Magical girl (maho shojo) is the genre built around girls who transform to gain powers, usually through an item and a transformation sequence, and use them to protect their world. It is one of anime's oldest original genres and a cornerstone of the shojo shelf.
The genre's roots run to the 1960s, with Sally the Witch and the magical girl comedies that followed, but its modern shape was set in the 1990s when Sailor Moon fused the transformation formula with a sentai-style team of heroines, each with her own element, colour, and weapon. That template, a team of transformed girls fighting in formation, became the genre's default grammar worldwide.
The transformation sequence is the genre's signature set piece: a repeatable, stock-footage ritual that marks the boundary between an ordinary girl and her powered self. Around it sit the genre's other fixtures, a mascot guide, a secret identity kept from family, and battles that are as much about resolve as force.
Later works play the formula at every angle, from faithful celebrations to stories that stress-test its costs, and the genre's audience now spans the children it was made for and the adults who grew up on it. The core promise has never moved: an ordinary girl, given power, chooses to protect her ordinary life. The genre also crossed the world early: its flagship series were dubbed and broadcast internationally in the 1990s, making magical girls many viewers' first anime and the genre a gateway shelf for a generation.
In use"A schoolgirl, a brooch, a transformation sequence, and a team to protect the city: that is the magical girl formula."