The manga Sailor Moon is the series that demonstrated, once and for all, that American girls will read about super-heroes with great enthusiasm. It features a young-looking aggressively typical school girl named Bunny. But then, one day, Bunny meets a talking cat, who turns her into… a super-hero Princess! With long hair! Nifty jewelr! Lots of deferential friends, and a handsome, dashing, mysterious true love! And, of course, she gets to keep the talking cat.
Needless to say, this abject wish fulfillment went over quite well with the target demographic; Sailor Moon manga and anime were huge in Japan, and were one of the early big manga successes in the U.S. as well. Thanks to its influence, Marvel and DC quickly leaped at the chance to reach the heretofore untapped female audience. Marvel released a Spider Girl title where the protagonist improbably turns out to be a Princess and seeks for magical jewels with companions like Grasshopper Girl and Ladybug Girl, while DC devoted its entire Minx line to sugary SF adventures in the Sailor Moon vein.
Or, you know, possibly it didn’t happen quite that way. But be that as it may…as somebody whose been incessantly blogging about at least one female super-hero, I’ve been thinking that I should read Sailor Moon for awhile. I finally managed to get to it this week, and….
Well, I wish I could say that I liked it. Obviously, it’s not intended for middle-aged guys, so my disapprobation isn’t all that surprising. Still, just because something is aimed at teen girls doesn’t mean I’ll hate it. I appreciated the naked wish fulfillment in Twilight. I adore the sugary glop that is contemporary R&B. I even enjoyed, with reservations, the manga series Cardcaptor Sakura, which is a fairly naked Sailor Moon rip-off.
Sailor Moon itself though, or at least the three volumes I managed to get through, is just not very good. In the first place, Naoko Tekeuchi’s art just doesn’t do a whole lot for me. It’s not horrible, or anything…the drawing is certainly more consistent than is often the case in American comics, and while the cartoony stylization can be a little cloying, it’s at least done professionally. Her pages, though, can get really cluttered and messy.
Clamp’s work for Cardcaptor Sakura, as a comparison, is a lot better.
As with Sailor Moon, Clamp breaks panel borders and works with different size images all jammed into one space. But they balance that by not using extraneous background detail; by using lovely, controlled patterns (the tree branches with blossoms are especially nice), and by using the panel breaks to move you thorough the story (you follow the girl’s body down to oversized legs and into the next panel of the narrative.) It’s just much more deftly done; the difference between artists with an aesthetic sense and one without.
The wriitng in Sailor Moon is similarly muddled. Bunny, or Sailor Moon, couldn’t be a much more generic or less interesting character. She’s really more a collection of traits than a person; we learn she likes video games and sleeping, that she’s terrible at school, and that she whines a lot…but cutely (at least in theory.) Her personality, as such, never takes shape beyond these not-especially-appealing tidbits — and, moreover, even these vague delineations are quickly abandoned. By the third volume, we learn that Bunny is actually Princess Serenity reincarnated (or something), and her returning memories more or less obliterate the Bunny we (barely) knew. This would be, perhaps, an improvement, except that Serenity’s only character trait seems to be mooning after her crush object, Prince Endymion.
As for the narrative itself…it’s really less a plot than a series of disconnected cliches, drawn about equally from video games and mid-drawer fantasy. There’s an eldritch evil, there’s a crystal that needs to be protected, there’s an ever escalating series of helpful sailor scouts who must be awakened, each with their own sailor power; there are battles which inevitably end in victory…etc. etc. etc. There’s some vaguely kinky mind-control too, but it’s hard to much care as fractured scene after fractured scene rushes by. Is Endymion in thrall to the evil overlord forever? I’ll never find out, since I can’t stand to read the fourth volume…but, still, I’m guessing not.
So yeah; not good — though it could be worse, certainly. There are certainly appealing moments; the gratuitously cute totem cat, for example, is in fact cute. Sailor Moon’s battle cry (“On behalf of the moon, you’re punished!”) is charmingly corny; the sort of thing you could imagine a little girl actually yelling in battle. And, though the plot is an incoherent mess, it’s a welcoming, open incoherent mess. American super-hero comics are often involuted and incomprehensible because they draw on a mass of useless continuity trivia that’s (A) stupid and (B) of no interest to anyone who hasn’t read American super-hero comics for the last twenty years. Sailor Moon, on the other hand, makes no sense not because it’s insular, but because it’s so extraneous. Sailor Moon has no background…even from volume to volume, anyone can pretty much start anywhere on any page and you’ll be as at home as you would be anywhere else. You’ve got cute girls fighting evil; you’ve got crushes; you’ve got nifty special effects; you’ve got cute cat; you’ve got gratuitous wish fulfillment. That’s it. There’s really nothing else going on — not character, not plot, not themes, nothing. In some sense, I wonder if that’s part of the reason for the series’ success. If you’re a girl, it might be easy to imagine yourself as Sailor Moon, since Sailor Moon is barely there. It might be easy to imagine your own adventures, since the adventures on offer barely exist either.
Sailor Moon gets the pander right, and given that, additional specificity might well get in the way. The books, in short, remind me a little of McDonald’s — they aren’t good in the usual sense, but you have to admire the way they identify a need and fill it with maximum efficiency and minimal frills.
A fine review, but I must take issue with your declaration of CardCaptor Sakura as a Sailor Moon ripoff. Rather, they're both just two examples of the magical girl genre. While CCS's publication may have been a result of the girly warrior boom that Sailor Moon inspired, their common "young girl receives magical trinket" plot had been around for decades before.
Don't confuse Berlatsky with facts. He'll just Google search until he finds somebody who agrees with him.
Thanks for the compliment and the info Abigail. Are there other examples you could mention? And is Cardcaptor Sakura more or less the best, or is there another one I should check out?
Brian, I actually prefer to just make up references. Takes less time.
For other examples, you might look at this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_girl
And this list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Magical_girl_anime_and_manga
Huh. Well that link actually seems to suggest that Sailor Moon did influence Cardcaptor Sakura:
"Until the appearance of Sailor Moon, the original term mah? sh?jo in Japan referred primarily to girls who did not transform themselves and used magic for acts of mercy and succor rather than heroism against evil; for example, Mako of Mah? no Mako-chan."
Can't blame me Brian; it's VM's link.
At least you're being slightly reasonable today.
I was expecting something more along the lines of, "I won't accept any examples from before Sailor Moon volume one because I've arbitrarily decided they're too old."
Frankly, I like it more when you stick to topics you actually know stuff about. Like why Dan Clowes is boring.
I know more about shojo than Dan Clowes at this point, I'm pretty sure. For what that's worth.
"Until the appearance of Sailor Moon, the original term mah? sh?jo in Japan referred primarily to girls who did not transform themselves and used magic for acts of mercy and succor rather than heroism against evil; for example, Mako of Mah? no Mako-chan."
Sakura doesn't really fight evil… the cards are mischievous spirits or something, its more like collecting animals.
I think its awfully reductive to say Cardcaptur Sakura is a rip off of Sailor Moon. It would sort of be like saying Spider-man is a ripoff of Superman, they both have powers and nerdy secret identities and can't win the girls…
I did say I like Cardcaptor Sakura better.
Sakura is supposed to be fighting evil in general, though it is a bit more ambiguous than with Sailor Moon.
Might it be more like Wonder Woman and Superman? I just find it hard to believe that the massive success of Sailor Moon wasn't a factor in Clamp's decision/interest in the genre.
I should add I don't think there's anything wrong with that kind of rip off, or borrowing. That's what popular culture is all about. And not infrequently (as in this case, or with Wonder Woman) the derivative is better than the original.
"Sakura is supposed to be fighting evil in general, though it is a bit more ambiguous than with Sailor Moon."
I would be surprised if the term "evil" is ever used in Cardcaptor Sakura. I don't think the cards she captures are moral actors. A pretentious person would probably make a comparison to the Shinto belief system… and personification of nature, or something.
Sakura is just returning the magical spirits "to the form they are meant to be in" or something like that. I'm not sure where you get the notion she is fighting evil.
"I should add I don't think there's anything wrong with that kind of rip off, or borrowing. That's what popular culture is all about. And not infrequently (as in this case, or with Wonder Woman) the derivative is better than the original."
I would imagine that Sakura could very plausibly be influenced by Sailor Moon, but I think, and least for me, the term "rip off" implies a moral judgement, versus "inspired by" or "influenced by".
But how do you know Sailor Moon's creator and Clamp weren't both ripping off http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majokko_Megu-chan
which Wikipedia claims is
"considered an important forerunner of the present day mahou sh?jo genre, as the series' characterization and general structure exerted considerable influence over future shows in the same genre. Most notably, several of the show's recurring motifs were recycled in Toei's Sailor Moon, AIC's Pretty Sammy, and (to a lesser degree) Wedding Peach [1]."
Maybe the creative teams watched this show when they were young?
That certainly seems like a reasonable assumption.
"the term "rip off" implies a moral judgement, versus "inspired by" or "influenced by"."
I was kind of assuming that the derivativeness (from wherever) was in Clamp's case in part due to commercial considerations; they've struck me as quite canny in marketing terms. But, as I said, I don't think less of them for that.
Sailor Moon hasn't really aged very well, on it's time it was so well received as it decided to mix the magic girl with the sentai team (A la power ranger but more stylish) and gave all the power and responsability to the girls. Also the drawing while not exactly da vinci had the so elusive je-ne-se-quois (or the hell it is written) that many artist wish they have.
And I don't think CCS is a fair comparison, yes it's a much better manga, but also it was made years later and in a more polished state of clamp. It would be better to compare with Magic Knight Rayearth, while isn't exactly the same is made in a similar time period.
Even as a fan of the manga, I mostly agree about the art and the character development (although Usagi has matured a lot by the end – she evolves into a Christ figure of sorts.)
One thing that's pretty unique about Sailor Moon, though: one of its main themes is power through femininity (and not the kind where you get a man to do everything for you, either). Any little girls who are going through the "princess phase" are probably better off with SM than Disney – at least Takeuchi's princesses do things.
Disney has its points too (nice animation, mostly), and Beauty kind of does stuff…. But, yeah, I don't hate Sailor Moon or anything. As I said, I can see the appeal, especially for the demographic it's aimed at. And I certainly wouldn't be horrified or anything if I had a daughter and that's what she wanted to read.
What i think is that a show of sailor moon 's class cant be compared with any other show in the same genre.I have seen all sailormoon episode and found each of them good.So there is no point comparing sailormoon