Quote:Very true! o_o
Depends on what you consider a magical girl, I guess. I tend to look at it more as a style issue than a literal thing.
And that's how I see Space Mage. Her costume's supposed to look cosmic, but in the Western comics tradition. I didn't have a magical girl thing in mind when I dreamt up the character. She's based on a costume design and a joke name, a pun on 'Space Age'. Her profile begins: "There's power in dreams. In 1961, a man flew in space. In '69, one walked on the moon..."
So that's the direction I was coming from. Honestly, the Japanese magical girl thing never entered my head at all.
But...now I've fleshed out the character, and actually have her in play...she certainly acts like a magical girl. Plus she's got the moves to pull it off.
Worse still, she's supposed to be an anime fan, so she probably considers herself one...
On the other hand, the definition of 'magical girl' can't be entirely detatched from the form. I'm thinking of Stefan Gagne's "Sailor Nothing" stories here - that whole world's populated by characters who certainly don't behave or think 'in genre', but have all the other trappings. Of course, that's all the way into the territory of meta-commentary or whatever...
Then there's our own Mirrorguardian Naoko, who's got a whole magical girl mythos behind her, is supposed to have the powers...but certainly doesn't BEHAVE like one, 'cause she's really a college-age guy...
-- Acyl