Anubi's response to The Team Shoujo Formula- Unoriginal?

Why do mahou shoujo team shows constantly include five people? Because five is a good number. You can still keep track of the characters, but have a bit of personality variety. It's modelled after the Sentai shows. Think Power Rangers, they traditionally had five member teams. The characters do usually come in 5 stereotypes: Bubbly leader, snobbish person, bookworm, aloof character, and hyper character, but again, that helps viewers remember the characters. I'm not condoning it, but remember the target audience is usually younger girls. The thing is, mahou shoujo shows usually aren't meant to have a large continuous plot. Most of the episodes are one-shot, monster of the day type things. You could play them in pretty much any order, with the exception of new team members and new attacks. They follow a monster-of-the-week format. Pretty Sammy makes fun of this all the time. Two of the shows you mentioned are American shows, W.I.T.C.H and Winx Club. They pretty much ripped off from the magical girl stereotype, and thus are more cliched than others. They take the major parts of mahou shoujo and don't invent much that's new. But there are plenty of mahou shoujo shows that break some of these stereotypes, and plenty have fewer than five people. Futari wa Pretty Cure, Figure 17, Magic Knight Rayearth, Magical Girl Pretty Sammy, Wedding Peach, and Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch all feature 3 girls or less as far as I know. Girls are chosen for the tasks, but if some random guy asked an ordinary girl if she wanted to fight, the girl would probably think he's nuts. But there are shows in which the characters debate being magical girls. In Figure 17, Tsubasa has a huge inferiority complex, and constantly feels she is too weak to be of any use. After one of the characters on whom she is emotionally dependent dies, she falls into a deep depression. DD doesn't want Tsubasa to fight either, but he admitted he needed her. In Magic Knight Rayearth, the girls have doubts about their actions. In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Nanoha is constantly thinking about if she's doing the right thing. Even in Tokyo Mew Mew, Zakuro considers running away. In Pretty Cure, they get their powers by pure luck. Same with Tsubasa, DD's ship crashes into the forest behind her house. The Chimera Animals are similar to the Youma, yes. But the Youma were only in one arc of SM, not the entire series, the other types of monsters operate and form differently- while the Seven Great Youma were reincarnated as humans (appearing during Zoicite's reign as immediate villain), Jadeite and Nephrite's youma were independant monsters; Kunzite had his youma possess humans to gain a tactical advantage against the girls. Meanwhile, the Daimons, created by Tohmo in Sailor Moon S, didn't possess anybody. Not all the generic monster of the week enemies operate the same way, even Rayearth had a monster of the week theme during Ascot's assault against them, and his attacks were fairly sneaky after the direct approach failed. Evil empresses are a pretty good choice for a villain because they're evil, they're in a seat of power, and they're girls. They're also good for fanservice. If you want a different kind of mahou shoujo, look at Rayearth, Figure 17, or Cardcaptor Sakura.