Where DO these names come from??
I’m assuming that most of you have already read the first part to this series investigating the playful puns, recycled references, and hidden history behind the names given to the droids throughout Sailor Moon‘s Black Moon arc. If you haven’t had a chance to read through it yet, you might want to read through part one first. With that out of the way, let’s take a look at how the remaining droids got their names!
Berthier and the Manga-Style Generic Droids
That’s right, it’s that time again where we get to look at the hidden meanings behind the names of the various youma of the Dark Kingdom, Ail and An’s Cardians, and other various naming mysteries in the Sailor Moon universe. While many of the names are just simple puns related to a trait of the particular droid, compared to the youma it looks like the production staff dug deep to find some really interesting references this time around. So, let’s take a look!
The Four Ayakashi / Specter / Phantom / Negamoon Sisters
While there’s no official (or even in-universe) connection between the Dark Kingdom and the Black Moon, Ms. Takeuchi continued reaching back into her roots in mineralogy and family history in gemstones when naming the members of the Black Moon Clan. But things aren’t exactly so clear cut with the Ayakashi Sisters. So what, exactly, is the mythological background behind Rubeus’ four underlings?
The Masked Belle Poitrine
Over this past year of exploring all of the hidden histories and minor intricacies in the world of Sailor Moon, one point that we’ve continuously come back to is that nothing is ever quite as simple as it seems. Much like an onion, there are layers and layers of neat bits of trivia. So in honor of the one-year anniversary of this blog, I’d like to go back way to the beginning: what was the inspiration behind the magical girl known as Sailor Moon?
Very computer-literate cats
One of the really interesting storylines about the original season of Sailor Moon (at least to me) that never seemed to live up to its potential was the concept of a game machine in the Crown Arcade which gave Luna instructions before she had recovered her memories and while she was left on her own to assist Usagi and the other Sailor Soldiers. While it was ultimately explained that the one giving her information was actually Artemis, it just sounded like an overly simple explanation. But that’s not what we’re talking about today. Rather, it’s about Luna’s strange code name: 0091. What does it mean?
Off to Africa Because… Reasons.
Motoki Furuhata has always been an interesting character to me in the world of Sailor Moon not only because he manages to be a strong supporter of Usagi and the rest of the Sailor Team even before he knows much about what’s going on, but he also neatly ties together the worlds of Codename: Sailor V and Sailor Moon. While I’d love to talk more about Motoki, though, today I’d like to talk about his girlfriend, Reika Nishimura, and some of the mysteries about her.
Don’t ever ask a woman’s age…
In a series like Sailor Moon which has given us so much trouble when it comes to trying to sort out the time line, it’s refreshing to finally be able to take on a question regarding an age which can actually be answered (… within reason) for once. So just how old is Ikuko Tsukino and – by extension – how old was she when she gave birth to Usagi?
Ikuko is, as implied by her name,1 the quintessential caring mother who isn’t afraid of engaging in a little bit of tough-love in order to get Usagi to actually get around to taking studying seriously. Also implied in her name is the Japanese concept of 教育ママ (kyouiku mama; a mother focused on scholastic achievement), a term which has been around in Japanese culture since at least the 1960s,2 though the concept may be more familiar in the west as a “tiger mother” as popularized in Amy Chua’s book by the same name.3
Usagi’s growing up!
As for her age, according to an offhand remark Ikuko makes in the manga, we can definitively say that she is 36 years old as of the Sailor Stars arc.4 Similarly, she makes a remark in the anime which puts her age at around her “later 30s,”5 so I would say it’s pretty safe to place her at 36 in both versions of Sailor Moon.
If she’s 36 years old when Usagi is first entering high school (and figuring that Usagi is 16 years old at that time), that would put her at around 20 years old when Usagi was born. And I bet you thought Usagi was young when she had ChibiUsa! In 1977, when Usagi was presumably born,6 the average age at the time of first marriage was 27 and 25 for men and women, respectively. As a point of comparison, those numbers are now 31 for men and 29 for women.7
What this does mean, though, is that Ikuko probably did not go to university, though that wasn’t so uncommon in those days. Back in 1977, only around 13% of Japanese women actually went to a four-year university, which is the same rate as that for Japanese men in 1955!8 This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, but it might be an additional reason behind Ikuko’s motivation for pushing Usagi to study hard (and since Usagi became the Neo Queen of Crystal Tokyo at 22, she very well could have gone to university).
Ikuko and six year old Usagi
What’s most interesting for me about all of this is that it shows that Usagi’s family is actually on the younger end of the scale, meaning that Ikuko would probably be a fair bit younger than the parents of all the other Sailor Soldiers (well, except Makoto’s…). From the point of view of education, it also nicely emphasizes exactly how impressive and rare it would have been for Ami’s mother to have been attending medical school at that time!
I really do which that we knew more about the family lives of the other members of the Sailor Team, but I guess I should be happy that at the very least the Tsukino’s were fleshed out as much as they were. I’d love to know just how much of their personalities were actually based on the members of Ms. Takeuchi’s family!