"I fight for love! I fight for justice! And in the name of the moon, I'll punish you!!"
-Sailor Moon
or
"A sailor-suited pretty soldier of love and justice: Sailor Moon! In the name of the moon, I'll punish you!!"
-also Sailor Moon
Before Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh, there was Sailor Moon.
Naoko Takeuchi's manga turned anime, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon, took the world by storm and gave new meaning to the planets of the solar system. The first season of Sailor Moon tells the story about a clumsy and often ditzy girl, Usagi Tsukino, who discovers that she has super powers and is meant to protect the world against evil. As Sailor Moon, she fights against the Dark Kingdom (or Negaverse) and gains allies in the inner senshi: Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus. As Usagi's fight progresses, she remembers a past life, finds love, and starts maturing into the leader that she was meant to be.
This show was the first anime to reel me in and get me truly hooked. It had been out for a while by the time that I sat down and watched it one day after school. I despised the main character, Usagi or Bunny or Serena depending on your translation, because I considered her one of the most annoying and useless people in the whole show. She was whiny, got bad grades, and her sole motivation seemed to be video games and food. Even when she was Sailor Moon, I found her largely useless. Her first power is her tiara which she uses like a frisbee and then she gets the Moon Stick which she uses to purify and heal. I couldn't stand it. The other sailor senshi had power over the elements, could summon fire or lightening or ice or metal, yet they still needed her whiny behind to defeat the enemy.
I also disliked Usagi's love interest Mamoru (Darien). He was a jerk to her in the beginning and by the time he improved, his alter ego Tuxedo Mask had already poisoned me against him forever. Tuxedo Mask was the most useless character on the show. His outfit was, you guessed it, a tuxedo and a mask. His only power was his ability to show up at just the right second and throw a rose. That was it. He threw a rose, said something dramatic about believing in yourself then left. In a show where the main character is constantly talking about defeating people 'in the name of the moon', he managed to win the award for most corny.
But every day, I had to be home by four to watch it. Despite my problems with the star-crossed couple, it was one of the few shows on the time that had female protagonists who didn't need males to save them. It had secret identities and magic. The main characters were juggling middle school and crime-fighting. I wanted a talking cat to show up and tell me that I was fated for more too. This show actually got me to bypass books and spend a few extra dollars to get the manga. I knew the English theme song by heart and memorized the first verse and chorus of the Japanese theme song. I found midis of each senshi's theme song and tried to sing along to them in Japanese. Everything about this show drew me in and I felt like I knew the characters personally.
My favorite characters were Makoto Kino (Lita Kino) and Ami Mizuno, aka Sailor Jupiter and Sailor Mercury.
My reasons for liking them were simple. Makoto was tall and tomboyish and she was the green senshi. Ami was the smart and analytical one so I forgave her for her blue costume. The other sailors, especially Usagi, paled in comparison to them and I always imagined what the show would be like if they were the main characters. I began to tell my siblings about the world of Sailor Moon that I thought should exist and they loved it. So I began writing my own adventures and creating new characters.
Some of these adventures eventually became so distinct from Sailor Moon as to have no resemblance to the original except for character names. These stories became my first original fiction.
