The Magical Girl Archetype and its Meaning

Probably the most characteristic and symbolic of all anime-style media clichés is that of the "magical girl", which usually involves the transformation of a young woman, generally a high school or middle school student, into a heroine endowed with great powers who often has the ability to save the world and is the protagonist of the narrative in question. Frequently this transformation occurs through some kind of bodily modification that can even be violent and, in any case, presents a traumatic side. The typically Japanese obsession with mutilation and the violation of the body finds here a perhaps somewhat attenuated form that turns against the feminine, revealing the psychological ambiguity of the male target audience in relation to the opposite sex. Proof of this is that, even after undergoing her difficult metamorphosis, the "magical girl" will often have to submit to harsh trials and tribulations, in which becomes apparent a certain appreciation for the cruelty inflicted against women and the desire to practice it. Indeed, as previously discussed, the ambivalence of the male public stems from its own alienation, which is explained by certain characteristics of Japanese culture, Japanese capitalism and Japanese history. This alienation is then expressed as a loss of masculine potency, leading to an identity crisis and the possibility of identification with the opposite sex.

It is this possibility that allows for the sexualization of the "magical girl". Her apparent powerlessness, her illusory inability to resist and her psycho-physiological immaturity express at the same time the frustration and the alienation of the target audience, whose masculinity has been undermined, as well as their yearning for an antidote to their own impotence that can reaffirm their threatened manhood – their search for a stimulus that will allow them to rediscover their sexual vigor. The infantilization and docilization of the "magical girl" are necessary to ignite sexual desire in the public, since their masculinity undergoes a crisis, as well as, paradoxically, for the male consumer to recognize himself in the feminine.

The ambivalent outcome is sometimes implicitly acknowledged in general culture. A few years ago, an elderly Japanese gentleman caused quite a stir by cosplaying as a female high school student – ​​which was considered funny by many people. Now, the very recognition of the humoristic value of this performance is an implicit admission that the audience recognizes itself in the "magical girls" and, therefore, in the feminine. If this were not the case, there would be nothing comical in this episode. The humorous element of his costume lies in the fact that it brings to light an unconscious truth that is difficult to accept (and that we usually do not want to accept), but which, transfigured in the form of a practical irony, loses its threatening side and can, therefore, be consciously acknowledged.

Perhaps it's possible to link the growing success of this trope in the West to the increasingly felt crisis of masculinity which, if it doesn't affect the entire world, decidedly afflicts at least our hemisphere. Indeed, the neurotic tendencies of anime and anime-style media which originate in the sexual frustration of Japanese men are increasingly finding in Western audiences the same fertile ground that first enabled their emergence in the land of the rising sun. In our corner of the world, too, the answers to this crisis have been sought ambiguously, sometimes by renouncing (which is clearly excessive) one's own masculinity, sometimes by reaffirming it in an even more morbid and decadent way. Western collective neurosis doesn't exactly have the same aspect as the Nipponic one – it's much more contained and stabilized, but it also has the capacity to modify our culture in a way that is possibly, if not probably, negative and regrettable.