Dustin Holder
January 4, 2021 
A few weeks back we opened a poll to find out what our readers think are the best magical girl series in anime and manga history. We filled with the possible answers with around 50 entries to minimize the chance that someone’s favorite pick was not available. There were over 700 replies, which leaves the results a bit thin and inconclusive past the top 10, but we still felt it was worth including the top 20 for curiousity’s sake.
So without further ado, here are the top 20 magical girl series according to Otaku USA readers:
20) The Demon Girl Next Door – 6 votes
19) Yuuki Yuuna is a Hero – 7 votes
18) Flip Flappers – 8 votes
17) Wedding Peach – 9 votes
10) Pretty Cure – 19 votes
9) Is This A Zombie – 20 votes
8) Magic Knight Rayearth – 21 votes
7) Revolutionary Girl Utena – 22 votes
6) Little Witch Academia – 23 votes
4) Princess Tutu – 25 votes
3) Puella Magi Madoka Magica – 76 votes
2) Cardcaptor Sakura – 107 votes
1) Sailor Moon – 208 votesSo what did we learn from this list? It seems that the popularity of magical girl anime among U.S. fans is firmly striated into just a few tiers. There’s Sailor Moon in a class of its own, then there’s Card Captor Sakura and Madoka Magica standing as the clear runners up… and then there’s everything else.
We can also clearly see that Pretty Cure’s prevalence in the Japanese market has not carried over to the U.S. market much. Perhaps if Smile Precure had not been renamed to Glitter Force on Netflix, the franchise would have scored higher in these results.
Lastly, who would have guessed that a Fate series like Prisma Ilya would get less votes than series like Rayearth and Utena? They are pushing decades old now and never had reboots to bring new audiences, but their memory seems to be going strong regardless.
Did any of the results surprise you? Let us know in the comments!
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