Genre question
11 years ago
Posts: 24
The magical girl genre is best represented by fantasy? supernatural? both? I've seen them listed under either of the two genres and sometimes both. For the most part they seem to cross the border between fantasy and supernatural. I'm looking for opinions. What do you think?

11 years ago
Posts: 445
Well for sure magical girls are supernatural but I think its even more fantasy. I know I sure fantasized about being a magical girl when I was younger. 😀

11 years ago
Posts: 437
The fantasy and supernatural genres overlap a bit, so things like this tend to happen. My opinion is that magical girl series are more fantasy, because they necessarily involve magic, and magic better fits into the definition of the fantasy genre here. (As you can see from MU's definitions of the two, fantasy tends to deal with the more outlandish things like magic, fantasy creatures, etc., while supernatural tends to deal with unexplainable, but not as extreme stuff like spirits, ESP, etc.)
But, I'm not saying that a magical girl series will always be exclusively fantasy--it may have supernatural elements too (e.g., maybe the magical girl can communicate with ghosts or something), so being labeled with both genres is appropriate sometimes.