Who Is the Demon Standing Behind Sailor Mars?

Posted 2016-03-11

Filed under Articles

Mars and the Mysterious Demon

One thing that’s always been of great interest to me is the story about the demon that appears in the background when she throws her ofuda and stuns enemies. I’ll admit that, having first seen Sailor Moon with the (censored) DiC dub, the first time I saw the demon – which they forgot to censor in one episode of the first half of Sailor Moon R (in the Doom Tree saga)¹ – it was pretty terrifying. It didn’t help that it was 2am and in a dark room, of course. So what’s the story behind the demon? Who is he, and what is his connection to Rei and her banishing of evil spirits?

Buddhist God Acala

As we’ve already discussed in the past, Rei’s use of religion is a bit of a mixed bag in the Sailor Moon series (and the anime in particular), so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to find out that this demon isn’t actually a Shinto god at all, but actually can be traced back to Buddhism. Now, that’s not to say that Buddhism and Shinto are two completely separate entities. They were originally, of course, but over the years (and in a desire to try to explain away inconsistencies in beliefs), many of the Buddhist bodhisattvas² (in a nutshell, someone who has come to understand the trues teachings of Buddha; akin to a saint in Christianity) came to be worshipped as Shinto gods, and many popular Shinto gods were considered to be bodhisattvas. In the case of Rei’s banishing of spirits, however, there’s a strong and clear Buddhist connection.

The demon that we see here is not a demon at all, but rather the Buddhist god known as Acala,³ one of the five Wisdom Kings,⁴ who is traditionally depicted with a sword in his right hand, a lariat or a noose in his left, and fire in the background. Acala, known as Fudou Myou’ou (不動明王; Unmoving Wisdom King), gained quite a following in Japan⁵ and had a great deal of art, statues, and no less than 34 temples dedicated to him.⁶ Considering that strong tradition, his warrior-like nature, and the association with fire, it’s not too surprising that he was a good fit for Rei’s warding off of evil energies.

It seems like the more you look, the more there is to find in the Sailor Moon universe, and I’m always impressed at just how far not only Ms. Takeuchi went, but the TV Asahi and Toei staff in creating the companion anime series. It’s always exciting to see what other mysteries there are to uncover!

What Is the Shared Mythology Between Luna, Artemis, and Diana?

Posted 2016-03-10

Filed under Articles, Characters, Language, Luna, Supporting Cast

The Moon… Cat Family

Of course we already know that Luna, Artemis, and Diana are connected through their familial connection, so there isn’t much of a mystery there. What is interesting about this connection, however, is that though Ms. Takeuchi may have recycled the name of Diana, she made a wonderful choice by choosing that as the name for Luna and Artemis’ adorable daughter.

Cat Family

Most people are probably aware of the connection between Luna’s name and the Moon, especially speakers of English and the romance languages, since the name has been been reappropriated for many moon-related terms in astronomy, events, and phenomena (e.g., lunar eclipse, lunar calendar, lunar tides, etc.). The source of this name, like many names associated with the planets and stars, is Roman mythology. The Roman goddess Luna¹ is the goddess of the moon, corresponding to the Greek goddess Selene.² Interestingly enough, this shows a nice, clear tie between Usagi — Princess Serenity — and Luna, which really shows up in the interplay between the pair.

What about Artemis, then? Well, sorry to say to the gruff, male assistant to the sailor-suited soldier, Sailor V, Artemis was also a goddess, this time of the Greek variety.³ It’s not all bad for poor Artemis (the cat!) though; the goddess he’s modeled after was known for her prowess as a hunter and was often depicted with a bow and arrow and was known as the protector of young girls, which fits in well with his position as confidant, advisor, and assistant to Minako.

The question of the day, then, is who is Diana, and how are Luna and Artemis connected to her?

Enter Diana (Act 20 of Sailor Moon Crystal)

Interestingly enough, Diana is also a Roman goddess of the moon.⁴ More specifically, she is the Roman counterpart to Artemis, known originally as a goddess of hunting (once again, like Artemis, many of her appearances in art depicted her with bows, arrows, and hunted beasts). Later, she became more widely known as the goddess of the moon, eventually coming to replace Luna in that role in Roman mythology. Indeed, Luna eventually came to be known as an epithet⁵ — a descriptive name, of sorts — for the goddess Diana. Ultimately, Diana is both Artemis and Luna, making the name a wonderful choice for the daughter of the two feline guardians.

One final little bit of trivia: the Romanian word for fairy, ZẤNĂ,⁶ is said to have come from the name Diana. That helps explain the moon fairy connection in her original incarnation!

How Was Mamoru Affected by His Amnesia?

Posted 2016-03-09

Filed under Articles, Characters, Mamoru Chiba

Usagi brings Mamoru a Rose (Sailor Moon R Movie)

While we know that Mamoru was pretty different between the manga and the anime and that his alter-ego Tuxedo Mask wasn’t spared from changes, it’s also worth taking a look at how one of the more notable traits about Mamoru – his amnesia – was treated between the two versions. As happens with a great majority of the cast of Sailor Moon, it all starts with the tragic death of Mamoru’s parents, when he’s six years old (according to the manga, on his sixth birthday). As the story goes, he and his family get into a car accident and he’s the only survivor, though he’s been left with amnesia. This is where I think things get interesting.

Let’s stop for a moment and think about what this amnesia means for a bit. Though we usually talk about amnesia as one big, abstract thing, there are actually multiple forms. What is typically referred to in the Sailor Moon series is the form where, due to some form of emotional or physical trauma, you lose your memories of events leading up to it. This is known as retrograde amnesia.¹ While this is made out to be a big thing, when you think about it, it actually has very little impact on him. If he lost all of his memories at six years old and, at the time of the series, he’s 16 or 18 years old (in the manga and anime, respectively), that would mean that he’s spent more years gaining new memories than he’s lost. In fact, due to a phenomenon known as childhood amnesia,² most people don’t remember anything prior to the age of three.

The Chiba Family (Act 7, vol. 2, p. 53)

Now, I don’t mean to trivialize his hardship, but that means that Mamoru had 10-12 years to rebuild and make new memories to replace the three years of his life that he forgot. I don’t know about you, but I’d say that it’s actually a relatively minor issue, in the grand scheme of things. In fact, manga Mamoru doesn’t seem terribly affected by this other than mentioning concern over whether he really is Mamoru Chiba and that he has dreams of a woman telling him to find the Silver Crystal.³ What about anime Mamoru, then?

Mamoru’s Transformation (ep. 19)

Unfortunately, from what we see throughout the anime, he’s much worse off here. Not only does he suffer amnesia from before the accident, he also seems to suffer from occasional bouts of what’s known as anterograde amnesia,⁴ i.e., losing track of time and failing to create new memories as things happen. This seems to occur in conjunction with his transformation into Tuxedo Mask which, unlike in the manga, he’s actually unaware of his alternate identity entirely.

In Mamoru’s big reveal as Tuxedo Mask in the anime,⁵ upon sensing that Sailor Moon is in trouble trying to save Naru from Nephrite in his costume as the Tuxedo Mask imposter, Mamoru suddenly suffers from a massive headache as he’s walking down the street and drops to his knees before transforming into Tuxedo Mask.

What’s interesting here is that as he’s falling down, he says:

「ま、またか、頭がッ」 (ma, mataka, atama ga…)

“N.. not again, my head!”

So it seems that all of his transformations into Tuxedo Mask are not only happening without his knowledge, but he’s also left without any memories of it either.

I think it’s definitely interesting to see how both the manga and anime took the impact of the accident on Mamoru to completely different places. While it affected his sense of self in the manga (his sense of a missing past), more than anything else it seems to have caused a rift inside him in the anime, leading to the creation of Tuxedo Mask as a separate identity and his loss of memories during his transformation. Now if only someday someone would explain where all that money came from!

How Different Was Tuxedo Mask in the Anime and Manga?

Posted 2016-03-06

Filed under Articles, Characters, Mamoru Chiba

The Dueling Masks

Second only to Sailor Moon, Tuxedo Mask was one of the original suited soldiers of justice fighting for peace and love on behalf of the citizens of Tokyo. In addition to the rather substantial differences between anime and manga Mamoru, Tuxedo Mask (when taken as an individual character) was also rather different between the two. Today, we’re going to look at a few of those differences.

Continue reading →

What Do Queen Serenity and Queen Metalia Have in Common?

Posted 2016-03-05

Filed under Articles, Dark Kingdom, Language, Supporting Cast

Queen Serenity and Queen Beryl

Whether you look at the anime or manga or even the live-action series, despite how important they were to setting up the story behind the Sailor Moon series, Queen Serenity and Queen Metalia both get incredibly minor roles with very little explained about their past or motivations. What’s worse, the Serenity name is passed onto her daughter, Princess Serenity, who then passes it on to her daughter, Princess Usagi Small Lady Serenity. But is there more to these characters than meets the eye? I think so, and that’s what we’re here to look into!

Queen Serenity

Starting with the Serenity line, it’s fortunately pretty easy to track down the meaning and history behind her name, though most of it is probably connected more to Princess Serenity / Usagi more-so than her mother. The most obvious and meaningful connection is the Greek myth of the relationship between Selene, the moon goddess, and the mortal Endymion.¹ This gets us partly to the name “Serenity,” though we have one (or possibly two!) other sources of inspiration, all inspired by the Greek connection to the moon.

We all know that Ms. Takeuchi had a strong attachment to astronomy during her developmental years and did a lot of research when making the series, so it should come as no surprise that Usagi’s royal name would be connected to a basin on the Moon, the Mare Serenitatis — or, in English, the Sea of Serenity.² This is also, incidentally, where the Moon Kingdom was said to be located and where the Sailor Team head in both the anime and manga to consult with the memory of Queen Serenity among the ruins of the Silver Millenium.

Naturally Occurring Selenite and Crystal Tokyo

So then, what is this third possible reference? Though less of a connection to the late Queen Serenity herself, there seems to be a strong implied connection between Neo-Queen Serenity, Crystal Tokyo, and the mineral known as selenite.³ Selenite is most often clear, though can appear white, pearl, or a variety of other colors depending on impurities. Most notably, it often is found in columns and in tubular designs, not much unlike the designs of the Crystal Tokyo Palace and the Silver Crystal.

Queen Metalia

Chrysoberyl (Alexandrite)

Like the Four Kings, the connections to geology are a lot more obvious with the Dark Kingdom. There are two notes about the dual monarchy — Queen Beryl and Queen Metalia — that are not obvious at first glance, however. First off, while the most obvious connection with Queen Beryl is to the gemstone beryl.⁴ However, it’s a little more complicated than that. You see, the Japanese word for queen is 王女 (oujo; queen) though Ms. Takeuchi tends to write the titles (e.g., princess, queen, etc.) out phonetically, such as クイーン (kui-n; queen). However, the titles for both Queen Beryl and Queen Metalia are misspelled in Japanese, and are written as クイン (kuin; no meaning). Why is that?

Well, it’s to give it a double meaning. While it still sounds reasonably close to queen (and is treated canonically that way), it also looks similar to クリソ (kuriso; chryso). So actually, Queen Beryl’s name is more strongly connected to chrysoberyl.⁵ Just by looking, you can see that this stone much more closely matches the color scheme associated with Queen Beryl, so it’s pretty clear that this is more likely a closer source for her inspiration than normal beryl.

That means that the chryso- connection probably also remains true for Queen Metalia as well, since her name is also written in the same (misspelled) manner. Since here’s no substance known as metalia, we can rule out any special connection there other than it simply being a reference to metal, but with the chryso- prefix attached,⁶ it modifies the meaning to the metal, gold.

What that ultimately leaves us with is the villain, an evil queen born of hatred from the sun and named in honor of the mineral gold fighting against the Silver Millenium, ruled by the queen of the moon.

The Forces of the Dark Kingdom

Though we never did learn as much about the motivations behind Beryl, Metalia, and the formation of the Dark Kingdom (outside of the musical, of course!) as I would have liked, it’s nice to know that Ms. Takeuchi went through quite a bit of effort to put a little more detail into their names than you’d initially assume. I have to admit, she’s pretty tricky!

How Does Rei’s Fire-Reading Fit Into Shinto?

Posted 2016-03-02

Filed under Articles, Characters, Rei Hino

Rei Meditating at the Great Fire

Though I hate to speak for other people, I think it’s relatively safe to say that the customs, beliefs, and traditions of the Shinto religion are often not well understood in the West and, therefore, it’s a bit difficult to get a handle on the accuracy of its portrayal in anime, manga, and movies. The good news is that even Japanese people don’t understand it all that well, and very often you’ll see vague scenes of “spirits” all passed off under the Shinto umbrella. That’s actually what’s going on with the fire-reading (also known as pyromancy)¹ scenes at the Hikawa shrine, where Rei uses the power of fire to consult with spirits and to get an understanding for what’s currently happening elsewhere or about to happen. What do I mean? Well, let’s get started!

The unfortunate and short answer to this question is that, quite simply, Shinto has no traditions of fire-reading or even smoke-reading. In fact, with the exception of the o-mikuji (paper strips telling the bearer’s fortune for the upcoming year or near future)² that you can get at a shrine, the Shinto faith (if you can call it that) doesn’t really believe in telling the future at all. Shinto deals in the past (the connection between the god’s who created the Earth and their lineage through the reigning emperor) and the present (the spirits or gods which inhabit everything around us), but it has no real concept of the future or even much of an afterlife. For that reason alone, the many scenes of Rei kneeling down and consulting the great fire are a bit out of place, to say the least.

Speaking to the spirits?

That’s not to say that fire-reading is completely without precedent in Japan, of course! A form of fire-reading – or, more accurately, pyromancy – was practiced in ancient China (and by connection, Japan) through what was known as oracle bones.³ The fortune teller would etch questions onto animal bones or turtle shells, put them into a fire, the bones/shells would heat up and explode, and then they would analyze how it broke and try to divine the future. This, however, fell out of practice a long time ago, with the last known examples showing up in the Zhou dynasty⁴ in China—around 771BC.

Jomon Fire-Reading Festival (1/2016)

That being said, the practice isn’t entirely unheard of in Japan, even if it doesn’t have connection to Shinto as it’s actively practiced today. In fact, the city of Oyabe in Toyama prefecture⁵ holds an annual festival in January in which they bring together the dried husks from the rice harvest, bundle them into a giant tower, and burn them as part of a festival in order to see what the coming year holds.

There are also other so-called fire festivals (左義長; sagichou)⁶ held throughout Japan during January that date back to 1251 AD, but these are more symbolic festivals that have to do with lighting up the dark winter and bringing luck through the coming year, and less to do with trying to engage in any sort of fortune telling.

So what does this ultimately tell us? Is Rei’s fire-reading a sham or some sort of mistake made by Ms. Takeuchi and the creators of the Sailor Moon anime? Not at all! Pyromancy is very much a real form of fortune-telling (ignoring for a second whether or not we believe fortune-telling is real) and it’s even mentioned in Act 3 of the manga that it’s Rei herself who is spiritual and has mysterious powers, not exactly the connection to the Shinto shrine itself. It would only make sense that Rei, being the Sailor Soldier of fire, would find affinity with fire and would use it to focus her natural spiritual abilities.

Rei doing a tarot card reading

Rei is also seen doing tarot card reading on several occasions in the manga, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that she practices many different forms of fortune telling in order to channel her own connection with the spirits.

I guess the take-home lesson here is that while the fire meditation / fire-reading that Rei does throughout the Sailor Moon series may not actually be a part of the Shinto faith, it’s not entirely heard of in Japanese history and, moreover, ties directly into her role as the Sailor Mars: Soldier of Fire. More likely than not, as with the tarot cards she uses on several occasions throughout the manga, it’s more a manner of giving her something to focus on to center herself (much like how Ami uses swimming). In the end, it probably doesn’t really matter, but it’s at least nice to know that it’s a part of Rei as a character, and not a part of the greater Shinto connection!

Was There an Actual Crown Game Center?

Posted 2016-02-29

Filed under Articles, Making Of, Real World

Crown Game Center – Real or Legend?

Anyone who has been around the internet long enough to have been bombarded with clickbait headlines on Twitter, Facebook, and even major new sides on a daily basis is probably familiar with so-called Betteridge’s law of headlines,¹ which states:

Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) for me, here we address nothing but questions with answers that are rarely – if ever – as simple as a yes or no answer. On one hand, it’d be nice to quickly confirm or dismiss some of these questions, but that’d kill much of the entertainment and learning value for you, the reader, and the excitement and research value for me, the writer. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that, as usual, the answer to this question is: “it’s complicated.”

Within the Azabu Juban Shotengai (麻布十番商店街; Azabu Juban Shopping District),² right around the time that Ms. Takeuchi was putting together the world of Codename: Sailor V (and later Sailor Moon), there actually was an entertainment center called “Crown.”

From Left to Right: Pachinko Crown, Crown Game Center, and McDonalds

The small caveat here is that though the Crown was a game center (i.e., an arcade as we’d know it in the west) in the manga run by a friendly university student, it was actually an incredibly noisy pachinko gambling den that kids were forbidden from entering in real life, known as Pachinko Crown. The business has since shut down and has been converted into a McDonalds, but the design of the building is still noticeable to Sailor Moon fans.

The Crown as it Appeared in 1993

Unfortunately, it seems that the anime didn’t take much of an effort to use the design of the original Crown, but it is nice to see that it was at least something of a festive landmark in the Azabu Juban area. According to a notice posted on the door (which was thankfully preserved online),³ Pachinko Crown closed for business on January 4, 2001.

While on the topic of the Crown shops (which, according to the Sailor Moon lore, was run by Motoki’s family, which explains why both he and his sister worked there despite being students), there is one more interesting thing to share: it seems that the Crown Fruit Parlor was also a real place, though it’s unclear if the businesses were related in real life like they were in the manga/anime. They both are named “Crown,” though, so it’s not too hard to imagine that there may have been a connection in the real world too.

Crown Musk Melon and Crown Fruits Parlor

The shop with the Crown Musk Melon sign is actually a fruit shop (which doesn’t seem to have an attached cafe) named Marumiya that appears to still be in business.⁴

So there you have it! For what seemed like a couple of random shops that appeared throughout the Sailor Moon anime and manga (and, in the case of the anime and Central Control, was actually an integral part of the series!), it turns out that there actually was some truth behind the locations and their designs. I’d love to know more about what drew Ms. Takeuchi to these places, if perhaps she used to buy groceries at the fruit shop or used to commute along these roads, but I suppose that sort of history is for now at least lost to time. All the same, though, it’s a great feeling to be able to see my favorite places in the anime actually appear in real life!

Tuxedo Unmasked

The Real World Stories Behind Sailor Moon

Category Archives: Articles