Seriously, this is how I write the blog
Back by popular demand, here comes another lightning round of Sailor Moon questions that come up often that are either not long enough to warrant a full-blown answer, or I have no clue what the answer is and I’m willing to go on record and embarrass myself. But I desperately try to keep it to more of the former and less of the latter.
Of course, if you have any questions you’d like to suggest, please leave it down below in the comments!
Without further ado, let’s get started!
Apartment 202 (Act 6)
What apartment does Makoto live in?
Okay, I’ll be honest. No one in their right mind would actually ask this, but it’s something I wanted to mention. Obviously an apartment number is not worth writing a 700-900 word article about, so I figured I’d spare you a long rambling post on the subject.
Anyway, in the manga Makoto lives in apartment 201 and apartment 202 in the live-action series.1
As for why they changed her apartment number, I really can’t say for sure, but I have a few ideas:
- They simply made a mistake and someone mis-remembered or messed up their fact-checking.
- The 202 mailbox was simply in a better position for the camera setup and they figured it was “close-enough.”
- No one really cared and it was just a coincidence that they managed to pick numbers close to each other.
The mailboxes in Makoto’s apartment
My guess is probably 1, but I doubt we’ll ever know. Nor does it really matter.
Why does only Sailor Pluto wear lipstick?
For starters, she’s older than the rest of the Sailor Soldiers, and (we assume?) quite a bit more mature.
Secondly, actually Sailor Uranus and Neptune also wear lipstick!
What kind of doctor is Ami’s mother?
Turns out, according to the manga, Ami’s mother is a 内科医 (naikai; internist, physician).2 This is a bit odd, considering it’s mentioned several times in the manga that Ami’s ridiculously wealthy, and physicians are not actually all that insanely well-paid. We also know that Ami’s mother works at a hospital (and doesn’t run her own private practice), which limits how much she could push her income even further.
So how much does a physician usually make? Glad you asked!
Sorry Ami, not as rich as you thought…
Assuming she had Ami when she was 25 or older and is now in her 40s, the average income for physicians at that age is between 14.4 and 20.4 million yen. So average that out and say she’s making around 17.4 million yen a year? (approx. $157,000 @ 110 yen to $1)
Not shabby by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely not the super ritzy life the manga leads us to believe.
Why are Luna and Artemis cats?
Hmm, interesting question. I feel like we’re getting pretty existential here.
As for why they’re cats, I honestly can’t say for sure. Obviously having an animal sidekick allowed it to be much easier to fit Luna into the story and be Usagi’s constant companion, and cats are a pretty safe bet to be popular with kids.
If your question is if whether there’s some sort of connection between cats and the moon, no, none to my knowledge.
However, I’d say that Kiki’s Delivery Service may have been a strong influence on the cat sidekick concept. No strong support for this theory, other than that the movie was wildly popular, came out ~2 years before Codename: Sailor V, and that Luna and Jiji were both black cats. So not much really.
What happened to Kae Hanazawa (singer of the Sailor Stars Song)?
Kae Hanazawa?
Wow, I can’t tell you how much time I spent looking up this question, which came in through the comments.
As far as I can tell, she only has two songs to her credit: the aptly-named “Sailor Stars Song” and “Motto Suteki na Asa ga Kuru yo” (“An even more beautiful morning awaits”), which also appeared on the Sailor Stars Song single.
Except for this one image I’ve found online, which I’m not even totally confident is her, there’s really no information about Kae Hanazawa available anywhere online. It’s like she came out of the ether, sang her two songs, and then faded out of existence once again as soon as she was done.
My best guess is that this was something of a pen name, much like how Daria Kawashima didn’t take credit under her own name for her role in Moonlight Densetsu. It’s possible that either she had other work that she didn’t want to overlap with this, or that Colombia Records or her talent agency didn’t want her real name associated with Sailor Moon.
Considering the deep connection between Sailor Moon and the Sakurakko Club (including, but not limited to, the initial Sailor Moon musical cast being made up mostly of members from there), I think it’s a reasonably safe bet that she came from there. In fact, the identities of the singers making up “Moonlips,” the group that sang Moonlight Densetsu for Sailor Moon SuperS, were never properly revealed.3
How do you draw Sailor Jupiter?
I have absolutely no idea, but let’s see if we can work this out together:
- Draw a circle (the head)
- Draw more circles (arms? knees? I dunno)
- Add some lines between your circles
- ?????????
- Erase the lines that look unnecessary
- Add a super-cool lightning bolt
- Color it in if you want… or don’t
Once you’re done, it should look something like this:
Not too bad, if I do say so myself
I believe I mentioned that I’m not an artist.
There were a few more questions lined up, but it looks like we’ve gone on a bit longer than I originally intended, so I’ll have to leave it off here for now. However, as always, I’m always open to questions either on here, on Facebook, or on Twitter.
If I’m able to get a collection of other questions to address in short-form response like this, I’d definitely love to to more of these!
References:
- See Act 6 of PGSM ↩
- See Act 40 of the manga ↩
- However, it’s theorized that Moonlips consisted of members of the first Sailor Moon musical cast, making them also Sakurakko Club members; see this nice write-up here ↩
So… I have a silly question but ok… so, how come Usagi becomes “Neo” Queen and Mamoru is just… King?
Practically? She probably needed to be “Neo” Queen Serenity because her mother was already Queen Serenity, so for the sake of the manga story line not getting even more confusing than it already is, they just tacked “Neo” onto the front.
Since there was no King Endymion anywhere else in the story, he was fine.
There really is never any discussion of who Mr Queen Serenity was, was there?
I feel like this was touched on briefly in the Dream arc in the manga. I don’t recall the details off the top of my head, but I believe Princess Serenity was essentially created from Queen Serenity (which explains why they look alike).
Nice post as always! By the way, reading about Kae Hanazawa has made me wonder about yet another musical mystery of the Sailor Moon world: what’s there behind the suspiscious similarities between “Eternal Eternity” and the song “Kizuna” from the Japanese dub of the anime Mermaid Melody? Do you by any chance happen to have some information regarding the topic?
Unfortunately, I’m not terribly familiar with Sailor Moon Crystal (much of my love for the series is probably thanks to nostalgia, so I have a hard time getting into the new animation and voice cast), so I can’t really say one way or another about Eternal Eternity or Kizuna.
In just a quick search in Japanese, though, it doesn’t seem like anyone has made any connections between the two in Japan at least. The composer, lyricist, and and arranger are all different between the two as well – though we also saw that with Moonlight Densetsu, so who knows how much that can be trusted.
Thank you anyway, there’s really no problem! 🙂 I already knew that the people behind the two songs were all different – in fact, Sailor Moon and Mermaid Melody have got little to no connection, to the point that, if I remeber correctly, the only staff member who worked for both series is Momoko Makiuchi (animator director for some episodes of both MM and Crystal). Eternal Eternity also shares the same composer, arranger and lyricst with Cherry Pie (Makoto’s image song in Crystal season 1), but Meg Rock is pretty obviously a pen-name, so I was hoping that you, having access to Japanese sources, could have maybe unsolved the mystery…? I mean, last year it took me endless research to finally find out that Tica-a is actually none other than Etsuko Yakushimaru herself 😛 Anyway I know there are very few who have pointed out the similarities between Eternal Eternity and Kizuna, – the only one I recall is Tumblr blogger “Crystal behind the scenes” – but it may also be because, after all the popularity it got during its original airing, Mermaid Melody is no more such a famous anime… which is a shame indeed!
PS: By the way, it saddens me a bit to read that nostalgia plays such an important factor in your love for the series. I don’t mean to judge you, it’s just that… I somehow find myself feeling bad about it. I don’t really know how to explain it, I’m very sorry, Ah, and sorry again for my bad English!
No worries about how you feel – I understand that a lot of people love Sailor Moon for many different reasons. In fact, that’s one of my favorite things about the series! Many different people can watch it, and all be touched in a different way, or take home a slightly different message.
I think Sailor Moon is still a great series, and I’m still very passionate about it. But a lot of my love for it – and anime in general! – is that it spoke to me at a very vital point in my life. While I’m happy to see the series and the characters grow and reach out to a whole new fan base, I can’t help but feel that these aren’t the same characters that had helped open my eyes to a whole new world.
On that note, I’m also a huge fan of 80s and 90s American cartoons, so part of this is also that maybe I never quite grew up. ^_-
Thank you for taking the time to answer my question 🙂
I think I should start collecting Sakurakko Club CDs – especially solo albums released by the girls after disbanding to see if any of the girls sound like Kae Hanazawa.
Hmm… A true mistery that one. It’s a very plausible theory that she just used a pen name for this one single.
It is a bit odd, isn’t it? One last possibility is to start looking through era anime magazines (Animage, Newtype, Animedia) from around early 1996 to see if any of them talk about the new theme song. Since it was the first time in 4 years that the theme changed, it’s totally possible that they did address it.
Still, my best guess is that she’s associated with Sakurakko Club, especially when you consider that they also did the Moonlips song — and went uncredited for that too.
There’s a magazine that actually identified the members of Moonlips, so I need to buy that eventually so I can go back to my obscene collection of articles on Moonlight Densetsu. =p
Follow up: How does your wife draw Sailor Jupiter? (Would she agree to it?)
…. Okay, so I’ve read through the manga, and I know the answer about “Why are Luna and Artemis cats?”
Actually, Luna and Artemis both have human-like forms that they both have shown able to turn into. During the last two manga, it’s revealed that there are Sailor Senshi from all over the Galaxy, and Luna and Artemis came from another planet, but had ultimately ended up at the moon. Considering they had spoken about their own Sailor Senshi from their planet, I’d assume they all keep human-like forms on their planet, but also car forms. Plus, cats ARE a common companion in Anime. That probably factors in.
I love Sailor Moon Crystal. Even when she transformed into princess serenity and that she is the future Neo Queen serenity. I really can’t belive that she is the mothe r Chibi-Usa.