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A girl, somewhere from 9 to 14 years old (though sometimes as
old as 16), acquires some magical powers, or has innate magical
powers which awaken. This is one characteristic that is
always true (the other characteristics just being
generally true). There are no magical women series; there are
no magical boy series. The reason for this is thought to be
that the Japanese culture considers the transition from girlhood
to womanhood to be "magical", and magical girl series
symbolically/metaphorically deal with this transition, in
addition to concretely dealing with the emotional "growing up"
of the main character. The transition from boyhood to manhood
isn't considered to be magical in the same way.
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The wand, magical jewelry, or other enchanted object that
contains/activates/focuses the girl's powers. There aren't many
exceptions to this. The only straight exception that I can
think of is the borderline magical girl series Magic Knight
Rayearth (MKR), where the main characters do straight
spellcasting. A sort-of exception is the manga version of
Mysterious Thief Saint Tail: while Saint Tail does
use a cane and top hat to do some of her tricks, they seem to be
more like props than tools, and she can transform without any
object; in the anime version, she needs a jewelry type thingy to
transform.
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Various attack phrases and incantations. All magical girls
have these. There is generally one for the transformation, and
one for each attack/spell. A pseudo-exception is Saint Tail,
who can perform magic without any words, but often says "One,
Two, Three!" or "It's Showtime!" when performing magic (but what
magic she does is entirely independent of the words she uses).
Probably the most memorable magical girl incantation is "Sammy
Davis Broiler Chicken!", from the Pretty Sammy episode of the
Tenchi Universe series.
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Transformation sequence. The magical girl grabs her magical
thingamabob, says an incantation, and then transforms into her
alter-ego; the transformation is usually about 10 to 15 seconds
long, involves the disappearance and reappearance of clothing, and
is used in every single freaking episode (they save money
that way, since that's 10 less seconds of original animation
they have to make each episode). In accordance with the Laws of
Anime, no opponent ever attacks the girl while she's
going through this transformation.
Sometimes the transformation also turns the girl into a 16
year old, or adult, version of herself (in keeping with the
transformation-from-girlhood-to-womanhood underpinnings of the
genre). If the transformation leaves the girl at the same
age, it has the additional affect of making it so that no one
can recognize the girl, even though her face is exactly the
same. The exception to the "Kent Clark/Superman" effect is
Saint Tail, who has to make sure that no one gets a good look
at her.
Exceptions to the "transformation sequence" characteristic are
Magic Knight Rayearth (they always wear the same clothing) and
CardCaptor Sakura (CCS). In CCS, Sakura's incantation
transforms a little key thing into her wand, but she undergoes
no transformation. However, her best friend Tomoyo makes up costumes for her, which Sakura wears if she
has the opportunity. This also means that Sakura's outfits are
different every time she wears them, unlike all the other
magical girl series.
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The animal helper. Most magical girls have some sort of talking
magical animal that helps them along, though there are some
exceptions. Nurse Angel Ririka SOS has no animal. Saint Tail
has a pet hedgehog, though it isn't magical. The Magic Knights
have an animal helper named Mokona, though it doesn't really
talk as the only thing it can say is "Pu!" (pronounced "poo");
however, Hikaru Shido can still understand him (it?), since
she has a gift for understanding what animals are saying.
Chacha in Akazukin Chacha doesn't really have an animal
helper, but her best friend Riiya is a werewolf who can
transform into a kawaii, fluffy wolf puppy, and Chacha just
loves him to death in the uber-cute form. ;-)
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The fighting of evil. The type of evil can vary. There's the
classic trying to take over the world type evil, in which case
the heroine(s) end up fighting the monster of the week; this
can get rather boring, since the magical girl uses the same
attack again and again and again, plus the monster
usually stands no chance once she gets the opportunity to blast
it. Outside of the monster of the week flavor, there isn't any
set kind of evil. In CardCaptor Sakura, the evil is the
disaster that will happen if Sakura doesn't capture all of the
Clow Cards. Saint Tail steals swindled/stolen items and
returns them to their rightful owner. Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne
steals objects of art that have been possessed by evil spirits.
The "taking over the world" type evil has it own set of
rules/conventions. There's a top bad guy, often a king or
queen, who has a bunch of powerful flunkies (the flunkies are
sometimes referred to as Dark Generals); these powerful
flunkies have their own, less powerful flunkies. Rather than
send their most powerful operative out after the magical girl,
they send out one low level flunky after another, each getting
more powerful than the last, but the magical girl gains power
even faster, so they never win. After a while, there'll be a
confrontation with one of the incompetent Dark Generals (he's
got to be incompetent, since if he wasn't he'd have sent the
most powerful monster out first rather than
last); the general bites the dust as well. Eventually
the heroine confronts the Head Honcho, and beats him/her, even
though said Head Honcho could have squashed the brat at the
beginning of the series. This sorry track record among
wannabe Evil Overlords has lead to
the fan fiction Magical Girl Hunters, where two human
assassins are hired by Dark Generals to kill magical girls
since the Dark Generals are too incompetent to do it
themselves.
There are also a few magical girl series in which there is no
evil to be fought. These include Fancy Lala, a 9 year old
girl who turns into a 15 year old pop star, and Hime-chan no
Ribbon, a girl with a ribbon that lets her turn into any
other human in the world.
An excellent source of magical girl information is the Mahou Shoujo
Anime Resources site, at http://www.mahoushoujo.net/