Is "Magical Girl" a suitable theme for entertainment?

Around this topic, there has been a decades-long debate in the world of creation and publishing in the material world, and this debate has not yet reached a clear conclusion.

In the material world in the past, about 50 years ago, entertainment creations related to "magical girls" have always been a popular theme. People are full of all kinds of imagination about the mysterious magical girl, and try to pin all kinds of imagination on this group of mysterious guardians.

Some of these imaginations are beautiful, full of praise and longing for heroes; Some are critical, questioning the origin and purpose of magical girls; Of course, there are also many that are difficult to talk about, and it is often difficult to get into the hall of elegance.

This creative boom lasted for a long time, and "magical girl" seemed to have gone from a well-defined term to a symbol of entertainment goods. In the end, even the real magical girls are endowed with certain idols and entertainment attributes, and there will be some fans of magical girls who spontaneously organize themselves and try to support their favorite magical girls in various ways.

It's just that nothing is too much.

When works related to magical girls become popular, it is natural that some people with bad intentions will mix in, or seize the right to speak for their own personal gain, or spread rumors to smear dissidents. The public, who are coerced by public opinion, cannot distinguish the truth from the false, and the term "magical girl" gradually begins to taste bad in the field of public topics.

In the face of those troubling rumors, most magical girls can only choose to turn a blind eye or suffer in silence. After all, their voices are too small in front of public opinion, and no matter how they speak, they cannot avoid being further misinterpreted.

However, even among magical girls, there are people with different personalities. In the face of more and more outrageous rumors, gossip and entertainment works, there are a few magical girls with tough personalities who are enraged.

"I can't control most of you's mouths, can't I cure those unscrupulous paparazzi?"

This is about 40 years ago, when this conflict broke out, a retired magical girl in the Xiluo Prefecture revealed her identity and said in an interview.

As a result, starting with the Xiluo Prefecture, the magical girls and retired magical girls began to confront the positive public opinion in the publishing and distribution circles. The confrontation gradually spread to the eastern states, and in the end it was a trivial mess, and no one took advantage. But on the surface, it seems that the magical girls have won.

Because the Magical Nation spoke to the governments of the states and cities, it directly ended the dispute.

Misinterpretations, rumors, and malicious speculations about magical girl works will not be published or distributed. In the 40 years that followed, commercial works with the theme of "magical girls" gradually faded out of the market, and the only ones that remained were magical girl animations that were created for young girls and children.

Of course, those works that use magical girls as a positive image still exist in the world, and they still have a lot of audiences, but they are no longer a topic of concern to the general public.

Now, 40 years later, people's perception of magical girls seems to be back to the past: in reality, magical girls are heroes who protect the city; On a virtual level, Magical Girl is an animation for children.

It is in this context that a few years ago, a mobile game called "Magical Girl Squad" quietly began to operate on the intercity network in the Dongying Prefecture region.

The mode of this mobile game is the very popular card drawing and cultivation on the market, and the content is really lackluster: it is to let players form and train their own team of magical girls, which is presented in the system is a very ordinary cultivation and turn-based combat. The game graphics are not very good.,The vertical illustrations of the magical girl are cute stick figures like children's drawing books.,The game level is a pixel figure with 2 heads and bodies.,It's not at all the desire of others to try it out.。

According to a later interview with the game's producer, he said that he felt that this was the magical girl he had in mind.

It's a pity that his "magical girl in my mind" has not been recognized by the market. is so mediocre, it can even be said that it has no bright spots, coupled with an extremely simple name, naturally it has not been able to get corresponding feedback. The mobile game was already making ends meet a few months after it started operating and went into a state of loss.

This is also the norm in the game market in the material world, too many games like this are released or sunk into the sea after being launched, and they have never been noticed again. The same is true of this game, which will not be seen since, even if it has not been heard from since.

But the game didn't end its operational career, it miraculously survived.

The turning point happened two years ago.

At the time, Magical Girl Sentai was already in a downright operational crisis, and as a test for a small company, the game brought its producers to the brink of bankruptcy. Then, I don't know if it was because the company was acquired or there were new investors, and the game was inexplicably brought back to life.

The game has been updated with a 2.0 version, in addition to retaining the original picture book art style and cultivation gameplay, the game's graphic expression has evolved significantly. Not only that, but the producers also added a detailed game background and story to this game, which originally had almost no background setting and plot.

In the new setting, players take on the role of a creature called "Fairy", who will search for magical girls in a fictional city, collect and train them, and form their own team of magical girls.

The game has added a certain amount of management and strategy gameplay, and optimized and improved the original turn-based combat, making a game that is not fun to play finally become fun.

But that still doesn't make Magical Girl Squad a hit.

There are many high-quality games, whether it is amazing art or interesting gameplay, there is no guarantee that a game will become a hit. What's more, "Magical Girl Squad" is only a small company's production, and it has been in operation for a long time and has almost no topical "violent death mobile game", even the version update has not been able to bring it many new players.

What really made this game popular was a blog post on social media with just a few words:

- "Is this me?" ”

There is a picture below the blog.,It's the development interface of "Magical Girl Squad".

And the owner of this blog is the current "strongest magical girl" who is famous in the material world - Blue Star.

As the captain of the magical girl in Tiandu, and the nominal strongest magical girl, Blue Star's social media account can be described as countless fans, and countless people express their solidarity under her account with only a few words every day.

Blue Star updated her blog, which is an extremely rare thing, and Blue Star posted screenshots of the game in her blog, which naturally made a large number of her fans run to download the game. On that day, the game servers of "Magical Girl Squad" were directly paralyzed because of this.

Later, as some players learned more about the game, they gradually discovered a shocking truth in the game - many of the settings in this game are too real.

Not to mention the "goblin", an urban legend that binds to magical girls all year round, the content of this game about magical girls' abilities and battles can be described as too detailed. There are even some people who claim to be retired magical girls who say on the Internet that the people who designed version 2.0 for this game are likely to be retired magical girls as well, because those settings are too real.

But if that's all there is, it doesn't seem like a big deal. There aren't many retired magical girls in the material world, but there are definitely a lot of them, and it's not too unusual for someone to enter the game industry.

The further fermentation of things is also due to the fact that people have found a lot of characters in this mobile game that are based on real magical girls. These characters have more or less archetypal traits, and will show a shocking level of detail in some of the details, and there are many character settings that even fans of magical girls have never heard of.

Take the game character that "Blue Star" once screenshotted on social media, that character is not very similar to Blue Star himself in appearance, but whether it is the setting of combat ability or some details in his personal profile, it is completely consistent with Blue Star. There is even a lot of information that Blue Star has never disclosed to the outside world.

Because of this, Lan Xing used a question sentence at that time, after all, she was also quite confused by it.

To say that this is a leak of privacy, there is actually no name in the game to say who; If this is a rumor-mongering, the images of magical girls in this game are very positive.

It can be said that "Magical Girl Squad" completely bypassed the previous restrictions on magical girl works, and found a way that would not be banned from distribution, but could satisfy people's desire for gossip with only one hand of "authenticity and reliability".

Since then, this game has really become popular among the magical girl fan base, and based on the magical girl fans, it has gradually gained a large number of passers-by players.

Two years have passed, and version 2.0 of "Magical Girl Squad" has been in full swing, and it is only recently that it has finally affected its original target users - adolescent girls.

Not only Jiang Yuan, but in the third class of the second grade of Xizhao Middle School alone, there were several girls discussing this game between classes.

And Lin Xiaolu, a girl who is not very interested in games and prefers to lie on the sofa and watch magical girl animations, also downloaded this game under Jiang Yuan's strong recommendation because of the theme of "magical girl".

After school, after simply patrolling around Luoming District, Lin Xiaolu took the lead in returning to the secret base, lying on the sofa and opening "Magical Girl Squad".

After watching the opening animation with a blank face, Lin Xiaolu waited for the hot update of the game while eating snacks. However, it seems that because there is too much data content, she has not been able to update it until she eats a pack of snacks, which makes her gradually impatient.

It's a hassle to play games, so why don't you watch TV?

She couldn't help but think so.

It's just that the interest in the theme of "Magical Girl" finally overwhelmed her impatience, so she waited until the game was updated.

Entering the game, reading a foggy opening plot, and going through a series of novice tutorials that made people yawn, Lin Xiaolu was finally able to get started by herself and began to feel the gameplay of this game.

She held her mobile phone, first expressionless, then frowned, and finally sat up suddenly, baring a pair of tiger teeth and shouting, "Ah! So boring! Don't play anymore! ”

She was still thinking about what kind of peculiar work this game would be under the banner of "magical girl" and the commercial results were still so hot. However, once she actually entered the game, the slow turn-based combat and complex skill stats instantly drained all her interest.

Throwing her phone aside, she picked up the remote control and turned on the TV, and casually tuned to her favorite animation channel on weekdays, only to find that today happened to be playing a program that she didn't like very much, and suddenly felt even more bored.

In desperation, she had no choice but to take the phone back and reluctantly continue her gaming journey.

Controlling the most basic team to beat the novice level, and after a completely unexciting plot, finally, the system prompted Lin Xiaolu: You can discover a new magical girl.

said that it was to convene the team members, but in fact, the embodiment of the game was card drawing, and this kind of thing seemed to be a convention in the mobile game industry, so Lin Xiaolu didn't have any ideas, so he followed the prompts and clicked into the game's card pool.

Then, her eyes were drawn to the cover of the latest issue of the card pool.

On the cover of the card pool is a magical girl wearing a fuchsia bubble skirt, with a slightly shrunken expression on her face, and at the same time inexplicably a little resolute.

The magical girl holds a weapon that looks like a notebook in her hand.,According to the explanation in the game,It's called a "spirit costume".,It seems to correspond to the magic girl's magic costume in reality.。

This seems to be a new character that has just been implemented, the name of the card pool is "Thoughts Return", the code name of the magical girl on the cover is called "Morning Glory", and the picture on the cover is also written in small text: "Blooming magic, to protect unfulfilled thoughts" such a message.

For some reason, Lin Xiaolu always felt that this magical girl had an inexplicable sense of familiarity, obviously she was not someone she knew at all, and it looked like an ordinary picture book cartoon image, but she always felt that she had seen each other somewhere.

And this familiarity is fleeting after all, and it will soon disappear without a trace, and then look at the magical girl on this cover, she no longer has this strange feeling in her heart.

Because he was just playing a game, Lin Xiaolu only thought that these were his own illusions, and quickly put the matter aside. Follow the instructions of the beginner's tutorial to the beginner's exclusive game card pool.

Then, with inexplicable excitement, I clicked the button of "Gather Members".

(End of chapter)