Magic Mutant Nightmare Girl, A Lolita Fashion Review

Disclaimer: This post is not sponsored. The novel was bought for the purposes of making an honest review. May contain spoilers.

Magic Mutant Nightmare Girl is a YA novel that has been posted a few times on the Lolita Updates Facebook group, so we decided to buy it and give it an honest review from the perspective of lolita fashion wearers. 

This post is a collaboration between a few members of this blog.

Story

It begins with Holly Roads and her best friend Chi Ho leaving a restaurant on her birthday. She remembers a prophecy from Chi Ho’s Nai Nai about avoiding alleyways. When Holly parts ways with Chi Ho, she encounters a pair of mutants and ends up killing one of them before fleeing home. 

The next day, a man named Michael Brannon shows up to her apartment after confirming she was involved with the mutant incident the previous night. She is then introduced to Nunez and later to Kyle and Doctor Laura who, along with Brannon, are all part of a secret government organization called N.E.R.D. that is responsible for creating a serum for soldiers to make them stronger and faster.

It is revealed that someone had broken into their lab on the same day the mutants had attacked Holly. Holly realizes that she is no longer fully human and agrees to help N.E.R.D.

 

This leads to a search around the city for the second mutant, a few sleepovers with the members of N.E.R.D. as they planned what to do, and a grand finale at a big lolita tea party.

Lolita Fashion Excerpts

Since Holly wears lolita fashion, we get to see a few instances where she tries to explain it and the culture surrounding the fashion. Let’s take a look at a few snippets to review how well it explains lolita.

First chapter where Holly and Chi Ho leave the restaurant they are at.

Chrysanthemum: The reaction from other people every 5 minutes is greatly exaggerated. I guess it is a way to set up expectations for how outlandish lolita may look.

Milk Tea: To me this section reads like a cross between an NLOG (Not Like Other Girls) blogpost and a Wikipedia article. To those who know about lolita fashion, this is all information we know. To people who don’t know about lolita fashion,  this is being blasted by a lot of information all at once which makes it hard to digest. 

After the encounter with the mutants, Holly arrives home, realizing her dress is ruined.

Chrysanthemum: I’m not sure a non-lolita would understand or even care about Puppet Circus. Surely though, it could be washed?

Milk Tea: Also is knowing the dress is from 2006 really relevant? People who know what Puppet Circus is are already impressed by Holly flaunting it. To other people a dress from 2006 just isn’t impressive.

Holly realizes her eyelids are more lavender than red when crying

Chrysanthemum: Okay, why Japanese tourists specifically? Maybe because of the location. I don’t know if San Francisco has a high population of Japanese tourists. I laughed. It reminds me of weebs thinking that any Japanese person’s opinion is gold.

Milk Tea: Plus the sprinkling of the Japanese terminology out of nowhere is pretty typical weeb behavior. 

Brannon and Holly are in her apartment when he starts commenting on her fashion style.

Chrysanthemum: I really don’t think anyone talks like this in real life. It breaks the immersion and I don’t quite agree with this explanation of lolita either.

Milk Tea: Again the author spirals into a Wikipedia post. It reminds me of how newbies tend to react to these kinds of accusations.  I know it feels like you’re being attacked when this happens, but going on a rant like this just makes you seem unhinged.

 

I’d also like to add that Holly contradicts herself here when she says “I’m not a bubble headed escapist” after previously saying that she wore lolita "to keep the world at bay to shield my porcelain heart". There’s nothing wrong with using lolita as some escape from daily life, every person has their own reason to wear lolita. you don’t have to validate yourself to anyone.

Lastly, since when has sweet lolita been connected to rave aesthetics??

Brannon wants to come along to the tea party Holly wants to attend and lure Hugo to.

Chrysanthemum: I can see this as a result of Holly’s jealousy causing her to think irrationally. She doesn’t want people to fawn over Brannon because she thinks he’s hot. Really though, lolitas are not like this unless you subscribe to the stereotypes of lolitas being mean bullies. It could be her anxiety talking.

Description of the tea party.

Milk Tea: This whole chapter really makes me wonder if the author has ever participated in a lolita event. The whole chapter reads like a Deerstalkers inspired parody of the lolita community. 

Chrysanthemum: I am very convinced that Holly is an unreliable narrator now. This is all the stereotypes of mean lolitas rolled up into one event. Regardless, it paints lolitas in such a negative light. I almost choked on the water I was drinking when I first read this.

Glossary

Chrysanthemum: EGL is not a formal name for lolita!

Milk Tea: I’m not sure all these terms were even mentioned in the book. Putting the glossary at the end also means that some of the terms have already been thoroughly explained while reading (Such as “Lolita Community”, “Headbow” or “Bonnet”.)

Reviews + Final Thoughts

Given that this is a Young Adult novel, what is everyone’s final thoughts on this novel? Would you recommend it to a non-lolita or a newbie? What age group would it be suitable for? Let’s take a look at what everyone thinks.

Chrysanthemum:

I read this novel with the expectation that it would involve magical girl elements, but I was wrong. Holly wears a fantastical fashion style and her Usakumya appears to talk sometimes, but there were rarely any things in it that made me think it included a sense of magic and whimsy that is often found in magical girl stories. It is just another fantasy YA novel, but it involves lolita as a way to gather an audience of readers.

Magical girl as a genre holds a special place in my heart as it embodies the idea that cuteness is not weakness. You can be strong while still looking cute and enjoying the things you love. It’s alright to be flawed and make mistakes. It’s important to have friends who can support each other and it’s okay to fall in love. 

Most notably, there should be a sense of justice that isn’t just based on the black and white thinking that all bad guys are bad and deserve it. This novel bothered me a lot because it seemed like Holly had little remorse for the people/mutant she killed. The random robber’s death in the first half was justified with a brief passage about his history of crime and fails to realize that he was human with so many other aspects to him.

Holly has her flaws, like most protagonists. However, she comes off as bratty and selfish without any redeeming qualities. She is completely unlikeable, often having moments that should make us want to sympathize with her, but ultimately failing and making it seem like she is going ‘woe is me’. While the mutant powers she has gave her physical strength, she doesn’t have any other strength besides being a complete asshole, especially to Brannon. She sexualizes him by thirsting over him throughout the book while also acting like a tsundere by denying her feelings for him. At no point did I see anything that seemed like she was nice to him. He comes off as mean because this story is told from her perspective and I got the impression that all these slights against her are in her head.

Her best friend Chi Ho also gave me a lot of pause. She is like the Asian best friend of the main character in a children’s cartoon. Her role in the story is to sit idly by while making sure her best friend is alright. I can’t help but think that her character is based on stereotypes. While some Chinese people do live in Chinatown, I find it a very odd location combined with her name. It gives off a fake Chinese name vibe much like Cho Chang. 

As for the lolita aspects, they are sprinkled in. It seemed like the lolita community and culture aspects are from the viewpoint of a newbie who still has negative stereotypes about lolitas as a group of mean girls who will gossip and compete with each other. These things are completely untrue based on my experience. I can see the appeal of this book towards a very young aspiring lolita who believes themselves to be special just like Holly, but overall I do not think it portrayed lolita in a positive light.

I can definitely see that this novel was a labour of love. No one who makes lolita content does it to get rich. They do so because of their love of the fashion. I’m a bit sad that it misses the mark for what I expected based on the marketing. I do appreciate that this was an effort to create another piece of lolita media for people to enjoy and that there is an audience who likes this type of story. I was a bit shocked at the negative Good Reads reviews for this book and had hoped to prove them wrong, but they were actually pretty reasonable criticisms after all.

Milk Tea: 

I haven’t read a young adult novel in years, but I used to enjoy them a lot when I was the target demographic. I was hoping to enjoy this novel as well but was sadly disappointed. The lolita aspect which is the “niche” the author chose to appeal to their audience is unfortunately lacking, be it the long winded explanations, overprotectiveness of the main character which makes every questioning of the fashion a direct attack or simply how our introduction to lolita is from a character who is very unlikeable.

While it appears that the author did attempt to investigate lolita fashion it does not feel like they have interacted with the community (And perhaps even actively dislike it like Holly seems to.) As someone who is a community admin and active in the community I have never encountered the “hierarchy” Holly mentions and only seen the level of cattiness she describes in anonymous online forums (Who’s participants may not even take part in the fashion.) I was hoping to see a novel that celebrates our fashion and which brings so many people together but I am afraid that a beginner lolita or someone unaware of the fashion at all will come away with an unbiased fear of our community after reading this novel.

As for the novel itself I found myself confused by descriptions and actions of the characters several times. From the unclear first sentence  "Chocolate icing stained my dress an hour before I got drenched in blue blood and a pinch of magic. When we stood to leave, I saw the blob and shrieked." to the time when Holly stops to describe her clothes while panicking and rushing out to find her phone to avoid being connected to a murder. The writing of the characters jumps between trying to act natural to speeches that are only heard on stage.

When it comes to the plot it feels like a generic “Teen gets superpowers and needs to save the world from an evil organization”. The one interesting plot twist is there for drama and not an actual plot twist, while the “true mastermind” is hardly introduced as a character (And even outright dismissed as a possibility.) until after their reveal. The “romantic drama” is compressed to an “Is he gay?” question and a crush which the author spoils before even beginning the story as part of their “trigger warnings”.

The novel also felt unnecessarily “woke” to a point of being slightly offensive. Every character's sexuality and race is described even if it has no connection to the plot (For example, do we really need to know that the mutant is of Pacific Island heritage?) and Holly's attraction to Brannon only seems to really bloom once she assumes his sexuality and decides he isn't straight, as if she can only allow herself to be attracted to LGBTQ+ people. I also feel like the amount of gore makes the novel inappropriate for a younger audience while older audiences might feel spoken down to. 

To add a nicer note, I really enjoyed the ending imagery of Usakumya falling out of the helicopter and reflecting the falling scene from Kamikaze Girls. This was the kind of wink to lolita fashion that I was hoping to see throughout the book and it’s a shame it only happens once towards the end.

In short, I did not find this novel enjoyable. The target audience is unclear. I would not recommend it to people who are unfamiliar or new to the fashion as it does not do a good job of introducing lolita or the community and veteran lolitas will find the long explanations tiring and the plot disconnected from the lolita aesthetic. 

We hope you enjoyed this honest review and please remember that this is just the opinions of some of the writers of this blog. We do encourage people to read it themselves!