How Did the Sailor Moon Cast’s Popularity Differ in the Anime and Manga?

Posted 2016-02-27

Filed under Articles, Characters, Inner Senshi, Outer Senshi

Same Team; Different Results

Though we discussed several possible reasons behind Ami’s seemingly uncontested popularity already, even after looking at all the data we were still left with quite a few questions. Namely, why is it that ChibiUsa (one of the major characters in the series and practically second-billing in the SuperS anime) didn’t even rank in any popularity polls? Or how do you explain the fact that even Usagi herself did so poorly in the polls despite appearing on practically all Sailor Moon merchandise?

In order to try to make more sense of this, I went to the Nakayoshi Annual Popularity Polls¹ for the five years that Sailor Moon was serialized in the magazine. In order to normalize the data, all characters that are essentially the same person (e.g., ChibiUsa, Princess Small Lady Serenity, Sailor ChibiMoon, and Black Lady) were tallied together. For that reason, characters have been ranked against each other to show how popularity changed relatively over time.

For the anime data set, I took another look at the Animage polls and decided to forgo the monthly totals and instead look at the year-end-reviews.² Once a year, Animage would rank the top 100 anime characters from the past year, so this gives us access to more characters (including Setsuna and ChibiUsa). Once again, characters have been ranked against each other to show relative changes.

So what does the data look like in the Sailor Moon anime now?

As you can see here, the results when taken in aggregate aren’t too different for the anime, even when viewed relatively rather than their actual ordinal ranking (for example, though Setsuna ranks tenth place in compared to the other members of the Sailor Team, she was actually 71st place – two times lower than Michiru – in the polls). One of the more interesting things you can see is just how much of an impact Sailor Moon SuperS had on taking the outer team our of the social consciousness, since they all but disappear with the exception of Haruka.

What can we learn by looking at the Nakayoshi ratings, then?

To say that I was surprised by these results would be a disservice. I was absolutely stunned at how different this worked out when compared to the results of the anime. Ami, the far-and-away leader in rankings in the anime drops down to sixth and even seventh place in the anime while ChibiUsa firmly holds second place right after Usagi. You can also see the definite impact of being kept directly involved in the Dead Moon and Sailor Stars arcs, since they not only maintained their popularity, but little Hotaru actually comes in third!

The data really speaks for itself and there isn’t much further to say here, but it is definite worth re-evaluating the commonly accepted myth that Ami is the most popular of the Sailor Team. She was (and is) definitely popular, yes, but a lot of that comes from the fact that many popularity polls at the time were done in anime magazines aimed at high school anime fans and older. What’s more, most of those fans were men (judging by the fact that the vast majority of “favorite” characters in Animage’s polls were women; this trend has reversed in recent years).

The most important thing to remember, though, is that there’s no such thing as a “wrong” answer when it comes to favorite characters. Who appeals to you is what’s most important, of course. But we definitely can learn a thing or two about the two very different audiences of Sailor Moon back in the early- to mid-90s!

What Food Did Makoto Make For Her Lunch?

Posted 2016-02-05

Filed under Articles, Characters, Makoto Kino

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal Episode 5

This is, admittedly, a really silly question and goes way into detail about really tiny things. But these are actually my favorite types of questions because they really make you think and also analyze the context of the Sailor Moon universe and how it fits in (intentionally and unintentionally) with the real world. So with that out of the way, let’s dive right in and discuss: what was Makoto eating when Usagi decided to make friends (and quiet her trumpet-playing stomach)?

Well, like all seemingly simple questions concerning Sailor Moon, this question sounds incredibly simple but has a lot more depth to it than you’d first imagine. Most importantly, her lunch differs ever-so-slightly between the manga, original anime, and the Crystal reboot. Making matters worse, Makoto had already started eating in the 90s anime, and the manga image is slightly cut off, leaving us guessing on the full contents. Crystal, however, gives us a good, clear shot, so we’re okay there.

Let’s take this one by one, then:

The Manga

Manga Lunch (vol. 1, p. 168 of the original manga)

From what we can see in this picture (and in the other scenes we briefly get), she has:

small takikomi gohan¹ riceballs (x3)
fried croquettes² (x2)
green peppers wrapped in meat (probably bacon) (x2)
cherry tomatoes (x2)
spaghetti
boiled quail eggs (x2)

For someone who wasn’t expecting Usagi to come along and help her out with lunch, that’s quite a respectable lunch she has there! To be honest, this (relatively) simple lunch fits in the best with her being a junior high school girl living alone, in my opinion. But doesn’t quite show off her famous cooking skills!

The Original Anime

Original Anime Lunch (ep. 25)

Once again, this scene actually starts with Makoto eating so we can’t get 100% accuracy here, but from what we get to see, her lunch consists of:

normal-sized takikomi gohan riceballs (x3)
croquettes (x2)
cherry tomatoes (x2)
little chick³ boiled quail eggs (x2)
cheese hamburger patty
glazed carrots⁴
parsley
meatball (we see her eating one)
ketchup packet

Honestly, compared to the manga I think that the anime really shows off Makoto’s cooking skills. Glazed carrots and specially cut boiled quail eggs are no mean feat to make in the morning, especially before school. Definitely impressive!

The Crystal Anime

Crystal Anime Lunch (ep. 5)

Last but not least, we have Makoto’s lunch as served up in Sailor Moon Crystal. What did Makoto bring to share today?

small(ish?) takikomi gohan riceballs (x3)
fried fish with tartar sauce (x2)
octopus-shaped wieners⁵ (x2)
spaghetti
cherry tomatoes (x2)
boiled green beans
tamagoyaki⁶ (x2)

I’d say that the Crystal lunch places nicely between the manga and the original anime when it comes to skill required for cooking (and uniqueness of her lunch). Definitely more intense that the manga, but could be thrown together in less time than the original anime version.

More than anything else, though, I’d say I’m actually most surprised by how consistent her lunch had stayed throughout all these versions – and spanning over twenty years, might I add! As for which I’d rather eat the most? I’d probably say the lunch as it appears in Crystal, since it’s definitely the most diverse. I always want to try making this someday!

What Is Under That Sailor Skirt?

Posted 2016-02-04

Filed under Articles, Making Of

Sailor Moon and Her Original Petticoat Design

There’s really no way to broach this topic without sounding a bit creepy, so let’s get the first (and most important) fact out of the way: what you’re seeing under the Sailor Solider uniform is the bottom half of the bodysuit/leotard. But what we’re discussing today is why that is, how it came to be, and what the inspirations were for the makeup of the design we all know and love today.

First off, it’s worth noting that the uniforms for all of the Sailor Soldiers can be broken down into nine basic components, which you can see broken up (literally and figuratively) pretty well in episode 27 of the anime, when Sailor Mercury is battling against Urawa as Bunbo.

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Who Saved Ami From Becoming a Cyborg?

Posted 2016-02-03

Filed under Ami Mizuno, Articles, Characters

Ami Mizuno – Not a Cyborg

To be fair, a more appropriate first question would probably be “was Sailor Mercury supposed to be a cyborg?” but that can be solved with a simple yes or no answer, so it’s better to not make things so simple. However, that is a very good (and astute!) question, and the one which we’ll answer first. So what is this talk about Ami being a cyborg, anyway?

Well, as Ms. Takeuchi outlines in her liner notes,¹ Ami (or Sailor Mercury, since the character of Ami Mizuno probably wasn’t fully developed at that time) was originally meant to be a cyborg.

Cyborg Ami

The original design for Mercury was that she would be a cyborg with acceleration technology. (This is probably the original Ami that I randomly sketched out)

Making matters worse, Ms. Takeuchi’s original intention was for this Cyborg Mercury to be destroyed at the end of the Dark Kingdom arc and have her die off (though this idea was ultimately taken up in the shocking end of the first arc in the anime).

Ami Five is Alive!

Princess Naoko: “What’s more, near the end of the first arc, I had planned to have her arms and other parts torn away and have her die.”
Editor Osabu: “This isn’t some joke here, NO WAY! This is a girl’s comic!”

Fortunately for us, and for the rest of the Sailor Moon lore, her editor Fumio “Osabu” Osano objected strenuously against this idea for, well… multiple reasons. Of course, the series was intended to be a shojo manga for girls and obviously you’d want to avoid really dark scenes like the death of a character. Robots also (at least at that time) seemed oddly out of place. One of the biggest reasons, though, seems to be that Mr. Osano seems to have taken quite a liking for Mercury from the beginning and is a self-professed Mercury fan even now.² In fact, Ami’s character design is even based on the source for his Osa-P/Osa-Bu nickname.

Happy Happy Ending

Princess Naoko: “However, my manager rejected that idea vehemently and it ended happy-happily without any of the Sailor Soldiers dying.”
Editor Osabu: “You absolutely, totally, CANNOT kill anyone!”

So while all of the characters were spared in the manga, it turns out things took a turn for the worse and, in a strange turn of fate, the anime producers decided to kill off all of the Sailor Soldiers in the anime (an oddly dark turn for the worse for a series meant for such little kids and their families). The irony wasn’t lost on Ms. Takeuchi, however.

Dark Rabbit

Princess Naoko: “However, in the final part of the first arc in the anime, wouldn’t you know it, but they all died! I still hold a grudge over that (but they all came back!)” (I also wanted to make a manga where the characters all die off!)
Editor Osabu: HEY!

It’s definitely interesting to see what a dark turn the manga was originally supposed to have taken and, had her editor not interfered, how different the Sailor Moon series could have turned out to be. Though Ami was ultimately spared from being a cyborg, she did keep some of the original ideas for Ami in tact, such as her being cool and logical, her high IQ, and her affinity for computers. To be honest, I definitely prefer it this way – I can’t imagine the story being remotely the same with robots running around! – but do kinda wish she would’ve elaborated more on what her ideas were!

What Gun Did ChibiUsa Use to Threaten Usagi?

Posted 2016-01-27

Filed under Articles, Characters, ChibiUsa, Usagi Tsukino

Say “What” Again

Before I go on to answer this question and spout off a bunch of random facts, it’s very important to note that I know nearly nothing about guns. But taking into consideration how far the artists in the original anime and Ms. Takeuchi herself had gone to copy real world cars, books, and even real people, it should come as no surprise that real-world gun designs might be used as well for the unforgettable scene when ChibiUsa first appeared in the second season of Sailor Moon.¹

Silly Rabbit, tricks aren’t for kids

Interestingly enough, it looks like Ms. Takeuchi actually used two different designs for the gun ChibiUsa wields, though seeing as this is a difference between an opening cover image and one of the panels inside the manga itself, it’s actually entirely likely that the images were drawn at two completely different times and she either simply lost track of her reference pictures, or changed her mind later when she had to draw it in color for a close-up.

If you take a look at these two images closely, you can see that the design differs pretty dramatically in the look of the hammer, how the front of the barrel tapers off, the design of the finger guard, and even the diagonal slashes on the left (they go all the way down in the bottom image, but only halfway in the top).

Also, if you look closely (really, really closely), you can see a design like a waving flag underneath where the shell casing ejects from the pistol in the bottom image, which is very similar to the Walther Arms company logo.² However, I’m unable to find any guns released by them matching this design, so it may just be a Takeuchi-original. You can tell that she didn’t take the scene all that seriously anyway, since even though the gun fires, ChibiUsa’s finger isn’t on the trigger, and the hammer is still cocked back. Interesting!

Shouldn’t she be more terrified?

Now, moving onto the Sailor Moon R anime, fortunately it’s a completely different story and here they actually use a pistol that’s pretty easy to trace, design and all!

From what I was able to find, this is a Colt M1911A1 pistol that ChibiUsa here is wielding. Not only was it the go-to gun used by U.S. armed forces since, well, 1911, but it also gained popularity after WWII in other countries throughout the world and – most importantly – was the weapon which the Japanese police were armed with from the 1950s and through the late 1980s.³

One interesting note about the particular version she’s holding here is that, as you can see underneath her thumb in both images, the gun handle has the optional medallion inlay in it. It’s such a small detail that I have to wonder why it got put in. Maybe the reference pictures the artist was looking at had one?

Recently, I asked a few friends of mine (an iPhone game artist and a published manga artist) why it is that so often real-world cards, weapons, and other various day-to-day items appear in anime and manga. Is it an homage? Reference? The answer, I learned, is much simpler than that: it’s easy to imagine an idea of what a car is, but when you have to draw one and convince the viewer, it’s much easier to just draw something real.

I guess it’s obvious now that I think about it, but it’s interesting to know that there’s actually a reason behind this. Though, of course, when it comes to what to copy, there’s still a good deal of lee-way for the artists and designers to express their own interests!

How Smart Is Mamoru in the Anime and Manga?

Posted 2016-01-25

Filed under Articles, Characters, Mamoru Chiba

Mamoru Flexing His Intelligence

One of the well-known – yet often forgotten – facts about Mamoru’s character is that he’s not only tall, mysterious, rich, and handsome, but he’s actually quite brilliant. In fact, if you were to judge by the levels of the schools he attends, he’s arguably on level with – or even above! – Ami. Of course we’ve already mentioned that Mamoru was changed from a high school student to a university student in the transition from manga to anime, but that actually has very little impact on the conclusions we can make, for reasons we’ll discuss below. So just how smart is Mamoru Chiba? Let’s find out!

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What Book Was Mamoru / Endo Reading When He Was Possessed?

Posted 2016-01-23

Filed under Articles, Characters, Dark Kingdom, Mamoru Chiba

Endo’s Book

I’ve mentioned it many times before, but it always amazes me just how detailed Ms. Takeuchi is in bringing to life the characters (and world) of Sailor Moon. You can really tell that she researches all the names, places, and characters and even puts in a lot of fun finishing touches here and there that leave a lot of fodder for me to answer questions like this! So, just what book did Mamoru – or, more accurately, Endo – forget and leave behind, only for Reika to come and bring back to him?¹

Endo and his book (Vol 3, p 59)

At first glance, the title of the book just seemed pretty generic and like something you’d write as a one-off line, akin to the fake movie titles you hear spouted off in movies. The title translates to “Encyclopedia of Jewelry” (宝飾大全; houshoku taizen) and opens up to a page entitled “Collectors’ Stones,” and shows a variety of different stones on it. This seems a bit odd to those of us who are particularly pedantic because the title of the book is specifically about jewelry, while the book itself shows a page on rare (and not-so-rare) stones. So what gives?

Houseki Taizen

Well, after doing a little bit of research, it turns out that there actually was a book by this exact same title, published by Yomiuri Color Mook in February 1991, over a year before this scene appeared in Nakayoshi. However, after taking a look through the index of the book,² it seems that while Ms. Takeuchi may have used this book as a reference when looking up different stones and their meanings for the series, it probably isn’t the base for the one Mamoru is reading here. The cover, however, does seem similar! But not quite what we’re looking for on the inside.

Around here, I almost gave up and just figured that this was a simple coincidence that the names matched, and maybe Ms. Takeuchi just made the book up. Seems possible, and there might not really be anything deeper to this story. Going back through my notes again, I made one last check of the Sailor Moon Perfect Edition (完全版; kanzenban) to get some higher quality scans and to see if I could get any further details. Wouldn’t you know it, but it turns out this that is yet another one of the scenes where Ms. Takeuchi actually made changes between the original run of the manga and the newer updates!

Endo and his (second?) book (Vol 2, p 153)

This time around, the book’s been renamed “General Primer on Gems and Crystals” (総論宝石結晶; soron houseki kesshou) and the inside looks different. Doing a quick search for the title, and bingo! There was a book by a very similar name published back in March 1992 by Relief Systems titled “Crystals and Gems” (結晶と宝石;kesshou to houseki). Now wait a minute, I know I’ve seen this before… and any one who grew up in the early 90s and had to spend time in their school library definitely has too.

Kesshou to Houseki

After researching this book more, I found out that this is actually a translation of the book titled “Crystal and Gem,” written by Robert F. Symes, and published by DK Children.³ The book has been around since the 1960s and I assume remains relatively unchanged, since a quick look at the index confirms that on pages 48 and 49 (of the English edition, at least) is a section titled “Collectors’ items.” Not much unlike the section found in the first edition of the manga. Even the art style/layout of the English and Japanese book is incredibly similar to the style which Ms. Takeuchi used in the original scene.

Crystal and Gem pp. 48-49

In fact, if you take a look at the page and compare it with the image from the manga above, you’ll actually notice that Ms. Takeuchi’s sketch is a near exact copy of these pages! Even more interesting is that page 49 (right page) contains an image in the lower-left corner of Mr. George Kunz, the source of the name for the stone Kunzite. Quite an inside reference!

It’s funny that Ms. Takeuchi actually changed the title of the book in the re-release to be closer to the inspiration, and yet changed the inside of the book to be further away from what the referenced material looks like. It’s not like I don’t understand, though. In the original manga, it was simply a sketch and impossible to get an idea of what the contents of the book were like, while this new version has clearly written text with “Jadeite” and “Beryl” written on it. But it feels a little less nuanced, and more like she’s throwing you a softball.

However, I’m honestly impressed that Ms. Takeuchi went this far to put a reference to Kunzite in here, in a small sketch of a book in one tiny panel. Great job!

Tuxedo Unmasked

The Real World Stories Behind Sailor Moon

Tag Archives: Manga