Also, doing something new here, and linking the OP as links in each title, if y'all like that, lemme know and I'll go back to the other posts and edit those to have them, too.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (Also A's, and StrikerS
The storyline follows Nanoha Takamachi, a nine-year-old Japanese girl attending elementary school, who lives with her parents and her older siblings. Nanoha's regular daily life ends when she rescues an injured ferret who reveals himself as a young shapeshifting mage named Yūno Scrya. An archaeologist from a parallel universe called Midchilda, Yūno came to Earth to collect a set of 21 dangerous ancient artifacts named the "Jewel Seeds" that he first discovered in his own world. Jewel Seeds give living beings who come into contact with them unnatural powers, often turning them into monsters. Yūno, injured while trying to collect them, must now rely on Nanoha while he convalesces in ferret form. He gives Nanoha an "intelligent device" (magical wand) called "Raising Heart", and she unexpectedly shows strong aptitude for magic. As the two gather the Jewel Seeds, Nanoha learns magic from Yūno while continuing with her ordinary everyday life.

-- Nanoha is very probably my favorite magical girl series, and while like other shows, anything I can say about it would constitute a spoiler, I will say that as a bit of trivia, this franchise started life as a spinoff side story from *another* franchise; Triangle Heart...which is a porn game. There's none of that here though! You could call this an alternate universe to that origin. (Also, I think Gryph might enjoy Nanoha, in particular her preferred method of making friends.)

Cardcaptor Sakura (Also it's relatively recent sequel, Clear Card)
Cardcaptor Sakura takes place in the fictional town of Tomoeda, which is located somewhere near the Japanese capital of Tokyo. Ten-year-old Sakura Kinomoto accidentally releases a set of magical cards known as Clow Cards from a book in her basement created by and named after the sorcerer Clow Reed. Each card has its own unique ability and can assume an alternate form when activated. The guardian of the cards, Cerberus (nicknamed Kero), emerges from the book and explains that only a person with magical powers could open the seal of the book, revealing that Sakura can do magic. Kero chooses Sakura to retrieve the missing cards. As she finds each card, she battles its magical personification and defeats it by sealing it away. Cerberus acts as her guide, while her best friend and second cousin, Tomoyo Daidouji films her exploits and provides her with both battle costumes and moral support. Sakura's older brother Toya Kinomoto watches over her, while pretending that he is unaware of what is going on.

--Ah, one of the classics, Sakura is just adorable, Tomoyo's obvious crush is adorable, and really the whole series just strikes that great CLAMP balance. ....Might wanna be careful about a couple of episodes though, concerning one of Sakura's classmates and their teacher...

Vividred Operation
In the near future, an invention known as the Manifestation Engine has solved all of the world's energy-related problems five years ago. This powerful machine creates energy from the sky and now lies in the centre of an artificial, man-made island called Blue Island. On another such island named Izu Ōshima, a girl named Akane Isshiki lives a peaceful life with her family. Her grandfather Kenjirou is a smart yet eccentric scientist who is also the inventor of the Manifestation Engine. Because of his invention, the world has entered a new era of peace. However, this peace didn't last for long.

-- A lesser known one, I simply adore the message of this show, plus the 'transformation' sequences - here, have the first one. ....Sshhhhhame about all the butt shots tho....

Yuki Yuna is a Hero
The story takes place on the Japanese island Shikoku in the fictional city of Sanshu, based on the real-life city of Kan'onji in Kagawa Prefecture, in the 300th year of the Era of the Gods. Yūna, Mimori, Fū, and Itsuki are all members of the Sanshu Middle School Hero Club, dedicating themselves to helping those in need. One day in their regular daily lives, the Hero Club members are suddenly caught in an explosion of light and transported to a strange forest, where they encounter mysterious monsters known as Vertex which seek to destroy the Shinju, the guardian deity which protects and blesses humanity. Using a special phone application granted by Taisha, an organization dedicated to the Shinju, Yuna and her friends must transform into "heroes" with magical powers to protect their world from imminent destruction.

--Mild spoilers, but this one is a bit more deconstruction in the vein of Madoka Magica, but it's done *really well* - the first season which I've seen at least. The second and third may fumble it entirely, I don't know.

Senki Zesshou Symphogear
Two idols, Tsubasa Kazanari and Kanade Amō, collectively known as Zwei Wing, battle against an alien race known as Noise using armor known as Symphogear, which uses the power of music to counteract the Noise's destructive capability. However, Kanade sacrifices herself to protect a girl named Hibiki Tachibana, who ends up with a piece of Kanade's Symphogear relic, Gungnir, embedded in her chest. Two years later, Hibiki awakens the power of the Gungnir relic inside her body, gaining the same Symphogear armor that Kanade had. Using the power of song, Hibiki and her fellow Symphogear wielders must fight to protect the innocent and defeat those who would use the Noise for evil.

--Here's the one you were probably waiting for, SYMPHOGEAR. On TVTropes, almost every episode of all five series has an 'Awesome' entry in either music or events or both, and they're well deserved. There's a shocking amount of blood and death in this show, but it adheres too closely to the standards of magical girls for me to classify it as a deconstruction. I've only fully seen the first two series of five, so I can't in good conscience recommend *all* of it, but it has good foundations.

Futari Wa Pretty Cure
Futari wa Pretty Cure revolves around two girls, Nagisa Misumi and Honoka Yukishiro, who encounter the Garden of Light's Mipple and Mepple, who give them the power to transform into the emissaries of light; Cure Black and Cure White, to fight against the forces of the Dark Zone: a dimension of evil that has encroached on the Garden of Light and is now about to do the same to the Garden of Rainbows, Earth. The Cures search for the Prism Stones, placing them in a heart-shaped device known as the Prism Hopish, protected by the Guardian, Wisdom.

--The first series in the franchise-to-be of Magical Girls which is practically Animated Tokusatsu - to the point of being included in the two hour block in which both Kamen Rider and Super Sentai air - Pretty Cure adheres to both the Magical Girl *and* Tokusatsu formula of first beating the crap out of the monster with their bare hands before hitting them with their finishing move, which puts some Wave Motion Guns to shame. There's about twenty shows in the franchise so far, a new one almost every year (So far there's been two 'second seasons') but I haven't seen enough of any of the to recommend any of them in particular aside from the original. I can give an unofficial thumbs up to Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure tho!

And that's all I can think of for now, but I'll list off some honorable mentions stuff that I *would* recommend if I had actually been able to watch them yet, since I know how they go and that I like them, but arbitrary limits: Madoka, Magic Knight Reyearth (Shouldn't need to go into that one HERE), Pretear, Sailor Moon, Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-Chan, Puni Puni Poemy, Tokyo Mew Mew, and Ground Defense Force! Mao-chan.

(Wikipedia lists Kill La Kill as a Magical Girl show, but.....no. That'll be in another post.)

Is this the one that ran for so long that the protagonist grew up and had magical daughters of her own? I think someone pointed me at a clip from something once where the magical "girl" shown was, like, 30, and as badass as you would expect a 30-year-old superhero whose career started when she was nine to be.

>-- A lesser known one, I simply adore the message of this show, plus
>the 'transformation' sequences - here, have the
> first one.

Hey, this one's already appeared in UF, albeit only in the Unrelated Cold Open of a Lensmen: The Brave and the Bold episode. :)

>....Sshhhhhame about all the butt shots tho....

As I recall, the director also has a peculiar fixation with mayonnaise getting all over Akane, too. Like, to a point that suggests some kind of bet among the production staff as to whether they could successfully get certain scenes onto terrestrial television.

>There's a shocking amount of blood and death in this show, but it
>adheres too closely to the standards of magical girls for me to
>classify it as a deconstruction.

So not so much deconstruction as ultraviolent revisionism. Like Sam Peckinpah westerns!

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Ah the glories of magical girls who use the Getter Robo method of power-ups: smashing two magical girls together to create a single stronger magical girl.

In terms of recent magical girl stories, I'm going to have to recommend Flip Flappers, which is a story about a girl and another girl who thinks she's a dog, and a world called Pure Illusion, and the girl figuring out her sexuality and what she wants out of life while accompanied by a small robot with a brain inside it.

Also in terms of Precure, I would recommend something like Heartcatch, Suite or Smile Precure if you're not just going straight for Futari Wa and Max Heart first- and if so, why not?, because they're all very solid first choices, Heartcatch for having a very unique art style and a more dark and serious storyline than most, Suite for having the 'two partners kick ass' story for a good portion of its run and calling strongly back to the original, and Smile for just being plain good fun and one of the best 'five man team' shows in recent memory.

Alternatively, try Happiness Charge Precure for what happens when Magical Girling becomes a franchised-out worldwide business and it's NOT taken in a dark and subversive direction, Fresh for another show that's got a good dark and serious storytelling streak in it, or if you just want to watch the second coming of Master Asia, the Yes! movie.

I'm speaking of the recent deconstruction titled Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka.

The titular Asuka is, indeed, a Magical Girl. She's a Japanese teenager, still in school, trying to live a normal civilian life. Trying to deal with the memory of having been a soldier in a rather horrific war, of having watched her teammates fall and die around her. She is one of five survivors of the Magical Girl team that won the war.

What war? Well. Earth was invaded by monsters from another dimension. They proved difficult for the conventional military to fight... until a second extradimensional faction made contact and offered to empower a small team of magical girls to fight them. The military accepted this deal, took the newly-empowered girls and put them through basic military training, and deployed them as the point of the spear to fight the monsters. They eventually fought their way through to the monsters' home dimension and defeated them.

So the world was at peace, and the poor traumatized kids... could go back to their lives. Or at least, Asuka did. She's not dealing well with it. PTSD is a thing, and it's a big part of her life now.

And then it turns out the monsters aren't gone, and the war maybe isn't really over, and there's all sorts of crap still going on, just well hidden.

This is a very dark story all in all. It touches on many of the themes of a guerilla war - terrorism, hostage-taking, torture, the effects of war on child soldiers...

I've described it as "24: The Magical Girl Edition". In total seriousness.