A Magical Girl Retires
by Park Seolyeon
translated by Anton Hur
2024
I think there's something of a cottage industry of postmodern novels about former kid detectives who are lost and floundering in early adulthood - Joe Meno's The Boy Detective Fails and Dustin Long's Icelander in print, Ed Brubaker and Marcos Martin's Friday comics, and The Venture Bros and Dicktown cartoon shows, to name the ones I'm most aware of.
Park Seolyeon's A Magic Girl Retires is kind of like that, but for transforming, Sailor Moon type superheroes. In the length of a novella, Park shows us a young woman becoming a magic girl, meeting the larger community, struggles to understand her place in this world, and ultimately (perhaps unsurprisingly, given the title) decides to retire from the superheroing life.
This is a deconstruction of the tropes of magical girl fiction, as well as an infusion of mundane reality into their stories. Our hero's biggest problems are depression, unemployment, and credit card debt. She lost her old job because of the coronavirus pandemic. The magical girls have a labor union, and when they talk about saving the world from a threat that could destroy civilization, they don't mean a monster, they mean climate change.
Park Seolyeon's A Magic Girl Retires is kind of like that, but for transforming, Sailor Moon type superheroes. In the length of a novella, Park shows us a young woman becoming a magic girl, meeting the larger community, struggles to understand her place in this world, and ultimately (perhaps unsurprisingly, given the title) decides to retire from the superheroing life.
This is a deconstruction of the tropes of magical girl fiction, as well as an infusion of mundane reality into their stories. Our hero's biggest problems are depression, unemployment, and credit card debt. She lost her old job because of the coronavirus pandemic. The magical girls have a labor union, and when they talk about saving the world from a threat that could destroy civilization, they don't mean a monster, they mean climate change.
A Magic Girl Retires is told in the first person by an unnamed narrator. She begins the book suicidal. She's pushing 30, has no job and no prospects, and owes 3 million won in debt (about 3000 US$, a deliberately small amount, I think). She's rescued at the last moment by the Clairvoyant Magical Girl, who senses her potential, knows she's in danger, and want to recruit her, believing she might be the long-awaited Magical Girl of Time.
Our narrator struggles with self doubt, but she also really wants to do well by her new friend, her new opportunity. She tries her best. She makes a totem, learns to transform. She gets a part-time job at a convenience store to try to pay off some of her debt. And when there's a fight, a real all-hands-on-deck fight, she joins in and does her best to help. But she realizes, being super doesn't solve her problems, and her power in particular comes with new problems of its own.
I like what Park's done here. This book is short but economical, using only a few episodic scenes to show us a glimpse of a magical world and invite us to imagine what it might be like to live inside, before turning away and shutting the door.
Our narrator struggles with self doubt, but she also really wants to do well by her new friend, her new opportunity. She tries her best. She makes a totem, learns to transform. She gets a part-time job at a convenience store to try to pay off some of her debt. And when there's a fight, a real all-hands-on-deck fight, she joins in and does her best to help. But she realizes, being super doesn't solve her problems, and her power in particular comes with new problems of its own.
I like what Park's done here. This book is short but economical, using only a few episodic scenes to show us a glimpse of a magical world and invite us to imagine what it might be like to live inside, before turning away and shutting the door.
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