I want to start a new series of articles on this blog for alternative theme personas for magic acts. Partly to move people away from wizard acts, but also as a creative exercise.
The creative part ensures that I won’t devote any more column inches to well trodden ground such as doing mentalism as a Sherlock Holmes character, or pretending the mob broke your thumbs for cheating at the blackjack table in an underground gambling den.
Today’s alternative theme: Magical Girl.
For those of you who read a lot manga or watch a lot of anime, the next few paragraphs will seem somewhat reductive and patronising but as my last post mentioned, sometimes you have to bring people up to speed.
Japanese animation is, for the most part, an entertainment juggernaut powered by national psychosis brought on by the trauma of two nuclear weapons being detonated there in world war two. In many ways it is not unlike the sudden shift in American action movies after 9/11, only on a much greater scale. As such it’s rapid cultural expansion didn’t slowly develop new ideas based on tradition so much as just invent new genres over night. Mecha, Isekai, Shonen, and Harem explore such fantasies as piloting giant robots, being transported to a magical world, becoming a heroic warrior, and living in a house with a bunch of women who all wanna fuck you.
And alongside all the fantastical stuff there’s also slice of life stuff about schoolgirls, office workers, cookery, and other boring shit¹.
The intersection of the fantastical and mundane is the magical girl genre. In magical girl stories a school girl gets wrapped up in a supernatural matter, either because she is chosen, fated, or encounters a magical artifact. After this entanglement she is able to transform into a version of herself with a cute outfit and some kind of magical powers which she uses to defeat the big evil.
You know, like Shazam, if he looked like this.
Depicted in that above video is Bishojo Senshi² Sailor Moon, the magical girl you are most likely to recognise if you aren’t terminally anime poisoned. Before you claim that this archetype I am about to lay out is sexist in some way, there are male magical girls chosen by magical beings to wield magical weapons along with talking animal sidekicks against the forces of evil. Don’t @ me.
You’re probably thinking “Okay, magic is in the name, but how can using monster fighting powers apply to stage magic?” Well… The thing about anime is that there is more of it than you could ever conceive, as such every possible variation on every theme has either been done before, is currently in the works or will happen at some point. So whatever kind of magic you’re into, you can apply magical girl aesthetic to it.
Case in point, card magic. We all love card magic right?
Right?
Well if you want to do a magical girl act with cards, look no further than the show Card Captor Sakura. In this anime, Sakura is chosen by a magical creature (Kero-chan) to weild a magical sceptre ( the sealing wand) which can turn monsters into cards, and those cards are then imbued with whatever power the monster had, allowing her to summon that power using the card³.
You into paper magic? Well a short little series called Read or Die has what you’re looking for (although Read or Die does not itself have a magical girl aesthetic, you don’t have to be a genius to see that there’s a bit of that DNA in there).
To really capture the magical girl aesthetic you need 3 major components:
- Costume
- Weapon
- Incantation
Costume
One feature you’ll see in a lot of magical girl outfits is the similarity to school uniforms, many of which look like of like sailor outfits. This is not the core of the aesthetic. Rather, the magical girl uniform is a heightened fantastical version of the main characters regular clothes, and since many magical girls are in school, that becomes the basis. To create a magical girl costume for yourself, you need to look at your own style and kawaiify it. A good starting point for this is in fact not anime but events like the Met Gala. Obviously you won’t be able to afford a bespoke designer met gala outfit, but something a little more outlandish than you would wear on the street is ideal for this. Bright colours, bows or scarves, additional motifs that tie it together with your props. If you watched that card captor sakura clio earlier you’ll have seen that a pendant she wears transforms into her weapon and the bird head motif is carried along with it. I couldn’t find a clip of her transformation but the opening credits show the full card captor outfit, with colours matching the colour scheme of the sealing wand, and even incorporating bird wings to match the bird head in the wand. This juxtaposition of regular outfit to magical outfit is of course a perfect opportunity for a single quick change in your act.
Just don’t forget the knee high socks.
Weapon
Weapon doesnt necessarily mean something like a sword or a gun. Many magical girls have a wand or sceptre, which is an easy thing to incorporate into a magic act, and often this will also transform along with the outfit. Again, in the example given Sakuras sealing wand grows from a key she wears, an effect hich would be easily acheived with an appearing cane and a pull. But the weapon could be any small object in its dormant form. A key, a pair of scissors, a piece of jewellery, heck even something like a sulk streamer or a rope could transform into a weapon if it fits the aesthetic.
Of course in it’s deployed form you wont use it as a weapon. Think of it more like a tool, a motivating factor in an other effect. I know you all watched that clip of cardcaptor Sakura and thought “You could use a card sword mechanism to make a card appear at the beak”.
Even if the wand has no specific power set or theme, you can still use it as a dancing cane or a generic magic wand.
Incantation
Finally we get to the reason I wrote this whole post. It all stemmed from this screenshot my friend Ember sent to me.
Hocus Pocus is old hat. Alakzam is a pokemon. Sim Sala Bim feels like cultural appropriation. Abracabra has been posioned by JK Rowling. But invoking the power of the moon, saying your name followed by a verb, combined with a number of exemplars? That’s anime baby. Especially if its combined with elaborate poses and hand signs.
However, and I cannot be too clear about this, sit and look at me. Pay attention, you need to absorb this next sentence.
Do not mispronounce English words to sound more Japanese.
In fact, unless you’re fluent, don’t speak any Japanese at all. Not even the occasional word like baka or nani. Don’t. That’s weeb talk, save it for your friends.
Just get a longer, flowier version of your regular outfit, add some bows or bells or medallions, bedazzle your favourite prop, topit it as you extend an appearing cane and point it at your next trick as you yell “Magical Moo Moo Hyper Touch!”⁴ instead of snapping your fingers. The rest of the act will write itself.
There are of course a number of optional extras.
Theme
Yes theme. Magical girl is an archerype but it is not a theme. Sailor moon leans into the theme of both the sailor aesthetic and the solar system. She has a whole team of other magical girls named after other planets. Card Captor Sakura uses tarot style cards as part of the theme but also most of the magical elements have wings or bird like features. Some of these were dropped in later adaptations but I maintain that was a mistake. There are animal themed magical girls, some people have reimagined Miku Hatsune as a magical girl, with the titular Miku Miku Beam⁵. Her theme is the fact that she’s a virtual character and a popstar.
Theme Song
Maybe you know a J Pop band? Maybe you have a large collection of J Pop albums. Maybe you want to go all the way and write yourself some lyrics, fire up a vocaloid and lay down a few tracks yourself?
Again, I cannot stress enough that you should avoid attempting to sound Japanese.
Frankly almost any anime worth watching has been dubbed into English and many have been given new theme songs. You don’t even really need lyrics; any instrumental pop music with a decent orchestration will hit the right notes, so to speak.
Blue Hair
Green or pink would also suffice.
¹ This is a very tongue in cheek joke on my part. My favorite animes are Azumanga Daioh (school girls), Aggretsuko (office workers), Delicious in Dungeon (cookery).
² Bishojo Senshi is Japanese for Beauitful girl soldier. The only reason I included the full title, when most people just call it Sailor Moon, is to show off that I know this fact. Before we continue I want it on record that I have been into anime since 2002, and I was writing this article long before Tyler Sherwin beat me to the punch by performing as Sailor Poon. I’m hoping I can convince you that I’ve brought more ideas to the table. Also in that clip don’t you think it’s so incredibly wholesome the way all Tyler’s “You’re gay” jokes play out when he’s performing for a lesbian spectator who is totally accepting of the genderbent nature of the performance? You love to see it.
³ A magical deck full of creatures with special abilities? What is this, Inscryption?
⁴ Moo Moo, or just Moo, is our nickname for our dog Mollie. I have not yet derived my own magical girl name.
⁵ Hatsune Miku, often called Miku Hatsune due to ignorance about the Japanese convention of putting family name before given name, is a very popular vocaloid. Possibly the only vocaloid to get a cultural presence beyond the sphere of vocaloid fans. She was in Fortnite, that’s when you know you’ve made it. The second Epic Games thinks it can make money out of your fanbase you are established.