The List
7 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Sailor Moon
by Lynzee Loveridge,
The Sailor Moon R movie is opened in theaters across North America this week! It seems like a great time to revisit some classic Sailor Moon trivia.
Naoko Takeuchi's magical girl series had a profound effect on anime fandom, whether you caught its first run in North America, or later on Cartoon Network's Toonami. The online fandom was undeniably huge when I was a kid. So much so that combing for little known facts was difficult given how much the fans poured over all the source material for the last 20 years. Was there anything left that Moonies didn't already know?
7. The Sailor Moon Girls Are Fairly Affluent:
The Juuban district of Tokyo is a real area, and is predominately wealthy. Usagi's house is a testament to this as a two-story home on an island whose square footage is very expensive. Her dad works as a newspaper photographer and Ami's mother is an accomplished physician. Mako lives in an apartment in the area, presumably financed by her parent's life insurance.
6. The Tsukino Family: Usagi's household includes herself, her mother Ikuko, her father Kenji, and a brother named Shingo. The entire family is actually named after creator Naoko Takeuchi's own family members, where Usagi would be considered the author surrogate.
5. Rich People Drive Expensive Cars: Given the presumption that Sailor Moon centers around wealthy kids, it should come as no surprise that they drive equally nice cars. Mamoru Chiba is seen driving an Alfa Romeo SZ in the anime series, although Takeuchi at one point drew him as Tuxedo Mask driving a Porsche 962 LM in one of the art books. Haruka Tenoh has a Ferrari 512M in some manga art work, as well as owning motorcycles, helicopters, and a race car.
4. Villain Groups: All of villains throughout Takeuchi's manga, and the corresponding anime adaptations, have a particular theme. Rocks and minerals are present through all five story arcs, while later seasons have secondary themes like from the Greek mythos. Takeuchi also slips in what might seem like advanced chemistry terms in the names, like the droids Chiral and Achiral. This makes sense though, as Takeuchi was a licensed pharmacist with a degree in Chemistry.
3. Sailor Moon is a One-Hit Wonder?: It's hard to categorize a series that had such a profound effect on the anime community as a "one-hit wonder" but the truth is, Takeuchi hasn't produced another popular series in almost 20 years since the manga ended in 1997. In fact, outside of Toki Meca!, which ran for only a year from 2005-2006, her other post Sailor Moon series were cancelled, including the one about female aliens that transform into cockroaches.
2. All of the Weird Sailor Guardians Are in the Musicals: The naming routine for all the canon Sailor Guardians is based off of real planets and heavenly objects in the Solar System up until Sailor Stars when a few fictional planets are introduced. The SeraMyu series gets even stranger, with some highlights being Shiva Shingetsu Astarte/Sailor Astarte from Transylvania in the Transylvania no Mori - Shin Toujou! Chibi Moon wo Mamoru Senshi-tachi musical, and Sailor Buttress, apparently named after an architectural structure, in the Sailor Stars musicals.
1. The Sailor Moon SuperS Movie Was Almost a Sailor Uranus and Neptune Film: It's no secret among fans that SuperS is one of the least popular seasons, according to Japanese TV ratings at the time. Kunihiko Ikuhara (who directed episodes of R and S), left the show after SuperS and would later make Revolutionary Girl Utena. Prior to leaving, Ikuhara penned an idea for the SuperS movie (that he claims was approved by a producer) that ultimately wasn't used. He imagined the film as a Sailor Uranus and Neptune standalone story where Uranus had to steal a talisman from Sailor Moon and Co. to awaken a sleeping Neptune in a place called "The End of the World." He also mentions a face-off rodeo scene with two Pegasuses. Ikuhara is weird.
The new poll: What's your favorite monster girl species type?
The old poll: Looking back at 20 years, what was your favorite anime of 1996?
- Rurouni Kenshin
- Vision of Escaflowne
- Slayers Next
- Martian Successor Nadesico
- Sailor Moon Sailor Stars
- Case Closed
- Dragon Ball GT
- You're Under Arrest
- Kodocha
- After War Gundam X
When she isn't compiling lists of tropes, topics, and characters, Lynzee works as the Managing Interest Editor for Anime News Network and posts pictures of her sons on Twitter @ANN_Lynzee.
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