BIG IN JAPAN
Sailor Moon
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| © Kodansh Comics |
A lot of nonsense has been
said about Japan' so-called otaku over the years. The term comes from a highly polite way
of saying "you," and can be translated as meaning nerd, specialist,
trainspotter, or all-purpose anal retentive. Before the Internet brought a new meaning to
the term "unsociable," the perfect breeding ground for otaku was the world of
manga and anime, and the single series that has attracted the weirdest and most fanatical
followers has been the girl's comic "Sailor Moon."
"Sailor Moon" in its original manga form began in the late 1980s, written by
Takeuchi Naoko. The story centers on a 14-year-old schoolgirl called Tsukino Usagi (a
loose translation of "rabbit in the moon") who's clumsy, scatterbrained, and
annoyingly cute. One day she comes across a mysterious cat with the mark of a crescent
moon on its forehead, who reveals to her that she is in fact the earthbound manifestation
of the extraterrestrial Princess Serenity. The Princess is one of the last survivors of
the Moon Kingdom, which was destroyed by the evil Queen Belial (also known as the
Negaforce).
Serenity, calling herself Sailor Moon, now finds herself Earth's guardian, along with an
army of super-powered girls called Sailor Scouts. The original scouts were Sailors
Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Mars, who were later joined by Sailor Uranus (yes, really!)
among others. All of them share the standard manga figures of huge eyes, unfeasibly long
legs, and of course cute sailor suit uniforms. For the love interest, there is the
mysterious hero Tuxedo Mask, who may or may not be the class geek Hitoshi.
The series is an ongoing struggle between the Scouts and the forces of Queen Belial, who
possess ordinary mortals in their attempts to take over the Earth. In their battles, the
Scouts refrain from killing the evildoers, simply changing them back to their human
selves, which cuts down on the blood and violence that's a staple of boy's comics.
Although Sailor Moon is targeted at elementary schoolgirls, its readership also includes
many middle-aged men (for obvious reasons) and hordes of otaku, both male and female. It
established the lucrative genre of portraying schoolgirls and boys as having double lives
and secret identities, and here we can see the clever psychology of other, more mundane,
forces at work. The Japanese educational system is well known for being a mincing machine
of rote memorization and blind obedience to class rules, and for decades manga have been
one of the few outlets for teenage stress. Comics like Sailor Moon offer pure escapism, a
world in which every Junichiro and Keiko can secretly be a dimension-busting superhero,
and so neatly avoids contemplation of the mind-numbing routine they are trapped within.
After all, why should they buck the system, if they can fly off and save the world after a
hard night in the juku?
This approach may well have backfired, however, as "The Authorities" are now
looking at the figures of underage crime, truancy, and suicides, and wondering if Japan's
youth has largely slipped away from reality altogether, disappearing into a paper-thin
universe of flashing knives and long, tantalizing legs. What kind of monster have Sailor
Moon and Queen Belial spawned? Calling the Moon Kingdom... come in, please...
John Paul Catton |
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