Though, after I fumed over a bowl of vanilla ice cream (with caramel sauce), I simmered down. I had too, there's alot to be done this week. I have my finals coming up and I have to study super hard so I can pass. Between enemies and equations, life's gotten super complicated for me. But ne'er you fear world, DJ Melody is always watching!
Speaking of school, history has got to be my all time favorite subject. After remembering those silly dates, I love to here the story of how certain things came to be, like countries, ideas, inventions, people... the list goes on! But, I bet you can't guess my favorite kind of history. Give you a hint: It's twinkly, sparkly, and will smack you in the face if you go against the paths of Justice!
I'm absolutely talking about the history of the magical girl. Like most people, things, and ideas, we had to come up from somewhere you know *teehee*. I, like the inquisitive history buff that I am, gave the internet a look see and found an awful lot of interesting things. Wikipedia has yet to let me down.
Before my research, I never knew that all of mahou shoujo spurred from the witty antics of Samantha Stevens of the US's Bewitched series that was popular during the '60s and '70s. Mitsuteru Yokoyama, know for classics such as Giant Robo and Princess Comet, was so fascinated by it's popularity in Japan that he was inspired to make Sally the Witch. I won't spoil the plot for you, but for the anime contributed a lot to how we precieve the mahou shoujo genre today. It intialy gave the current magical girl the custom to use her powers for to help those around her. Prior to that, Fujio Akatsuka's Himitsu no Akko-chan, or Akko-chan's Secret, introduced the canon of a the "special object" that gives her her nifty powers.
Since then, new mahou shoujo series brought different things to the table, like Cutie Honey and the henshin (transforming) sequence or Sailor Moon and the trademark sentai* (taskforce). Over time, the magical girl was no longer just a girl with magical powers helping people and fulfilling a dream, she was a fighting machine taking on the world, sometimes with the help of friends. Mahou shoujo went from being simple disguised flight stewardesses and doctors to princesses and goddesses that protected entire kingdoms, universes, or even dimensions. Makes me feel so proud to be apart of such an exclusive line *beams*.
There are other sites other than Wikipedia that talk of the genre's history. For instance, Henshin: The Mahou Shoujo Genre was a site I used to frequent on my spare time before it was taken down. The new domain is here, and is intergrated with some other articles i'm sure you'll love. Anime Academy has a shoujo page where it brings some other interesting facts about the behind the scenes of shoujo anime as well as other nifty things. Suburban Conspiracy has a great article on Sailor Moon's influence on the perception of America's view on the mahou shoujo genre. It's a super read.
Yikes, I gotta fly, I can't spend too much time educating you guys, there's and algebra test I've gotta study for. If you guys have any comments or anything you'd like me to add, email me, I'd love to hear from you!
~DJ Melody
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