What Do the Sailor Moon Transformations Look Like to Other People?

Do they really henshin in front of people?

Do they really henshin in front of people?

Though I’m not a betting man, I’d feel relatively comfortable saying that nearly every Sailor Moon fan out there that has watched the anime with a friend or family member who isn’t a fan of the genre has had to deal with the question: “why doesn’t the bad guy just attack her when she’s transforming?”

And can you blame them? It’s a really good question.

Though fans have come up with a multitude of reasons to explain this away over the years — with answers ranging from the Youma wanting a fair fight to the Sailor Soldiers teleporting away during the henshin sequence — we’re actually here to address a much more fundamental question today.

Do these transformations actually take place, or are they like the eye catches between commercial breaks, and only for the viewer’s benefit?

Stick around, it’s about to get interesting!

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Was Sailor Moon the First Magical Girl to Transform With a Compact?

The Crystal Star Compact is hardly compact...

The Crystal Star Compact is hardly compact…

With how amazingly popular Sailor Moon wound up becoming, it’s easy to forget that the series was not the first to have explored… well… practically any of the concepts that made it famous. Not to downplay the achievements Ms. Takeuchi’s genre-defining classic, of course, but nearly everything that we know Sailor Moon for nowadays had already been done in other series before it.

Many of the so-called “tropes” that 21st century fans would readily attribute to Sailor Moon were in fact already well-established before our favorite sailor-suited warriors were even conceived.

While Usagi may have made the idea of a “magical compact” famous, the great grandmother of magical girls is the one who made it a staple in the genre.

Today we’re going to take a look back to the earliest days of the “magical girl” genre and tell the story of one of its earliest pioneers!

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Does Usagi Need Her Brooch to Stay Sailor Moon?

So if that brooch was gone, then...?

So if that brooch was gone, then…?

“Moon Prism Power, Make up!!”

With those five simple words, the klutzy 14 year old crybaby Usagi Tsukino turns into the sailor-suited soldier of both love and justice, Sailor Moon. Once her power is unleashed, she’s able to fight the toughest monsters the enemy can throw at her, and… umm… heal the baddest of the bad?

What I’d like to talk about today is something that has been on my mind for awhile: does the brooch make Usagi into Sailor Moon, or is it just a way of channeling her inner power?

Hopefully you’ll join me on this in-depth look into the source of Sailor Moon’s power!

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