Magical Girl Squad

Is "magical girl" a suitable theme for creative works in the arts and entertainment industry?

This topic has sparked a decades-long debate within the Material Realm creative and publishing world, a debate that remains unresolved to this day.

In the Material Realm, roughly 50 years ago, entertainment and creative works related to "magical girls" were always a popular theme. People had all sorts of imaginations about mysterious magical girls, trying to project all sorts of ideas onto these mysterious guardians.

Some of these imaginings are beautiful, full of praise and longing for heroes; some are critical, questioning the origins and purposes of magical girls; and of course, many are unspeakable and often unsuitable for polite society.

This creative boom lasted a long time, and "magical girl" has clearly transformed from a well-defined term into a symbol of entertainment products. Ultimately, even real magical girls were endowed with certain idol and entertainment attributes, and some magical girl fans spontaneously organized themselves to try to support their favorite magical girls in various ways.

However, everything in excess is harmful.

As works related to magical girls became increasingly popular, it was natural that some unscrupulous individuals would infiltrate the scene, either seizing control of the discourse for personal gain or spreading rumors to smear dissidents. Caught in the crossfire of public opinion, the public was unable to distinguish truth from falsehood, and the term "magical girl" gradually began to lose its original meaning in the realm of public discourse.

Faced with those troubling rumors, most magical girls can only choose to ignore them or silently endure them. After all, their voices are far too insignificant in the face of public opinion, and no matter how they speak out, they cannot avoid further misinterpretation.

However, even among magical girls, there are those with diverse personalities. Faced with increasingly outrageous rumors, gossip, and entertainment works, a few strong-willed magical girls were provoked.

"I can't control most of your mouths, but can't I at least control those unscrupulous paparazzi?"

This is a quote from a retired magical girl from the Western Luo Region who revealed her identity during an interview about 40 years ago when the conflict broke out.

Thus, starting in the Western Luo Region, magical girls and retired magical girls began a direct confrontation with the publishing and distribution circles. This confrontation gradually spread to the eastern continents, eventually becoming a messy and trivial affair, with no one gaining an advantage. However, on the surface, it seemed that the magical girls had won.

The dispute was abruptly ended because the Magic Kingdom issued a statement to the city governments of various states.

Works that misinterpret, spread rumors, or maliciously speculate about magical girls will not be published or distributed. Over the next 40 years, commercial works with the theme of "magical girls" gradually faded from the market, leaving only magical girl anime aimed at young girls.

Of course, works that portray magical girls as positive figures still exist and still have a considerable audience, but they are no longer a topic of concern for the general public.

Forty years later, people's perception of magical girls seems to have returned to the past: in reality, magical girls are heroes who protect the city; in the virtual world, magical girls are anime for children.

Against this backdrop, a few years ago, a mobile game called "Magical Girl Squad" quietly began operating on the intercity network in the Eastern Isles Region.

This mobile game follows the popular gacha and character development model, and its content is truly unremarkable: it lets players build and train their own Magical Girl Squad, presented in a very ordinary system of character development and turn-based battles. The graphics are also not particularly outstanding; the magical girl illustrations are cute, simple line drawings like those in a children's sketchbook, and the game levels feature pixelated characters with two heads of chibi style, completely failing to entice anyone to try it.

According to a later interview with the game's producer, he felt that this was the magical girl he envisioned.

Unfortunately, his "magical girl vision" failed to gain market recognition. Its unremarkable, even uninspired, appearance, coupled with its incredibly simple name, naturally failed to generate the desired response. Within months of its launch, the mobile game was already operating at a loss.

This is the norm in the Material Realm game market; too many games disappear without a trace after release or launch, never to be noticed again. This game is no exception; even if it vanishes without a trace afterward, no one will give it a second glance.

But the game did not end its operation there; it miraculously survived.

The turning point came two years ago.

At the time, Magical Girl Squad was in a complete operational crisis. As a trial project by a small company, the game brought its developer to the brink of bankruptcy. Then, whether due to the company being acquired or the arrival of new investors, the game inexplicably came back to life.

The game has been updated to version 2.0. In addition to retaining the original picture book art style and simulation gameplay, the game's visual presentation has been greatly improved. Moreover, the developers have added detailed background information and story to this game, which originally had almost no background setting and plot.

In the new setting, players take on the role of a creature called a "Fairy," who will search for magical girls in a fictional city and, through collecting and nurturing them, build their own Magical Girl Squad.

The game adds some management and strategy elements, and optimizes and improves the original turn-based combat, finally making a not-so-fun game fun.

But this still wasn't enough to make Magical Girl Squad a wildly popular game.

There are many high-quality games, but whether they have stunning art or fun gameplay, none of them can guarantee that a game will become a huge hit. Moreover, "Magical Girl Squad" was just a small-scale production by a small company, a "flop" mobile game that operated for a long time but generated almost no buzz, and even version updates failed to bring in many new players.

What truly made this game a hit was a blog post on social media that consisted of only a few words:

"Could this be me?"

The blog post included a picture of the character development interface from the game "Magical Girl Squad".

The owner of this blog is none other than the renowned current "Strongest Magical Girl" in the Material Realm — Blue Star.

As the captain of the magical girl team in Heavenly City, and nominally the strongest magical girl, Blue Star has countless fans on social media accounts, with countless people expressing their support in the comments section of her account, which only has a few words every day.

Blue Star updated her blog, which was already an extremely rare occurrence, and when Blue Star posted game screenshots on it, it naturally caused a large number of her fans to download the game. That day, the game servers for <Magical Girl Squad> crashed entirely as a result.

Later, as some players delved deeper into the game, they gradually discovered a startling truth—many of the game's settings were unbelievably realistic.

Leaving aside the urban legend of "Fairy" being so often associated with magical girls, the game's content regarding magical girl abilities and combat is excessively detailed. Some people claiming to be retired magical girls have even stated online that the person who designed version 2.0 of this game is very likely also a retired magical girl, because the settings are just too realistic.

But if that were all, it wouldn't seem like a big deal. There aren't many retired magical girls in the Material Realm, but there are definitely quite a few, and it's not uncommon for some to enter the gaming industry.

The situation escalated further when people discovered numerous characters in the mobile game modeled after real-life magical girls. These characters bore some characteristics of their counterparts and displayed an astonishing level of detail in certain settings, with many of their character designs being completely unknown even to fans of those magical girls.

Take, for example, the game character that "Blue Star" once screenshotted on social media. While the character's appearance isn't particularly similar to Blue Star, its combat abilities and details in its personal profile are completely identical to Blue Star's. In fact, much of this information is information that Blue Star has never publicly disclosed before.

That's why Blue Star used a question at the time, since she herself was quite confused about it.

If this is a breach of privacy, the game doesn't actually name anyone; if this is slander, the magical girls in the game are all portrayed as very positive.

It can be said that Magical Girl Squad completely bypassed the various restrictions on magical girl works in the past. With just the word "realistic and reliable", it found a way to satisfy people's gossip desires without being banned.

From then on, the game truly became popular among magical girl fans, and based on these fans, it gradually gained a large number of casual players.

Two years have passed, and Magical Girl Squad 2.0 has been operating vigorously until recently, when it finally began to affect its original target users—teenage girls.

It wasn't just Jiang Yuan; several girls in Grade Two Class Three at Sunset Middle School were discussing this game during breaks.

Lin Xiaolu, a girl who wasn't particularly interested in games and preferred watching magical girl anime on the sofa, downloaded the game because of the "magical girl" theme, at Jiang Yuan's strong recommendation.

After school, Lin Xiaolu patrolled the area around Luoming District briefly before returning to her Secret Base, where she lay on the sofa and opened <Magical Girl Squad>.

Lin Xiaolu watched the opening animation with a blank expression, then ate snacks while waiting for the game's hotfix. However, it seemed there was too much data, and the update didn't finish even after she finished a bag of snacks, which gradually made her impatient.

Playing games is too much trouble, how about we just watch TV instead?

She couldn't help but think that.

However, her interest in the "magical girl" theme ultimately outweighed her impatience, and she waited until the game update was complete.

Upon entering the game, after reading a confusing introductory story and going through a series of yawn-inducing tutorials, Lin Xiaolu was finally able to get started and experience the gameplay.

Holding her phone, she first remained expressionless, then frowned deeply, and finally sat up abruptly, baring her prominent canine teeth and shouting, "Ugh! So boring! I'm not playing anymore!"

She had initially wondered what kind of unique game this was, given its "magical girl" label and phenomenal commercial success. However, once she actually entered the game, the slow turn-based combat and complex skill data instantly killed all her interest.

She tossed her phone aside, picked up the remote, turned on the TV, and casually switched to her favorite animation channel, only to find that it was showing a program she didn't particularly like, which made her feel even more bored.

Left with no other choice, she took her phone back and reluctantly continued playing the game.

After controlling the most basic team through the beginner levels and going through a completely uninspiring storyline, Lin Xiaolu finally received a system notification: You can now discover a new magical girl.

The game claims to be recruiting team members, but in reality, it involves drawing cards. This kind of thing seems to be a common practice in the mobile game industry, so Lin Xiaolu didn't think much of it and just followed the prompts to enter the game's card pool.

Then, her gaze was drawn to the cover of the latest gacha banner.

The cover of the gacha pool features a magical girl wearing a purplish-red bubble dress, with a slightly timid yet inexplicably resolute expression.

The magical girl holds a weapon that looks like a notebook in her hand. According to the game, this is called a "Spirit Armament," which seems to correspond to the Magic Armament by magical girls in reality.

This appears to be a newly implemented character. The gacha pool is called "Rekindled Longing," and the magical girl on the cover is codenamed "Morning Glory." Next to the cover image, there is a message written in small text, "Blooming magic, used to protect unfulfilled memories."

For some reason, Lin Xiaolu felt a strange sense of familiarity with this magical girl. Even though she was not someone she knew at all and looked like an ordinary cartoon character from a picture book, she felt like she had seen her somewhere before.

This sense of familiarity was fleeting, quickly vanishing without a trace. Looking at the magical girl on the cover again, she no longer felt that strange sensation.

Since it was just a game, Lin Xiaolu assumed it was all her imagination and quickly put it aside. She followed the tutorial to the beginner's gacha pool.

Then, with a strange sense of excitement, I clicked the "Gather Team Members" button.