You may have noticed I watch a fair amount of anime, which does include the magical girl genre. That started when I was a kid and watched Cardcaptor (dub not sub, don't hate me) and I've continued with time, though I've increasingly enjoyed the various subversions of the form, such as "Yuki Yuna is a Hero", "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" and "Magical Girl Raising Project". Which meant I was more than a little interested when I discovered this novel by Ryk E. Spoor (of Digital Knight fame, though also much more, I've just not read it) about the appearance of a magical girl in our world, who must save the world from lovecraftian horrors.
However, the best magical series nowadays come with a twist. And the twist here is that the person who has been selected to become a magical girl is Steve Russ, a man who is both rather too old to be a magical girl, and a man. He's been chosen for this odd task, because Silvertail, the cute magical animal sidekick all magical girls must have, has had enough of sending children off to fight creatures from beyond. Also, magical girls are powered by the sacrifice of giving up their normal lives to save others, and what could be more sacrifice than losing one's self-identity?
Of course, this leaves Steve in the very weird position of being a teenage girl, attending school and attempting to recruit other teenage girls to act as part of his/her team to fight off the various monsters. Yes, this is basically a novel about grooming. Everybody is uncomfortable with it. It's part of the book's appeal that everything is discussed with the expected degree of seriousness. People are very weirded out that a chap is going to their children's school.
The world ending monsters are influenced by humanity whenever they invade, and for the last couple of decades mankind has been very good at thinking up horrifying things, especially in the form of creepypasta. Which means that the various creatures that the Apocalypse Maidens (our magical girls) have to fight off might be familiar to those who have kept themselves aware of the more common recent horror monsters. Looking at you, creepy Ringu girl.
Spoor uses the form well, with everything you might expect from a magical girl show (though I can't decide if some of the slightly irritating repetition is a nod to the form, or just an unfortunate side effect). There are certain other problems with the book in that things feel like they get solved a little more quickly than they should. Still, the more common difficulties that most anime just skip over are considered in a fair bit more detail here, such that it's an interesting exploration of the form. The characters are all aware of the stereotypical life they're living, which influences their decisions. It does feel nicely like you would expect it to if our world suddenly turned into an anime.
It also treats what is effectively transgenderism with a decent sensitivity. What might act as a source of humour in other works is given a good amount of thought here.
Overall, it's a good effort at taking what is a very fixed form and taking it to places it often hasn't gone. I'm lead to believe Re:Creators might take a similar approach, but that's still on my "to-watch" list. (Only so many hours in the day, after all.) If you're a fan of the form, it's probably worth a look to see something we don't normally get (especially given how rarely light novels get translations) and this is a much longer take, from a good author who is obviously having fun nerding out. He also drops in a pretty close version of the SCP Foundation, about which there is also a side story, On-Site for the Apocalypse.
Recommended.
Tagged: Book Urban fantasy Working joes Novel Print