Was Sailor Jupiter Almost Cut from Sailor Moon?

The Original Sailor Team

The Original Sailor Team

While it’s easy to look at the Sailor Moon series now, in its long history spanning nearly two-and-a-half decades, and to say that its monolithic success was basically guaranteed. I mean, when you look at its legacy – an immensely successful five-year run for both anime and manga, a long-running musical, a television drama, and countless other product lines – it’s hard to not look at it with our 20/20 hindsight and say that the series was destined to end up this way.

But is it really that simple? When you take a look at some of the decisions Ms. Takeuchi and the animation staff made, there’s some room to wonder if some emergency plans were made to cut the series short, specifically before Makoto made her appearance. Let’s take a closer look!

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Why Did Rei Pursue Mamoru in the Anime?

Rei Locked on to Her Target (ep. 15)

Rei Locked on to Her Target (ep. 15)

While there are quite a few differences between Rei in the anime and the manga, one of the more striking differences between the two is the storyline where Rei and Mamoru briefly dated in the first season of the Sailor Moon anime. Though Mamoru himself was no stranger to differences between the two mediums, how it is that the cool, mysterious, and boy-hating1 (!) Rei from the manga went so far into the opposite direction and ended up pursuing Mamoru so aggressively is more than a bit out of character for her. So how did this wind up happening and what does this tell us about Rei’s character in the anime?

Rei’s reasons for pursuing Mamoru were actually pretty simple (some would say superficial, but I’m not one to judge). According to Rei:2

「ルックスがよくて、いい学校に行っていて、お金持ちだから」

“He’s attractive, going to a good school, and is rich.”

Rei finds her prey...

Rei finds her prey…

More than likely, this is in reference to what is known in Japanese as 三高 (sankou; the three highs): high salary, high-class education, and physical height.3 During the bubble economy4 – from the late 80’s to early 90’s – these attributes were said to be what was most valued by Japanese women when choosing a potential boyfriend or future husband. From Rei’s point of view, as the daughter of a politician and a student at an elite private school, it was only natural that Mamoru would make a good match for her. It’s possible, I suppose, that she could also sense Mamoru and Usagi’s budding feelings for each other and this was meant to be antagonistic, but that’s just speculation and I really don’t see Rei as that type of person.

Perhaps the greatest source of information on (anime) Rei’s outlook on love and romance comes from an interview5 with Michie Tomizawa, Iriya Azuma, and Sukehiro Tomita (Rei’s voice actress and Sailor Moon‘s producer and scenario writer, respectively). In it, the producer (Azuma) admits that Rei and Michie have the strongest resemblance between all of the voice actresses of their respective characters, and even that the animation staff often sit in on the post-recordings and take notes for how to evolve the characters.

Newtype: 「シリーズが進むうちに、レイちゃんと富沢さんの性格が接近してきたということですね。」
Azuma: 「ええ。スタッフも、アフレコなどでよく声優さんを観察していますから・・・あっ、似てきたといっても、富沢さんがイジワルだってわけじゃないですよ(笑)。」

Newtype: “So Rei and Ms. Tomizawa’s personalities are getting more and more alike as the series progresses.”
Azuma: “That’s right. The staff is often watching the voice actresses during the post-recordings, you see. Well, it’s not like Ms. Tomizawa is ill-tempered or anything! (laugh)”

Later in the interview, Ms. Tomizawa discusses the brief relationship between Rei and Mamoru, describing it as Rei mistaking her feelings of admiration for Mamoru for romantic love. Even more interesting, and possibly even more relevant to Rei’s feelings towards love with regard to Yuichiro, Ms. Tomizawa describes herself as:

Tomizawa: 「 ・・・わたし、子供のころからずっとスポーツギャルで、仲のいい男の子の友達もいっぱいいたんですけど、好きになった人に対しては口もきけないようなタイプでした。」

Tomizawa: “… I’ve always been a sporty girl and have had lots of male friends ever since I was a child, but when it comes to people I liked, I couldn’t talk to them.”

This may help explain her completely different approaches toward her relationships with Mamoru and Yuichiro, wherein she directly pursues Mamoru but seems to interact with him more like a friend, particularly in the Sailor Moon R anime where she can occasionally be seen spending time together with Mamoru and ChibiUsa, while completely ignoring or even yelling at Yuichiro. Further discussion on her relationship with him, however, will have to wait for another time!

A romance never meant to be...

A romance never meant to be…

Whether you love or hate the way Rei differed in the anime and manga, she did serve as an interesting foil in the series to play against Usagi and even helped bring out some of Usagi’s feelings toward Mamoru prior to the big Tuxedo Mask reveal (something which fans often describe as happening too fast in the manga). It’s interesting to see that a lot of this actually came about from Ms. Tomizawa’s take on the character and how the production staff chose to adapt Rei’s personality to match the person providing her voice (both literally and figuratively)!

How Does Rei’s Fire-Reading Fit Into Shinto?

Rei Meditating at the Great Fire

Rei Meditating at the Great Fire

Though I hate to speak for other people, I think it’s relatively safe to say that the customs, beliefs, and traditions of the Shinto religion are often not well understood in the West and, therefore, it’s a bit difficult to get a handle on the accuracy of its portrayal in anime, manga, and movies. The good news is that even Japanese people don’t understand it all that well, and very often you’ll see vague scenes of “spirits” all passed off under the Shinto umbrella. That’s actually what’s going on with the fire-reading (also known as pyromancy)1 scenes at the Hikawa shrine, where Rei uses the power of fire to consult with spirits and to get an understanding for what’s currently happening elsewhere or about to happen. What do I mean? Well, let’s get started!

The unfortunate and short answer to this question is that, quite simply, Shinto has no traditions of fire-reading or even smoke-reading. In fact, with the exception of the o-mikuji (paper strips telling the bearer’s fortune for the upcoming year or near future)2 that you can get at a shrine, the Shinto faith (if you can call it that) doesn’t really believe in telling the future at all. Shinto deals in the past (the connection between the god’s who created the Earth and their lineage through the reigning emperor) and the present (the spirits or gods which inhabit everything around us), but it has no real concept of the future or even much of an afterlife. For that reason alone, the many scenes of Rei kneeling down and consulting the great fire are a bit out of place, to say the least.

Speaking to the spirits?

Speaking to the spirits?

That’s not to say that fire-reading is completely without precedent in Japan, of course! A form of fire-reading – or, more accurately, pyromancy – was practiced in ancient China (and by connection, Japan) through what was known as oracle bones.3 The fortune teller would etch questions onto animal bones or turtle shells, put them into a fire, the bones/shells would heat up and explode, and then they would analyze how it broke and try to divine the future. This, however, fell out of practice a long time ago, with the last known examples showing up in the Zhou dynasty4 in China—around 771BC.

Jomon Fire-Reading Festival (1/2016)

Jomon Fire-Reading Festival (1/2016)

That being said, the practice isn’t entirely unheard of in Japan, even if it doesn’t have connection to Shinto as it’s actively practiced today. In fact, the city of Oyabe in Toyama prefecture5 holds an annual festival in January in which they bring together the dried husks from the rice harvest, bundle them into a giant tower, and burn them as part of a festival in order to see what the coming year holds.

There are also other so-called fire festivals (左義長; sagichou)6 held throughout Japan during January that date back to 1251 AD, but these are more symbolic festivals that have to do with lighting up the dark winter and bringing luck through the coming year, and less to do with trying to engage in any sort of fortune telling.

So what does this ultimately tell us? Is Rei’s fire-reading a sham or some sort of mistake made by Ms. Takeuchi and the creators of the Sailor Moon anime? Not at all! Pyromancy is very much a real form of fortune-telling (ignoring for a second whether or not we believe fortune-telling is real) and it’s even mentioned in Act 3 of the manga that it’s Rei herself who is spiritual and has mysterious powers, not exactly the connection to the Shinto shrine itself. It would only make sense that Rei, being the Sailor Soldier of fire, would find affinity with fire and would use it to focus her natural spiritual abilities.

Rei doing a tarot card reading

Rei doing a tarot card reading

Rei is also seen doing tarot card reading on several occasions in the manga, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that she practices many different forms of fortune telling in order to channel her own connection with the spirits.

I guess the take-home lesson here is that while the fire meditation / fire-reading that Rei does throughout the Sailor Moon series may not actually be a part of the Shinto faith, it’s not entirely heard of in Japanese history and, moreover, ties directly into her role as the Sailor Mars: Soldier of Fire. More likely than not, as with the tarot cards she uses on several occasions throughout the manga, it’s more a manner of giving her something to focus on to center herself (much like how Ami uses swimming). In the end, it probably doesn’t really matter, but it’s at least nice to know that it’s a part of Rei as a character, and not a part of the greater Shinto connection!

How Did Naoko’s Part-Time Job Influence the Creation of Rei?

Our Eager Miko

Our Eager Miko

The answer to this question can be really short or surprisingly quite long, depending on how deep you want to get into it. Of course, the quick and easy answer is that “Rei is a miko because she lives at a Shinto shrine,” but like most things in the Sailor Moon universe, things aren’t that simple (nor would it be interesting if they were!). We’ve already discussed the interesting religious (in)significance of Rei attending a Catholic school, so let’s take a closer look at the inspirations behind her more obvious religious affiliations!

Fortunately for us, Ms. Takeuchi directly addresses this question in her ~~ Punch! question and answer segment added to the end of the re-released manga volumes around 2003/2004 (the shinsouban; “new editions”).1

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Why Does Rei Throw Her Ofuda at Enemies?

Mars and Her Signature Move

Mars and Her Signature Move

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been reading and watching the adventures of Sailor Moon for ten or even twenty years and have seen Rei throw these strips of shrine-blessed papers at enemies (and even Usagi) without ever once thinking “Well, that’s kind of strange. Throwing papers around seems like an odd way to go about things.” In fact, until I actually started reading up on this for a completely unrelated project, it just seemed so natural to me that of course she would be throwing papers around. I suppose this is because scenes like this actually appear in other anime and manga, so it just seems like yet another anime trope. But if that’s the case, where did it start? How did something like this get embedded into Japanese entertainment in the first place?

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What Does Rei’s Name Mean?

What's in a Name?

What’s in a Name?

As anyone who’s started out on the massive undertaking of learning Japanese can probably tell you, there are three different writing systems used in Japanese: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are nearly identical except for their usage – hiragana is used for native Japanese words, while katakana is used for words of foreign origin or for sounding things out (such as onomatopoeia). Kanji is used in conjunction with hiragana1 to add context and meaning to words or names.

The reason why this is important is that Rei’s name not only lacks any kanji associated with it (to be fair, both Usagi and Makoto’s names are typically written only in hiragana as well), but it’s also written in katakana, the system usually reserved for foreign names. Considering that we can be pretty sure that Rei’s not foreign (especially when you consider that Grandfather Hino is about as Japanese as they come, running a Shinto shrine and all), that leads us to the interesting question of why Ms. Takeuchi would choose to write Rei’s name in this manner. So, why did she?

The Mysterious Miko and her Birds

The Mysterious Miko and her Birds

While Ms. Takeuchi has never officially commented on this issue, it’s most likely that her reason for choosing this style is precisely to draw attention to Rei’s name. You see, since Japanese lacks uppercase letters and it doesn’t look so good in bold or italics, one Japanese strategy to emphasize a word or text is by writing it in katakana. For example, this strategy is often employed in video games or manga when robots are speaking. It gives the reader a sense of unease and draws attention to the text, the same way an English writer may put something IN ALL CAPS.

How does this all play out for Rei? Well, it gives the reader an impressing that something just isn’t quite right about this priestess girl and a sense of mystery to her. It also leaves it up to the reader as to which kanji they want to attribute to Rei, depending on what they believe her personality is. Though Usagi and Makoto are written in hiragana, there’s really only one meaning possible for either of their names: rabbit and truth, respectively. Rei, on the other hand, has several prime choices, all of which could be read the same. For example:

  • 玲 = translucent, brilliant, clear 2
  • 麗 = beauty, lovely3
  • 霊 = spirit, soul, ghost4

So by writing the name in katakana, Ms. Takeuchi is in a way able to attribute all of these meanings to Rei, all without actually saying any one in particular.

As one final note, it’s worth mentioning that the Chinese adaptation didn’t have the luxury of spelling out names phonetically and actually did have to choose one of the above. The localization there went for 火野麗 (the second one above),5 though it seems there are several other characters used occasionally by fans. Who knew that how you write the name could mean so much!

Why Did Rei Go to a Christian School?

Rei, the Shinto Priestess

Rei, the Shinto Priestess

One interesting issue regarding the character of Rei that is often pointed out among fans as an “inconsistency” is the slight oddity that a Shinto priestess would be attending a Christian junior high school. As we can see in multiple issues in the manga and continuously throughout the anime, Rei is a rather gifted young woman with mystical powers allowing her to sense evil, have premonitions, and otherwise engage in other experiences we’d typically describe as a “sixth sense.” Beyond that, Rei frequently performs fire readings and performs the role of a miko (巫女; shrine priestess)1 in carrying out Shinto rituals at the shrine. Taking all of this together, it may seem a bit strange at first glance that Rei would attend a Christian school. However, taking the situation and status of private schools in Japan, it’s not actually all that surprising. Let’s take a closer look!

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