This was definitely not recommended by fans
Now that we’ve gotten the serious attack suggestions out of the way, it’s time for us to delve a little deeper into Animage’s mail bag and look at some of the… less likely ideas for attacks recommended by Sailor Moon fans, way back in the summer of 1992.
Thought I can’t really imagine any of these attacks ever really appearing in the anime or the manga, it’s nevertheless a fun look back at the fandom in the early days of the series.
Let’s get started!
The long lost Sailor Archery attack
Remember that time when Sailor Moon pulled back on the string of her crescent-moon-shaped bow, let loose, and tore the attacking youma asunder? No? That’s strange, because I’ve got this picture right here in front of me.
Oh, that’s right! The attack never actually existed. But it was briefly considered, and a single animation cel was even made of the attack.
Today, we’re talking about attacks suggested by fans to the anime staff!
Usagi has to keep these scripts secret!
I was surprised to find out recently that way back when the Sailor Moon anime first aired, Animage1 – one of Japan’s premier anime magazines – held a contest in conjunction with the anime production staff to for fans to send in ideas for what they’d like to see in the series. This was known as the “Sailor Awards” (セーラー大賞; seeraa taishou).
The suggestions were reviewed and comments on several of the better choices were provided by either Junichi Sato (series director)2 or Iriya Azuma (producer).3 The best ideas were even ultimately used in the series!
Today we’re going to look at some of the plot suggestions that these early-adopting Sailor Moon fans sent in.
Sailor Moon STI Condom (Front)
While I’ve certainly written more than my fair share of off-color topics in the past, from what the Sailor Soldiers wear under their skirts to their mathematically-derived bust sizes, I never thought I’d actually be writing about an authorized Sailor Moon… condom, with Ms. Takeuchi’s seal of approval. While this isn’t the type of trivia I usually discuss, this seemed worthy of a further look and something I thought would be fun to share with fans in the west. So, what’s all this about?
Saturn and Saturn
Whether you’re an anime or manga fan in Japan, Europe, America, or anywhere else around the globe, odds are that you’re intimately familiar with cosplay, and may have even done it yourself. While cosplay isn’t limited to — or even unique to — Japan, it is without a doubt well-known for the high quality of the costumes and incredible attention to detail by the cosplayers who bring our favorite characters to life. Today, I’d like to talk about the experiences of one such cosplayer.
Usagi Tsukino and Naru Osaka – BFFs
Naru Osaka is one of those secondary characters that is incredibly hard to pin down. At first glance she’s just one of many background characters – like Ms. Haruna Sakurada, Usagi’s family, and many other members of the supporting case – but when you actually take time to look at the amount of work put into developing her character, you realize that quite a bit more work was put into her background than many others. So what do we actually know about Usagi’s best friend?
The Sailor Team like to think they have pretty normal names…
We’ve discussed on several occasions the difficulties involved in localization, particularly when it comes to names, but we haven’t often discussed the names of the main characters themselves (with some exceptions), and how uncommon or strange they may seem. In fact, when the Sailor Moon manga was first being localized into English by Mixxzine1 (before being moved to Smile2 and then serialized by Tokyopop)3 – one of the first magazines for localized manga to be widely distributed in the U.S. – there was a lot of debate among fans over how Usagi’s name was localized.
While many fans either preferred the name Serena, as used in DiC’s localization of the anime, many other fans expressed an affinity for the Japanese original name. Mixx’s choice to translate Usagi’s name literally as Bunny was divisive to say the least. On one side of the argument, you could say that this is how Japanese readers interpreted the name—as a word found in the dictionary. On the other, one could argue that just like Dick Dastardly4 and many other children’s cartoons in the West, the name is simply an extra to give you further insight into the character.
Since there’s no “correct” solution to this issue of nuance in Japanese being lost in localization, I think it’s worth taking a look at this issue from another direction: just how made up are the names of the Sailor Moon cast, and are they really as obscure and fictional as we’ve all been led to believe? How many people can there actually be who are named “… of the moon,” anyway?
Neo Queen Princess Usagi Serena Bunny Serenity Tsukino
According to this index5 of 19,661,494 Japanese phone book listings, at least. Another site, which uses both phone records and and government census data,6 says that there are approximately 1,500 people with the last name Tsukino, making it the 6,402nd most popular last name in Japan. The site also provides an interesting look into the origin of the last name:
現鹿児島県東部である大隅国曽於郡月野が起源（ルーツ）である。近年、鹿児島県に多数みられる。 「野」は自然のままの広い地を表す。
The origin of the name is the village of Tsukino in the Soo district of Oosumi province in what is now the eastern part of present-day Kagoshima prefecture. There are many with the name found in Kagoshima prefecture. The character for “no” (野) means a wide-open natural space.
That’s right, if you were to go to Soo county in Kagoshima,7 you could very well meet someone named Tsukino. So in terms of realism, how do the rest of the characters fare?
| Name | No. Households | Ranking | Most Common In |
| Tsukino | 251~1,500 | 6,402 | Kagoshima |
| Mizuno | 26,216~175,000 | 105 | Aichi |
| Hino | 4~20 | 64,633 | Oita |
| Kino | 1,284~8,700 | 1,811 | Shizuoka |
| Aino | 21~140 | 26,233 | Hokkaido |
| Chiba | 34~230 | 19,895 | Yamagata |
| Tenoh | 13~80 | 36,041 | Hiroshima |
| Kaioh | 0 | NA | NA |
| Tomoe | 0 | NA | NA |
| Meioh | 0 | NA | NA |
| Osaka | 172~1,200 | 7,346 | Osaka |
I guess it shouldn’t be all that surprising that Mizuno would be that common of a last name (almost breaking into the top 100!) considering that there’s the Mizuno Corporation,8 a popular brand of sports equipment. More than anything else, though, I was surprised to see that nearly all of the last names of the main cast (with the exception of Michiru, Hotaru, and Setsuna) actually exist in the real world. Even Ms. Naru Osaka, who I always figured was a pure parody name, actually has some real-world relatives in the – big surprise! – Osaka region of Japan.
The Lovely Ms. Osaka
So there you have it! Though obviously Ms. Takeuchi picked the character names in order to match them with their representative planets as well as their chosen element and, to be honest, it may simply be a pure coincidence that any of these are real-world names at all, I for one am glad to see that there is at least one more touch of reality in the world of Sailor Moon.
And for anyone who’s curious – no, there’s no one in Japan that I could find named Usagi. Too bad!