Magical Girl Friendship Squad - Imagine Sailor Moon if it was created by creatively bankrupt millenials who wouldn't shut the fuck up

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Tanti-Fanti dijo:
...but also not very memorable.

I agree with others in that this show blends in with other adult cartoons because the humor in Western animated adult shows always targets the same things: sex, drugs, periods (if women), needing to make rent, etc. So many of these shows have these elements that trying to distinguish yourself is extremely difficult unless written well. This is why shows like Bojack Horseman stuck out. Despite humor being one of the main points that show, there was a nice balance. When things got serious, the episode didn't constantly interrupt the pacing of those scenes with jokes. It let you have those serious moments. That's why I think people will remember that show more than this one. So many adult Western cartoons are just so afraid of letting you have adult moments. It's like they're scared of actually dealing with these topics that isn't in an immature way. It says something that when given the chance without the limitations of a kid's show, the writers don't even take the opportunity to make something fun.

Compare this to certain infamous deconstructions of magical girl anime that this show shamelessly rips off. Mami getting her head bitten off, Sailor Moon finding out she's a reincarnation/sacrificing herself for her friends, and Kill la Kill with the uniform system are still referred to this day not just because of the craziness surrounding the situations, but these are fun concepts to explore. Not only that, the exploration was fun getting to those points.

It's not that the idea of "adult" magical girls is a bad one, but the execution here is subpar at best. I figure if put in the hands of more well-seasoned writers this could be something special. Sadly, that probably won't happen.
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Yes. This is the best summary of why Magical Girl Friendship Squad doesn't work.

It's doesn't do anything different. Sailor Moon is fucking iconic like Spiderman. There are HUNDREDS of Magical Girl shows that, to me, are WAY better to parody and take inspiration from like Cardcaptor Sakura and Ojamajo Doremi since it's rarely been reference in cartoons. (Those two animes are way better than Sailor Moon IMO)
Everyone knows what Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, Naruto, Cowboy Bebop, One Piece, and Gundam is. These properties have been broadcasted in America for 30-40 years now. It's not a quirky, hidden culture anymore. Anime is mainstream in America. And like anything mainstream, it'll get old to constantly reference.....REMEMBER STAR WARS?????

Imma add another point of criticism that I just thought of.

The Magical Girl genre is for young kids and teens and not grown ass women...
The appeal of MG is that a kid gets to have a decorative fancy outfit, enhanced abilities, and a magic weapon to smash monsters and be the hero. Like a Disney princess with a weapon....Seeing a grown woman do the same would look pathetic.

I've rarely seen magical girl anime with grown adults, I feel that the equivalent to a grown up magical girl genre is the Superhero genre like Wonder Woman.

It's like these weebs are missing the fucking point that certain anime genres are geared towards different crowds.
 
Grape_Soda dijo:
Imma add another point of criticism that I just thought of.

The Magical Girl genre is for young kids and teens and not grown ass women...
The appeal of MG is that a kid gets to have a decorative fancy outfit, enhanced abilities, and a magic weapon to smash monsters and be the hero. Like a Disney princess with a weapon....Seeing a grown woman do the same would look pathetic.

I've rarely seen magical girl anime with grown adults, I feel that the equivalent to a grown up magical girl genre is the Superhero genre like Wonder Woman.

It's like these weebs are missing the fucking point that certain anime genres are geared towards different crowds.
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Honestly, I do believe a magical girl show with adults can work if it always remembers that the characters are adults who have to live in the real world (they have a family to take care of; they're long retired while still able to use magic but refuse to use it; they're actually struggling financially and are juggling jobs and can't afford to be magical even though they're called to and sometimes are forced to depending on the situation). Or have the setting already be a magical world where everyone is a witch or whatnot and there's something equivalent of a bounty hunter witch or something that the cast could be involved in (since they want to make a callback to the '90s where that was rather commonplace in more adult anime) to keep the status quo. The magical girl genre is escapist fiction (literally everything fictional is a form of escapism), but there still needs to be a down-to-earth element to them that makes the characters more grounded and well-rounded. They don't always have to be relatable, that's just a plus that happens to work out more often than not.

Given the rise of magical girl shows aimed at adult men (thanks, Madoka Magica) and how many adult women still are fans to this day, this shouldn't be too difficult to do in making adult women characters who fight bad guys. The magical girl genre is super hard to fuck up, and yet somehow shows like High Guardian Spice and Friendship Squad never cease to astound me in how much they completely miss the point because all they care about is "muh diversity" while trying to be another Rick & Morty.
 
Kari Kamiya dijo:
Given the rise of magical girl shows aimed at adult men (thanks, Madoka Magica)
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Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is generally seen as the first show explicitly aimed at an adult male audience, although Pretty Cure probably ended up having more to do with that than any other show.
 
Kari Kamiya dijo:
Honestly, I do believe a magical girl show with adults can work if it always remembers that the characters are adults who have to live in the real world (they have a family to take care of; they're long retired while still able to use magic but refuse to use it; they're actually struggling financially and are juggling jobs and can't afford to be magical even though they're called to and sometimes are forced to depending on the situation). Or have the setting already be a magical world where everyone is a witch or whatnot and there's something equivalent of a bounty hunter witch or something that the cast could be involved in (since they want to make a callback to the '90s where that was rather commonplace in more adult anime) to keep the status quo. The magical girl genre is escapist fiction (literally everything fictional is a form of escapism), but there still needs to be a down-to-earth element to them that makes the characters more grounded and well-rounded. They don't always have to be relatable, that's just a plus that happens to work out more often than not.

Given the rise of magical girl shows aimed at adult men (thanks, Madoka Magica) and how many adult women still are fans to this day, this shouldn't be too difficult to do in making adult women characters who fight bad guys. The magical girl genre is super hard to fuck up, and yet somehow shows like High Guardian Spice and Friendship Squad never cease to astound me in how much they completely miss the point because all they care about is "muh diversity" while trying to be another Rick & Morty.
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What a lot of people tend to miss about Magical Girls, along with Shoenen / Isekai / Harem anime, is that the main characters are always relatable. Sailor Moon was a young teenager girl, Naruto is a young teenage kid, isekai protagonists are videogame-playing nobodies that suddenly become very cool in a fantasy world. They're grounded in realism because they're appealing directly to the audience and the audience can directly relate to the protagonist. Almost like it's marketing or something..

Compared with a lot of Western animations where the protagonist is clearly who the writers -wish- they were. Cool, hip, trendy kids who just get shit on because the world is bad but they're too damn cool to care and wow now they're superheroes too because now they're doubley-awesome. Just look at Bojack or Rick or Steven Universe and they're obviously written as 'cool & successful but damaged' and FS is no different. There's nothing redeeming or relatable because they're puddle-deep personalities are wholly based on a concept that is half-baked to begin with, hell FS kicks it up a gear by making the protags utterly unlikable and expect us to back them because they're the underdog when it's clearly written by people that have little idea of how to write someone relatable while sat in their San Fran apartment living on parents' money.
 
Filthy Greenskin dijo:
Just look at Bojack or Rick or Steven Universe and they're obviously written as 'cool & successful but damaged' and FS is no different. There's nothing redeeming or relatable because they're puddle-deep personalities are wholly based on a concept that is half-baked to begin with,
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Steven is a kid with mommy issues who constantly has people pressuring him to act the way THEY want him to. The whole cast is relatable, that's part of why the show was as successful as it was. I have no clue how Bojack operates, but SU is not this mega woke and "above it all" show people seem to think it is.
 
Mysterious Girlfriend X dijo:
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is generally seen as the first show explicitly aimed at an adult male audience
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Being a spin-off of a hentai will do that for you, and that's also another example of magical girl adults since you got to watch Nanoha and Fate grow up and keep their powers, but that admittedly takes a few seasons. But the popularity with men definitely spiked with Madoka Magica, especially outside of Japan.

Although interestingly enough, the Tenchi Muyo spin-off Magical Girl Pretty Sammy is listed as a seinen, which predates Nanoha by a few years. And Cutie Honey was most definitely aimed at boys originally but it gained a female audience pretty quickly. So it's always had a male demographic that grew more noticeable over the decades.

Filthy Greenskin dijo:
Compared with a lot of Western animations where the protagonist is clearly who the writers -wish- they were. Cool, hip, trendy kids who just get shit on because the world is bad but they're too damn cool to care and wow now they're superheroes too because now they're doubley-awesome.
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Think this is what a lot of creators tend to do anyway is make the protagonist or someone close to the protag someone whom they wish they were, or at least inserted most of their characteristics into them. Naoko Takeuchi practically stated Usagi is the closest to being a self-insert as she could be, though I don't think she grew up rich and self-entitled, for sure. I do legit believe many modern creators were fanfic writers in some form or another who were among those who screeched over the slightest criticism and never got over it, so that's reflected in their original (using it loosely) works.
 
Kari Kamiya dijo:
Honestly, I do believe a magical girl show with adults can work if it always remembers that the characters are adults who have to live in the real world (they have a family to take care of; they're long retired while still able to use magic but refuse to use it; they're actually struggling financially and are juggling jobs and can't afford to be magical even though they're called to and sometimes are forced to depending on the situation).
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There is a character in the second arc of magical girl raising project that have similar problem. Not exactly an adult but a college girl who had an in universe anime made out of her adventures but real life is now catching up and she's finding it hard to juggle both at the same time. Unfortunately it didn't get explore much.
There's also a couple adults in the first arc
but they're completely insane. One is a jaded person with a superiority complex and one is just a abusive sadist bitch.
 
starborn427614 dijo:
Steven is a kid with mommy issues who constantly has people pressuring him to act the way THEY want him to. The whole cast is relatable, that's part of why the show was as successful as it was. I have no clue how Bojack operates, but SU is not this mega woke and "above it all" show people seem to think it is.
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I'll add that the key difference between Steven and Bojack is that the latter is supposed to be wrong. Bojack is not a good person and is never portrayed as such. He's basically trapped in a self-hating loop due to his crappy, unstable upbringing. He has reasons for why he turned out the way he did, but the show doesn't excuse his actions. Instead, he constantly has to pick himself up from his mistakes while failing at the same time. Other characters do try to help him, but in the end they just end up get dragged in his bs. However, what makes him work as a character is while the show is about him, we get time away from Bojack's problems to focus on fleshing out the other characters and most of his breakdown "moments" are limited to major scenes or dedicated episodes.

MGFS's characters don't work because they are never treated as if they're in the wrong. It doesn't matter if they're self-inserts or not in my opinion because previous shows have found ways to integrate them well. This show is so focused on trying to ham-fist references and jokes that none of the characters get any meaningful development. You could argue that this is just supposed to be a run-of-the-mill series with no consistent plot, just gags (think Tom and Jerry), but the new episodes show that this is supposed to be copying the same formula magical girl anime like Sailor Moon use. The writers really want us to sympathize with these 20-year old nobodies, but at the same time has scenes like them being rude to others for no good reason or having them win scenarios they shouldn't.

Kari Kamiya dijo:
Given the rise of magical girl shows aimed at adult men (thanks, Madoka Magica) and how many adult women still are fans to this day, this shouldn't be too difficult to do in making adult women characters who fight bad guys. The magical girl genre is super hard to fuck up, and yet somehow shows like High Guardian Spice and Friendship Squad never cease to astound me in how much they completely miss the point because all they care about is "muh diversity" while trying to be another Rick & Morty.
Presiona para expandir...

These shows almost always miss the mark because the people behind them don't seem to truly love or understand what they're trying to parody. The magical girl genre has such a distinct formula it might as well be blueprints for any aspiring story creator. There such a distinct pattern of "cute girl meets magical mascot(toy), gains weapon/jewelry (another toy), and transforms to defeat bad guys". It's not too complex and you can get some decent stories out of it for kids/teens alike. Despite MGFS trying to copy this to a tee, they mess it up because they don't bother to appeal to people who may want to watch the show or even enjoy it. Let's ask ourselves...who is this show for?

For magical girl fans? From what I see, a lot of them were pissed off because of the blatant rip-offs and even some of those fans are sick of Sailor Moon being referenced to death.

For Twitter? Most people from what I see think the show is subpar from the clips that went viral minus a few exceptions.

I wouldn't even call this a show for Tumblr of all places. Considering the outfits are raunchy as well as the humor and Tumblr loves to hate fictional characters for showing even the slightest bit of skin, I doubt they're coming to see this show in droves.

With manga and anime being more accessible, plenty of kids and young teens will read that instead too. I don't see MGFS winning too many people over.
 
Tanti-Fanti dijo:
I wouldn't even call this a show for Tumblr of all places. Considering the outfits are raunchy as well as the humor and Tumblr loves to hate fictional characters for showing even the slightest bit of skin, I doubt they're coming to see this show in droves.
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Is Tumblr actually even paying attention to this show, since you mentioned them? Them wearing skimpy outfits shouldn't matter as long as they can ship them with other women like with Kill la Kill, especially since one of them's a fat woman like they've always wanted.
 
Kari Kamiya dijo:
Is Tumblr actually even paying attention to this show, since you mentioned them? Them wearing skimpy outfits shouldn't matter as long as they can ship them with other women like with Kill la Kill, especially since one of them's a fat woman like they've always wanted.
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I've seen one Tumblr post defending the show and that's about it. I've seen others complaining about the show being edgy as well to be fair. But then again, most of this stuff geared towards a certain audience don't tend to watch or support it anyways.
 
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