I posted before about the teen-comedy genre, something that I'm extremely passionate about, a passion that I carried on into my script. Genre-breaking is a term which I came across while watching reviews on youtube for one of my favourite animes, 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica'.
"a method of critical analysis of philosophical and literary language that emphasizes the internal workings of language and conceptual systems, the relational quality of meaning, and the assumptions implicit in forms of expression."
That's a bit of a mouthful... So basically, using Madoka Magica as an example, you pull apart the Magical Girl genre until you have its bare bones, the essence, what makes this genre the genre that it is. You'll find stock characters, plot elements and a basic overall story. You investigate these before putting it all back together into something of your own creation.
The Magical Girl genre, to anyone who is less informed about anime sub-culture, is a decades-old genre that involves adolescent girls being gifted with magical powers to defeat evil, while trying to deal with the stresses of everyday life, so basically it's Japan's answer to the US juggernauts of DC and Marvel.
The video above deconstructs the genre into several points that can be found throughout the Magical Girl genre, they are as follows:
- Cute magical creature reveals itself to the protagonist and offers/grants them the ability to transform into a magical girl and combat evil.
- Stock characters (a term originating in ancient Greek theatre) are present such as the (often blue-haired) best friend, the clumsy and meek protagonist, big sister/mentor figure, tough tomboyish figure and the mysterious, deadpan character with unclear motives.
- Main character has an important magical destiny that only they can fulfill, something which a lot of the characters including the protagonist cannot comprehend.
After looking over these points, it's a lot like the narrative theories that I've been studying in film studies and script-writing, e.g. 'Monomyth' and 'The Hero of a Thousand Faces', so it's really interesting and useful to see how these theories are used in genres, not just in mainstream, but all over the world. Now coming back to the teen comedy genre, I used the formula that I posted a while back to give me something to build on for my script, and to my surprise I think it worked quite well! My script has been put forward to be made in class, something which I didn't expect at all. It's far from perfect, but it's something that's given me a lot more motivation!
