Magical Girls in Anime/Manga

Magical girl anime has always been one of the most popular anime genres- with some of the most well-known series to its name! Sailor Moon, Revolutionary Girl Utena, and Puella Magi Madoka Magica are all *intensely* beloved series by many anime fans, and their influence effects media both in Japan and the U.S. to this day!
For example, American cartoons such as Steven Universe and Star Vs. The Forces of Evil are full of references to Sailor Moon and Utena, even at times having shot-for-shot remakes of certain action sequences. I personally did not grow up watching Sailor Moon, but I've seen it referenced so often by now that I feel like I've watched the whole series!

On another hand, while magical girl anime has had an overall positive influence on eastern animation as a whole, it is really interesting to see the reactions toward the raunchier, more adult magical girl series such as Kill la Kill and Panty & Stocking. I love both of those series very dearly, but there are certain aspects about them that I find to be more harmful for the magical girl genre than actually groundbreaking- particularly with Kill la Kill (I'll give Panty & Stocking a pass, mostly because the main two characters are adults and the style is so cartoonish/abstract that the raunchy nature of it just makes it more fun).
Kill la Kill is so contentious for me because the way that the female characters are empowered is through nudity- and while that's a super cool progressive idea- its shown through the male gaze and often done to objectify the characters, so its really hard to call it a truly progressive anime (especially when the majority of the show's creators are men- who made the decision to have the nudity of the protagonists be a plot point, so that they had an 'excuse' to put fan-service in as much as they wanted).
I really do love Kill la Kill's world building and characters, and I do recommend it to people, because its such a fun action-packed series with great animation- but I really encourage people to watch it with a critical eye, because its so easy to forget that the plots/events of a fictional story are fictional- therefore real people made these decisions to put these characters in certain situations!

I think it is completely possible to have a progressive and feminist story where nudity is empowering a magical-girl sort of character! But Kill la Kill is certainly not it!

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