Why do magical girls have magic? girls? The answer to this question is the subject of award-winning Korean author Seoleon Park’s English-language debut novel, Magical girl retired. This isn’t an attempt to emphasize the gender binary in superheroes, although it might sound that way at first—after all, magical boys have been accompanying magical girls since at least the 1990s, including Tuxedo Mask, Kaito Sinbad, and comic version Nurse Angel Lilica, holy. Recently, Cure Wing joined the main team Soar into the sky! Pretty Cure, and a good argument can be made that DN Angel is a complete magical boy story. But most of the people with transformation sequences and shiny, best-selling items are girls, and Parker thinks there’s a specific reason why: Girls and women are more likely to need supernatural powers to save themselves.
Magical girl retired Set in modern-day Seoul, the story begins with an unnamed twenty-nine-year-old woman preparing to commit suicide. Her situation is unenviable, but familiar: deeply in debt, unemployed, and recently orphaned by the death of her beloved grandfather. Copy on other sites heavily emphasizes the fact that she’s a millennial, but the truth is, this is a terrible situation anyone can find themselves in, and Parker’s writing makes it clear that age is nothing more than a number for any character Everyone can find their place in it. The number one magical girl in South Korea who is still practicing is the grandmother, and Aloa herself is likely to be in her twenties like the protagonist. The bigger problem for the anonymous narrator is that life has gotten the best of her, which can happen at any age. So when Aroya stops her from jumping off a bridge into a river and tells her that she’s destined to be a magical girl, she offers her more than just a way out, showing that her life still has value.
According to Aloa, who holds the title of “Clear Eyed Magical Girl”, the protagonist is destined to become the most powerful among magical girls – the Magical Girl of Time. The other magical girls (who have joined the union, of course) have been waiting for her to appear, because only those with the power to turn back time can stop climate change. This does make sense to the narrator, as her grandfather was a watchmaker, an ambition she carried with her for most of her life before things went sour. Hearing that she was connected to time and needed was enough to convince her not to jump.
This ties into the idea of why magical girls tend to be female. Aroa fulfills her duties as a magical girl by saving the narrator, but later mentions that a magical girl must be able to save herself before she can save others. Anton Hull noted in the translator’s note that “when you live in South Korea, as I do, you are constantly bombarded with media coverage” of violence against women, a phenomenon made worse by the lack of consequences for perpetrators. Disturbing…the most iconic magical girl, sailor moonspecifically calling himself a champion justice…Magical girls exist because justice does not exist. The Magical Girl Alliance is waiting for the Magical Girl of Time, because she can bring justice to the world and save humanity from the chaos of its own making.
But…what if she doesn’t want to? This feels like an inevitable consequence of magical girls being empowered, as they are placed in an inescapable, untenable situation. We’re used to seeing them rise above their circumstances, but what if they choose not to or can’t? PretelThe opponent is a “failed” magical girl who let the world defeat her. We can see sailor moonSailor Galaxy has a similar situation, so this isn’t a new concept in the genre. But Parker takes this more cautiously, because the magical girl we follow knows better than anyone else what it feels like to lose all hope. Her place in the story is that of the final savior, but not in the way others might imagine. She understands that not everyone can be saved, and that’s because she went into the story believing that she couldn’t be saved. Of course, she is, but fate and her life experiences determine how she ultimately uses her power and what form it takes. Her end is not a glorious self-sacrifice, as sailor moon or Nurse Angel Lilica, but a quiet compromise. It’s her power, which means she gets to decide how to use it.
Ultimately, like many other classic magical girl works, Magical girl retired is full of hope. It doesn’t pretend that everyone can be saved or the world fixed, but it still acknowledges that magical girls are beacons of hope, if only for themselves. As girls and women, we always put others before ourselves in society, something Parker acknowledges in the story, but the novel asks us to understand that we must create justice, us Wanting to see the world, even if it’s not exactly what everyone wants us to do. We are all our own unsung heroines.
