Well, if you're limiting the definition of "magical girl" to Sailor Moon-esque characters, then that's up for debate depending on how you define evil in the context of SKU.

The thing is that you have to look at magical girl series before SM. There were magical girl series that involved preteen girls who just wanted to be idol singers. There were series where the girl is a princess that came to Earth from a different world/dimension to learn about human nature or learn how to use her powers so she could go back and become queen one day.

I think it's a magical girl series, by definition. The fact that there's magic in it at all keeps from being straight-up shoujo, I think. Then again, if you don't think that what Anthy does is magic, that could change your answer.

Louchan wrote:

But that begs the question, is every anime that involves a girl with magic powers a Magical Girl anime? Wouldn't that mean, for example, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is a Magical Girl anime by that definition? (Now there's a funny thought...)

Duh. Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt is a Magical Girl anime. They have ethereal powers. They get orders from an ethereal source. They fight monsters that come from an ethereal realm. They are rewarded with ethereal matter made material. Ethereal is the word of the day.


Stop thinking so hard about this.

Well, technically Evangelion is a robot anime, but that aspect usually gets glossed over in favour of the mind-fuck. Deconstruction of a genre is still participating/fulfilling that genre. Utena counts as magical girl, it ticks all the boxes, it just gets... um, mind-fuckery.

It's a parody of MG shows, in a way - you have to admit there are some parts that are just funny, and may have a deeper meaning but are also hilarious. It takes the typical magical girl setup and the iconography of classic shoujo manga and brings it all way farther than anything that came before.

Riri-kins wrote:

To me, all magical girl animes are female superhero series: Pretty Cure, Sailor Moon, Magical Princess Minky Momo, etc.  Utena isn't a superhero. She's not trying to save the world. She's trying to become a prince. That's why I don't believe it can be classified as one.

Well, no. The whole point is that Utena's not a hero. It's the whole philosophy behind the series. A prince is a hero, only with marginally better manners and fashion sense, and an emphasis on chivalry. Utena wants to a prince; she wants to be an upper class category of hero. She wants to protect the meek and helpless, and to do this, she has a magic ring that symbolises her heroic-ness and she has a magic weapon for smiting the bad guys, she has a magic pet (Anthy) that is cute and mysterious and by a dramatic twist at the end, proves to be the source of her power. When she says the magic words she enters a magical arena to vanquish the enemy, and when she reaches out and called to her guardian spirit (Dios) she suddenly gains a whole new set of magical abilities, to wit, suddenly turns into a master swordsmen who can free her enemies from their terrible ensorcellment and enslavement by the bad guy (Akio).

Utena is a superhero, but on a smaller and more subtle scale, and she's definitely a magical girl. Sailor Moon in both the anime and the manga kicked up a hell of a stink over not wanting to be a hero, but that's what she ended up being. I honestly think that using the 'I wanna be a prince' thing to rule out magical girl the magical girl genre is really a case of splitting hairs.