What could have been…
When you consider what a hot property Sailor Moon was as a full-blown multimedia marketing machine from the early- to mid-90’s, it seems like something of a mystery that there never was a movie for the fifth season to wrap the series up. After all, with the new stories and characters introduced in Sailor Stars, there must have been a lot of potential for making a movie, right? Well, that’s what we’re going to take a look at today!
Off to Africa Because… Reasons.
Motoki Furuhata has always been an interesting character to me in the world of Sailor Moon not only because he manages to be a strong supporter of Usagi and the rest of the Sailor Team even before he knows much about what’s going on, but he also neatly ties together the worlds of Codename: Sailor V and Sailor Moon. While I’d love to talk more about Motoki, though, today I’d like to talk about his girlfriend, Reika Nishimura, and some of the mysteries about her.
They’re not flying! They’re… falling in style!
A frequent topic of conversation for this blog is is just how much the story and characters of Sailor Moon had changed from Ms. Takeuchi’s original plan for the series. Many of the changes, such as Ami originally being a cyborg, were done early in the planning process and before the characters actually came to light while others, like Makoto’s rougher side, slowly were adjusted as the series progressed. What we’re looking at today – Sailor Moon’s ability to fly – is one of those odd situations where it was removed from the series only to be put back in later, for Eternal Sailor Moon. So how was Usagi originally meant to fly?
Proto Sailor Moon?
The internet, as I’m sure you know, is home to a great many bizarre theories, half-baked connections, and misunderstandings. But for every ten poorly-considered campaigns to buy breakfast pastries to save your favorite anime, there are at least one or two legitimate pearls of wisdom to be found. Today I want to take a look into a Japanese fan theory making the rounds on the internet that Ms. Takeuchi was inspired by the 1985 cartoon She-Ra: Princess of Power1 when she made Sailor Moon.
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!
Usagi Tsukino and Naru Osaka – BFFs
Naru Osaka is one of those secondary characters that is incredibly hard to pin down. At first glance she’s just one of many background characters – like Ms. Haruna Sakurada, Usagi’s family, and many other members of the supporting case – but when you actually take time to look at the amount of work put into developing her character, you realize that quite a bit more work was put into her background than many others. So what do we actually know about Usagi’s best friend?
It’s rude to look at a lady’s underwear… but this is for research!
To be fair, this is probably not a question that has crossed many people’s minds, but I thought it was interesting enough that it was at least worth discussing. After all, while we all know that it’s not uncommon for Japanese anime and manga to make references to each other, for those who have grown up in the west — or are watching Sailor Moon decades after it first aired — the references are no longer instantly obvious. So just why does this odd fish keep appearing, and who/what is it?