The Sailor Moon Phenomenon: Love! Valor! Compassion! Middie Blouses!
Ever wonder why a cartoon aimed at teenage Japanese girls would literally circle the globe, embraced by fans from Boston to Brussels to Brazil? Wonder no more.
Until 1992, Naoko Takeuchi was one shojo manga cartoonist among hundreds, trying to break out of the pack with something unique. She had done several successful series for Nakayoshi magazine between 1986 and 1991, when she got a nibble on her line with a schoolgirl superhero comic titled Code Name Sailor V. This superhero had a few flaws, certainly nothing uncommon for a fourteen-year-old. However, Takeuchi took her next heroine even further out of the heroic mold, playing up the flaws. Enter the oversleeping, overeating, whiny, klutzy crybaby who has to save the world, keep up with her homework, and chase after a boyfriend: Sailor Moon.
Why did Sailor Moon became as big an international hit as it did? Certainly the animated version accounts for some of its popularity, since even the more pedestrian scenes (pedestrian to those who already know anime) have something interesting, while the stand-out sequences are stunning. But great visuals have been around for a long time. That’s not enough of a reason.
The fact that the animated and print versions appeared at the same time was a daring marketing move—daring, but not unprecedented.1 This, however, is not a sufficient reason.
It’s no coincidence that the rise of Sailor Moon occurred along with the rise of the Internet. Fans of anime in general, and of the series in particular, had a new and expansive venue in which to compare notes. But this in itself is not the answer.
Sailor Moon has been compared with another television series aimed at roughly the same demographic—Buffy the Vampire Slayer—as a prime example of a female empowerment fantasy. But the same argument could be made for other American television series, as far back as the situation comedy Bewitched, which was very popular in Japan and helped give rise to the entire “magical girl” genre, of which Sailor Moon is a prime example. There’s more to it than that.
To give the series its full title, Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon (Beautiful Young Girl Warrior Sailor Moon) was essentially the first shojo anime broadcast in the West. There were other series broadcast in the ’80s that were meant to balance out the more macho anime like Mach Go Go Go (known in the West as Speed Racer), Go Lion (translated as Voltron), and the Macross/Robotech episodes. The Nickelodeon cable network showed such kinder, gentler fare as Belle and Sebastian, Maya the Bee, and an anime series based on Saint-Exupéry’s classic book Le Petit Prince. Still, these were targeted more at a grade-school audience, not aimed at teenage girls.
Sailor Moon for all practical purposes perfected the formula Dr. Tezuka developed in Princess Knight. It strikes a balance between romance and action, often relying on humor as the glue to hold the two very different halves together. (For comparison’s sake, Please Save My Earth has lots of action and lots of romance, but in its animated version is almost entirely humorless. And the humor in Fushigi Yugi is more disorienting to a Western audience, since it isn’t driven by the inherent flaws of the characters but by “super-deformed” caricatures.) The humor element also takes much of the edge off of the proceedings, so that this series empowers without threatening to take anything away from anyone. Its international popularity is due, I believe, to this ability to be the best of several possible genres.
The Rising of the Moon
The story takes place in Azabu Juban, a real, present-day Tokyo neighborhood. It’s home to the Tsukino family, including their teenage daughter Usagi. Usagi is hardly a role model: perennially late to school, too lazy to study and subsequently always in trouble for bad grades, constantly snacking and arguing with her little brother. In anime’s long and rich tradition of “magical girl” heroines, Usagi would definitely seem to be an unlikely candidate—until the day she encounters a black cat with a crescent-shaped mark on its forehead. The cat tells her to defend her friend Naru against an attack by a monster. True to the tradition, she’s told to say a few magic words, which transform her into . . . a superpowered klutzy crybaby. All of Usagi’s flaws stay with her, but somehow she saves the day. Then she learns that this was no accident, and that the whole story started a thousand years ago on the moon. . . .
This chapter borrows its title from a play by Terrence McNally, and although there’s absolutely nothing in common between the story of Sailor Moon and AIDS (the subject of McNally’s play), the titular virtues of the play sum up Takeuchi’s work as well as can be done in three words.
Love
The world of a pubescent girl is a magical country in and of itself: little wonder that this demographic seems to take pride of place in Hayao Miyazaki’s films. Whatever else happens, a girl’s sexual/romantic awakening is waiting in the wings, and this has been featured for years in numerous manga and anime, sometimes innocently, sometimes pornographically, and occasionally in a gray zone between the two.2 In fact, in 1995, during the fourth season of Sailor Moon’s anime broadcast, a fifteen-minute theatrical special touched on the romantic awakening of one of the Sailor Senshi, the bookish and very unromantic Mizuno Ami.
Usagi’s awakening is taking place when the series begins; in fact, she has something of an embarrassment of riches, being drawn first to the owner of a video game parlor, then to the older and somewhat mysterious Chiba Mamoru. Although at first he seldom has a kind word for her, criticizing everything from her grades to her hairdo, they become more than just crime-fighting allies (he joins the long line of masked heroes as Tuxedo Kamen). Just as Usagi is the rebirth of Moon Princess Serenity, Mamoru is the rebirth of Earth Prince Endymion. They were in love a thousand years ago, when Queen Beryl’s forces interrupted their happiness, and their meeting in twentieth-century Tokyo is the fulfillment of destiny. As the theme song says, “Onaji kuni ni umareta no /Miracle Romance” (Being born in the same country / Is a Miracle Romance).
Valor
Valor and Usagi hardly belong in the same sentence. This girl panics if she forgets her lunch. She would hardly seem to be a match for the procession of absurd, downright surreal monsters she has to fight.
And yet that seems to be the point. Usagi can’t help having been the Moon Princess in a previous life, and now that she’s stuck with it, she has to find the courage to do what needs to be done (which is, after all, just another way of saying giri). This is a more realistic object lesson for the audience anyway—very few of us will inherit superpowers, but all of us find ourselves in predicaments that we’re not entirely sure we can get out of.
Compassion
Some anime hero shows (notably The Guyver) have villains with no real personality, and sometimes not even a real name. Hence, they’re lined up and cut down in quick order. This doesn’t make for much exercise of a yasashii spirit. Sailor Moon has two classes of villains: the absurd monsters and the thinking, feeling humans. They may not be of this Earth, and they may do incredibly evil things, but they’re still human. Along the way, not all of them get destroyed; some are even redeemed. Giving the villains scope to exercise their feelings is very common for anime and manga, just as it’s almost unheard of in the West.
Take, for example, a memorable subplot from the first season. In a bad case of crossed wires, a minion of Queen Beryl named Nephrite assumes that Usagi’s friend Naru (aka Molly) is, if not Sailor Moon herself, somehow connected to Sailor Moon. Cultivating her friendship (in the dub, under the ridiculously soap-opera name Maxfield Stanton), Nephrite is amazed by her self-sacrificing spirit; she deliberately steps into the path of the Moon Tiara that would have vaporized Nephrite.
Naru’s compassionate gesture has its effect on Nephrite; later on Naru makes a joke and he laughs. This would have been beyond him in the past, but love is turning him human. Beryl has to dispatch other minions to kill Nephrite, out of fear he’ll go over to the enemy. The death is a clean and pretty one, in the shojo manga tradition, with Neph-rite dissolving into starlight and drifting into the night sky. However, Naru’s anguished scream on the soundtrack had to be a new and unexpected development for viewers who were fed nothing but happy endings year after year. This may not be classic tragedy in the Western literary tradition—it’s not Oedipus Rex or Hamlet—but through this story-arc the viewer is taken one (by many accounts) unforgettable step closer to that wider world.
Sailor Moon
What’s in a name? A lot, when it comes to Naoko Takeuchi’s Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon. The name of virtually every character has multiple meanings.
Take the title character, whose name, in the Japanese manner, with the family name first, is Tsukino Usagi. The phrase tsuki no usagi literally means “the rabbit in the moon.” This alludes to the Sino-Japanese perception of the full moon’s craters not as the face of a person (the Man in the Moon) but as the silhouette of a rabbit. Some say that the rabbit holds a vial of the Elixir of Immortality, long sought after by Chinese Taoists. On a more secular note, the rabbit is supposed by others to be pounding rice to make mochi, rice cakes with a taffy-like consistency. In any event, rabbit imagery abounds around Usagi, especially in the manga. The same applies to Usagi’s four friends. Their names correspond to the powers they call upon and the planets with which these powers are associated:
Mizuno Ami
mizu = water / Sailor Mercury
Hino Rei
hi= fire / Sailor Mars
Kino Makoto
ki = wood / Sailor Jupiter
Aino Minako
ai =love / Sailor Venus
Why Jupiter and wood? Before they adopted Western astronomy, Japanese stargazers identified Jupiter as Mokusei, the Wood Star. In Japan, giving Sailor Jupiter the Oak Evolution attack makes perfect sense. In the same vein, Mercury is Suisei, the Water Star, and Mars is Kasei, or the Fire Star.
The odd woman out is Sailor Venus, who was transplanted into Sailor Moon from Code Name Sailor V and has a planet with Western mythological overtones: the association of Venus the planet with the Roman goddess of love was inevitable, as is her rope of linked hearts called the Venus Love-Me Chain.
The name game continues with the villains, almost all of whom are named after minerals, gems, or other earthly elements. Thus, the Sailor Senshi battle Queen Beryl, Rubeus, Emeraldas, Kaolinite, etc. Among the minerals are Zoicite, Jadeite, Kunzite (aka Malachite), and Nephrite. The English dubbed version changes the latter’s name to Nephlite, but that’s clearly a mistake.
Death does not even have to be part of the picture for fate to take a hand in matters, as demonstrated in the first Sailor Moon theatrical feature. Known in the West simply as “the R movie” until a dubbed version was commercially released, it begins with a flashback reminiscent of François Truffaut. What seems to be a seven-year-old pajama-clad Mamoru is shown on a rooftop, giving a flower to another boy, who vanishes into thin air.
We are suddenly in a botanical garden. Usagi and Mamoru are out for a holiday (and looking for a little romantic privacy), and the other Senshi and Chibiusa3 are trying to spy on them. They’re interrupted by the return of Fioret, Mamoru’s friend from the flashback, older now and looking very much the bishonen, or “beautiful boy.” (In fact, this gives rise to some gentle humor suggesting that Mamoru is gay.) We later learn the truth: that Fioret is an alien. He had wandered through space, all alone, dropped in on Earth, and found someone as lonely as he was: the hospitalized Chiba Mamoru, who had just lost both parents in an auto accident. Mamoru had given Fioret a flower as a token of their friendship, but when Fioret returned to space (because he couldn’t stay on Earth indefinitely), he promised to bring back a flower for Mamoru.
Unfortunately, Fioret became possessed by, and has brought to Earth, the Xenian flower. This sentient bloom turned Fioret’s mind, making him think (among other things) that Usagi was coming between Mamoru and him. When Fioret tries to kill Sailor Moon, however, we are treated to the most amazing plot twist. Remember the flower Mamoru gave Fioret at the very beginning of the movie? Where did that come from? From the four-year-old girl who wandered into Mamoru’s room, giving him a flower because her mother had just had a baby boy. It was Tsukino Usagi who supplied the flower Mamoru gave to Fioret; therefore, Fioret had an obligation to Sailor Moon. The belief in on meant that he would have to change his plans about killing Sailor Moon.
The symmetry of the story-arc gets even better. At the beginning, Mamoru tries to kiss Usagi, who’s puckered and waiting. However, knowing he’s being watched by the others, Mamoru backs off. At the end, Usagi is near death, drained of her life-energy while trying to get herself and her friends back to Earth. Fioret’s final gesture, demonstrating his own compassion by atoning for the business with the Xenian flowers and fulfilling his obligation, is to save Sailor Moon’s life. He presents the flower of his own life; Mamoru sucks the life-restoring dew from its petals and feeds it to Usagi, bringing everything full circle with a kiss. It’s classic shojo.
Beyond the five seasons of television episodes, the three films, and the eighteen manga volumes (not counting Sailor V), Sailor Moon stayed alive in several forms. Between 1993 and 2005 no fewer than twenty-nine stage musicals featured the Sailor Senshi. The number is actually deceptive, since musicals were reworked from one season to another: the fates of some villains were left unclear in earlier versions and cleared up later, and actresses completing a run as a particular Sailor (described as “graduating”) might be given additional dialogue or musical numbers as a going-away present.
The stage musicals were, as can be imagined, influenced by the Takarazuka theatrical conventions. There was some gender bending of roles, especially with the Three Lights. The musicals had very little kissing: only between Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask (as expected), and between the lesbian couple Sailors Uranus and Neptune (but usually only on the final night of the run).
2003 saw one season of live television: Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. This live series was an adaptation of the Queen Beryl story, with a number of changes, including prequel and sequel episodes. Minako Aino (Sailor Venus) is an idol singer in this version,4 who has competition from an evil idol, Mio Kuroki. One of the most interesting variations is the “turning” of Sailor Mercury to work for Queen Beryl. Of all the Sailor Senshi, Mercury is the smartest, and a “Dark Mercury” would be a formidable foe.
On top of all of this is a string of video games, released almost entirely in Japan. Some are puzzles and some are fighting games; the most recent game was released in 2011. Add to this the countless trinkets, pencils, posters, dolls, wands, picture books, plush animals, key chains. . . . It’s no wonder that the anime industry, and all its offshoots, have been called part of Japan’s Gross National Cool.5
And About Those Sailor Suits . . .
The Sailor Senshi have uniforms similar to the ones they wear as junior high and high school students, modeled after British midshipman (or “middy”) blouses, with subtle differences in style and color that indicate who goes to which school. When we first see Kino Makoto (soon-to-be Sailor Jupiter), her school uniform is completely different from anything worn in the rest of the school. She’s still wearing the uniform from her old school—one she was expelled from for fighting.
During the Meiji period, when Japan reformed its educational system along European lines and public school attendance became required, Gakushuin (Peers’ School), the private academy for imperial and other noble families’ sons (school wasn’t coed yet), was the first to institute uniforms. These uniforms (with coats that button all the way up to the collar) were modeled after Prussian military tunics. The rest of the nation’s schools followed the lead of the nobility. In 1885, Gaku-shuin forbade students from coming to school by horse and carriage, which meant that book bags also became a necessity. The country’s elementary schools again copied the style. The educational wardrobe has stayed pretty much the same ever since, but with considerable loosening up in recent years, mostly in subtle details: for example, girls wearing fashionably loose white socks. But the uniforms are still there, and are part of an evolving combination of TPO style and personal expression.6
1. An excellent account of the details of the manga-anime-merchandise campaign that launched Sailor Moon can be found in Lee Brimmicombe-Wood and Motoko Tamamuro,“Hello Sailor!,” Manga Max 19 (August 2000): 30.
2. This has given anime in particular, and much of Japanese pop culture in general, a bad reputation in the West. The preference for youthful, virginal females has become known as rorikon, short for “Lolita Complex,” named after Vladimir Nabokov’s infamous novel about an older man pursuing a young girl. Then again, there was a similar theme in the popular American film American Beauty, so the tendency is not exclusively Japanese.
3. The R season introduced a character from the thirtieth century, Chibiusa (“cute little rabbit”) who seems to have some sort of resonance with Usagi and Mamoru. The fact is, she’s their daughter (rather, the daughter they will conceive when they are reborn in the future). Chibiusa spends most of the R season getting the Sailor Senshi to come to the future to fix what has gone wrong.
4. This rearrangement of the story allows for one of the series’ happiest puns: one of Minako’s hit songs is “C’est la Vie,” which sounds like “Sailor V.”
5. Douglas McGray, “Japan’s Gross National Cool,” Foreign Policy 130 (2002): 44–54.
6. “. . . it is common in Japan to think in terms of the acronym TPO: Time, Place, Occasion. If one’s dress is appropriate to these three things, the chances of embarrassment are significantly lessened. Times are changing and the rules are not as strong as they were, but it is likely that due to a history that values appropriate dress and due to the custom of looking to those of high rank as good examples of TPO, the rules will remain important in Japan” (http://www.marubeni.co.jp/english/shosha/cover68.html).