Postby Agloval » Sat Apr 16, 2011 2:50 am
I'm not a great expert, but as I understand it Utena and Madoka (and for that matter Nanoha) are kind of exceptions: run-of-the-mill magical girl series are long, more focused on selling toys, and actually aimed at little girls. So it depends whether you want to be bingeing on normal magical girl shows or on magical girl shows which parasitically depend on the genre for some elements of a more grown-up package.
Midori has already mentioned Cardcaptor Sakura, which is I think a bit of a touchstone example.
There's Toei's monstrously profitable, action-packed Pretty Cure franchise. The most recent complete title, Heartcatch Precure, is pretty accessible and enjoyable. I happen to rather like it. If you want something more traditional, Pretty Cure's predecessor from Toei, Ojamajo Doremi, is more in the 'solving problems, sometimes with magic' vein than the 'Rider Kicking evil in the face' vein that Precure follows.
As for shows that do something with magical girl ideas for an older audience, I can think of Uta Kata, which winds up to a fairly grim climax about judgement and redemption. (And also retunes some other elements of the genre: each transformation scene, for instance, is entirely different from the last.) Uta Kata has a certain amount of fanservice in it. And Okusama wa Mahou Shoujo, which is a fairly fanservice-y story about a magical girl who's grown up and married, and has to deal with a usurper.
(Utena didn't strike me as that heavily leaning on the magical girl genre -- the only really strong element I can remember is the transformations. But it's been a while since I saw it. Can anyone else remember some other magical girl elements in it?)
'That blast is blown for me, for I am the prize, and yet am I not dead.'
