I graduated from college in 1994 with a degree in Liberal Arts, which meant I was destined to have a few years to myself. It was right around this aimless period in my life that the anime scene started finding its foothold on western culture. The timing was a perfect match for my age bracket, having spent my childhood in the arcade and formative adolescence on the golden years of MTV.
At the time there wasn't much to choose from. There was Ranma, Akira, Project A-ko, and a bunch of harmless sounding titles with the 'absolutely not for children' label taped across the cover at the video store (it only took one overly curious peek into the contents to understand that warning was issued by a very sad adult whose optimism was NEVER coming back). There was actually a point where one could have watched every anime VHS tape available in the area and still had time for the handful of sci-fi programs that aired among the paltry 56 channels.
And then USA started airing dubs of Sailor Moon.
Magical Girl stories date as far back as 1953 in Japan with the Princess Knight manga, and there was in fact a successful run of the concept in the 70's and 80's. But Sailor Moon not only revitalized the concept in the early 90's but it re-envisioned the tropes to be more than full length commercials for toys. Even more so, Naoko Takeuchi's creation became an international flagship for fantasy anime, and heavily influenced much of what has followed it.
So why did Usagi-chan catch on so strongly cross-culture, so much that she has a whole other theme song in Germany? And why has the male audience embraced her with relative comfort? Or more close to home, why after two and a half decades am I still imagining what I'd do as the show-runner of a live action reboot of the series?
Perfect Timing
Anime tends to draw the attention of the misfits, which is practically the entire nerd community. In the 90's, the lot of us still had a fondness for animation, but with the exceptions of The Simpsons and Batman: The Animated Series there wasn't much geared towards us. Disney was having its renaissance but most of what was available reminded us that we were essentially interlopers on the younger crowd's turf. But at the same time we'd also contracted the animation bug. The X-Men's Saturday morning cartoon often aired ongoing story arcs from week to week, something that made the 'soap opera' concept kind of cool for the first time.
I think my father stumbled across the USA airings of Sailor Moon, and became interested in the grander plot line that wove through the monster-of-the-week episodes. Soon we figured out how to intercept the satellite feed that sent the following week's episodes to the local affiliate and began binge watching the show every Monday afternoon.
The first thing that stood out was the voice acting. Not everybody was spot on, but they had Terri Hawkes in the lead role. Some of the lines they gave her were flat out atrocious, but Hawkes could make anything sound convincing through sheer energy. I had only recently become interested in the art of voice acting, and I quickly realized that Terri Hawkes deserved to have a school on the subject named after her.
Even when the plot (usually) came off as superficial, I found myself rooting for both the character and her voice actress. It turns out the behind the scenes production of the dub was an absolute mess, and in retrospect it's amazing the thing came together at all. And maybe that taps into an axiom for the way nerds experience entertainment. We seem to love something more for its flaws, possibly because we see it as a reflection of us.
Off-Target Audience
Something else I found oddly engaging was that I didn't understand who the show was meant for. It didn't seem like it was for kids, at least not for American kids. Or more accurately, it didn't seem like the kind of show networks and parental groups would ever give kids enough respect to handle. Out of that confusion I didn't feel like an outsider by watching it, or at least any more of an outsider than anyone else.
As it turns out, Sailor Moon was meant for Japanese girls who were between 12 and 14, and that by itself is an interesting insight into the difference between our culture and theirs. There are some intentionally uncomfortable moments in the plot where characters in the grey area don't get what they deserve. I don't know if Japanese children are raised in such a way that they're prepared to process tragedy on their own by that age, but if I had a daughter I expect we'd be having some tough conversations in response to the show. Healthy ones to be sure, but I might be having to admit that I don't have all the answers.
Bad is Better
There's no way to say this without lobbing criticism at Takeuchi herself, but her villains were all one note. Don't get me wrong, she more than makes up for it in other areas; her magic girl plot is much deeper than it ever needed to be, and nobody draws manga more 'magic' looking than Takeuchi. But her baddies really miss the mark. The anime started making some changes to that. In season one, there are a couple of points where I found myself kind of rooting against the scouts, and by season two I was ready for the villains to hijack the whole show.
In addition to obsessing over anime, in the 90's I'd gotten back into role playing (2nd edition D&D remains the superior version, suck it feats table!) right around the time Planescape hit the market. We have an ongoing campaign involving the multiverse and space/time/plane travel. After a while we stopped even figuring up stats for characters and just jumped into the voice of the characters. Guess who started showing up in the campaigns?
I honed in on Queen Beryl, because I believed then what I believe now; used in the right way she could be as iconic as Maleficent. If I get started talking about the way I reworked her backstory this blog will never end, so instead let me use the Beryl of the cartoon as an example of why the show pulls you into it.
You watch the dub, you laugh at the endlessly creative insults hurled among characters (monkey twit is my personal favorite). But unconsciously you sense that there's more that's meant to be going on. Partially because the Japanese version was edited down, and some awkward cuts definitely catch your eye. But also because you feel that you're only getting the iceberg tip of the story. It's like the bait that hooks you.
The villains are very well designed, and once the anime took over they got an upgrade in sympathy. It makes their deaths all the more disenchanting. I'm sure I'm not the only fan of the show who has declared their intention to rewrite the story where Queen Beryl survives the ordeal.
And the Stars Will Show
In the end, I think what really hooks us is that Sailor Moon hits the sweet spot between simple and complex. Our species loves its mythologies, and nothing grants us the perfect blend of freedom and structure like the planets in our solar system. They're out there in space, but they're close by. What if each of those planets was given a personification? Then what happens if those personalities walk among us, and attend high school, and read comic books? What's the story that brings that into being?
Sailor Moon does what the classic stories and modern myths do, it plays its story both big and small. For every gaping hole in the plot's logic, it practically invites you in to fix it yourself. It's a show that may inadvertently be satirizing itself well before any of us ever sarcastically remarked who we intent to punish in the name of the moon.
But more importantly, we have the character of Sailor Meatballhead herself. She's the kind of hero who is both archetypal and unique at the same time. We've seen plenty of heroes who charge in like Rambo, and nearly as many Inspector Clouseaus who stumble their way to victory. At her core, Sailor Moon is a goofball. She has more power inside her than she realizes or wants, and when the cosmos has her backed against the wall she always does what her intuition tells her to. But she never let's it change her.
It's kind of a strange thing to take away, the idea that not changing (or changing very little) could be the heroic trait. But that's what makes her special. She was fine the way she was at the very beginning. Any sudden arrival of a talking cat, or multiple threats to the universe itself, or behind the scenes upheavals among the English writing staff just roll off her back. In the end she remains a goofball through and through, and we can't help but admire it.
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