History of Magical Girl Anime, Part 1

I recently found this series of videos on the history of mahou shoujo anime by SourcererZZ. Somehow, he’s managed to dredge up clips from early shows, including some that are quite hard to find. He seems to know his subject very well. Depending on what he gets into, some of his later videos might be NSFW, but this first one is a pretty good overview of the evolution of the genre from its origins with Sally the Witch to the early 1970s with Cutie Honey (that last getting a little racy toward the end of the video).

He’s a little hard to understand and rather quiet, but if you turn on the closed captions, he’s added accurate subtitles.

The Jake and the Dynamo Messenger Code

… I don’t even know what that is. But it kind of looks cool:

I like the circly thingy. — I like the circle thingy.

This is in some mysterious fashion linked with the new Facebook page for Jake and the Dynamo. I think you can scan it with your phone using the Messenger app. You might have to print it first.

Back in my day, things you scan with your phone were square and looked like mazes. You kids these days have it easy, what with your pictures and circle thingies.

As an added note, Chapter 2, of Jake and the Dynamo, “Enter the Dynamo,” will appear this coming Monday, just in time for Mother’s Day … at least if you like to get your mom things like free ebook chapters because you’re some kind of cheapskate tightwad who doesn’t appreciate his parents.

Chocolate and flowers, dammit. That’s what your mother wants, not magical girl ebook chapters! Believe me, I know this.

Because she told me last night.

Zing.

Oh, by the way, like our Facebook page. I promise not to talk about your mom.

Anime Review: Nurse Witch Komugi R

They should have called it “Magical Girl Tsukasa-kun.”

Nurse Witch Komugi R, directed by Keiichiro Kawaguchi. Written by Kazuyuki Fudeyasu and Momoko Murakami. 2016. 12 episodes. Approx. 276 minutes. Not rated.

Available on Crunchroll.

There is a character in Nurse Witch Komugi R who, as I’ll explain shortly, should have been the central protagonist. She is (I kid you not) a crossdresser/pop idol/magical girl/cat girl/nun. And that right there tells you all you need to know about this show. To sum it up in a word: unfocused.

Continue reading “Anime Review: Nurse Witch Komugi R”

Meet Your Magical Girls! JAKE AND THE DYNAMO Bio 5: Sword Seamstress

CODENAME: Magical Girl Sword Seamstress
ALTER EGO: [redacted]
FAMILIAR: Stitches the Ragdoll cat
CURRENT AGE: 13
THREAT LEVEL COMPETENCY: 8.3
MAGITECH: Sewing-based

“A stitch in time stops crime!”

The haughty yet superbly fashionable Sword Seamstress is one of the most admired and effective magical girls in all of Urbanopolis. Some maintain that she is second only to Pretty Dynamo herself.

She slays monsters by the dozens. More importantly, she does it with class. Continue reading “Meet Your Magical Girls! JAKE AND THE DYNAMO Bio 5: Sword Seamstress”

Art Wednesday

“Magical Girl All Star” by hecoheio. That’s it, DeviantART. Get some users whose names are easy to spell or I’m going somewhere else.

I have a series I want to discuss with you all, but I neglected to get any screencaps, so that’s what I’m doing tonight. Have you some art, this one being, apparently, an advertisement for a Hong Kong electronics studio.

How come magical girls don’t advertise things in my country? I would buy way too much stuff if they did.

Whoever Made This Video Needs to Watch More Older Stuff

I wrote my own list of top magical girl anime once, and it looked rather different. It’s unfortunate how quickly stuff goes out of print in both anime and manga. If you don’t get it when it’s out, it might be gone, and unless some streaming site archives it or it gets a re-release, you might not be able to find it at all. It can become more-or-less impossible to acquire, as in my fruitless quest to find a set of Creamy Mami, or prohibitively expensive, as in that opportunist on Amazon who wants seventy-five bucks for the final volume of Sugar Sugar Rune, which they tell me is the greatest of the “cute witch” magical girl stories, except I wouldn’t know because, well, seventy-five bucks? Seriously? My magical girls are precious to me, but so are my dead presidents.

I’m grateful for re-releases or longer running releases when they happen. All the furor over some bad decisions aside, I’m glad Viz picked up the original Sailor Moon to release the whole thing with subtitles, and I’m quite pleased with my collector’s set of Revolutionary Girl Utena, a series I have a love-hate relationship with. And I really like my DVD set of Princess Tutu, which in my humble opinion might be the greatest magical girl series ever made (yeah, yeah, Madoka, whatever). It was also when Crunchyroll started archiving more older shows that I finally decided to pay them for a subscription. Specifically, it was when they got a set of Cardcaptor Sakura, another series I have a love-hate relationship with.

By way of an update, I’ve been so busy getting Jake and the Dynamo going that I’m behind on other projects. I should have a review posted this week, at least. Jake and the Dynamo will have a new chapter every Monday for as long as I can sustain that pace, which will be at least three months. Then I might change the schedule if necessary.

I’m also tweaking the look here. This blog’s only a few weeks old, and it’s still running on the default theme. For the time being, J&tD have their own spot in the sidebar, and the chapters will also be navigable.

JDII-01-05

Who is Magical Girl Pretty Dynamo?

JAKE AND THE DYNAMO Chapter 1

The First Test: Can three young girls stop an implacable enemy with powers beyond human ken?

“It is rare that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.” —Alexandre Dumas

JAKE AND THE DYNAMO

CHAPTER 1: THE FIRST TEST

FIRST
PREVIOUS
NEXT

On the desolate slope of a craggy mountain where no snow fell and no flowers grew, a high castle of black basalt stood resilient against the biting, howling wind. Deep in the castle’s bowels, the Dark Queen, mistress of all that is base and wicked, reclined upon her throne. Leaning an alabaster cheek on the palm of one hand while she slid the carefully manicured fingers of the other along the generous curve of her hip, she ran a forked tongue across her blood-red lips. Continue reading “JAKE AND THE DYNAMO Chapter 1”

JAKE AND THE DYNAMO Starts Tomorrow!

“If you have a taste for cartoon satire, magical girls, and bloody violence, then you may find this story is for you.” —Starbat

jake_and_the_dynamo_finished_by_starbat-da08stb — Cover by Starbat

In the near future, most of the universe has decided that humanity needs to die. Decimated by alien invasions, primordial monsters, demons from hell, and abominations from beyond space and time, mankind’s last remnants have gathered together under the protection of the benevolent Moon Princess … but what was supposed to be a last refuge is instead a perpetual war zone.

Fortunately, the forces of goodness have given us a small advantage—by granting random superpowers to emotionally volatile young girls.

In the midst of these upheavals, fourteen-year-old Jake Blatowski just wants to live a normal life, but fate will instead place him in the path of the city’s most electrifying protectress, Magical Girl Pretty Dynamo. Worse yet, the monsters’ formerly random attacks have begun to exhibit a pattern: they’re all aimed at him!

Now all that stands between Jake Blatowski and certain death at the hands of ravenous monsters is an eleven-year-old girl.

And that’s just too bad for the monsters.

JAKE AND THE DYNAMO

4 · 25 · 2016