What is the Connection Between Sailor Moon and Pop-Tarts?

Posted 2016-02-22

The Power of Strawberry Pop-Tarts

For anyone who’s been involved in the Sailor Moon fandom for an extended period of time, this is a story that’s probably familiar to you already. But occasionally, I like to take a look back at the evolution of the Sailor Moon fandom and see where we as Sailor Moon fans have come from and how the community has changed over the years. But let’s talk a bit about the bizarre connection between Sailor Moon and Pop-Tarts!

Back in the late 1990s, there was a group/website known as Save Our Sailors (hereinafter, SOS)¹ which was dedicated to campaigning to finish the Sailor Moon dub. The original dub done by DiC only went halfway through Sailor Moon R and ultimately left English-speaking fans with no way to see how things with the Black Moon Family turned out, shy of importing fan-subbed copies. For reasons which are unclear, the members of SOS had determined that the reason why Sailor Moon was dropped in North America was due to a lack of sponsors and, further, that Kellogg’s would be a great potential sponsor for the show.

How they reached that conclusion and that having a “procott” (basically, the opposite of a boycott where everyone buys a certain product on a certain day) was, to put it gently, unscientific at best, but there was definitely heart behind their ideas! According to the members of the SOS Team:²

During the Summer (after we found out that the show was going to be dropped), we started to write down every commercial on the show.

When we finished the list we took off those things which we all couldn’t buy.

[…]

The products shown at the top are the ones our members got to vote for. These products had the most commercials. We thought whoever put on the most commercials deserved to be nominated!

So begins the epic story of the Great Strawberry Pop-Tart Procott to Save Sailor Moon (hereinafter, the GSP-TPSSM). I’m ashamed to say that unfortunately I didn’t take part in it since I didn’t even know Sailor Moon existed back on December 14, 1996, though I doubt my paltry several dollars would have helped much. As we all know with our 20/20 hindsight, not only did the GSP-TPSSM fail, but it was ultimately General Mills – Kellogg’s main competitor – that wound up sponsoring bringing Sailor Moon back to the airwaves (even if only in syndication and with no new episodes).³

And there you have it! The bizarre tale of how a group of very dedicated (and well-meaning) fans managed to forever tie the Japanese anime Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon to a sugary-sweet breakfast pastry that none of my Japanese friends will ever eat.⁴

Only tangentially-related, but I’ll leave you with this video of Super Sailor Moon selling potato soup!

Why Did Usagi Become Queen of Crystal Tokyo at 22?

Posted 2016-02-21

Filed under Articles, Characters, Usagi Tsukino

Our Future Queen

There’s one thing that’s always been bothering me about the introduction of ChibiUsa and, by extension, the introduction of the setting behind Crystal Tokyo and its monarch, Neo-Queen Serenity. I don’t mean “bother” in a bad way, of course. More like one of those niggling¹ little doubts that always seems a bit off. In a series that is ostensibly about female empowerment, contains many female leaders (Queen Serenity, Queen Beryl, Queen Metalia, Neo-Queen Serenity, Sailor Galaxia… I could go on), and stars a main character that is infinitely more powerful than her romantic interest and male counterpart, why did Ms. Takeuchi decide to have Usagi give birth to ChibiUsa and assume the throne as Neo-Queen Serenity at the age of 22?

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How Did Fans React to the Deaths of the Sailor Soldiers?

Posted 2016-02-10

Filed under Articles, Characters, Dark Kingdom, Inner Senshi

Some Serious Sailor Moon Fans

Though it seems that Ms. Takeuchi was stopped at the last minute by her editor, Fumio Osano, from killing the Sailor Team at the end of the Dark Kingdom arc, their anime counterparts weren’t quite so lucky. For a show which strayed even more into family-friendly territory (which can be seen often with the comical moments between Rei and Usagi that didn’t exist in the manga) and even cut out some of the deaths from the series (such as Jadeite being killed in the manga and frozen in to an eternal slumber, Princess Serenity’s suicide in the manga after the death of Prince Endymion, etc.), it’s a bit odd that they’d go the opposite direction and actually kill off the main cast in the epic climax. So after being lulled into this false sense of security, how did the fans react? And, by extension, their parents?

June 1993 Animage

The information for this article comes from the June 1993 issue of Animage magazine.¹

The first, and most widely-publicized, story comes from a midnight radio DJ for Radio Fukushima, Arata Owada.² As the story goes, he used to would watch Sailor Moon together with his daughter every Saturday and was shocked to watch the Sailor Team fall one by one. He was so upset by this that he actually called up TV Asahi and demanded to know what they planned to do about the characters. Since he often discussed anime on his late-night radio show – and was vocal about his concerns – he eventually caught the attention of Animage, which asked him to do a phone interview.

In the interview, he said that his daughter was so shocked by the ending that she came down for a 40°C (104°F) fever and stayed home from kindergarten for a week. When he finally took her to the doctor, he was told it was autointoxication³ and the doctor asked if she had suffered some sort of trauma or shock recently.

Nothing Can Stop a Fan

Another – and perhaps more interesting – story comes from a fan-letter section in the same issue of Animage called “Mom’s Too!” In it, a 32 year old mother offered her opinion on the matter. She noted that in real life, people don’t die and then magically come back, so she was opposed to the idea of the Sailor Team so imply being “reset” and then coming back to life as if nothing had happened. She was concerned that her daughter would take away the opposite lesson: that people die and come back, that death isn’t permanent, and may lose out on the importance of life.

Looking around on the internet also gives various anecdotal stories from people about their classmates not coming to school or the author themselves not being able to eat for several days after watching the climax to the first season, so it’s pretty apparent that the impact these episodes had on Sailor Moon fans was huge.

Personally, though, I think it’s a good thing – it really shows that what could be written off as a simple anime really did touch people’s lives, and that the TV Asahi staff did a wonderful job of making these characters real. Isn’t that really the greatest compliment?

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!

What is a Moonie Code?

Posted 2016-01-08

Filed under Articles, Fandom

Usagi Flaming Noobs on the Sailor Moon ML

This is something a little bit different from what I usually cover here, but I wanted to briefly stop and take a look at not just the world in which the characters of the Sailor Moon universe live, but also how the fans had developed their own culture to show their appreciation for the series. This isn’t something I will be doing all that often, but I think it’s definitely interesting to show how the Sailor Moon fandom has evolved into what we have today. So, without further ado, I bring you Moonie Codes!

mooniecode(1.12.05)
SM:5+ F:vM9+[+]Sf+:pSCl D:sNe-Ta-:vEs X:**[*]:a197s|1d:m17sO:?d+:s[+]:o:a[+]:h+[+]:x P:a24:s6:w:f[+]:eGrBGz:hBrD:t[-]:cWh:bB+:*Li:yH?:r+|-

For those of who looking at this mass of letters and numbers and who were neither regular internet users in the late 1990s or fans of Sailor Moon, this jumble of text looks like something between a corrupt file or an encryption key. Alas, this is the kind of insanity that hardcore fans used to put in their e-mail signatures, post on message boards, put on their homepages, or even sign guestbooks with to show their level of fandom. First created by the user Tolaris¹ on July 15, 1997, the Moonie Code is a play off of the Geek Code² and was created as a quick way for you to succinctly write all of your preferences, opinions, thoughts, and beliefs on Sailor Moon in one block of text.

Luna never was good at touch-typing…

How does it work?

Well, in the author’s own words:

The moonie code consists of a few sections. Each section starts with a capital letter and is used to describe a part of your amazing and unique personality.

Each section, as noted above, is marked by a capital letter and then followed by a colon to help mark it from the rest. Let’s take a look at a few examples and deconstruct it a bit!

SM:5+

Means that, on a scale of one to ten, you’re between a 5 and a 6 as a Sailor Moon fan.

F:vM9+[+]Sf+:pSCl

F is for your favorites, be it senshi, villian, supporting cast, or season. v is for villians, so the code above shows that the poster likes Mistress 9 quite a bit (the + sign) and liking her more and more (the additional [+] sign) as well as Saphir. The p is for your favorite season/act, and the author of this code likes S and Classic.

I’ll save you the boredom of analyzing each part in detail, but this should give you an idea for how a Moonie Code was put together.

Okay, but why?

Back in 1997, you could finish lunch before your e-mail loaded

For anyone who grew up with Gmail and nearly unlimited e-mail storage, high speed internet, web 2/3.0, and Facebook, this is a completely valid question. The early internet, however, was a completely different beast what what we have now with far more basic forms of communication and — more importantly — far fewer images (as a matter of necessity).

Message boards, where they existed, generally did not have user images and rarely did profiles contain any bios or detailed information. The primary form of communication between fans was over e-mail and “mailing lists,” on which all registered members receive a copy of each e-mail sent in the group. This is where things like these Moonie Codes would shine, since you could communicate through your signature your love for the series in each and every e-mail or message board post without having to tell the same story over and over again.

That’s nice, but what exactly is a Moonie?

You could probably pick up on this on your own, but it’s probably worth pointing out: a “Moonie” was one of the many names being tossed around for Sailor Moon fans in the US in the late 90s. Much like Trekker vs. Trekkie, though, there were many people who didn’t care for the term (and the Moonie Code even has a section allowing you to put that information in!).

So there you go, a brief primer on the Moonie Code, and a snapshot back in time on what the Sailor Moon fandom on the internet was like in the US back in the late 90s. In case you want to know more (or want to make your own Moonie Code), I’ve copied the original Moonie Code readme file here. Enjoy!

Moonie Code Readme

Who Was the Inspiration Behind Ami’s Character Design?

Posted 2016-01-07

Filed under Ami Mizuno, Articles, Characters, Making Of

The Bob-Hair’d Goddess

It probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that with all the various female designs that Ms. Takeuchi had to come up with when designing the cast of Sailor Moon that one or two of them (or even more!) would be based on people in the real world. Much has been said in recent years about modern Japan’s obsession with their (often very young) idols, but this is not a recent trend at all – not by a long shot. The young idol who became the basis for Ami (in design, at least), Noriko Sakai,¹ was only 15 when she made her debut in the magazine Momoco‘s section that would introduce pretty up-and-coming talents entitled Momoco Club (モモコクラブ), before later that year gracing television screens on a show by the same name.

Noriko Sakai (15) in a November 30, 1986 Performance on Momoco Club

This actually isn’t the first time we’ve talked about Noriko Sakai, actually. Her name came up previously in the discussion on Osa-P, Luna-P, Mina-P, and the various uses of -P in Sailor Moon. Despite being the youngest member of the Momoco Club cast, she served as an MC of sorts and introduced various segments, made the opening and closing remarks, and basically ran the show (on-screen, at least).

May 21, 1987 – Noriko Sakai on the show Gochisosama

May 21, 1987 – Noriko Sakai on the daytime talkshow Gochisosama

Going back a bit, I mentioned that the “Osa-P” name given to the jewelry shop is also a playful nickname that Ms. Takeuchi gave to her editor, Fumio Osano,² based on the wildly popular “Nori-P” language that Noriko Sakai made up and played with at the height of her fame as a sort of character branding (however, as the Sailor Moon manga continued through the mid- and late-90’s, this nickname had evolved into “Osabu,” as a play on the sound a pig makes in Japanese – buu). It’s no secret that Ami is Mr. Osano’s favorite character, between him tweeting about her birthday³ or even mentioning his “beloved Ami” in the manga.⁴ The bio on his official Twitter account⁵ even describes him as:

武内直子先生「美少女戦士セーラームーン」の原作担当者（永遠のマーキュリー男子）です。
Manager of the original “Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon” by Ms. Naoko Takeuchi (and eternal Mercury fanboy).

While this part is just conjecture, between the -P nickname given to him and his absolute love for the character of Ami Mizuno, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to guess that he may have been of a fan of Noriko Sakai to begin with (and the nickname was a teasing play on his obsession) and then used Noriko Sakai as the basis behind Ami’s character design, as they do bear quite a striking resemblance.

One last note: Ms. Takeuchi has also mentioned in the past⁶ that Ami’s origins can be found in a short-story compilation written by her – Miss Rain – which was serialized in 1993 in Nakayoshi. Take a look at it sometime, it’s a pretty interesting story!

Tuxedo Unmasked

The Real World Stories Behind Sailor Moon

Tag Archives: Real Life