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Claire Ryland just became the newest member of her favorite band, Magica Riot! They’re cool, they’re cute, and they have a van named Vancent Price! Oh, and they’re magical girls who fight against the interdimensional forces of evil. That’s cool, too, I guess.

Claire got more than she bargained for with her powers, though. With a super dose of magical HRT, Claire doesn’t have the option to stay in the closet anymore—at least, not in regards to being a normal, everyday girl who also happens to be in one of the hottest indie bands in Portland. Being a magical girl, on the other hand, needs to stay under wraps. Keeping secrets while being yourself is tough. Fighting the forces of evil is tough, too. Hell, just being a newly out trans girl in the Pacific Northwest is tough! But with backup from her band, there’s not much Claire can’t do!

Quick Review: This new adult novel is as sugary sweet as any Saturday morning cartoon. Drawing heavily from Pretty Cure to Power Rangers and the indie music scene of Portland, Oregon, author Kara Buchanan blends her eclectic interests in a satisfyingly cohesive fashion to create something that finds a perfect balance between the familiar and the new.

Wholly unique yet wearing its influences on its sleeve, Magica Riot is an absolute must-read for adult fans of children’s action cartoons like Steven Universe or She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. This book is also the perfect pick-me-up for transfemmes in the face of threats to our freedom.

Meet the Riot Girls!

But before we go any further, let’s meet our cast of characters:

• Sara Ward is the impossibly cool Riot Red, the singer and rhythm guitarist.
• Hana Hasegawa is Riot Green, the calm and cheerful bassist.
• Cass Coates is the kind and caring Riot Yellow, Magica Riot’s lead guitarist and backing vocalist.
• Nova is Riot Blue, the manic pixie dream drummer.
• And then you have Claire, who joins as Riot Purple, the band’s keytar queen!

Sara Ward, Riot Red

Cass Coates, Riot Yellow

Hana Hasegawa, Riot Green

Nova, Riot Blue

Saturday Morning Sincerity

If the van named Vancent Price didn’t clue you in, Magica Riot has a highly playful tone matching its Saturday morning children’s programming influences. And yet, like many of those programs, Magica Riot is also sincere in its presentation. The girls speak of Vancent with genuine reverence as the oldest member of Magica Riot—a chariot that carried previous magical girl teams through victory and heartbreak.

There have been a great many magical girl subversions and deconstructions ever since the trifecta of Revolutionary Girl Utena, Princess Tutu and Puella Magi Madoka Magica popularized the subgenre of dark magical girls. Magica Riot certainly shares some DNA with the aforementioned trio, but it rejects the wider, more cynical trend of subversion for subversion’s sake. Utena, Tutu, and Madoka incorporated heavy subjects like the exploitation of women, the suppression of desire and the pain of grief to reinforce the the common message that defines the magical girl genre: hope, love and friendship will always shine bright when faced with darkness. These classic titles deepen the darkness to make the light shine that much brighter.

Some magical girl stories, however, are dark for the sake of darkness and subversive for the sake of subversion. Magica Riot is the antithesis of this trend. It serves as a course correction, bringing childlike wonder back into the darkened, adultified version of the genre. Magica Riot may be aimed at an adult audience, but it’s just as delightfully corny and sincere as the original Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.

Nova is a little blue ball of energy who perfectly embodies the “Saturday morning spirit” of Magica Riot. She’s the youngest member and was the first to reach out to Claire. Though the book overall includes adult language, Nova avoids swearing in favor of her made-up expletive “flammin,” seemingly to keep up the family-friendly vibes while the group eviscerates interdimensional monsters. It’s a wild contrast between Nova using PG swear word replacements and the gross and grisly descriptions of the girls destroying the monsters. It brings to mind all the moments you’ve watched a cartoon and thought, “How did they get away with that on a kid’s show?!”

It’s moments like these when Magica Riot elegantly evokes a sense of nostalgia for the media that inspired it. If done less skillfully, such evocations of nostalgia could have felt pandering and inauthentic, but Buchanan’s writing has the subtlety and sincerity to pull it off.

That said, the less subtle nods are also a blast. The way the girls summon their magic microphones to initiate the classic magical girl transformation sequence is highly reminiscent of the “Moon Prism Power, Make-Up” command from Sailor Moon, while the boot slam that punctuates the end of the transformation brings to mind the famous *clack* of the girls’ high heels in the Pretty Cure franchise.

Evil Both Supernatural and Banal

Now, that isn’t to say everything’s sunshine and rainbows all the time in Magica Riot. Like many superhero or magical stories, it takes place in what is ostensibly our real world, just with a supernatural underbelly that our heroes have to deal with. Buchanan doesn’t shy away from the mundane issues the team faces as a group of women who are marginalized for their gender identity, race and/or sexuality. Likewise, our team’s heroics don’t begin and end with fighting monsters. Cass runs a mutual aid organization to help her community, while Hana is fiercely protective of Nova and Claire due to their vulnerability as trans women in a society that isn’t always accepting.

These social issues are not the central focus of the book, and in fact, Buchanan goes out of her way to establish a highly supportive environment for Claire. Claire receives unquestioning support from her bandmates and the wider Starlight Alliance (the organization that supports magical girls across the globe). Still, Magica Riot does not turn a blind eye to the struggles faced by marginalized communities.

Defeating monsters and taking on unfair power structures often come down to the same thing: taking care of each other and working as a team. This allows the story to seamlessly blend the fight against evils, both interdimensional and mundane.

I also greatly appreciate the varied tone with which Buchanan approaches the banal evils of our everyday lives. While Cass’s work and Hana’s protectiveness are taken seriously, you also have tongue-in-cheek jabs at our oppressors with song titles like “Gender Hypocritical.” In Magica Riot, even fighting against bigotry can be fun.

A Flammin’ Good Time

Let’s be real. The second you saw the name Vancent Price, you probably knew whether or not this book was for you. This book isn’t afraid to juxtapose utterly ridiculous van names with characters overcoming loss, abuse and social injustice. Its humor and drama are equally sincere and evocative, crafting a world and characters you can care for. This mad science experiment, stitching together one woman’s varied passions and experiences into a single unit, is a smashing success.

This story has nothing but love and care for marginalized people, especially trans women, and nothing but scorn and derision for their oppressors. That makes Magica Riot one of the best books imaginable for our current moment in time.

“Servants of the darkness, be silenced by the song of Magica Riot!”