch in class. Mami's rival, Azami Onigashima, possesses dark magic which she uses to make life worse for the kids at school, especially Mami.

From what I understand, the story is pretty simple, but it's still cool to see how it slots in with then-contemporary magical girl tropes. This is another example of a character who is explicitly a witch, but doesn't use much or any witchy paraphernalia, a defining archetype of the early magical girl genre. Arguably the thing that most closely associates her with traditional conceptions of witches is her pet raccoon, Damp, who can be interpreted as a familiar of sorts. Interestingly enough, the inclusion of a cute raccoon here more or less synchs up with the cute animal mascot becoming an increasingly common trope in the magical girl genre.

What interests me the most though is how major a role Azami plays in the plot. The dark magical girl archetype can be traced at least as far back as Non Gou in 1974's Majokko Megu-chan, but it wouldn't become a genre staple until the rise to prominence of the magical girl warrior. It's interesting then that this manga so prominently features, if not a conflict of good versus evil, at least a contrast of moral versus immoral, with Azami cast as categorically in the wrong.

Magical Mami was created by Yumiko Igarashi, an iconic manga artist best known for providing the illustrations for the original 1975 manga of Candy Candy, written by Kyoko Mizuki. Other notable manga Igarashi drew for include 1982's Georgie! and 2011's Bara no Josephine. As the above examples indicate, Igarashi mostly worked in historical shoujo, mostly in western settings, so it will probably not come as a surprise that she also penned shoujo (and josei) adaptations of historical western literature such as Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, and Romeo and Juliette. A slightly less peachy aspect of Igarashi's career is the legal drama she was embroiled in in the late 90s over the ownership rights to Candy Candy, which is pretty well known but not particularly relevant to the topic at hand. What I will note is that Igarashi has some famous family members. Her cousin, Satsuki Igarashi, is a member of the beloved manga artist group CLAMP, known for the likes of Cardcaptor Sakura and Magic Knight Rayearth. Her former husband, Kazuhiko Inoue, is a voice actor perhaps best known for providing the voice of Kakashi in Naruto, but also had parts in some magical girl anime, including but not limited to Minky Momo, Mahou no Yousei Pelsia, and Saint Tail. As well, Igarashi and Inoue have a child known professionally as Nanami Igarashi, an otokonoko and former idol who published an autobiographical manga in 2010.

Magical Mami was first published in Shogaku Ninensei from the January 1984 issue to the March 1984 issue. It was then published in Shogaku Sannensei from the April 1984 issue to the March 1985 issue. One thing to note about Japanese manga magazines though, is that they are published in the month before the one listed on the cover, meaning this manga actually started in December of 1983. A single tankobon volume was released on March 1, 1985 by Shogakukan under their Tentoumushi Comics imprint (tentoumushi being the Japanese word for ladybug). This volume contains six chapters for a total of 195 pages, so unfortunately it likely does not contain the complete series. A digital rerelease was made available as early as June 18, 2004, and this edition is still available through Yahoo's eBook Japan website. It will probably come as no surprise that this manga is not available in English, but for my Spanish speaking readers, I have some wonderful news.

Very recently, in March of this year in fact, the manga was officially released in Spain by Arechi Manga under the title of La Brujita Mami (approximately The Witchling Mami). This release was very unexpected, but it's extremely welcome given how rare it is for magical girl works of the 80s and prior to be exported to other countries these days. It gives me hope for the propagation of old school magical girls going forward.

#my posts #long post #Magical Mami #La Bruijita Mami #まじかるマミー #Yumiko Igarashi #いがらしゆみこ #Shogaku Ninensei #Shogaku Sannensei #80s #shoujo #official Spanish translation

[mahounomanga]

50 followers!

Oh my gosh! This is so exciting! I know 50 follows isn't a lot in the abstract but it's more than I have on my main account and my other sideblog combined. I started this blog basically as a resource for myself and didn't think it would resonate with very many people, so I'm very happy you guys are enjoying my posts so far. Thank you so much for your support!

I don't really have any big exciting plans for Mahou no Manga at this time, kind of just more of the same, but I'm always open to constructive criticism. Feel free to let me know how this concept can be improved upon or anything you're looking forward to hopefully seeing in the future. Thanks again and have a splendid day! ♥

#my posts #milestone #I'm hoping to have the next writeup up either late this month or early next month.

[mahounomanga]

Cinderella Knight

If you ask me, magical girls and fairy tales go hand in hand. There are plenty of ways to incorporate fairy tale elements into a magical girl story. One can use fairy tale aesthetics and roles as a recurring motif such as in Revolutionary Girl Utena, one can write an in-universe fairy tale significant to the plot such as in Princess Tutu, or, most common of all, one can base a magical girl character off of an iconic fairy tale heroine. Today's manga is of the last sort, and if you've ever thought Cinderella deserves a sword, boy do I have a manga recommendation for you.

Cinderella Kishi (Cinderella Knight) is a 1981 manga by Go Nagai. Our protagonist is Michiko Michikusa, or just Michi for short, an energetic yet awkward young woman from the Japanese countryside. At the start of the series, she flies to The Grand Duchy of Ballade, an old-timey European country, in pursuit of her celebrity crush, Prince Emilio Ballade. On the plane, she meets a mysterious older woman named Yaaba Dragono, and the two hit it off almost immediately. Yaaba reveals that she was Cinderella's fairy godmother back in the day, and she is the current tutor of Prince Emilio. Having forged this new connection, Michi is able to meet the prince, and even become his assistant. However, she learns that the prince's life is at risk, as numerous assassins have infiltrated the ranks of his closest allies. Not knowing who in the castle she can trust, Michi goes to Yaaba wishing to protect Prince Emilio herself. Yaaba gives her a pendant which allows her to transform into the mysterious swordfighter, Cinderella Knight. What unfolds is a romantic drama filled with royal intrigue, intense battles, and the kind of genre-bending insanity you would expect from a Go Nagai manga.

I wrote about Nagai's career and legacy in my post on Mahou Ningyou Pendora, so I won't recap that stuff here. What I will say is that it's interesting to read this manga through the lens of "from the creator of Cutie Honey".

By 1981, fighting magical girls were still uncommon. Honey was still arguably the most visible example of one. For Nagai to write another magical girl who battles enemies (with a sword no less) feels like something of a return to form. It's also worth noting that the sinister organization making attempts on the prince's life feels rather evocative of Panther Claw. Rounding out the Cutie Honey similarities is the nature of Cinderella Knight's power. This is another case where the magic is not magical in the strictest sense, but a form of super science. Yaaba is revealed early on to be a dragon alien from another planet with access to super advanced technology. As such, the transformation abilities she passes on to Michi are given an extended sci-fi explanation.

There are other things that make Michi's transformations interesting as well. Transforming seems to make her stronger, more agile, and a skilled fighter. Plus, this is one of those magical girl works wherein the protagonist's civilian identity and magical alter ego look nothing alike.

When transformed, Michi is taller, bustier, and her hair changes from brown to blonde. We also learn that she can change outfits with her mood, though this is a bit of a drawback in that she detransforms when knocked unconscious. As well, I would be remiss not to mention that Cinderella Knight gets a power up late in the story, which grants her a new outfit.

These sorts of magical girl final forms were very uncommon in the genre at this time. In fact, I actually can't think of one that predates this. Even Honey didn't get this kind of power up until Hyper Honey in 1997's Cutie Honey Flash. Yet this would eventually become something of a genre staple, as demonstrated by Eternal Sailor Moon in Sailor Moon, Amulet Fortune in Shugo Chara!, and Ultimate Madoka in Puella Magi Madoka Magica. While it's not the most prolific of magical girl tropes, it is still extremely cool to see such an early example.

Anyway, apart from all the transformation stuff, Michi has a couple other abilities courtesy of Yaaba as well. The two are able to communicate telepathically so long as they aren't too far apart, a skill we see Michi use with others as well. Yaaba also has what appears to be a crystal ball, which she explains is actually a three dimensional television (because science fiction). This 3DTV can show the user what's happening anywhere in the kingdom without the use of cameras, and Yaaba let's Michiko use it when she's not around.

In general, Yaaba is a really important character. She's a good magical mentor, a well-written modernization of the Fairy Godmother, and just a stellar character in her own right. It's always nice to see a woman confident in her power who is not at all vilified, especially given that she's older and plus size but not made fun of for either of these things. (Low bar but still.)

Michi, on the other hand, isn't as strongly defined in my opinion. We don't get a clear sense of her hobbies or interests, and we don't know of any goals of hers that don't relate to Emilio. We don't even find out that much about her life back home. Still, even though there's not much to her character, I grew to like Michi. She has a spunky tenacity I find endearing. Not to mention, I appreciate that she is unapologetically horny for the prince. These sorts of horndog characters are usually male, while female protagonists are often expected to be more demure and chaste. Cinderella Knight doesn't provide us with the most nuanced or mature inversion of this concept, but it's a refreshing change of pace nonetheless.

Prince Emilio isn't given very much character development either. He fills the generic prince role admirably, but that's about it. He can hold his own in a fight, but he does get kidnapped when the plot calls for it. Cinderella Knight and he have kind of a girlboss and malewife dynamic. There are several male characters in this manga who are deliberately designed to be attractive, but Emilio is still the most noteworthy among them. Heck, he's even nude in his first appearance. This is all very welcome, but it is admittedly a little off-putting to see Go Nagai of all people draw a character who plays so heavily into the bishounen archetype.

The characters are rounded out by a veritable rogues gallery of cool villains, all of whom fall into roughly two factions. The first part of the manga mostly deals with members of the prince's court who wish to overthrow him; however, we gradually shift focus to an international coalition of assassins with the hilariously apt name Murder. Many of the villains have some distinctive ability or design, but to be honest, most of them weren't that memorable, with one major exception.

Near the end of volume one we are introduced to an individual referred to as Beast Apollon, a silent juggernaut Murder has enlisted to kill Cinderella Knight. I don't want to spoil anything, but let's just say his eventual backstory is the subject of a couple truly bonkers plot twists in the back half of the manga. I highly recommend reading it for yourself, but I do not make that recommendation without some major caveats.

Despite being written for the shoujo demographic, this is still very much a Go Nagai manga. Nagai has a penchant for sex and violence, both of which show up here in some capacity. The sexual content ranges from simple nudity to full-on BDSM dungeons, and the violence is often quite graphic, at times bordering on outright gore.

Content/trigger warning for (in no particular order) sexual assault, rape by coercion, incest, torture, mutilation, body horror, and detailed depictions of giant spiders.

To be clear, none of these things automatically make for a bad story in and of themselves. However, my concern over their inclusion in Cinderella Knight is twofold. 1). This manga ran in a magazine geared toward female readers as young as twelve, and I would argue that some of this content is inappropriate for that specific demographic. 2). While these themes can ostensibly be handled well in a way that contributes meaningfully to the narrative, I don't think that's always true of this particular narrative. Let me give you an example. For reasons that are never made clear, Michi has to manually undress herself before she can transform. This is questionable as is, but at one point there is a prolonged scene in which she gets interrupted before transforming, and then can't find where she put her clothes. The whole time, I found myself wondering 'How is this necessary?'.

The objectionable content is arguably the biggest detractor from this manga, but unfortunately it isn't the only one. The writing also has its' low points, particularly in how it's paced. A lot of time is spent in the beginning setting up the plot, and it takes far longer than I expected for Michi to get her powers and transform for the first time. The ending doesn't tie up all the loose ends, to the point that it almost feels incomplete. These things combined would ordinarily make the middle appear stronger in comparison, but the events of the story are all over the place, and the flow feels disjointed as a result.

Still, for all my gripes about this manga, I would be lying if I said I wasn't drawn in. Say what you want about Go Nagai and his work, he knows how to tell a compelling story. An interesting concept with fun characters, decent worldbuilding, and well-blocked action is exactly the kind of thing I want to see out of an 80s magical girl manga.

Quick side note that doesn't really fit anywhere: finding results about this manga proved a tad difficult. Searching Cinderella Knight in either English or Japanese mostly yields results pertaining to the unrelated k-drama Cinderella with Four Knights.

Cinderella Knight was published in Margaret from October 9, 1981 to April 23, 1982. The complete series was compiled into two tankobon volumes published by Asashi Sonorama in 1983 under their Sun Comics imprint. A digital reprint is available through eBOOK Initiative Japan, though I've been unable to find out what year this rerelease went live. Unsurprisingly, there has been no official English release of Cinderella Knight. Luckily for us though, it has been translated in its' entirety by a fan group called HappyScans! (yes, the exclamation point is part of their name). Their English scanlation has been reposted to various unofficial manga reading websites, making this one of the easier to find titles I've reviewed.

Speaking personally, Cinderella Knight is probably my favorite manga I've covered on this blog. As much as I was frustrated with an horrified by it at times, I genuinely do think there's a lot to love in it. What it ultimately comes down to is that the good outweighs the bad. But of course, this is extremely subjective. You would know better than anyone else if it's a good idea for you to read this one for yourself. If you do, I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

#my posts #long post #Cinderella Kishi #Cinderella Knight #シンデレラ騎士 #シンデレラナイト #Go Nagai #永井豪 #Margaret #80s #shoujo

[mahounomanga]

It's what she deserves.

✧・ﾟ:*Today’s magical girl of the night is: Mayumi Makimura from Super Rose!✧・ﾟ:*

#reblogs #Super Rose #Also thank you for the shoutout in the tags! #Love your blog!

[mahounomanga]

Mahou Ningyou Pendora

One of the interesting things about focusing just on manga that don't have anime is there are certain story concepts that show up here, but nowhere else. I can't think of many, or indeed any, magical girl anime that focus on magical dolls with an average girl as the audience insert character. (Doesn't mean they don't exist; I just can't think of any right now.) However; if I had a nickel for every time I found an old magical girl manga about a little girl who has a doll that is both alive and magical, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice, right?

Mahou Ningyou Pendora (Magic Doll Pendora) is a 1981 manga starring a prim and proper little girl named Youko-chan. One day Youko gets caught out in the rain and finds a doll on the side of the road. The doll isn't in great condition, but Youko takes her home anyway and cleans her up. This doll then comes alive and grows to the size of an adult woman, introducing herself as Pendora. For the first leg of the series, Pendora uses her magic to make life more fun for Youko and protect her from harm. However, chapter 6 introduces two new characters who act as foils to Youko and Pendora. Kenbo (usually referred to as Itazura Kenbo, with Itazura meaning naughty) is a boy Youko's age who lives up to his nickname, and he has a magic doll of his own named Kabutler. From there, the series mostly revolves around Kenbo and Kabutler pranking Youko and Pendora, with Pendora swiftly delivering the two their comeuppance.

If you read my post about Majokko Lily, parts of this setup probably sound familiar. Both Lily and Pendora disguise themselves as dolls when not actively using magic, and the POV character is the human girl. I'm not sure how much of this was intentional vs. coincidence; but either way, there are a couple of key differences that set these manga apart. While Deko is able to use Lily's magic at times, Youko is never able to do the same with Pendora's magic. The more major difference is the introduction of antagonist characters Kenbo and Kabutler, who don't really have an analogue in Majokko Lily.

Design-wise, Mahou Ningyou Pendora is somewhat interesting to me as well. Pendora and Kabutler have a bug motif, with Pendora based on butterflies and Kabutler based on stag beetles. The wings on Pendora's head remind me of the distinctive butterfly hair of a later magical girl known as Yadamon, though their pink color is also evocative of Nemulin. Pendora has a magic wand, though she rarely uses it. Like many other early magical girls, she can conjure magic with just her hands, and she has heightened physical strength that comes in handy too.

Mahou Ningyou Pendora was published in Yoiko from the April 1981 issue to the August 1982 issue for a total of 17 chapters, each 4 or 5 pages long. These chapters were never reprinted outside of the original magazine run, and as far as I can tell they've never been translated either.

The series was created by Go Nagai through his studio, Dynamic Productions. Nagai is a mangaka who has been hugely influential in the history of not only the magical girl genre, but broader manga and anime history as well. He made his debut in 1967 with Meakashi Polikichi, and he would really make a name for himself in shounen manga/anime throughout the 70s. Arguably his biggest contributions were to the mecha genre with titles such as Koutetsu Jeeg, UFO Robo Grendizer, and Mazinger Z, the lattermost of which was the first series to feature a giant robot piloted by a person. His are credited as some of the first post-apocalyptic manga, beginning with his series Violence Jack, and Nagai's works are generally known for their dark tone, such as his subversive hero series, 1972's Devilman, which was also the first manga of his to get animated. Other Nagai anime include Dororon Enma-kun, Mujigen Hunter Fandora, and Juushin Liger. Not only that, but his work continues to be rebooted, the most recent example being 2021's Getter Robo Arc. Many other influential figures in anime and manga have cited Nagai's work as among their influences, including but by no means limited to Hideaki Anno, Kentarou Miura, and Gen Urobuchi.

When it comes to magical girls however, Nagai's best known creation is Cutie Honey. The original anime and manga were created in tandem with one another, and the series would be the first male-aimed magical girl work in both mediums. The 1973 Cutie Honey anime was the first magical girl warrior anime, which would directly influence later titles in the sub-genre up to and including Sailor Moon. Like Nagai's other works, Cutie Honey would be rebooted many a time, most recently as a 2020 stage play titled Cutie Honey Emotional.

While shoujo manga reimaginings of Cutie Honey were created alongside the original, Go Nagai wouldn't make a fully shoujo magical girl of his own until 1978 with Majokko Tickle. Cutie Honey and Majokko Tickle contrast in some interesting ways. The former had little in common with other magical girl anime of the time, but has a fair degree of overlap with modern expectations of magical girls. The latter was more in line with magical girl archetypes of the 70s, but bears little resemblance to how people think of the genre currently. It's unsurprising then that Cutie Honey has endured the test of time while Majokko Tickle has all but fallen into obscurity, even in Japan.

The magical girl stuff isn't the only connection Mahou Ningyou Pendora has to Nagai's legacy, but the other point of overlap is more... uncomfortable. Nagai is a legendarily horny dude, so much so that he's credited with pioneering ecchi as a genre. While one would hope this sort of content wouldn't make it into a manga for an audience as young as this, there are times when Mahou Ningyou Pendora certainly looks like a Nagai manga let's say. Pendora's default outfit is quite formfitting, a common staple of Nagai's heroine's character designs. Granted, that isn't inherently erotic, and if I didn't know who Nagai is, it might not even register. However, there's also a chapter where the characters make a trip to the beach and we get to see Pendora in a somewhat skimpy bikini. To be honest, I don't totally mind this because Pendora is a grown woman who can wear what she wants. There's certainly a conversation to be had about how much agency a fictional woman has in a story created by a man, but we don't have time for that conversation here. What does bother me is how often Youko is shown partially or fully nude, including in the very first chapter. Thankfully she has Barbie doll anatomy, so it isn't exactly obscene, but I still question if it was necessary.

Interestingly enough, Pendora (or at least her doppelgänger) has appeared elsewhere within Go Nagai's body of work. Her design was initially used for the character of Kochou Phantasy in Nagai's 1978 manga Space Opera Chugaku (content warning for female-presenting nipples) and she would make a cameo alongside other Nagai characters in the first episode of the 2004 OVA Re: Cutie Honey.

I love the concept underpinning this manga, and I feel like a lot could have been done with it, but I also feel as though the premise was hampered by the demographic. However good the core ideas are, this is very clearly a manga for kindergarteners, which makes it difficult to get too invested as an adult reader. The only times the manga breaks from this mold are when it's being horny, and in the context of everything else, I don't care for that either. It's not a bad manga by any means, but it's just not on par with Nagai's other, more well-known magical girls.

#my posts #long post #Mahou Ningyou Pendora #魔法にんぎょうペンドラ #Go Nagai #永井豪 #Yoiko #80s #shoujo #content warning: lolicon #<- not exactly sure if the stuff with Youko counts but I'd rather not catch anybody off guard