MatchaZed

MatchaZed

@MatchaZed

A Well-Intentioned Fool

  • she/her

Math/video games/anime trash nerd

Hope is my name. Matcha, or Zed is acceptable online. H. P. to some. Gender is she/they in that order of preference currently. Trans.

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MatchaZed
@MatchaZed
leggystarscream
@leggystarscream
soleilraine
@soleilraine

Statement 1: Both mecha and magical girls are an enhanced state you enter that makes you exceptionally adept at inflicting violence, yet it reveals your emotional weakness in doing so.

Statement 2: Mecha games are notoriously stat-heavy with intense customization based on switching out parts of your physically powerful alternate form.

Ergo: There should be a magical girl game with stat heavy customization based around swapping around parts of your frilly combat dress

amaranth-witch
@amaranth-witch

As a scholar of both, this is an accurate and important statement.

IkomaTanomori
@IkomaTanomori

Aesthetics are stored in the stat customizations... Hmm...

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in reply to @soleilraine's post:

yrgirlkv
@yrgirlkv

is magic girl form revealing emotional weaknesses a big thing in like, precure? i ask because my experience in the genre is sailor moon and madoka and like, bits of the one singing robot girl anime you really like and i don't see this much in sailor moon and don't remember it in robot girl singing anime...

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soleilraine
@soleilraine

Symphogear has a lot of it, Hibiki’s entire thing early on is that her power gets more unstable as her life and relationships slowly deteriorate due to her magical girl activities. Madoka, I would argue, is entirely about this, as Kyubey explicitly states the entire point of the magical girls is to incite strong negative emotions to use as fuel. But also Madoka isn’t often considered a great example of the genre so it’s not particularly emblematic of overarching trends here.

But you’re not wrong - by and large, it’s technically much more accurate to say that while the magical girl form does often reveal your emotional vulnerability, it’s more about the difficulty of the position that reveals your emotional vulnerability. Being a magical girl frays your life and relationships due to just not having time and being pulled thin and being stressed and scared. Meanwhile mecha doesn’t tend to focus as much on this aspect because their life outside of being a soldier is still defined largely by being a soldier, so the mecha fights serve as their emotional catharsis. but it’s easier to leave out that pesky nuance for the sake of the punchline

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yrgirlkv
@yrgirlkv

yeah this all makes sense — i was pretty up on madoka being about this but i agree that madoka's not representative of the genre (and tbh hitting more representative works has me a lot less impressed by madoka than i once was.) appreciate the symphogear reminder + larger thoughts tho

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soleilraine
@soleilraine

Yeah... Madoka is a useful touchstone but like. Ech. I still like Madoka quite a lot (mostly because Rebellion injected it with a lot of great thematic meaning it otherwise wouldn't have) but it's one of those things where you have to accept that it used the aesthetic entirely for a bait and switch and doesn't really have anything to say about the genre, just wanting to use the language as a way to explore the thematic ideas of self-destructive heroism it actually wanted to explore. It's so un-magical girl that when Rebellion wanted to give you the unsettling feeling that something is currently Deeply Wrong With The World, they did so by having the girls do a transformation sequence.

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IkomaTanomori
@IkomaTanomori

Arguably, it's not so much "un"-magical-girl, as it is an extreme accentuation of certain aspects. It's not even the first to have a twist on the familiar who offered the powers, just a memorable and best example in many ways. I definitely agree that it was incomplete as a story without Rebellion.

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IkomaTanomori
@IkomaTanomori

Where magical girls cross over with henshin and especially sentai, there is usually meaning to the magical form. How tied this is to any specific emotional or character beat varies greatly from series to series. In precure, uh... which one? Precure has done everything. There are over two thousand episodes of various precure shows to pick from. That's a low estimate, it might be over five thousand. It's probably not OVER EIGHT THOUSAND, yet.

In Lyrical Nanoha, the characters' personalities and their magic definitely reflect each other, but on a symbolic Doylist story level more than from a diegetic Watsonian perspective. This contrasts Sailor Moon where the magic works on the original friendship is magic rule, predating My Little Pony using that as a central trope. Also on the divine right of moon queens but ehhhh....

I would say that all transformations (henshin) in heroes and heroines who go through them to assume their heroic identity reflect an iconic role and totemic personification. Sometimes this reflects the inner personality, whether flaws (Madoka Magica, for reasons discussed by @soleilraine), or the ideals embodied, or just favorite snacks (there are a LOT of precure shows). Sometimes the forms reflect something larger and beyond the girls themselves, although the girls tend to have congruent personalities with the type in most cases - magic knights rayearth, for example, or She-Ra.

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yrgirlkv
@yrgirlkv

having it laid out this way does clarify something for me actually which is that the contrast i'm perceiving here is that in mecha anime the contrast between the power granted by getting into a giant robot and the failure of that power to secure you against emotional pain is something these shows really emphasize, whereas in magical girls shows it kind of feels like that's a given? like gundam suggests that a gundam should protect you from all pain, isn't it fucked up that it doesn't? whereas in sailor moon it's kind of taken for granted that your sailor form isn't going to make you immune to getting your heart broken. i dunno if that difference is actually borne out on the genre level tho! maybe it's just me

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IkomaTanomori
@IkomaTanomori

Right, because of the difference between "the divine form is a giant suit of armor" and "the divine form is a heightened state of your own body." Mecha stories are more likely to reflect on things like "actually the mech is your body kind of" and "oh by the way the mech betrays you, like your body sometimes does." Whereas in magical girl and other henshin where it's an outfit change with magical powers, it's whatever you are, worn literally on your sleeve (and skirt).

Don't denigrate your perception! Own that it's yours, but nobody is objective or perfect. I think you've grokked some threads that make the genres meaningful and why they have reflections of each others' truths.

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soleilraine
@soleilraine

No I think you're right, and I think it is borne out on the genre level, because of one major reason - The specter of militarism. The mech is intrinsically a war machine, it is an idealized self as decided by military engineers, and that ideal is "unfeeling, invincible war machine." The pilot only steps into it temporarily, assumes the ideals of the idealized soldier, and in doing so, ends up becoming the weakest part of the mech. They can and do fail at assuming this idealized self, because as you said, it just... can't protect you from all pain.

Meanwhile the magical girl is just... You. You are already the weakest parts of yourself. The only ideals you have to live up to are the ideals of the responsibilities you have taken for yourselves - a hero who protects the city and the head of homecoming committee.

(once again symphogear is fun because it kinda is both at once and you can actually pick out more mecha moments and more magical girl moments and is very good at highlighting just how compatable the ideas are. if one of the expectations you're being pulled by is to be a war machine, but you're always just you, how do you exist like that?)

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yrgirlkv
@yrgirlkv

i guess that's the difference between our reads -- i guess the ideas are literally compatible but to my eyes magical girl shows like. it's true there but they don't care to be like "isn't that fucked up?" whereas gundam is super invested in being like "and that's fucked up, it feels like it shouldn't be like that"

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soleilraine
@soleilraine

oh yeah no i outright agree fully. i was just saying i think this comes from the militarism of the mech. a magical girl is just because you're a person, you're just you, but stronger, having your flaws is just assumed, so they don't point out how fucked up it is. but for a mech, you're just... not the mech, you're just a person trying to live up to the ideal it represents. Magical girls revel in and embrace the emotionality of humanity, whereas mechs are designed to strip you of that emotionality and end up amplifying it instead.

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authorx
@authorx

I do recall one friend pitching a magical girl game where you abilities/powers were chosen from the book by choosing the associated outfits/accessories/etc. This was years ago and the games she's made have veered in a very different direction so I feel like I'd be putting her on blast by naming her but I do think about that concept a lot.

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Letheka
@Letheka

There's a Japanese TTRPG called Princess Wing that is like this except for the stat-heavy thing, it's on the lightweight side, though it's still a combat-focused game with a tactical grid.

You choose a base "Princess Core" which is your main outfit—they have fairy tale motifs, like Match-Seller, Rapunzel, Scarlet-Hood, etc.—and then choose four pieces of equipment, two on your arms, one 'top' and one 'bottom'. The equipment includes things like Avalanche Knuckle, Chain Whip, Scissor Wings (top), Scorpion Tail (bottom), etc.

Unrelated but the Princess Wing rulebook explicitly states that all individuals, regardless of their gender or lack thereof, can be magical princesses.

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