#but i should probably get to tropical rouge for mermaid content.....

[ashored]

magical girls..... and loto

[mahou-furbies]

It is time for

This year the event will be hosted by Snow Miku! Not exactly magical girls but close enough design wise.

Here is the magical girl media consumed on this blog this year:

(Delicious Party Precure, Futari wa Precure Max Heart, Magia Record s3, Machikado Mazoku s2, Tokyo Mew Mew New, Magic Users' Club! (OVA), Magic User's Club! (Tv), Tropical Rouge! Precure season movie, Futari wa Precure Max Heart season movies 1 & 2)

At first it looked like I barely read any magical girl manga this year, but then ended up reading a couple in the final few weeks of the year:

(Magilumiere co ltd, Time Stranger Kyoko (reread), The Life After Retirement of Magical Girls, No Match for Aoi-kun, Magical Lollipop)

Also I read a lot of magical girl webcomics!

(Magical Mom, Sleepless Domain, Cloudy Wondrous, Apricot Cookie(s)!, Miss Guillotine, Strawberry Seafoam)

Then let's go through the events that happened this year. We had a tournament for the favourite Precure, and Cure Milky was the winner! This time it has taken even longer to draw the celebratory art for the winners than last year and I'm still not done, but I guess nobody but me really cares about that so all is well.

We also had a poll for most/least favourite magical girl elements, which I used to compile the most liked and least liked magical girls (though I think the least liked one turned out to be more popular). I really liked this idea and would like to do something more with it one day, or at least just get statistics on people's opinions on different magical girl tropes for fun.

I also did both Mermay and Witchtober this year (and Adorkastock Draw Everything June which I've done every year since its inception), which included a lot of magical girl content. I like these monthly drawing challenges since I enjoy drawing a set of themed characters, and usually the results are a lot more varied than the stuff I usually draw. So next year I'd like to do some more, but I'll have to find different challenges so it won't get repetitive, this was the second Mermay I did and while it mostly involved characters I never draw otherwise, I'd still like to give that spot to something else next time.

Saban Moon was unleashed to the public this year, which did not affect me that much since I have very little relationship with Sailor Moon, but I can still appreciate unearthing a secret alternative version of a well known character (also it was my most popular drawing this year)

This year I started and exercise project by trying to motivate myself with the reward of buying a Miku Nendoroid each time I exercise a certain amount of times. It has been mostly successful, or there are breaks but they are a lot shorter than they would ever be without a prize looming in the future. Much recommended!

Finally one thing that's different from last year that I didn't draw a lot of characters for my magical girl chibi series, because I was busy drawing a different kind of chibi series (hundreds of Pokemon chibis on my other blog). And this chibi style spread to several of my other fandoms too, I used it on the Witchtober, and I've done four (I think) sets of requests in it.

Finally a mention to my frustration on the lack of green Precures culminating in a series of green Precure OCs. 

Then onto the awards!

Best Henshin Design goes to Cloudy Wondrous! A solid design where everything works together (I’m especially a fan of the cloud motif used in different places), and the unique details (crown, wing eyepatch thing) make it more memorable.

Best Team Design goes to Tokyo Mew Mew New! Granted I think I like the original designs more, but TMM team design is still strong here as well, it's recognisable as TMM but highly customisable for OCs.

Best Powerup Design goes to Strawberry Seafoam! Or they should probably rather be called separate forms on the same level with different purposes rather than increasing in power, but who's counting. They are all pretty (as are the other mermaids' transformations) but let's say the jellyfish one is my favourite, it has such warm glowing palette (but also an illuminated dark mode!) and it creates a unique silhouette.

Also a shoutout to Cure Spicy's Party Up Style "hat".

Best Civilian Design goes to Amane's winter look from Delicious Party Precure! It just looks so comfy...

Best Hair goes to Sae from Magic User's Club! It's pretty simple compared to the usual absurd magical girl hairstyles, but I like how the angular shapes make it memorable.

Best Magical Item goes to Bijou's pen from Strawberry Seafoam! It looks pretty, and I like magic where you actually draw your spells. And it's fun to see her style evolve!

Best Henshin Scene goes to the dresser henshin in Magilumiere! Overall it has a lot of creative henshin and I really hope it gets animated some day!

Best Fan Creation��is the catch-all award for everything that's not from, like, a big corporation, and this year the competition is really tough with all these highly polished webcomics, on a normal year any one of them would have been the winner but now I have to pick one. And it is also this year's Best Work, so more on that later! 

Best Relationship goes to the group in Magic Users' Club! Their relationships feel very natural, and everyone has something different going on with the other characters. And while there is a little drama, the overall vibe is delightfully positive.

Best Mascot goes to Kome-Kome from Delicious Party Precure! Personality or plot-wise there's nothing that interests me about her, but it must be said that I'm a sucker for progressively aging designs and she's also stupidly cute.

Best Supporting Character goes to the 4th wall breaking Director of Darkness, from Apricot Cookie(s)! He just cracks me up every time he is on panel with his friendly and welcoming attitude. 

Honourable mention to Mari-chan from Precure who is the best character in the season but who unfortunately doesn’t get to do much.

Best Visual goes to the art style of Strawberry Seafoam! Bold and unique glowing saturated colours that somehow feel nostalgic. Special mention to all the swirly magic.

Honourable mention to the art style shifts Apricot Cookie(s)!, sometimes the art goes to retro manga or anime or 3d idol dance models for fun. And another honourable mention to the visual presentation of the Apricot Cookies website.

Best Audio goes to the Shiny Luminous / Queen theme in Futari wa Precure Splash Star (not the henshin one but the one when she’s doing something epic). Feels very majestic.  

For the Best Scene I don’t have anything specific that comes to mind over everything else this year, so let’s say Kuroe’s fate in MagiReco, Shiny Luminous in the Max Heart finale and Grandma’s fate in Apricot Cookie(s)! can share it.

Innovation Award is for honouring a work doing something new and refreshing for the magical girl genre. This year I read several webcomics (that generally get to be more innovative than commercial anime) and even one actual manga that focused on "magical girls as a job", but each with a little different angle. So a shoutout to Magilumiere Co ltd, Sleepless Domain, Cloudy Wondrous, Apricot Cookie(s)!, Miss Guillotine and Magical Mom! With this many of them it'd feel a little weird to pick any for the "innovation award" over the same topic, so let's reward Magical Mom, for having, well, the magical mom! Magical girls whose mother is also a magical girl are of course a thing, but this time the child is a boy, and the mother also is an active and prominent character (and not just a background mentor), so that is new to me.

Then the Golden Mana Award, that is the dishonourable mention awarded to one thing I didn't like this year! 

This year it goes to Porun from Futari wa Precure Max Heart. Frankly he was probably more annoying in the original Futari wa but I had something else to complain about that year so now it's his turn. For the life of me I can't understand how this would be an appealing character concept even for children, like don't even 5-year-olds get annoyed at a toddler sibling's tantrums interrupting their big kid play? Even his less overtly irritating scenes don't do much for me, since they rely on "aww isn't it cute how the baby wants to be with you" mushiness.

Also another dishonourable mention to downgrading Pudding’s jumpsuit into a dress.

Best Character goes to Kuroe! (from MagiReco) I really like her design (especially how it mirrors Iroha’s), her quiet and hesitant personality and her melancholic story that felt fresh among all the magical girls who excitedly jump into saving every passerby. Or I don’t really like how she fit in the larger narrative, but in isolation I think her story was interesting.

Best Work goes to Apricot Cookie(s)! It's really funny and the art is great, and the character designs are memorable. The heroine is charmingly dumb and everyone in her family is great. And it took a while to grow on me, but in the end the weeb references make me feel at home.

Plans for 2023

I didn't manage to get any of the shorter mg shows from last year's list (though I did watch Magic User’s Club which wasn’t on the list) so those are still there. I'd also like to watch two series from the Precure backlog, this year I only managed one.

Art-wise I plan to do more for the chibi series, and do another "x colour Precure oc" series. And I'd really like to draw more art that has, like, a background or a mood or a composition, but let's see if that goes anywhere.

(also hopefully more Miku Nendoroids)