7 votes

Reclaiming the Witch Through Magical Girls

3 comments

  1. [2]
    skybrian
    Link
    Lots of people do and it's nothing new. Traditionally it's one of the most popular halloween costumes for girls. Maybe not quite as popular as princesses, but right up there. It's well established...

    With all the bad press, why would anyone want to be a witch?

    Lots of people do and it's nothing new. Traditionally it's one of the most popular halloween costumes for girls. Maybe not quite as popular as princesses, but right up there.

    It's well established that there are good and bad witches going back at least to the Wizard of Oz. Not to mention that the "Wicked" novel and Broadway show which reclaimed even the "bad" witches, the old and new "Bewitched" TV shows, Ursula K. Le Guin's writing if I recall correctly, several Terry Pratchett's novels, and probably lots of other fiction that I'm forgetting.

    Maybe magical girls are the Japanese version of this? But there are many more variations.

    2 votes
    1. Whom
      Link Parent
      I don't really get the impression that the article is claiming this is something unique to the mahou shoujo genre. It also specifically addresses Bewitched. It's just focusing primarily on this...

      I don't really get the impression that the article is claiming this is something unique to the mahou shoujo genre.

      Reclaiming the idea of “The Witch” as a positive symbol didn’t happen overnight, and it wasn’t solely a personal journey that began and ended with a rebellious preteen occult-obsessed phase. The cultural framing of the trope transformed over several decades with the help of the Magical Girl genre.

      It also specifically addresses Bewitched. It's just focusing primarily on this history in anime and manga, not as a whole.

      2 votes
  2. moocow1452
    (edited )
    Link
    The article kind of dances around the implications of the text with Madoka featuring Magical Girls fighting Witches. And by leaving the context out, I think it makes for a lesser article. Spoilers...

    The article kind of dances around the implications of the text with Madoka featuring Magical Girls fighting Witches. And by leaving the context out, I think it makes for a lesser article.

    Spoilers for Madoka Magica, Rebellion and Magia Record (Anime)

    The Witches the girls fight are their comrades in elderich form who have lost their "innocence" and have given into despair, and this Magical Girl system was specifically set up by Kyubey (their mascot familiar) and his people to harvest the magic of despair to stop the entropy of the universe, and they are upfront about none of this. Dubious science aside, it's a commentary on how we treat young women, tell them they can change the world, empower them with words and righteousness, but if they make a mistake that compromises their innocence, or invoke a less than positive power to get things done, now they are the monster, and that system works to protect itself. Even when an attempt to compromise is made and the universe bends so that Witches can no longer exist and Kyubey's people, the Incubators, don't even remember that the witch system is an option, reneg on the deal and test the limits of causing girls despair to get more energy faster because they can so they should.

    When the article says that Magical Girls in the Magia Record spinoff can invoke their Witch forms as a desperate effort to win a fight, we haven't seen much of it yet, but it's implied to have the dark consiquences, and one of the senior Magical Girls is ready to put a bullet in the head of someone who was able to change back from witch to human form, because she thought it was a disguise. She internalized the divide between Magical Girl and Witch, and since a soiled Magical Girl can't come back from being a Witch, the person who did just that in front of her must have been a Witch hiding as a Magical Girl.

    So clearly not everybody wants to be a witch and I think the article could have gone into it a little more, but at that point it would have mostly been about Madoka's influence on the Magical Girl genre rather than a retrospective on how it was born from little witch shows.

    2 votes