Magical girlfriend
stock character often associated with romantic comedy anime and manga series
A magical girlfriend, exotic girlfriend, monster girlfriend, nonhuman woman, or supernatural lover, is a female stock character often associated with romantic comedy anime and manga series, and is sometimes considered a genre of its own, or as the leading lady of the "fantastic romance" genre, which combines the fantasy and romance genres.
As Thomas Lamarre states, "Anime fans become familiar with a whole range of female
figures that are either not really human (robots, aliens, deities, animals), or that possess extra-human powers of some kind or another (from cyborg enhancements to magical or psychic abilities), which take them beyond the merely human woman."
Magical girlfriends can be one or many in a single series (always attached to the male lead). Because of the tendency for rivals to appear even when there is one female lead and because of the unnatural gender balance among the cast, magical girlfriend comedies are often conflated with harem comedies. A good example of this conflation is Oh My Goddess! which is "one of the prototypical 'harem' titles" despite the short-lived nature of most of the romantic rivalries.
History
Magical girlfriends initially derived from the US television series Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, which were dubbed for the Japanese market. Sally the Witch was the first anime series inspired by Bewitched, leading to the popularity of magical girls in Japanese anime.
Genre characteristics
Often series in the genre start with the male lead encountering the female lead either by pure chance or by an unusual event, after which the female lead somehow becomes bound or otherwise dependent upon him, often forcing a situation of cohabitation. In many cases, this situation is repeated with other characters (Tenchi Muyo!), overlapping with the harem genre. However, the male lead is often inexperienced with women despite typically being a "nice guy".
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This entry incorporates text from “Magical girlfriend” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.