Before I started this blog, I had never even heard of these two genres. But as I read about them, I realised that I had actually encountered some of it before. Maybe not so much in literature, but certainly in movies and animé.

Wuxia is a mostly eastern fantasy subgenre where a character or a few characters have martial arts skills that border on magical abilities and sometimes frolick merrily in it. I’m not sure I can really elaborate without repeating myself more than a few times, so, here are some examples: Naruto (manga and animé), The Forbidden Kingdom (a movie from a few years back) and Kung Fu Hustle (a spoofy movie from the East).

Magrical Girl, as far as I have been able to glean from scanty Internet sources, is an animé fantasy subgenre (fairly popular, I might add) that revolves around a female main character who has some sort of quest or ability that sets her apart from her mundane peers. She might dedicate her entire life to it or may even practice only after school hours. Examples include Elfen Lied and Sailor Moon. I honestly haven’t seen much of these…though I have for some reason encountered the reportedly less common “magical boy” shows – Bleach, Kekkai Genkai and Evangelion.

Don’t take me as the authority on this, though. As I said, I’ve really only dipped my toes in these two subgenres. Check out Wikipedia and do a Google search to get a better feeling for this.