Clearandsweet is very much of the opinion that a Magical Girl ever using a sword would violate the Genre’s unwritten rules and betray its underlying moral ethos. He loves citing a scene from Hugtto Pretty Cure to prove this point and it is a big part of his criticisms of Sailor Moon Crystal, Eternal and Cosmos and the original Manga compared to the 90s Anime.
Interestingly the people I’ve seen most vocally express disapproval of Magical Girl Anime taking away the swords these Magical Girls had in their original Shoujo Manga source material are women, like the ladies at the Love And Justice Podcast or Aishyo in her recent video on Wedding Peach.
Frankly I also see a weird cognitive dissonance in Clearandsweet being so symbolically opposed to Magical Girls using Swords when he made over 24 hours of content arguing Madoka Magica is the most Platonically Ideal Magical Girl show with it’s very bombastic love of Gunplay.
I am a Pro-Gun Rights Leftist, I understand that weapons themselves are not the problem, only how they are used ever is.
Likewise yes Jesus said “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword” but he also said “he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one” and “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”.
Yoda said in Empire Strikes Back that a Jedi uses his Lightsaber for defense never to attack, that’s what makes a Sword Wielding Magical Girl different from a sword wielding villain or antihero.
Let’s be real here, pretending Magical Girl Warriors are using totally purely pacifist methods to resist evil just because they often lack the symbols of violence seen in Shounen and Seinen Anime and American Action Movies is silly. They are always fighting, they are violently resisting the enemies who threaten their world, that’s literally what the Warrior part of the subgenre’s name means.
Magical Girl Warriors are supposed to be in part Hyper Feminine Knights, that’s the imagery the word Senshi is supposed to evoke. Sailor Venus’s Sword is because she is the Moon Princess’s loyal Knight. Cure Sword in Doki Doki Pretty Cure is also a Knight.
The real reason swords, especially realistic looking swords like the one in the Sailor Moon Manga, were not allowed in the Anime versions is because they were heavily merchandised Toy Factories, Japanese parents did not want their kids playing with realistic looking weapons. When Wedding Peach did their DX OVAs they were no longer driven by the child friendly merchandising and were thus now given swords and even a gun.
Hugtto Pretty Cure had the same series director as the first 5 cours of the 90s Sailor Moon Anime Junichi Sato. But in between there was one more unambiguous Magical Girl Warrior show he directed, Pretear, it was geared a bit older and was a single cour so this time he did not take aware her Wind Sword, he could have, other things were changed from the Manga for that Anime, but he did not object to the Sword even though it would have been very easy to come up with a different Wind Elemental attack.
So I don’t think that sword based plot point in Hugtto was intended to defend how he adapted Sailor Moon, that sword represents something very specific in that context but it is not a statement about Swords in this genre as a whole.
But I also do not think a man like Sato get to decide what is and is not allowed in a genre first and foremost meant for young girls.
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