Sean Gaffney

We are getting near the end of the Feast! What will today bring?

Animemiz gives us two more articles on Sailor Moon, the first talking about the gorgeous Sailor Moon artbooks, and the second discussing her dislike of Chibi-Usa, and how she compares with the final arc’s Chibi-Chibi.

Zoe Alexander reviews the first Sailor V manga, and also gives us a look at her Top 10 favorite manga moments from Sailor Moon.

Lastly, I also did a list of my favorite moments.

Tomorrow will be the final post! Will there be more amazing stuff?

(There are obviously spoilers here for the anime and manga.)

These are my own personal top five, of course; if you asked ten different Sailor Moon fans you’d get ten lists. But these five are good examples of why I keep coming back to this manga/anime again and again. Three manga moments, and two from the anime.

5) Sailor Moon Super S manga – Dream 6: New Guardian Dream. I chose this chapter for many reasons. First of all, it’s fantastic to see the Outer senshi at rest, as it were. For all that they tend to be seen as the driven and pragmatic counterparts to the more emotional and caring senshi, they’re still meant to be high school girls, after all. (Well, mostly. Setsuna is debatable, see my previous post.) Here we see them all living as a family, celebrating their six month anniversary of having done so, since the end of S when Hotaru became an infant. They’ve also been unable to transform, so it’s been a bit of an idyllic rest for the three of them. However, Hotaru (who has gone from baby to 4-year-old in 6 months, and ages here to approximately 13 or so) is also there to remind them of their duties as senshi, and notes it’s time to get involved. This chapter, showing a different side of Haruka, Michiru and Setsuna, was so much fun that the anime, which had removed the Outers from the Super S story, went back and redid it as a prelude to Stars, just so they could show off how cool it was. I love the Outers, and this chapter is basically just seeing them all relax, then seeing them all kick ass. It’s great.

4) Sailor Moon Super S manga side-story – Rei and Minako’s Girl School Battle. Sailor Moon is a very funny series. However, I’ve noticed that a lot of the people talking about how funny it is tend to focus only on the anime. Now, it’s true that the anime has some side-splittingly funny episodes – I could easily have picked Nurse Minako from R or Minako’s Heart Crystal from S here as well, and debated it. But I went instead with this small chapter as I think it showed that Takeuchi’s characters are still her characters, and that they don’t need the expansion/exaggeration the anime sometimes gives them in order to be funny. The Rei we see here is definitely the manga version – the cool beauty and queen of her school – but we see how she gets driven to be just as angry as her anime counterpart. And Minako is simply fantastic – her drive to find out about Rei’s private school, completely being unable to fit in, and accidentally releasing the monster of the chapter through her own foolishness. And, of course, there’s the part that *everyone* remembers, which is Minako asking Rei if she has ever farted. Leaving aside that it’s Minako’s own way of trying to get Rei to admit that she’s just another girl like the rest of them, it is gloriously in character. What’s more, the punchline to the chapter – where Rei angrily says she has never farted, and that she’s nothing like Minako at all, makes me laugh hysterically – because of Takeuchi’s little side comment of an arrow pointing to a blushing Minako saying “has farted before”. Glorious.

3) Sailor Moon R – The Movie (climax). Sailor Moon had 3 movies made for the theater while it was running. But in general, when people talk about Sailor Moon movies, they mean *this* one – the first, and the best. Towards the end of the movie we see the other inner senshi watching Sailor Moon get throttled by the villain of the piece, and they all have little flashbacks to their lives before Usagi. And they’re all *incredibly depressing* – each one shows the girls being ostracized for being different or strange. Ami the intellectual, Rei the shrine maiden, Makoto the supposed “thug”, and Minako “always leaving” but unable to say she’s Sailor V. It’s beautifully done, and heartbreaking. Then later on Sailor Moon has defeated the villain, but there’s still the small matter of an asteroid headed for the Earth. Everyone teams up to stop it, and we see the Inner Senshi having another set of flashbacks – these showing Usagi coming into their lives, and her honest kindness and friendship being more than anyone could ask for. It shows how closely linked these five girls are, and it’s simply brilliant.

2) Sailor Moon R manga – Never Ending. This is the first of two to deal with the deaths of a sailor senshi. It’s a credit to both Takeuchi and the anime that even after we know about the senshi’s tendency to be resurrected and reincarnated, death is still a horrible, tear-jerking thing. This is the final chapter of the second arc, and all seems completely lost. Chibi-Usa is possessed as “Black Lady”, and Prince Diamond is about to cause a time paradox that will destroy not only Crystal Tokyo but causality. This leads Sailor Pluto to do the unthinkable – she stops time, allowing Sailor Moon to resolve things. As this happens, though, we see a much younger Pluto talking with Queen Serenity in a flashback, and she is told point blank that stopping time is forbidden, and that if she ever does it she will die. And that’s what happens, with Pluto barely getting time to say farewell before passing away. That’s not, however, why this is here. This is #2 because of Black Lady, who is startled to find tears streaming down her cheeks, becoming unpossessed and reverting to Chibi-Usa again. What’s more, Chibi-Usa has finally become able to unlock her powers – she transforms, and is now Sailor Chibi-Moon! Delighted, she turns to Pluto (who previous chapters have shown is essentially her only friend) and remarks on her transformation – only to become hysterical as she sees Pluto’s corpse, and begs her to open her eyes. I don’t think anyone can read this chapter and not be affected – it’s been over ten years since I read it, and I’m still tearing up just typing this.

1) Sailor Moon anime, episode 45. Yeah, there really wasn’t any question what number one would be. If the climax of R is, in my opinion, the manga’s finest hour, the climax of the first arc is where the anime surpassed it, both in dramatic tension and in heartbreaking loss. It should be noted that the anime does not exactly make this a big secret – the episode is TITLED “The Sailor Senshi Die!”. And sure enough, that’s what happens, as the senshi travel to the North Pole to take on Beryl. Now, there is a manga equivalent here – the senshi die there as well, though in a completely different situation – but the tension and agony are just incredible in the anime, where first Jupiter, then Mercury, then Venus and finally Mars sacrifice themselves so that the others can continue, each showing off just how powerful and badass they are even as they are killed. And Sailor Moon, her despair growing with each death, is left alone at the end – except that the spirits of the four fallen girls appear once more, telling her that they will always be with her and giving her the strength to go on. The anime came close to hitting these highs later on (Episode 125 comes closest), but never quite topped it – an episode that shows that even a magical girl may need to pay the ultimate price in order to save the world.

So those are my five favorites. If you think I missed something, let me know in a comment!

There’s more activity for Day 5, with several new links.

Ash Brown reviews the first volume of Sailor Moon, and finds the story a bit unfocused, but is charmed by the characters. There’s also a competition at that site to win the first volume!

Animemiz is another long-time fan, and discusses her ongoing love for the series.

Margaret Emma gives us an essay on how Sailor Moon opened life up for her, and the lessons she takes from it on love and friendship.

Crystal Lewis takes a closer look at Usagi, and talks about the anime sometimes exaggerating her bad points.

And speaking of the anime and its influence, I take a look at Mamoru, Chibi-Usa and Rei and the changes they made – some quite significant! – going from page to screen.

Lastly, the Manga Bookshelf team had an ongoing discussion about the first volumes of both Sailor Moon and Sailor V.

Some fantastic articles here. Get to reading!

I touched yesterday on the differences between the source manga and its anime adaptation when I discussed villains. Of course, it doesn’t get limited just to them. Any anime adapted from a manga is going to need to expand and add in order to make it viable. 23 minutes of screen time vs. 30-40 odd pages means you need to figure out ways to remain true to your material while exploring new boundaries. And given that the original manga is 52 chapters, and the anime counterpart is 200 episodes… there’s a lot of stuff that can best be categorized as “anime only”. There’s added on plot arcs, like Ail and Ann; there’s changing events to make things more dramatic for television, such as the end of the first arc. And sometimes, there’s changes of the main characters themselves.

Sometimes this cam be small. Usagi cries a lot more in the anime, but this isn’t really that out of character for her. Likewise, Minako’s ditziness gets really ramped up as the series goes on, but you never find yourself thinking “Wait, she’d never do something like that.” There are three characters, however, that I’d argue the anime alters enough so that fan opinion on them changes depending on what people are more familiar with. And let’s be honest, for 95% of Sailor Moon fans, that’s the anime.

Mamoru and Usagi end up falling for each other straight away. And in the manga, despite the occasional ‘being possessed by evil’ that happens to love interests all the time, this is never in doubt. The series is not really about “will they get together or not?”, especially after the second arc shows us the future in Crystal Tokyo. As a result, one main element used to pad out an anime is missing from the manga – romantic tension. Not to worry, though. Simply have Mamoru be far more aloof and unconcerned with Usagi’s feelings, and have Usagi be even more insecure and jealous than she is in the original. Plus throw in a few rivals for their love. Presto! … Of course, the problem is that this makes Mamoru look like a jerk at times. Thus, for those who grew up with the anime, it’s not “wow, look at their beautiful love” but “what does she see in him?”

(I haven’t been able to track down a source, but several folks have noted that the director of Sailor Moon R, S, and Super S, Kunihiko Ikuhara (better known for Utena and Mawaru Penguindrum these days) has openly stated he couldn’t stand Mamoru, and wanted Usagi to end up with Rei.)

Mamoru, of course, is still at heart a “nice guy”, meaning that it’s harder to hammer on his character flaws the way one can with crybaby Usagi or impulsive Minako. Sometimes, though, when a character does have known character flaws, hammering on them TOO much can cause issues. This is what happened, to a certain degree, with Chibi-Usa in the anime. She is, especially in her debut, meant to be a bratty kid who glomps on to Mamoru and doesn’t like Usagi. While this improves in future seasons, like “crybaby Usagi”, her default seems to be “bratty Chibi-Usa”. And fans, as a whole, tend not to like bratty kids that much. She’s a bit bratty in the manga as well, but it makes her shyer as well, and gives her a lot more bonding moments with Usagi. But again, we run into what happens when you have to fill time. Need to have conflict in an episode? Have Chibi-Usa fighting with Usagi. I like to think that the two of them are finally getting less hatred from fandom, but it was quite bad for a time.

Sailor Mars, aka Hino Rei, is quite different. With a few exceptions, she never got the hate that a lot of folks had for Mamoru and Chibi-Usa. Of course, she was also dealing with a different problem. Mamoru and Chibi-Usa were still recognizably their manga characters, just with several negative traits brought to the fore. But Rei… Rei was *changed*. In the manga she may get angry with Usagi at times, but it’s more of a grumpy irritation, and in general Rei epitomizes the “cool and aloof” type. She also shows no interest in Mamoru whatsoever, and in fact notes a few times that she doesn’t like men. (I think that’s meant to be more of a “teenage boys are immature” thing than a yuri thing, not that that’s stopped anyone.) In the anime, however, she’s an angry hothead whose fiery temper matches her element. And she’s the main rival to Usagi for Mamoru’s affection in the first season.

Why the huge change? Again, it could be to add conflict. It’s not as if Usagi was going to get into shouting matches with Ami, after all. And what’s more, Makoto doesn’t show up till episode 25, leaving a lot of space where it’s just Usagi, Ami and Rei. Someone has to offset the others. What’s more, Rei’s loud and angry persona gives her more easily exploitable flaws – it’s shows right off the bat that she and Usagi are more alike than they want to admit – and also allows them to grow closer as friends once this is discovered. Usagi and Rei grow to be best friends in the anime, whereas in the manga I’m not sure that’s the case. (Rei in the manga tends to match up with Minako, who displays many of the same qualities and has the same ability to drive Rei nuts.)

As a lifelong Doctor Who fan, one thing that’s been driven into my head is that canon is fluid, and it’s really best to be able to keep several conflicting realities in your head at once rather than remain wedded to one to the exclusion of everything else. The Sailor Moon anime and manga both have strengths and weaknesses, several of which actually offset each other quite well. But in the end, I think fans are still going to have to clarify when they’re debating a pairing or a plot point, “Are you talking about the anime personality or the manga one?” And let’s not even get into Minako’s changes in the live-action series…

Another quiet day, but not silent!

Kathryn Hemmann has an excellent article on Sailor Moon and Femininity, and the gap that sometimes seems to exist between examination of the series by feminist critics and love of those same elements by its fans.

And John Walter Biles did a guest post on my blog about pacing in Sailor Moon, and how both the anime and manga have their advantages when it comes to use in fan works.

Sean here. Today we have a guest post by one of the more popular Sailor Moon fanfiction authors, John Walter Biles. John has been writing Sailor Moon fanfiction for over 15 years now. His most acclaimed stories include the epic Sailor Moon Z and the Arthurian pastiche A Tokyo Senshi in Queen Rei’s Court. John’s stories can be found at his website. Here he discusses in depth something I touched on in my villains essay: the differences between the manga and its anime, and how this affects Sailor Moon fandom.

It cannot be denied that the Sailor Moon manga is better paced than the animation. This is not unusual; even poorly paced manga tend to be outrun by any attempt to animate it at the same time the manga is coming out. Any fan of Japanese animation based on manga soon comes to expect the many tricks used by animated series in order to avoid having to pass the point the manga has reached.

Further, the Sailor Moon manga is tightly paced, especially in comparison to a lot of other manga in which people fight each other or monsters. Compare the disasterous spiral of bloat of the Bleach manga in the Hueco Mundo arc to any of the major manga arcs. (If you enjoy pain, anyway). Each arc lasted roughly a year of real time, setting up a set of interconnected conflicts, resolving them by the end. Indeed, with only 52 chapters, many foes die by the end of the chapter they first appear in.

The strength of this is that you end up with something which is complete in itself, doesn’t wander all over the place, and which does not contain any wastes of time. From a perspective of purely reading,
this is a definite strength.

But we live in an age in which reading (or in the case of TV, watching) is not the only use of media. Increasingly, many fans want to engage with media at a deeper level, whether arguing about the story’s direction on a mailing list or discussion board or Twitter, creating fan art, writing fan-stories, making music videos or other forms of secondary creation. Modern technology greatly facilitates this.

Ironically, for this purpose, the flaws of the animated versions of many manga become strengths. The more holes they are, the more space there is for secondary creators. It’s the series which are problematic which tend to attract the most fan writers, whether to fix the holes or to exploit the additional plotlines which have to be added. There is enough framework for a common fandom and enough room for improvement to inspire people to do so.

The massive army of Sailor Moon fanfics attests to this phenomenon. The flawed structure of the anime opens more room for fanfic, which is among the reasons there are more fanfics based on it than the manga. The fact that in the US, most people have not actually seen all of the anime contributes to this as well, leaving the series essentially open-ended for them (like, for example, Ranma One-Half, another series which launched a thousand fanfics).

Naru, for example, who is ephemeral in the manga, is given enough coverage in the anime’s first season to become a substantial character, then fades away as the show progresses. For many people, this does not please them, leading to a small army of stories about her, whether to make her a senshi, or just to preserve her friendship with Usagi instead of her fading away. (I plead guilty as one of those people, in my fanfic Sailor Moon Z.)

Thus, for those inclined to use a work as a basis for building their own story, something flawed and sprawling may well open doors for their own creativity. Which is not to say I wish Naoko Takeuchi had churned out a never-ending mess like the Bleach manga has become. Frankly, a lot of modern manga authors should be sat down and forced to read something with good pacing.

But the dual existence of the anime and the manga means we can have our cake and eat it too in this regard, having one version of the story to spark creativity especially well and one to deliver a tighter version of the tale for reading enjoyment.

After a flurry of links for Day One, it’s been quieter lately, likely as most contributors are recovering from Christmas.

Kate Dacey reviews the first Sailor V manga, finding it suits its intended age group perfectly.

I take a look at the Senshi of Time, Sailor Pluto, and also compare how villains are treated in the anime when compared with the manga.

The MMF is still going on – keep those contributions coming!

(Hat tip to Animemiz for the topic for today.)

In a later post I’ll be discussing the confusion that sometimes appears in fandom when people discuss plot points or characterizations that are wildly different when seen in the Sailor Moon manga versus the Sailor Moon anime – or even, these days, the Sailor Moon live action series. But I want to talk about the villains separately here, as they get talked about a whole lot, and it’s quite fascinating how differently they’re treated by the various sources.

Naoko Takeuchi’s manga is excellent at giving its main characters well-developed and awesome character arcs. But the villains? Not so much. It’s got a lot to pack into its chapters, and the villains are there to move the plot along to its next point. Not to say there isn’t some thought given to each of them. The Four Generals being Endymion’s old bodyguards from the Silver Millennium was clearly thought out well in advance, and indeed gets brought up long after their deaths in the first arc. As for Super S, I’ll get to that later. But, especially in battle, generally a villain’s job in the manga is to show up, be horrible, threaten a few people, and then get zapped by the senshi (who, unlike the anime, have no issues whatsoever with killing them provided they prove to be monsters and not humans).

The anime had a lot more time to fill in its episodes, and the best way to do it was to flesh out the various villains. And so Nephrite begins to fall for a human, Usagi’s friend Naru, and in the end redeems himself for her even though he dies. (One can argue how acceptable this is, but the anime clearly wants you to feel sorry for him, even if many don’t.) Kunzite and Zoisite are in a relationship (which required the dub to make Zoisite a female, as heaven forbid a kid’s cartoon had suggestions of homosexuality). The Akayashi Sisters in the second arc, who were all complete cannon fodder in the manga, all get ‘redemption’ stories and are purified by Sailor Moon. The same thing happens to the Amazon Trio in the Super S anime – in the manga, they too are killed off. And Professor Tomoe’s story is equally tragic in both versions, but the anime gives him a heart he simply doesn’t have in the manga. It’s not a surprise to see why – Takeuchi made her minions, for the most part, to be funny and entertaining, and the more we see of them the more we got to like them.

(Tomoe’s redemption actually caused a nasty plot hole in the anime that had to be fixed later. This is why Pluto basically shows up at the start of Stars, takes his daughter from him, and proceeds to have her live with the other Outers. Which seems rather cruel of her. No need for this in the manga – he was far more irredeemable, killed off, and Hotaru went to stay with the others out of necessity.)

Of course, not EVERYONE got to enjoy a nice soul-healing redemption. The Witches 5 are just as wacky and fun to watch as prior villains, but they get killed off in ways that range from horrifying to *really* horrifying (hi, Mimete). Likewise, the Sailor Animamates in the final arc got huge expansions of roles (in some cases, they were only in the manga for a brief scene before being offed), but they manage to die all the same. In general, if the anime can manage to save the villain without harming the plot or having it turn too sweet, they might do so. but if the plot is meant to be dark (S, Stars), they’re far less lucky.

Then there’s Super S. The fourth arc in the manga, it’s the one that was changed the most for the anime. The anime, in fact, has a bad reputation, as it upped the cutesy Chibi-Usa scenes and removed the Outer Senshi from the story. It was probably the fluffiest of all the anime seasons. And because of that, it actually manages to redeem TWO sets of villains – not only the Amazon Trio, but also their replacements, the eccentric Amazoness Quartet, who in the anime are purified and become human girls. Now, for once, they Quartet are ALSO saved in the manga… but have a far more interesting role. Sailor Saturn (who, as I noted, was removed from the anime Super S) notices them and begs them to remember who they are. They ignore her, and are (we think) killed by being turned into glass marbles by the main villainess. Saturn grabs these, and once everything is safe and the villain has been vanquished, asks Moon to purify them. She does… and surprise! These four villains are actually SENSHI, Chibi-Usa’s bodyguard team from the future. What’s more, they even show up again in the next arc. This is probably the biggest villain redemption in the series, and it’s surprising that it comes in the manga (though this means it loses some of its impact as the Quartet didn’t appear as much).

This is not to say there aren’t scary and horrible villains. Each arc has its main general below the big bad (the big bad in each arc tends to be a horrible monstrous creature of some sort), and you feel no sympathy at all for them beyond the occasional “My God, What Have I Done?” moment. But in general, for Sailor Moon, it pays to be silly. The sillier the villain, the more likely you are to get out of the series alive. Especially since another of Takeuchi’s favorite techniques is also at play here (you can see it with Jadeite, Prince Diamond, etc.): if you are an asshole, particularly a male one, the heroines will kick your ass from here to Cleveland.

When I was writing about Makoto, I used her own personal name in the header. We first meet her as a normal teenage girl, and despite becoming Sailor Jupiter and defending justice and the like, the manga follows her life as a normal teenage girl. When we first meet Sailor Pluto, though, in the middle of the second arc of the manga, we see her as the senshi first and foremost. We don’t even realize she has a civilian identity until the third arc, when we finally “meet” Setsuna Meiou. This fits rather well, as Pluto’s arc is time in reverse compared to the others – she’s the no-nonsense soldier of the future, then upon her return she’s allowed to live a (somewhat) carefree life.

We know next to nothing of Sailor Pluto’s actual past. One flashback in the manga shows Queen Serenity telling Pluto the three rules of time that she is never allowed to break. Leaving aside the fact that she has broken all three of them by the end of the manga, what’s striking is that she’s telling this to a Sailor Pluto who looks to be about 7 years old. I mentioned before that these Sailor Senshi are not going to grow up and get married, but grow up and take on their duties as defenders of the Earth. Pluto, on the other hand, seems to have been born to this duty. It’s a rather jarring. What’s more, throughout this first arc we see that Pluto’s life in Crystal Tokyo is a solitary one… her only friends seem to be Endymion and Chibi-Usa. One would imagine even in Crystal Tokyo the other inner senshi all still hang out. Is Pluto’s task really that important?

Speaking of which, why isn’t Pluto’s task actually being the Senshi of Death? There are rumors that Naoko Takeuchi got Pluto and Saturn confused when she was writing the manga, and then gave Hotaru powers equivalent to “death” when she realized it was too late to go back and change it. In any case, guardians of time are not new in the land of fiction, or even manga, and it’s actually more of a surprise that Pluto doesn’t abuse her powers *more*, given the obvious temptation. Then again, Pluto is… well, not exactly a stoic, but her personality definitely tends towards the cooler end of the spectrum. Even when she’s living as Setsuna in present-day Tokyo, we learn very little about her personal life, her likes and dislikes, etc. She has no romantic scenes or pairings, even with the other senshi; the manga hinted she might have a crush on future King Endymion, but even that was mild. It does seem that she’s enjoying her time as Setsuna, at least. Probably the first time she’s had to relax in thousands of years.

We have no real idea how old Pluto is. Her parents are unknown, and she seems to be a young girl in the Silver Millennium when talking with Serenity. Her future is… confusing, given that she dies in Crystal Tokyo and then is reborn into the past to live in the present with Usagi and company as a (presumed) 18-year-old college student. Is she caught in a time loop? I’d like to say she isn’t, given I think that might be a bit too cruel. I imagine the combination of her own powers and Neo-Queen Serenity’s was able to work something out. (In the anime, of course, she doesn’t die in the first place, rendering all of this moot.)

Fan opinion on Pluto is mixed. As I said, there’s a lot of “with great power comes great responsibility” to her senshi powers, and that, combined with her cool and somewhat aloof personality, means that there’s a lot of fanfics and fan opinion portraying her as a manipulator. Heck, I’ve done it myself. In terms of the canon, though, I appreciate Pluto for her role as the Senshi of time, and her ability to show us what duty and sacrifice really are; but I also appreciate just as much her time as Setsuna from the third arc onwards, if only as we do see a teasing and fun side to her, and she’s a devoted parent (along with Haruka and Michiru) to Hotaru. Setsuna is time reversed from the other senshi – we see her as a soldier, then we gradually see her civilian self. As for which is her “true” self, well, that’s a hard question to ask for any of the senshi.

We’ve got some excellent links from Day One of this Manga Moveable Feast!

Aaron Kooienga tells us all why he’s so find of the magical girl genre, and also reviews the second volume of Codename: Sailor V.

Erica Friedman wrote a great article for Hooded Utilitarian a while back about why Sailor Moon was such a huge influence on North America.

Ed Sizemore found that he had issues with Usagi as a heroine in his review of Volume 1, but he was able to get behind Minako more. Ed also did a podcast about the series with Erica and Emily Snodrass.

Erin Jamison gives us a look at what lessons one can learn from Usagi Tsukino.

I’ve reviewed the first two volume of both Sailor Moon and Sailor V here, and I also discussed the character of Makoto Kino/Sailor Jupiter.

And that’s just Day 1! What will other days bring?

When I thought about what I wanted to write about for this month’s Sailor Moon MMF, I decided I wanted to get away from my two favorite senshi, Minako and Hotaru, mostly as I’ve discussed them to death. (You can argue I’ve done the same with Setsuna, but I reserve the right to come back to her later this week anyway.) So I started to wonder if there were senshi that I liked but hadn’t really delved into why I liked them in great detail. Makoto was the first that came to mind. Because really, she’s terrific.

Introduced at the end of the first re-released volume/halfway through the first season of the anime, Makoto pretty much makes an instant impression. She is 5’6″, which given she’s 14 and Japanese, is really significantly tall. She also has many of the features and clothes that a fan of Japanese shoujo manga would instantly associates with ‘yanki’, or a girl in a gang – she has ‘wavy’ hair (the manga goes to great pains to have her note that it’s naturally that way and not a perm), she wears a long skirted school uniform, a carryover from her old school, which one could easily hide weapons in (it’s noted she’s so tall the school can’t get her a new uniform right away – in fact, she doesn’t get one till high school). And of course she’s rumored to have been expelled from her old school for fighting. (Apparently Takeuchi’s original plan was for Makoto to actually *be* a yanki, but her editors told her to dial it back.)

Of course, we eventually find out that Makoto is quite feminine, and loves to cook and do gardening. The interesting thing about this, though, is that this is not followed by her explaining everything else is a misunderstanding. She does fight at school – she fights bullies picking on others. And even though she gets ostracized by her classmates for her scary appearance and tendency towards fights, she’s not going to stop doing this. This becomes even more obvious when she awakens to her role as a senshi, Sailor Jupiter. She takes her role of protecting her princess, Sailor Moon, very seriously, and does not hesitate to treat youma exactly the same way she would treat a bully. Makoto hates injustice as much as the rest of the senshi, and if she can use her height and strength to stop it, well, that’s fine.

I feel I should also mention something else – of the entire inner senshi, Makoto is the only one with no parents – or even parental figure – at all. Takeuchi actually gives us this information offhandedly in a comedic side-story – Makoto gets terrified when she hears an advertisement for an airline, and tells us her parents were killed in a plane crash. Now, Ami and Rei also have parental issues – Ami’s parents are separated, and Rei’s mother has died and she’s estranged from her father. But Ami does at least live with her mother, and Rei has her grandfather. Makoto, from what we can tell, lives alone. How she manages to swing this we’re never quite shown – one fan idea is that she’s given enough for an apartment and necessities from a distant family member – but certainly it does give another reason why she’s good at cooking.

And then there’s the old boyfriend. Now, the manga briefly touched on this in her debut, but the anime began to use it as a running gag. And then once fans got a hold of it and began using it in fanfics… let’s just say that if you ask Sailor Moon fans about Makoto, one thing they will always discuss is that “she always things every guy reminds her of her old boyfriend”. A constant source of humor, it also underscores the loneliness in Makoto’s life. From what we see, Makoto was devastated by the breakup (this is even more true in the anime – the manga downplays it somewhat by having her awaken to her destiny) and is having a lot of trouble getting over it. Sailor Moon is not a series short of girls wearing their hearts on their sleeves, but even among those Makoto stands out.

Again, among the Inners, Makoto has a tendency to be “the normal one”, who can play straight man when any of the others go insane. One can argue Ami also fills this function, but Ami is a “genius type”, whereas, height notwithstanding, Makoto is far more easy to identify with as “one of the girls”. We usually find Makoto talking Usagi and Rei down from a fight (anime only – manga Rei rarely gets that hotheaded) or trying to walk Minako and Usagi back from a harebrained scheme. But as a character, she’s just as notable. Showing female readers and viewers that you don’t have to be either a ‘tomboy’ or a ‘girly girl’, but can feel free to love aspects of both. Oh yes, and also feel free to take no guff from any bullies who might be picking on your friends. Makoto is a fantastic part of the core Sailor Moon cast.

And she’s ‘talented’, too. (Sorry, had to get that in there.)

In two days it will be my 2nd anniversary of manga blogging. Of course, I won’t post about it then, as I’ll be far too busy writing up and linking the new Manga Moveable Feast, which will be discussing Sailor Moon. But since my stack of books to review keeps getting higher, and Lord knows I’ll do anything to avoid doing things that are pressuring me (hi, stack of Viz books!), I thought I’d discuss what I thought of this year.

Overall, a mixed bag. (And I’m pretty sire that art is final, sadly.) Tokyopop had its faults as a company, God knows, but they also put out a pile of series I adored. Viz slowed to a crawl a number of series I follow, presumably for sales reasons. Kodansha’s reboot was great, and Sailor Moon is fantastic, but they give the impression of working with a very small staff, given the number of obvious proofreading errors that plague their books. And in general a lot of 2011 was watching the economy continue to contract, and seeing it affect everyone in the business.

But it certainly had its high points as well. JManga, even if it’s not what we hoped it would be, has introduced me to a number of stellar series. Viz also came out roaring with their digital platform, and are doing the speedup to (near) simultaneous release that folks clamored for. Yen Press and Kodansha also rolled out digital platforms. I admit that a lot of the digital manga arena seems to be ‘won’t you buy this proprietary device that you can only get our manga on?’, but I’m hoping 2012 will include more options for those of us who don’t own iPads.

Series I love ended in 2011! Fullmetal Alchemist, Eyeshield 21, Seiho Boys’ High School, Black Jack. New series I love began! Blue Exorcist, Oresama Teacher, The Drops of God. New reprints of Love Hina and Sailor Moon. And yes, some series were cancelled: Gintama. And, in non-manga high points, the big news of the year was Pogo *finally* coming out from Fantagraphics.

There’s a lot to look forward to in 2012. New series like Devil and Her Love Song, which promises to be awesome. Shonen Jump Alpha, even if it doesn’t have Medaka Box just yet. Vertical trying to change its image a bit from ‘they don’t publish mainstream’ by picking up GTO and Flowers of Evil. More from JManga, hopefully at a faster pace than the 1-per-week they settled into after their debut. Some great stuff from Yen, including the Durarara!! manga and Until Death Do Us Part. And, of course, Vol. 23 of Excel Saga. I’ll be there, shouting from the rooftops as always.

Any wishes for the new year? I wish that some of the mid-range publishers who were all giving stuff to Tokyopop got together and figured out what they’re going to do now. Hakusensha in particular is in trouble if their one venue is now “One Viz license per year”. Yes, I realize that they probably feel pretty burned by Stu Levy and reluctant to deal with North America right now, but still. I’d like to see some titles available digitally that are back catalog titles – such as Ranma, or Excel Saga, or Please Save My Earth – rather than just “new and popular”. I’d also be interested in companies doing some digital only – maybe that’s how we can see ‘tricky’ series such as Medaka Box or Sket Dance. Of course, I realize digital only is very unpopular with folks, but… And I’d like to see the economy turn around, and folks buy more manga, so that we can get even more licenses.

I’d ask for a pony, but I did discover Friendship Is Magic this year, so I am content with Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and the others for now. :D

Lastly, thanks to everyone who reads and comments at my blog for a great year. I particularly want to thank MJ, Kate, Michelle and David at Manga Bookshelf, both for asking me to join and for immediately welcoming me. It’s been a rough December for our group, as you are no doubt aware, but I hope that 2012 finds joy and happiness all round, for both the Manga Bookshelf team and its readers.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!