Gender Nonconformity and Lesbianism in the Magical Girl Genre

Abstract

The purpose of this paper will be to describe gender dynamics in the magical girl subgenre of Japanese anime, the genre itself revolving around young female characters who transform into magical superheroes. More specifically, this paper will analyze how four popular magical girl series--Sailor Moon, Pretty Cure, Kill la Kill, and Puella Magi Madoka Magica-- deal with the topics of gender conformity and nonconformity as well as lesbianism, for better or for worse. In addition to this, a section prior to these four analyses will have a thorough explanation on what a magical girl is, as well as examples of historic iconography detailing the evolution of the European witch, and how it eventually became a symbol of feminine power that directly inspired the creation of the magical girl. This paper will present examples of the centrist perspective on gender within the genre, meaning it's refusal to engage in truly revolutionary representations of womanhood that aren’t strictly cisheteronormative in favor of adherence to capitalist will. In addition, further examples will be drawn from some of the series in order to show that despite this, efforts are being made to represent heavily coded LGBT coming-of-age narratives with certain characters.