Life in Peace City is, well, peaceful. Sure, there's the occasional monster attack, but that's what the city's Magical Girls are for. Practically celebrities, these girls have obtained popularity untold, both at work and in school.
Which is where the world's image of magical girls is harshly subverted, as in that at school, they're alpha bitches to the extreme.
A pair of sisters, Julie and Callie, discover this the hard way, by each becoming the magical girls' designated targets. While the stress on their lives is hard, the two of them manage to get by... until Julie is murdered, and Callie has immense reason to suspect the magical girls. On that day, she declares war against the magical girls of Peace City. Her mission: discovering the truth behind Julie's murder - and killing the magical girls along the way.
Miss Guillotine
is a Korean Webtoon written by Gaje and drawn by stego.
This webcomic provides examples of:
- Adults Are Useless:
- Granted, most of the characters never even attempt to tell an adult authority figure what's going on, but the ones who do appear aren't very helpful to anyone:
- Hailey's parents evidently allowed her to get massive plastic surgery that made her virtually unrecognizable as a young teenager, something both dangerous and extremely detrimental to a young person's self-image and mental health.
- Sue's parents are uninterested her in any capacity except her accomplishments so they can show off how successful she is and her father even sweeps her murder under the rug and refuses to investigate because it would reflect poorly on his company.
- Mint's older sister obviously cares about her and tries to help her out when she knows Mint might be in danger, but even then she fails to warn Mint that the teacher she has a crush on is a known sexual predator even after Mint asked specifically about said teacher and chose to transfer schools just to be near him.
- Other characters' parents only barely appear so their parenting style can't be commented upon, but all of them are aware that their daughters are magical girls who go out to face dangerous monsters with regularity, and that at least one magical girl has died in the line of duty, but none of them are shown to put up any resistance to the lifestyle their children lead, probably because of the money they bring in. Same for the TV producers and other companies that exploit the girls commercially.
- The teachers and administration of Peace High also mostly don't appear, but they seem especially useless considering the godawful bullying going on every day that nobody seems interested in stopping. The only teacher with a major role is Mr. Park, and the fact that he's a known sex offender who preys on his teenage students apparently didn't stop anyone from hiring him and letting him continue to teach young girls.
- Police Are Useless: Though police are said to be investigating the murders, nothing ever comes of this. You'd think that they would at least stake out the high school where people keep dying, but nope. Apparently they're content to let magical girls handle all public safety matters, even when said magical girls start turning up dead.
- Alpha Bitch: The manhwa might as well be called Alpha Bitch: The Magical Girl Version. We get traditional versions like Hailey and Jina and later Terrie and an Academic Alpha Bitch in Sue.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: Hailey is of course a massive subversion. Ivy, the original magical girl of beauty, is a genuinely good and nice person along with being beautiful. The ways that this trope and Beauty Is Bad intersect is one of the themes of the comic, which emphasizes "Beauty will always have its advocates" no matter how good or terrible the person behind the beauty actually is.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
- Most of the magical girls except Sarah, Ivy, Ara, and later Bori, but Terrie stands out as the biggest example.
- Somi of the side story isn't an actual magical girl, but as Prism Snow she appears to be a dedicated champion of justice who relentlessly beats the shit out of Choa, the supposedly evil Black Crone Queen.
- Bittersweet Ending:
- The main story ends on a more "Sweet" note. Everyone in the cast except for Sarah, Ivy, and Ara are dead. Callie's killed Terrie, but Callie pulls a Suicide by Cop by the magical girls of other cities come to stop her. The truth of Peace High is revealed, and all of the girls who were complicit in the bullying that went on are exposed and humiliated. However, Sarah's grown from the experience and is the new Revelator. There's a new magical girl, Bori, but she's avoiding the spotlight at Sarah's orders and works as an urban legend called "Magical Girl X."
- The extra story ends on a more "Bitter" note. Somi is exposed as a fake and a bully by Choa, thanks to Choa being temporarily empowered by Sarah with illusion abilities. Ara posts evidence proving Somi was never Magical Girl X, and the TV station is humiliated by the scandal. However, Somi's determined to claw her way back to fame for the sake of "her sense of justice" and is already getting noticed again. Bori herself is left somewhat disenchanted when she sees how the people who cheered Somi on as Prism Snow are happy that she's been exposed as a fraud.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: While most of the antagonists are unambiguously terrible people, those who are on the side of good are still very flawed people, especially Callie. Even nice people like Julie and Sarah have unintentionally caused harm. And that's not to mention that not everyone in the magical girl posse aren't completely bad.
- Body Motifs: Eyes are a constantly-seen symbol in the story, representing the voyeuristic existence the magical girls lead. Whenever someone does something that will make someone judge them negatively, the others characters are drawn with huge, empty eyes and no other facial features.
- Compelling Voice: Callie, a revelator whose thoughts are heard in the heads of magical girls.
- Everyone Has Standards: While the female students of Peace High are generally shown to be opportunistic bullies and hangers-on who will turn on anybody they can at the drop of a hat, the male students who rarely appear are shown to be far more empathetic to Terrie, when Jina humiliates her by stripping her down and throwing her into a classroom full of boys.
- Frilly Upgrade: Whenever a magical girl "Awakens", she gains a spiffy, new outfit.
- Genre Throwback: Ivy's eyes are distinctively drawn to resemble a character from a vintage shoujo manga such as Dear Brother or Glass Mask.
- Hard Truth Aesop: By the very end of the series, it discusses how the concepts of beauty and justice are social constructs. Anyone can convince themselves that they are right above everyone else, but at the end of the day, no one really knows what "justice" truly is.
- Hate Sink:
- Jina, the previous fire magical girl, had absolutely no redeemable qualities. She was a vicious bully and a two-faced liar who victimized Terrie and turned her into a nervous wreck. It is impossible to feel sorry for her after Julie removed her powers and she died, since Jina's bullying is what transformed Terrie into the true Big Bad of the series.
- The faceless classmates who support the horrible actions of Hailey and the other magical girls exist to be this trope, since they're repeatedly there to serve as mindless, asskissing groupies who'll eagerly turn on the magical girls if they think they have an excuse for it. The end of main series implies all of them were humiliated pretty badly when the truth of Peace High came out. One girl is seen giving testimony about the awful things Hailey and the others did, only for the reporter to then ask the girl what she and the other girls did in response to the bullying. Suddenly the girl doesn't feel like talking.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Of a sort. Kayla sacrifices her reputation and career to use her broadcasting time to expose Mint for spreading false rumors about Callie having sex with her teacher. Callie is visibly shaken and brought to tears when she realizes Kayla sacrificed everything she worked hard for to try and help someone else. Kayla later dies as Genuine Beauty fighting against Sophie, and allows Callie to use her as a scapegoat so she'll be blamed for Guillotine's murders.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Hailey espouses that "Beauty will always have its advocates" when she bullies Kayla and treats her like crap. And then she sees people supporting Kayla, and Hailey suddenly realizes that logic isn't reserved solely for her.
- If I Can't Have You…: Mint kills Mr. Park, the teacher she has unrequited love for. Subverted, as it wasn't because Mint couldn't have Park. It's because she discovered he was a child molester and most likely killed him out of self defense.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: Several of the magical girls suffer from this. Hailey looks down on others partly as a result of her own unattractive past. Chloe acts like this towards Sue in an attempt to cover her intense jealousy over Sue's swimming achievements, given that Chloe herself was a champion swimmer who had to give it up thanks to the phobia of water Sue inflicted on her.
- Magic Plastic Surgery: Hailey, formerly Michelle, goes through extensive plastic surgery to make herself look like a "proper" Illuminaty Beauty. Which somehow makes her slimmer, taller, changes her eye shape, and changes her body proportions.
- Make Way for the Princess: Hailey is accompanied by her mean girl posse at all times. No one will dare cross the most popular girl at school.
- Mean Character, Nice Actor: In-universe, the side story has poor Choa who ends up getting cast as the Black Crone Queen in the fake magical girl battles. Due to Somi's popularity as the fake Prism Snow, the TV studio decides to keep Choa as the villain despite the initial plan to have her be "redeemed."
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: It eventually turns out, despite Sarah seeming like she's this trope, among the magical girls Sophie fills this role. There was no specific reason why Terrie felt Sophie should be Ice Heart. They simply needed more one girl and told Julie to pick anyone.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Julie realizes far too late that Michelle was not truly beautiful on the inside. She suffered an even bigger version of this after realizing Callie was being bullied by Hailey and the others, and then recalled them talking about some "Ungrateful girl" with Julie cheerfully stating a person like that needs to learn their place.
- Nice Character, Mean Actor: In-universe in the side story there is Somi as the fake magical girl Prism Snow. To the viewing audience she's a champion of justice delivering punishment to the evil Black Crone Queen. The truth is Somi's a shameless opportunist and vicious little monster eagerly beating the shit out of Choa because she knows she can get away with it.
- Nice Girl: Ivy, previously called Daisy Nova, is one of the few legitimately kind and decent magical girls in the city, and she was able to not let her fame go to her head like the most of the others.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Choa fell for Somi's sob story and convinced their agency to give the magical girl role to her instead. Choa bitterly states this was perhaps the worst mistake she ever made after the constant abuse she's suffered at Somi's hands.
- Playing the Victim Card: Terrie gets Callie to become her unwilling ally by crying about how Julie ruined her life and the lives of the other magical girls, starting from when she empowered Jina. It's later revealed Terrie deliberately neglected to mention Julie wouldn't have empowered Hailey and the others if Terrie hadn't convinced her to do so for all the wrong reasons, being the actual person who ruined their lives.
- Redeeming Replacement: Bori, the new magical girl introduced in the side story, is by far a more genuinely heroic and well-meaning person than Hailey and most of the other girls were. It helps she was chosen by Sarah.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Hailey's eyes are apparently naturally red, which indicates her true nature as a cruel bully. Other characters are drawn with red eyes when they are scheming or judging someone.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Chloe and Sue respectively. Chloe is the hot-headed Coil Gold while Sue is the cold and distant Aqua Prussian.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Mint tells everyone that Callie and Mr. Park are having sex as revenge because she thinks Callie flirted with him. She didn't learn until it was too late that Park is a child molester and has had sex with students at his old school, which is where Mint's sister used to attend.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Ara quit being a magical girl out of disgust towards Julie taking away Jina's powers while they were fighting a monster and leading to her death. Ara later comes to realize she could've stopped Jina from dying had she done something to protect her, but didn't.
- Shout-Out: Ivy and Ara appear to have been visually modeled after Shion Sonozaki from Higurashi: When They Cry and Yuno Gasai from Future Diary. This is Dramatic Irony at its finest, as Shion and Yuno are widely considered to be two of the most unstable girls in Japanese fiction, while Ivy and Ara are considerably the most morally, emotionally, and mentally sound women in the cast.
- Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics: With bullying being so rampant at the school, many of these tactics have been used. Almost every main character has been the subject of nasty rumors.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Putting the power of deciding who becomes a magical girl in the hands of a young child who has a similarly childish sense of justice and responsibility goes about as well as you expect it would.
- Tiger Versus Dragon: Chloe and Sue's Red Oni, Blue Oni dynamic causes the two to clash over even the most minor of problems. Chloe represents the hot-headed and passionate tiger. Sue is the calm and logical dragon.
- Token Evil Teammate: Sue and Terrie, although Sue is a much more obvious example in that even her own teammates dislike her. Terrie ultimately proves to be worse long after Sue dies.
- Token Good Teammate:
- Sarah, the Magical Girl of Justice. After Julie's death, she wants to go confess their role immediately, and tries again after Hailey is murdered. She's the only survivor because she was this trope.
- Sophie later becomes one when she dies trying to protect Sarah from Callie and Kayla.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Julie, dear God. The entire plot would never have happened if she hadn't made the mistake of empowering Jina as a magical girl and then tried to make up for it at the worst possible time. This made Jina's bullying of Terrie worse and shaped her into becoming a sociopathic manipulator, and gave Terrie the chance to guilt Julie into turning her into a magical girl.
- The woman on the plane who gave Julie her power of Revelation is an even more unwitting instigator. She was just trying to save a child's life, and in the end the power Julie gained ruined and ended many more lives.
- Unwitting Pawn: Callie used Kayla to get to Hailey. Even after Kayla learns how Callie ruined her life for her revenge, Kayla still wants to help her.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Kayla doesn't hesitate to chew Callie out when she realizes how far Callie went to use her to destroy Hailey.
