Roadrunner Twice

So the idea of "body horror" as a genre or generic marker is that you are being transformed into something intrinsically and personally monstrous and everything is terrible. Right? So I figure the reverse of body horror is when you are transforming yourself into something (conventionally) monstrous because it's awesome and beautiful.

Ask me about my reverse-body-horror magical girl fighting game idea sometime.

— Motor Sprite (@nfagerlund) April 26, 2013

And the core idea of the magical girl genre is about undergoing a transformation into a prettier and more perfect version of yourself -- becoming more capable and self-actualized, then performing that capability aesthetically (prettier) and through ritual combat against physical embodiments of negative and destructive psychic forces (more perfect).

I figure? After the first time you have to defend your friends' lives by going toe-to-toe against a monster-of-the-week, your idea of "pretty" is going to change pretty damn quick. Fast and strong and efficient and shiny and bulletproof, and taking down a demon before it even gets a WHIFF of your designated love interest; THAT's pretty. And thus, our heroine's mystic-gem-fueled magical girl transformation gradually becomes more and more inhuman, but, and here's the thing, she is totally cool with this, because she A: has a job to do, and B: is in the process of adopting an aesthetic of function. And the monsters of the week are stuck dealing with eight feet of shiny glittering motion-blurred blade-fingered lantern-eyed (ribbon-bedecked, glass-armored, short-skirted, and let's be clear here, you get a super-legit sparkly transformation sequence before each battle) insectile terror.

( more thinking about video games and practical genre abuse )

Hey vaulted_eel: You were totally right, Ouran High School Host Club is frickin' awesome. (Just finished the first ep, have #3 in the queue, and am fighting a particularly recalcitrant torrent for #2.)

I don't have much else to say about it... but I really like Haruhi as a protagonist. Aside from my long-standing just-in-general appreciation for boy-dressin' girls, I really like that she's... sensible. She just seems to react the way a real person would when absurd shōjo manga shit starts happening.