Magical Girlfriends in Western Media
Tiffany White of Pop Matters, in her review of the Mannequin movies, classifies magical girlfriend movies with this template:
• Main protagonist is a loser who has no luck with girls or has a real girlfriend who doesn’t understand him.
• Main guy finds magical girlfriend (usually an angel, mermaid, or science experiment) and they fall in love.
• An antagonist lurks about, and its sole purpose is exposing the magical girlfriend.
• In the end, the protagonist and the magical girlfriend escape persecution, gain public acceptance, and spend the rest of their lives happy ever after.
A.E. Sparrow of IGN, in reviewing Mamotte Shugogetten, also relates magical girlfriends shows to their western counterparts: "She's completely devoted to protecting her new "master" from any misfortune, utterly oblivious to the ways of the modern world, and (in cute girl manga terms) a total knockout. If you're not completely immersed in the world of manga yet, think "I Dream of Jeannie". If you are, then think "Oh! My Goddess!". Either one works if you're looking for a comparison."
Examples of magical girlfriend in Western media include: Samantha from Bewitched, Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie, Lisa from Weird Science, Jenny/XJ9 from My Life as a Teenage Robot and Madison from Splash.
Read more about this topic: Magical Girlfriend
Famous quotes containing the words magical, girlfriends, western and/or media:
“Something magical happens when parents turn into grandparents. Their attitude changes from “money-doesn’t-grow-on-trees” to spending it like it does.”
—Paula Linden (20th century)
“Her girlfriends asked that innocent,
“What? What appeals to you?”
when her pregnancy cravings appeared.
Her gaze merely fell
on her husband.”
—Hla Stavhana (c. 50 A.D.)
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“The media transforms the great silence of things into its opposite. Formerly constituting a secret, the real now talks constantly. News reports, information, statistics, and surveys are everywhere.”
—Michel de Certeau (1925–1986)