Magica Riot is a love letter to magical girls of all kinds (especially trans/queer ones <3), different forms of queerness, the magical girl genre as a whole, indie bands, and Portland, Oregon, a city I’m more than a little fond of myself. Minor spoilers to chat about some favorite elements!
There’s both familiarity and freshness here for fans of Magical Girl Things™, which makes for a comforting yet engaging read. The magical girl transformations include gender affirming magic and outfits with an alternative twist. The most frequent baddies have big horror movie monster energy, with lovingly gross descriptions of their own transformations. The conflicts have musical overtones, since the girls aren’t just squadmates but bandmates who wield their powers through their instruments, and there’s an interest in things like the difference between often-lumped together concepts like beat and rhythm. Each of the Magica Riot girls brings a different type of feminine power and queerness (there’s even a polyamorous pan/bisexual in there which I really appreciated <3), and they are unified in their celebration of and care for each other.
The wicked magical girls (yes thank goodness we love a wicked magical girl) have, of course, hidden depths and inner conflicts as well as ominous devotion to their mysterious evil mistress. The romance is sweet and gay and notably untortured, with a lovely scene in the Portland rose garden where main character Claire gets to see her own beauty and femininity reflected through the camera of the girl she adores. And instead of the genre’s frequent obsession with keeping secrets, this story likes to get things out of the closet and into the open, which I found especially refreshing in the romance. Several times I braced myself for genre-typical angst at a crossed wire or missed text or date or whatever and then it just DIDN’T HAPPEN because that’s not what this story is doing and also these women actually default to talking to each other when in doubt, even and especially when it’s awkward, and it was SO NICE.
The prose and pacing is brisk, keeping the scenes and set pieces coming. But some of my favorite moments were when the story took a moment to linger on delightful, specific oddities: a local juice cart and its endearingly in-character owner; a beloved band van with a storied history and a sturdy frame; a [gender-intentionally-left-blank] Dark Souls-obsessed IT gremlin (ilu hikariii <3) I enjoyed the sense of place; this story is set in Portland, and while you don’t need to have been there to enjoy it, there’s little treats if you have (it’s been too long since I’ve been to “Howell’s”) and clearly lots more for the actual PDX locals.
I had a fun time with the girls in Portland, and I look forward to seeing what’s next for them!