Sailor Moon

Bishoujo senshi Sailor Moon; animated fantasy series, Japan, 1992; D: Junichi Sato, Kunihiko Ikuhara, Harume Kosaka, Noriyo Sasaki, Konosuke Uda, S: Kotono Mitsuishi, Toru Furuya, Aya Hisakawa, Michie Tomizawa, Emi Shinohara, Rica Fukami, Keiko Han

Tokyo. Usagi, a 14-year old girl, is one of the weakest students in her high school. But one day she meets a talking cat, Luna, who gives her the ability to transform into Sailor Moon and fight against the forces of evil; Queen Beryl and her henchmen who drain the people’s powers. Usagi is soon joined by Ami (Sailor Mercury), Rei (Sailor Mars), Makoto (Sailor Jupiter) and Minako (Sailor Venus). She also discovers she was once a princess on the Moon. Together, they destroy Beryl on the North Pole, but die. Yet, they come back to life and continue with their lives, not knowing what happened.

One of the greatest female and anime characters of all time, Usagi Tsukino, appears in "Sailor Moon", whose innocence leads her to the right path wherever she goes. The first season of “Sailor Moon” is actually one of the weakest since it was clear that the authors still were not sure how it should look like, but since the character of Usagi is simply perfect, it already paved a new way for the ‘magical girl’ genre. Its main theme is the curse of the past, and how it disrupts the present: once Usagi finds out who she was, and how she lost everything, since her entire kingdom and nation was wiped out in a de facto genocide, things cannot get back to normal everyday routine. Is it better not to know anything about the injustices from history for fear that they might come to haunt you even to this day? In that sense, the cat Luna appears almost as some sort of ghost from Hamlet, to try to awaken Usagi to avange the death of her mother. This story is highly subconscious, intuitive instead of logical and realistic. The characters, from Ami Mizuno up to Minako Aino, are absolutely irresistibly cute, their facial expressions, looks of their eyes, movements and behaviors are contagiously alive—and perfectly sum up every emotion the authors wanted to say, whereas the situations they encounter are magical: despite all our knowledge, rational explanations and tight scientific analysis of the world we live in that took away every unknown dimension and showed the whole Universe as predictable and calculative, there will always be something in our nature that will draw us to the unexplainable, unknown, magical side of our world. It is the classic 'good vs. evil' story, but with untypical execution: among others, it shows evil inciting negative energy among people, and then feeding off it. Evil is presented by a group that wants to dominate, is humorless and emotionally dead; whereas the forces of good are presented by a group that lives like equals, is full of humor and happiness.

"Sailor Moon" is a miraculous anime. The fascinating thing is how it juggles between a kids' story and a grown up drama, the latter appearing so unexepctedly that it sometimes takes the ground below your feet. The moment where Zoisite is lying in Kunzite’s arms and his final wish is: “I want to die in beauty”, so he creates flowers for that occasion. Some episodes are really clever, like no. 31, where Yuuichirou meets Rei in town and tries to ask her out on a date—if you look closely, behind him is a poster of a man, and behind her a poster of a woman, and their facial expressions change so subtly when the camera pans from one to another, it’s a delight. When he asks Rei out, the text on the man’s poster is “Now is your chance. Go for it!”, while Rei is flattered and the text on the woman’s poster is “My perfume…I am beautiful!” But when Yuuichirou gives up and leaves, the the man’s face on the poster seems sad and the text says: “Is it really all right?” Such a sly, sophisticated style is abundant in “Sailor Moon”. The clumsy Usagi broke absolutely every cliché in the superhero book—unlike other superheroes, she is a girl, yet does not wear make up and has different clothes in every episode, and is an immature and imperfect, but cheerful person, someone so down to Earth that in episode 11 Luna jokingly says that she is glad Ami and Rei are there "or the forces of evil would have won a long time ago". The highlights are the two final episodes featuring epic, relentless, cathartic battles (from the scene where the explosions on the North Pole melt the snow into water, but then freeze instantly, leaving ice spikes with the senshi bodies on them, up to the scene of a half-dead Sailor Mars' hand grabbing a tentacle of a youma and shouting "Fire") with an inner-directing skill for pathos, tragedy, loss and the Buddhist cycle of life that ends and is then just reborn again in different ways. That is why the heroine's rise to a mature woman as Sailor Moon is a fascinating allegorical teenage transformation from carefree childhood to a more complex grown up era—it shows how even silly people are capable of great deeds when they become dedicated; and how every ending is in a way a new beginning. The genuine feel and style turned "Sailor Moon" into a "superanime" and announced an era where the Japanese were the "masters of the universe" in animation.

Grade:+++