Where are the Magical Girls in the Era of the Cinematic Universe

Aubrey Buchanan
Nov 2 · 3 min read

Nakayoshi is a shojo manga (Japanese comics with a target audience of young girls) magazine and being published by Japan’s largest publishing company — Kodansha — since December 1954, it’s a shojo manga magazine with a lot of history behind it. The long-running magazine saw a considerable boom in its popularity in the 90’s for beginning to include ‘magical girl’ series in its otherwise primarily romance-based repertoire. These magical girl series, such as ‘Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon’ and ‘Cardcaptor Sakura’ caught on quick to build up their respective massive international impacts. More than twenty years later the Sailor Moon and Cardcaptors fandoms live on in fans like Captain Marvel star Brie Larson.

Sakura Kinomoto (of Cardcaptor Sakura) and Usagi Tsukino (of Sailor Moon)

Kodansha, itself known for ties to The Walt Disney Company is also one of the official sponsors of Tokyo Disneyland. The two media giants have been known to assist in translating and publishing each-other’s works and have even collaborated in production of series such as ‘Miriya & Marie’ a 2015 manga adaptation of Disney’s ‘The Aristocats’ (a strange sounding choice from an outside perspective, however I am assured this series came to be as a result of the film’s massive fanbase in Japan).

Although Disney has expressed interest in the rights to Kodansha’s Sailor Moon for a live action movie adaptation on multiple occasions and dating as far back as 1997, we’ve sadly had no progress on such a deal reported. However, twenty-two years after Disney’s initial proposal could Kodansha be warming up to the idea?

On August 31, 2009, The Walt Disney Company announced a deal to acquire the superhero comics publisher Marvel Entertainment for $4.24b. The deal was ultimately completed and with Disney’s backing, Marvel Studios’ production of what is now known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe has grossed over $22b since, with seven more films in the series currently in various stages of development, and further films beyond these already announced. A menagerie of television series, merchandise, and tie-in comic books have bolstered the deal’s very-apparently lucrative results even further.

In a similar move, on October 30, 2012, Disney announced another deal now to acquire Lucasfilm for a familiar looking $4.05b. Disney and Lucasfilm, already having strong relations following their collaboration on Disney Resort attractions based on the Lucasfilm properties ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Indiana Jones’, quickly closed the deal. The production of 4 new Star Wars films since have grossed over $4.5b, with another film in the series, as well as a new entry in the Indiana Jones series currently underway, and a trilogy of films with Star Wars Episode VIII director Rian Johnson slated to return. Again, in a similar move to Disney’s Marvel acquisition, we’ve also seen the Star Wars comic book rights return to Marvel, several television series have been announced, and undoubtedly you’ve seen Star Wars merchandise hitting store shelves almost anywhere you might go looking.

If Kodansha is looking at the multi-billion dollar heights these multimedia-monster franchises have seen at Disney, I wonder what they might be thinking? Regardless, 2019 should be a year of rather telling signs that the time is right. Comic book movies such as Avengers: Endgame, Captain Marvel, and Spider-Man: Far From Home dominated the box office, Godzilla: King of the Monsters modestly bested Hollywood’s previous attempts at bringing Japan’s best-known monster to American screens at the box office, Pokemon: Detective Pikachu enabled Nintendo’s Pokemon to take the record for highest-grossing film based on a video game, and Alita: Battle Angel brought the 90’s manga Battle Angel Alita to a box office success as well — what more could Kodansha be waiting for to see that it’s time to bring Sailor Moon or Cardcaptor Sakura into the spotlight?

Aubrey Buchanan

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Hey! I’m a writer, software developer and tinkerer based in AB, Canada! Find my projects and the like @ aubreys.ca

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