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Sally the Witch is often hailed as a trailblazer in the anime world, marking the inception of the magical girl genre. This captivating genre has evolved over the years, continually pushing creative boundaries and inspiring countless fans. Typically, magical girl anime delve into the lives of seemingly ordinary girls who undergo extraordinary transformations, gaining incredible powers to combat malevolent forces. This genre has become a cornerstone of the shojo demographic, producing some of anime’s most iconic female leads.
While classics like Revolutionary Girl Utena and Sailor Moon remain beloved, not every magical girl series from the past has aged well. Some of these nostalgic favorites have struggled to maintain their charm over time and might be better left in the past.
Tokyo Mew Mew is one such series, featuring heroines whose transformations are inspired by endangered animals. Despite debuting in 2002, its themes and style seem quite dated. The anime follows Ichigo and her fellow Mew Mews as they strive to defend Earth from extraterrestrial threats. Upon its initial release, Tokyo Mew Mew was celebrated for its adorable concept and character designs, even becoming one of 4Kids’ most popular dubbed anime series.
Tokyo Mew Mew Is Bogged Down By An Antiquated Storytelling Structure
Tokyo Mew Mew, a magical girl anime where its heroines’ transformations are based on endangered animals, has such old-fashioned sensibilities that it’s hard to believe that it was released in 2002. The anime celebrates Ichigo and the rest of the Mew Mews’ efforts to protect the planet from evil alien invaders. Upon its release, Tokyo Mew Mew received lots of praise for its cute premise and character designs, and it even became one of 4Kids’ highest-rated anime dubs.
There’s a decent foundation present in Tokyo Mew Mew, but the 52-episode anime spends far too much time on superfluous “monster-of-the-week” stories. Its outdated and repetitive storytelling structure makes it a real chore to revisit. Tokyo Mew Mew is compromised enough already, but its disappointing English dub produces even worse results as a result of egregious edits and censorship.
Wedding Peach Copies Sailor Moon’s Schtick & Suffers For It
The biggest deterrent against Wedding Peach, a popular magical girl anime from the mid-’90s, is that it’s simply not Sailor Moon. It’s truly unfortunate that Wedding Peach functions like such a carbon copy of this formative magical girl series, which makes it extremely difficult to rewatch.
Wedding Peach replicates the standard Sailor Moon formula when Momoko is given a magical compact from an angel and learns that she’s a Love Angel known as Wedding Peach. The Love Angels must work together to protect the world from devils, which leads to predictable monster-of-the-week stories that lack creativity.
Wedding Peach might work for anime fans if they’ve never seen an episode of Sailor Moon, but otherwise, this just comes across as an inferior substitute. Even Momoko’s clumsy and airhead attitude brings Sailor Moon‘s Usagi to mind.
Fancy Lala Muddles Its Ideas Through Sloppy Storytelling That Lacks Resolution
Studio Pierrot dominated the magical girl genre during the ’80s and ’90s. Fancy Lala, like Studio Pierrot’s early magical girl anime before it, opts for a very simple narrative where a nine-year-old girl is given a magical sketchbook and pen that will bring to life whatever she draws. Additionally, this young girl can transform into a teenager, who she names Fancy Lala.
Fancy Lala, the Magic Stage follows Lala’s unexpected road to fame, while she simultaneously battles rote monsters with her powers. Fancy Lala lacks proper closure and concludes on a rushed, unsatisfying note. The anime’s biggest selling points — Lala’s music and her drawing abilities — are also done better in other magical girl anime.
Magic User’s Club Is Held Back By Dated Visuals & Ideas
There are some ambitious ideas in Magic User’s Club, a magical girl anime from 1996 that deserves credit for tackling what it does. The problem is that Magic User’s Club struggles to connect its dots and fully develop its themes, which makes it seem inferior to all the subsequent genre-blending magical girl anime that learned from its example.
Magic User’s Club tells a run-of-the-mill story where a group of high school girls use magic to protect Earth from extraterrestrials, all while it satirizes slice-of-life comedies and science fiction. The darker sci-fi elements clash with the magical girl premise, especially when gratuitous fan service also enters the equation. Magic User’s Club also incorporates CGI visuals, which haven’t aged well, and the title’s degrading visuals are another reason it goes overlooked today.
Cardcaptor Sakura’s Filler-Heavy Formula Hurts Its Identity
Cardcaptor Sakura is a signature magical girl anime that’s often in the same conversations as Sailor Moon. Both anime resonate with similar audiences, yet Cardcaptor suffers from some more mechanical ideas that make it hard to watch in its entirety.
Cardcaptor Sakura has strong narrative momentum because of Sakura’s challenge to find all the Clow Cards, but the episodes cycle through the same broad ideas that hurt the anime’s voice. It’s an anime that works better when a random episode is watched in a vacuum, rather than as a continued binge that gets lost in filler. It also doesn’t help that Cardcaptor Sakura‘s English dub is seriously weakened by censorship and edits that remove over 30 episodes, reorder others, and make Sakura a supporting player in her own series.
Magical Princess Minky Momo Takes A Disturbingly Dark Turn That’s Left It Tainted
Magical Princess Minky Momo is a formative magical girl anime that helped move the genre beyond witch stories and establish many new staples, like young girls who transform into adults as part of their metamorphosis. It’s easy to appreciate Magical Princess Minky Momo for its genre innovations.
However, Minky Momo definitely suffers from elements that are symptomatic of ’80s anime, like a primary objective to sell toys. Magical Princess Minky Momo also builds to a dark, spiteful finale that must have been traumatic for its younger viewers and now makes it difficult to rewatch. This haunted and foreboding energy now hangs over the original anime and makes it easier to watch the franchise’s other iterations instead.
Saint Tail Succumbs To Dull Developments Despite Blending Phantom Thief & Magical Girl Mayhem
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There are many different magical girl subgenres that have emerged since the ’60s and Mysterious Thief Saint Tail combines magical girl tropes with gentleman thief staples. Meimi Kaneoka moonlights as the Phantom Thief Saint Tail by combining her family’s stage magician and phantom thief legacy. As Saint Tail, Meimi steals famous pieces of art and other artifacts, but only those that have been illegitimately obtained and stolen themselves. She applies a Robin Hood-like mentality to her criminal theatrics.
Saint Tail was a breath of fresh air upon its release. It handles criminal and heist storylines with unexpected enthusiasm. That being said, Saint Tail is absolutely a product of its time that’s guilty of repetitive storytelling and contrived scenarios — particularly with Meimi’s complicated relationship with Asuka Jr., a police detective’s son — that drag down any binge-watches.
Magic Knight Rayearth’s Poor Pacing Ruins A Compelling Magical Girl Subversion
Magic Knight Rayearth was considered to be a groundbreaking anime, not just for its unique approach to the magical girl genre, but also for its use of isekai and mecha elements. Three schoolgirls are whisked away to a magical world where they serve a higher calling as Legendary Magic Knights who must rescue the world’s kidnapped princess in order to restore balance.
Magic Knight Rayearth was daring and different back in the ’90s, with an excellent twist that still hits hard today. Unfortunately, its creative ideas get lost in a poorly paced anime that often feels at odds with itself.
The series’ first half is bogged down with forgettable monster-of-the-week stories, while the second-half takes an abrupt turn to darker and more melodramatic territory that doesn’t mesh. At 49 episodes, Magic Knight Rayearth‘s good ideas get pared down and lose their impact.
Powerpuff Girls Z Is A Stylistic Mess That Loses The Heart & Soul Of Its Source Material
It’s always a lot of fun when a Western franchise receives an anime makeover, but it’s a tricky exercise to do right. Powerpuff Girls Z was produced to celebrate Toei Animation’s 50th anniversary and applies many magical girl tropes to the Cartoon Network series’ formula. Powerpuff Girls Z made waves upon its release because it’s such an irregular experiment that looked like a joke.
Ironically, the anime’s changes to the franchise’s lore, the girls’ powers, and the series’ general tone left fans of the original series frustrated. Powerpuff Girls Z loses its retro-futuristic design elements and cynical tone in favor of a generic magical girl series that skews younger and puts too much of a focus on school life shenanigans. These disappointing stylistic choices, which are even more apparent in the anime’s English dub, have turned Powerpuff Girls Z into a tainted fever dream.
Pretty Cure Is Extremely Repetitive With Diminishing Returns
Pretty Cure is a totemic magical girl franchise that’s been around for over two decades and produced over 1000 episodes across 23 different series. The general Pretty Cure framework involves teen girls who use magical items to become the legendary Pretty Cure warriors. These warriors, along with the help of fairies, battle malevolent monsters.
Pretty Cure helped solidify Toei’s stake in the magical girl market. That being said, it’s a franchise that’s geared to a very young audience and embraces formulaic storytelling with simplistic themes. Pretty Cure is a great starter series for any young anime fans who are curious about the magical girl genre, but most adults are going to get bored once they’ve watched a handful of episodes where Pretty Cure uses the power of friendship to defeat another monster.