Sabrina The Teenage Witch Inspired The Magical Girl Subgenre

With sparkly eyes and a positivity to match, the "magical girls" subgenre is a phenomenon in manga and anime that turns the traditional idea of what a witch is on its head. Swapping black robes for pastel frills, warty snarls for winking ones, and wrong-doing for charitable heroism, "magical girls" are, by nature, predominantly children and young women as opposed to old crones or ancient beings. As such, their youth informs an upbeat resilience in the face of evil.

In fact, before the term had been coined, early examples were referred to as "majokko," which just means, "little witch." Kiki's Delivery Service and Little Witch Academia are cute callbacks to this era, and continue to stand as proof of its lasting impact.

Today, iconic magical girl properties like Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura are commonly thought of as uniquely Japanese creations that helped sprinkle “kawaii” magic around the world, but they actually wouldn’t exist as we know them had it not been for the impact of Western pop culture.

The anime series Sally The Witch became the first to put a magical girl on Japanese TV in 1966, based on the manga character of the same name. However, that show's creator, Mitsuteru Yokoyama, specifically based Sally -- a teenage witch princess who travels to Earth from another realm -- on the American sitcom character Samantha Stephens, from Bewitched.

The show was re-dubbed and aired on Japanese television at around the same time, and proved popular enough to warrant a remake known as Bewitched In Tokyo.

As well as Bewitched, Sugawa Aikiko -- an associate professor of gender and media studies at Yokohama National University -- points to another little-known Western influence on the magical girl subgenre: Mary Poppins, with the Disney film released in Japan in 1965. Though the British nanny is more of a magical matron than magical girl, the idea of a modernized "good" witch transported from a distant world to use her powers to help others makes her a clear prototype.

Predating all of them, however, was Archie Comics’ Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch, who was first introduced in 1962’s Archie’s Mad House #22.

Sabrina’s Western forebears include more adult-oriented fare; in supernatural tales of seduction, like 1942’s I Married A Witch, and 1958’s Bell, Book And Candle, where mortal men were preyed upon by love potions and wicked wiles.

George Gladir and Dan DeCarlo’s creation, on the other hand, was younger, sassier, fresher, and fits the magical girl bill perfectly. Like Sally, her kind originates from the “Other” or “Magical Realm,” but she mingles with mortals on Earth and uses her powers only for fun.

Her status as a half-witch means that -- like the magical "warrior" girls of the '90s -- she also lives a double life.

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So far, there’s nothing to fill the missing link between Sabrina and Samantha, and by extension, Sally as a formative magical girl influence; this makes the similarities even more uncanny. By another uncanny chance, the first live-action Sabrina The Teenage Witch series in 1996 happened to coincide with the anime boom in the West, airing at the tail end of Sailor Moon’s original run in the US.

Today, this back-and-forth between East and West continues in the recent trend of magical girl-influenced, Western-made cartoons like Steven Universe, Star vs. the Forces of Evil and Miraculous: Tales Of Ladybug & Cat Noir. Interestingly, Ladybug is co-produced by Toei Animation, which is also the studio that brought Sally the Witch to TV for the first time.

We can even find comparisons between Sabrina's radically spooky reinvention in the Chilling Adventures universe and recent anime like the thematically pitch black Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which received widespread acclaim for deconstructing the sickly sweet genre.

Witches, in any form, have long been provocative; more than enough to feed a real-life hysteria in the US and Europe in the 1600s. The idea of unchecked, latent feminine power is subversive in a patriarchal society, which is why they were accused of being in league with the devil, despite their Wiccan origins significantly predating Christianity. It’s part of why they remain so endlessly appealing.

Magical girls offer mixed messages when it comes to female empowerment. They’re independent but often preoccupied with boyfriends and husbands; they’re problem-solvers, career women and superheroes; but they conform to an infantilizing style of dress and mannerisms. Rendered in DeCarlo's pin-up girl style, Sabrina was similarly conceived with a male gaze in mind.

And yet, there is something to be said for a power that is unmistakably feminine — even if it’s a stereotypical one — and remains so even if wielded by magical boys. Against other Strong Female Character archetypes, magical girls -- from Sally to Sabrina to Sailor Moon -- prove that women don’t have to channel masculine energy to have agency.