Left to right: Alex, Nut, Daisy
Magical Girl Friendship Squad is a short-lived 2020 animated series, and the first original program of Syfy's TZGZ block.
Parodying the Magical Girl genre, the show stars Quinta Brunson and Anna Akana as Alex and Daisy, two millennials who are tasked by Nut (a goddess in red panda form) to save the universe from an evil otherworldly being.
This show contains examples of:
- Adjective Noun Fred: Owing to its Affectionate Parody of Magical Girl anime, the title is formatted as such, if you take apart "magical" and "girl" instead of using it as one phrase. Either way, it counts.
- Affectionate Parody: Of typical Magical Girl series.
- Animesque: Being a parody of magical girl shows, the show employs an anime-influenced art style.
- Ass Shove: Nut provides magical exposition on her backstory to Alex and Daisy... by way of having them put their fingers in her butthole.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!:
- While talking with his boss over his watch, Corvin gets distracted by seeing vegan muffins in the cafe window right before he turns back and apologies.
- Daisy is shown to have a pretty short attention span while discussing the villains' main company with Nut while taking numerous pictures of the latter for her Instagram page.
- Berate and Switch: When Nut watches reality TV:Nut: Oh, this is horrible! ...I love it!
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In Episode 4:Daisy: I have never once seen Lulu laugh. Is she about to evict us? (gasp) Or kill us? (gasp) Or evict us and then kill us?!
- Break Them by Talking: The Mushruminations relentlessly undermine the self-esteem of their hosts. They come from a universe full of beings with endless pride and are meant to balance that out. In a normal world where everyone has issues, however, it results in chaos in less than a day.
- Butch Lesbian: Daisy wears mostly masculine clothing aside from her superhero outfit, contrasting with her pink-haired ex-girlfriend.
- Catch-22 Dilemma: Alex is told that she needs several years of barista experience to become a barista. She immediately lampshades that there's no way anyone could be a barista by that standard.
- The Chosen Zero: Alex and Daisy, by their own admission, can barely take care of themselves, and a misunderstanding leads Nut to choose them to be the defenders of the universe. It later turns out she picked them more or less at random and simply spun a line about their importance to get them to cooperate.
- Crazy Enough to Work: Daisy offers to send the Mushruminations back to their home universe, even though she admits to Alex she's just winging it and has no idea if it will work. Surprisingly, they do manage to open a portal. However, they forgot that they have no idea what universe the Mushruminations come from, so they just banished them to some random universe.
- Disposing of a Body: Corpse removal is explicitly averted, so the girls have to dispose of the Monsters of the Week's bodies themselves. Their first time they chop up the body and put it through the garbage disposal.
- Evil, Inc.: Aggregon is a corporation that serves as a front for the villains, who are using it to gather energy through exploiting humans.
- Evil Mentor: Veerus offers Alex the position of her assistant after Alex and Daisy have a falling out with Nut. Only later does Alex find out Veerus is trying to destroy the universe.
- The Evils of Free Will: Nut's sister created a copy of Earth where no one has free will and everyone lives boring, scheduled lives.
- Exposition Beam: A bizarre example: Nut magically sucks the girls' fingers into her butthole to project images of her history to them.
- Fat and Skinny: Alex is a Big Beautiful Woman, while Daisy is a more noodly tomboy.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Nut is a goddess, but appears as a red panda to avoid freaking out humans and drawing unwanted attention.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: In Episode 4, you can see the following written on Corvin's whiteboard:Idea: Why horse milk is objectively best
What's a bighonkk, anyways?
Earth: flat?? - Hate Plague: The Mushruminations can cause two or more of their victims to get into pity-party arguments with each other.
- Hearing Voices: An evil example. In episode 4, Alex gets an infection from a supernatural plant monster that causes her to sprout talking mushrooms all over her body, which only she can see and hear. Nut identifies them as "Mushruminations", a type of parasite that feeds on stress. They quickly spread by skin contact. The infection can be cured by confidence, and there's a queen that controls all the others.
- Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Daisy reveals that she writes fanfiction of Scully hooking up with a female alien named "Daisy".
- Hormone-Addled Teenager: When Nut was the divine equivalent of this, she created a world of perpetual teenagers that were just as emo, and even more horned up. When they became obsessed with her she left, but they planted scouts on worlds across the universe to find her. They get appeased when introduced to the concept of fanfiction.
- Human Resources: The villains' company, Aggregon, exploits humans as resources for their goals. They use monsters from other universes to steal human life energy, abduct people infuriated by their clickbait articles so they can harness their outrage to power robots, and collect eggs from their own employees under false pretenses to use as base material for mutant soldiers.
- I Am Not Weasel: A Running Gag involves Nut often being mistaken for a raccoon when she's in fact a red panda.
- Invisible to Normals: Only the hosts of the Mushruminations can see and hear the little creatures on their body. Nut can see them, being a goddess, but can't hear them. The ones that are growing on inanimate objects, however, are visible and audible to everyone.
- Limited Animation: Often pops up in the non-action scenes. For example, when Daisy is summoning various items with her magic bong at one point, she turns around exactly like a Paper Mario character.
- Lipstick Lesbian: The sweet, affectionate pink-haired doctor in Episode 4 is Daisy's ex-girlfriend.
- Magical Girl Warrior: Alex and Daisy become magical girl warriors after Nut grants them powers.
- Marriage of Convenience: Daisy complains that she'd have healthcare if Alex had gone along with her idea of getting married so they could share one plan. Daisy's ex-girlfriend had the same thought, but actually wanted to get married.
- Misapplied Phlebotinum: In the second episode, the girls use their powers to conjure a bunch of fake celebrity paraphernalia to sell online, as opposed to gold, jewels, or anything else of actual value they could sell for far more.
- Morph Weapon: The girls' transformation objects are also their weapons in battle. Alex's birth control becomes a Killer Yoyo while Daisy's bong, Bong Selleck, becomes a mace. Once transformed, they can alter their weapons to whatever they happen to need at the moment, such as a hose or flashlight.
- Nemesis as Customer: Corvin repeatedly demands horse milk with his coffee despite the poor barista telling him again and again that that is not a thing.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Nut nearly tells Alex that Veerus is the true Big Bad, but Daisy interrupts to point out how Nut manipulated them, souring Alex on Nut's help for the time being and allowing Veerus to manipulate Alex into taking Corvin's recently vacated post.
- "No. Just… No" Reaction: Daisy's reaction to the extremely revealing outfits that she and Alex have once transformed.
- Non-Nude Bathing: After being affected by the Mushruminations, both Daisy and Alex shower with their clothes on.
- Old Shame: In-Universe and Downplayed; Nut is a little embarrassed to have created a world informed by her angsty, horny and immature self, but still deeply loves her creations.
- Powerful and Helpless: Nut can grant powers to others in her red panda form, but otherwise can't directly use her godlike powers as long as she remains on Earth.
- Really Gets Around: Daisy has apparently slept with every barista at the coffee shop, and doesn't even remember their names.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The carefree Daisy and the more sensible Alex, respectively.
- Shower of Angst: Daisy ends up sitting in the shower tearfully as the Mushruminations continue to grow on her body.
- Sissy Villain: Corvin is clearly Laughably Evil and Camp Gay.
- Sleep-Mode Size: On Earth, Goddess Nut chooses the form of a red panda, as does her sister.
- The Stoner: Daisy, who chooses her bong modeled and named after Tom Selleck as her Transformation Trinket.
- Stripperific: The magical girls' initial outfits were designed by Nut and they look like something out of a cross between Kill la Kill and Cutie Honey. Alex and Daisy are both mortified and cold, so they quickly put on some extra layers before fighting. They alter the costumes to be more modest for subsequent transformations.Alex: We look like we're playing figure skaters in a porno!
- Take That!: A group of Straw Misogynist men harassing a young girl wear shirts saying "Gamergate", "Pepe" and "Anime" respectively. They're also all drawn as overweight and riddled with acne.
- Terrible Interviewees Montage: When Alex and Daisy leave her, Nut goes door-to-door in their apartment building to try and find new guardians. It does not go successfully.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Daisy is the tomboy while Alex is the girly girl.
- Transformation Trinket: Alex uses a birth control pill container, while Daisy uses a bong.
- Weirdness Censor: Aside from an ominous figure remotely tracking her, no one notices Nut the talking red panda. Neither does anyone note the girls' outfits and fights with monsters. In fact, a completely unrelated bystander is given credit for their first victory once everyone recovers, because he happened to stick his legs out and trip her as he was waking up.
- Wingding Eyes: Nut gains stars in her eyes as she becomes engrossed with Reality TV.
- You Have Failed Me: Veerus fires Corvin for allowing Alex and Daisy to derail his egg freezing program.
