Fairydeficient

Pink leader is a recent development (as in the original magical girls were not always pink), but it’s the same reason Barbie clothes are predominately pink. People in charge think little girls like pink.

Magical girls with non-pink main characters/”leaders”:

Pretear - dress sphere so she gets multiple outfits/colors

Sailor Moon - blue/magenta

Ultra Maniac - red (green, blue, pink accents)

Princess Tutu - white

Uta Kata - dress sphere so she gets multiple outfits/colors

Cardcaptor Sakura - multiple outfits/colors

Creamy Mami - purple/yellow

Cutie Honey - Red

Ground Defense Mao-chan - Red/Green (pink hair tho)

Magical Emi - Purple/Blue/Yellow

Magic Knight Rayearth - Red

Sally the Witch - Red

Fancy Lala - I think it’s blue? It’s been a while, I could be wrong with this one.

Minky Momo - Red/Blue (pink hair tho)

Day Break Illusion - Red/Orange

Fantasista Doll - main girl is red, and then the “main doll” is yellow.

Vividred Operation - red

Choujigen Game Neptune: The Animation - purple

Panty & Stocking - Red/Pink & Blue (one has pink in her hair, but it’s predominately purple)

Futari Wa Precure - Cure Black has pink accents but she transforms at the same exact time as Cure White who is white/blue

This isn’t actually the only reason - the colour coding goes way further than just the Pink leader, it actually also goes into the Blue/Purple characters.

In Japanese stories, Heroes were often colour coded as ‘red’ or a colour in the ‘red’ range (red, orange, pink, an so on). Our Japanese culture tutor at school explained them as ‘bright, loud, energy filled ‘genki’ characters’, and it goes much farther than just Mahou Shoujo. Look at One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Fairy Tail, KuroBasu, and more - their fiery lead character will rep either red or orange somewhere as their main colour. 

For the BLUE characters, they tend to be either rivals or opposites (usually an ally in some way) to the red characters - cool, calm, collected, there to balance out and CHALLENGE the red characters to help them grow. The colours range from deep blue (Fairy Tail, Naruto, KuroBasu, Bleach) to blue-purple (common in Pretty Cure series, purple tends to be a bit of a lone horse, blue is OFTEN a cool type).

For me, it’ll always be Haruka and Michiru from Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon.

Even when I didn’t knew about sapphic love (or LGBT+ stuff in general), I knew that these two had a thing going on. Plus, it’s funny to see the random innuendos between them (plus, I totally believe that Michiru is the dom).

Another detail that I like about them is that everyone is in love with these two, but they get a tad bit frustrated because they’re already taken (by eachother, that is!)

Not to mention that their relationship pretty much evolves into a polyamory with Setsuna after adopting Hotaru; this is an ideal goal for me.

And may I also mention that I didn’t grew up with the gross and incestuous censored version? These two are not cousins, goddamnit!