Since its emergence in post-war Japan, anime’s influence has grown from a single genre of animated cartoons to informing a vast collection of popular culture that encompasses many different forms of popular media including television, movies, manga, and video games. Pop culture in this form has an incredible influence on society, most notably through the establishment of gender roles, particularly in magical girl anime and similar girl power stories.
This paper explores the notion of gender as seen in magical girl media where the concept of feminine empowerment is prevalent especially in giving young girls the excitement and empowerment seen within shonen (boy) media. Is the magical girl genre supportive of female empowerment, or is it actually exploitative of the topic? Overall, there are empowering anime stories for girls, but at the same time there are examples of exploitative representation that seem to work against empowerment and instead feed the male gaze. This research follows the lens of scholars such as Gayle Rubin, Helene Cixous, and Judith Butler in order to psychoanalyze these three anime and the magical girl genre in general. I will address such questions as; What does it mean that Japanese anime so often sexualizes female characters?; Does “magical girl” anime support or subvert anime tropes around the representation of female characters?; Is mahou shoujo about female empowerment or about the reproduction of patriarchal ideology?; How does mahou shoujo depict gender identity?; Gender fluidity? Given that anime pop culture is still a recent phenomenon, there is seldom research topics on the matter.
