A question I’ve seen pop up quite a few times is “why are there no magical boy series?”. Ignoring that the male equivalent to mahou shoujo is superhero tokusatsu à la Kamen Rider or Super Sentai, I guess it’s because there’s no real way to do it without it coming across as self-parody? Especially if you try to stick to standard mahou shoujo conventions – I mean, could you imagine a male Precure? Ok, scratch that, I just remembered the episode of DokiDoki Precure! where Sebastian becomes a Precure. Could you imagine a male Precure done seriously??
Given that, the obvious solution to doing “mahou shoujo but with boys” is to go full-on parody. Enter Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu LOVE!, which I’ll just be shortening to Bouei-bu from here on out. While it wasn’t clear before airing – I picked it up for the absurd novelty of the premise – Bouei-bu is a straight up deconstruction parody of the mahou shoujo genre, with a heaping dose of bishounen anime thrown in for good measure. As a budding fan of mahou shoujo, this was right up my alley! What’s more, it’s directed by Shinji Takamatsu, director of Gintama and Daily Lives of High School Boys, noted funny shows with parodic elements. Can’t complain about that.