Tag Archives: Manga

What is Sailor Jupiter’s True Element – Lightning or Wood?

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Jupiter Supreme Thunder!

Jupiter Supreme Thunder!

Despite being one of the five (six, if you count Mamoru / Tuxedo Mask) main original cast members, and the fourth Sailor Soldier to join the team, there’s a lot about Makoto’s back story that’s left untold. Not only does her background suggest that she was very possibly a member of a gang, but we were often left hanging wondering if we would ever find out about her mysterious ex-boyfriend/sempai or if she’d ever find a new love interest to get her mind off of him. But what we’re here to talk about to day is another one of those mysteries that has stymied Sailor Moon fans for decades: just why is it that Sailor Jupiter – the Sailor Soldier of thunder/lightning – also have wood/plant elemental attacks?

Well… actually, no. It turns out that this is yet another case of needing to re-frame the question to help us understand what the real issue is and to arrive at the right answer. As we’ve previously discussed, each of the Sailor Soldiers’ names from from the Japanese name for the planet their affiliated with, which also neatly gives them an elemental association. In the case of Ami Mizuno, for example, the Mizu in her name comes from the kanji for water (水; mizu, sui)1 which is incidentally also the kanji used to represent the planet Mercury (水星; suisei)2 in Japanese.

Mercury to Jupiter, in Japanese

Mercury to Jupiter, in Japanese

So what about Makoto then? Well, her last name Kino is made up of the kanji for trees  (木; ki, moku)3 which ties back into the kanji used to represent the planet Jupiter (木星; mokusei).4 What this tells us is that it’s likely that Makoto’s primary element is actually supposed to be wood/plants and in fact the lightning attack is actually the abnormality. But before we can say that for a fact, we need to consider why this would be.

Coconut Cyclone

Coconut Cyclone

Why give Sailor Jupiter a lightning attack at all, you ask? Well, quite simply, one of the most memorable features of the planet Jupiter is its turbulent weather system, leading to violent thunderstorms as large as 1,000km across.5 Zeus and Jupiter, of Greco-Roman mythologies, were also known for throwing lightning bolts.6 When choosing an attack for the Sailor Soldier of the planet Jupiter, it’s hard to argue that her Supreme Thunder didn’t fit the role nicely.

However, as the series progressed, you can see that Ms. Takeuchi actually stuck with using purely wood/plant-based attacks going forward, with the single exception of Jupiter Thunderbolt.7 From thereon, we had (together with its first appearance):

  • Flower Hurricane (Act 5)
  • Sparkling Wide Pressure (Act 16)
  • Jupiter Coconut Cyclone (Act 27)
  • Jupiter Oak Evolution (Act 42)

The anime, however, seemed to prefer the electricity theme and continue to go with it whenever new attacks were created, though they sometimes implemented the manga attacks as well, which is what leads to some of the confusion.

So there you have it! As it turns out, Sailor Jupiter’s proper element should actually be over plants and nature, though due to a little creative thinking on Ms. Takeuchi’s part when it came to making her first attack, there’s been some long-term confusion as to which she really should have command over. Minako also has a similar issue with regard to metal and love, though that is another discussion for another time.

What about you? Do you prefer Sailor Jupiter as the Sailor Soldier of thunder and lightning, or do you see her more as backed by the power of plants and nature? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Did the Sailor Moon Anime Make Haruka More Masculine?

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Sailor Uranus – A Sailor Soldier Not Restricted by Gender

Sailor Uranus – A Sailor Soldier Not Restricted by Gender

I generally try to avoid topics that require an understanding of Japanese to begin with, since it’s much less fun for those involved and has a very “inside baseball”1 feel to it if you’re trying to follow along with a bunch of different terminology. Of course, it can be very interesting sometimes and since we’re talking about a series which has undergone many incarnations in being brought to the Western world, it definitely is worth discussing sometimes. The case of Haruka, and how her gender and sexuality is conveyed in the anime and manga, is certainly one of those issues worth a closer look.

Haruka needs to relax sometimes

Haruka needs to relax sometimes

Japanese, as I’m sure many of you are aware, has a lot of personal pronouns.2 In fact, if you take a look on the Japanese Wikipedia page,3 you’ll find that they list fifty-one different ways to say “I” or “me.” This leads to an interesting problem in translation, since in Japanese these all express information on the way that the speaker views both themselves and their relationship with the listener while there’s no other choice than to translate them all as “I” when putting it into English.4 While most anime fans have undoubtedly heard of the common terms like watashi, atashi, boku, and ore, there are many others like honshoku (本職; used in business correspondence, often by government officials) and wagahai (我が輩; used by kingly sorts and despots, like King Koopa from Super Mario and well known in the title of “I Am a Cat” by Natsume Soseki5) which, though slightly less common, are just as important to Japanese culture and communication.

So when it comes to Haruka, it’s obviously a great point of interest how she refers to herself, since it expresses a part of her character that doesn’t really come across in English. While researching this, though, I came across an interesting issue: the anime and the manga treat Haruka’s use of personal pronouns differently… and in a pretty peculiar way.

The Unstoppable Sailor Duo

The Unstoppable Sailor Duo

How does the anime treat it? Well, irrespective of whether she is Sailor Uranus or Haruka (and both before and after Usagi discovers Haruka is female), she refers to herself using the pronoun boku, which is typically reserved for males but is not seen as completely verboten when used by younger girls and up through university. Where things get interesting, though, is in the manga. Ms. Takeuchi did not stick to just one personal pronoun for the character, but actually uses two – atashi and ore, which are seen as explicitly feminine and masculine, respectively. So when appearing as Haruka, she identifies herself more as a masculine and strong personality while taking on more of a feminine touch (on the same level as the way Ami refers to herself!) when in the form of Sailor Uranus.

To be honest, I’m rather disappointed that the anime did away with this for a simple across-the-board use of boku rather than going through the effort of trying to show Haruka as more of a fluid character, transcending above the simple male/female gender choice, as Ms. Takeuchi hinted at in the manga by switching between two extremes.

Ultimately, this is all a relatively minor issue, but it’s unfortunately one that’s lost in translation since there really aren’t any direct ways to address it in English other than changing the rest of the character’s speech patterns. I’d love to hear about how other translations dealt with it, though. Especially ones which do have gendered pronouns!

How Different Was the Pacing of the Sailor Moon Anime and Manga?

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The Sailor Soldiers and Their Princess

The Sailor Soldiers and Their Princess

Taking into consideration that the manga was serialized in Nakayoshi magazine at a rate of one act per month1 while the anime needed to consistently churn out episodes on a weekly basis, it’s plain to see that there would be definite pacing differences between the two. What’s interesting, though, is that when you take the time to actually look at the data, the story flow of the Sailor Moon anime and manga are actually more similar than you would assume. A word of warning: we’re going to be looking at a lot of numbers today!

First off, we need to establish our points of comparison. We know that the manga ran for 52 acts and the anime for 200 episodes. For the sake of a fair comparison, though, I believe we need to remove the Cardian Arc (as much as I may like it) from the Sailor Moon R anime and also the beginning of Sailor Stars since it was a continuation of the Nehelenia story line. We also will not be counting the side stories (picture diaries, etc.) in the manga. Once you do that, here is how the numbers break down:

Number of Episodes and Acts by Story Arc
Story Arc Episodes Acts Eps/Acts
Dark Kingdom 46 13 3.5
Black Moon 30 10 3.0
Death Busters 38 10 3.8
Dead Moon 39 9 4.3
Sailor Stars 26 10 2.6
Total 179 52 3.4

As we can see, though it differed on a season-by-season basis, on average the anime had to make 3.4 episodes per act in the original manga – and that makes sense, considering they needed to track how the manga developed on a roughly monthly basis. But what does this mean for the actual story progression, and how did they differ due to this need to add episodes? Interestingly enough, it didn’t have as much on an impact as I would have thought, though the anime did choose to pad out the story in interesting ways (and even shorten certain story arcs, it seems).

In order to answer this question, I think the most clear-cut way is to look at important story events and compare how early/late they occurred and how much attention certain elements were given as a part of the total story arc. Let’s get started!

Dark Kingdom

As you can see here, this shows how much the series had progressed by the time the character was introduced (in percentages). For example, Ami appeared in Act 2 of the manga and episode 8 of the anime. This works out to 15% and 17% of the way through the plot, respectively, and is actually pretty close. Rei (at act 3 and episode 10, 23% and 22% respectively) is also pretty close in the manga and anime. Makoto and Minako, however, are a different story. It seems that the anime staff wanted to take a break from introducing new characters for a bit and held back for quite a while on Makoto’s introduction, probably until they were ready to bring in the Rainbow Crystal story line.

Speaking of which, you can also see that there was a great amount of difference in how the time between the Four Kings and the end-game (or with Queen Beryl as the main villain) was split up in the manga and the anime.2 First, the manga:

Interestingly enough, an equal (or near-equal) amount of attention was given to each of the main villains in the manga, including the end with the drawn-out battle against Queen Beryl/Metalia. How did things look in the anime, then?

And… wow. Jadeite and Kunzite have around the same respective shares, but I was surprised to see that Nephrite and Zoisite actually were around for nearly as long as the rest. Of course, the padding added to them greatly impacted the post-Kunzite part of the story, which was reduced to a paltry two episodes.

Overall, I think what I learned by taking a look at the actual numbers of the two tellings of the Dark Kingdom arc was that they’re surprisingly more similar than I had thought, when you take into account the volume differences. You could probably make other observations depending on how fine-toothed of a comb you want to use looking at the data (amount of times the Sailor Soldiers fight, number of days passing, side-character interactions, etc.), but I think this makes an informative visualization.

Unfortunately, this article has gone on a bit long, so we’ll have to save the analyses for the rest of the story arcs until the next part. What other interesting differences are waiting to be discussed, I wonder…?

How Did Sailor Moon’s Disguise Pen Work?

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It's Morphin' Time!

It’s Morphin’ Time!

Among all of the special items that Luna gives Usagi and all of the other Sailor Soldiers, I’ve always felt that the Disguise Pen was one of the most interesting, and yet also the most under represented. How is it that you could have a pen that could turn you into whatever you wanted to look like (and typically allow you to look like a grown adult despite being a fourteen year old girl…) and yet so rarely ever use it? In fact, out of its 11 appearances in the anime and six appearances in the manga,1 all but two of them in both the anime and manga occurred in the the Dark Kingdom arc.

What particularly interests me, though, is how more often than not Usagi manages to use the pen wrong and all the while still gets a semi-satisfactory result. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s take a look!

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How Did the Moon Frisbee Become the Moon Boomerang?

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The Not-Boomerang Moon Boomerang

The Not-Boomerang Moon Boomerang

Few attacks in the history of the Sailor Moon series have undergone as many alterations as the sailor-suited soldier’s debut attack in both the manga and the anime. While it’s up for debate whether or not her crying, which unleashes ultrasonic sound waves that distract the youma Morga in the midst of her assault,1 is a special attack in its own right, in the tradition of most anime and live-action shows in the sentai fighting-force line, I think it’s fair to say that anything without an explicit name is just a part of them being super soldiers of justice. Otherwise, you will need to start coming up with names for their ability to jump to high places, a name for Sailor Jupiter’s punching, and more. That said, Sailor Moon’s tiara is the first named attack, but its name has gone through several major changes. What gives?

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How Was Mamoru Affected by His Amnesia?

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Usagi brings Mamoru a Rose (Sailor Moon R Movie)

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)

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)

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?

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The Dueling Masks

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.

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