Introduction
Sailor Moon has earned a place in pop culture history by being an evergreen property that continually gains new fans, inspires new derivative works, and is continually referenced in other forms of media. The strongest pop culture impact is found through the historical and humanities lenses. Nearly every magical girl show that has followed Sailor Moon’s success utilizes some aspect of the show, be it the main cast of five girls, themed powers, or emphasis on empathy as the strongest power. The positive queer representation was a rarity in 90s children’s media and several queer-coded shows airing today such as Owl House on Disney or Steven Universe on Cartoon Network, reference Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon’s manga popularity in its serialization helped launch other popular magical girl properties. In addition, Sailor Moon was a key part of the initial anime boom in America, which has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry. The prolonged success of Sailor Moon has made it a pop culture fixture that transforms with each new decade.
Historical Lens
Sailor Moon, the manga, debuted in its native language on December 28, 1991, in the magazine Nakayoshi, where it was serialized through 1997. The animated series aired in 1992 through 1997. A second animated remake of the series began airing in 2014 and the final movie is scheduled to be released in 2023. In America, the manga, comic, was released initially in 1997 and the animated series began airing in 1997 as well. In addition, over 29 stage musicals were produced along with a live-action sentai (power rangers) series. America is not the only country infatuated with Sailor Moon. According to Japan Times, it has been released in 50 countries around the world.
Sailor Moon is notable because it is one of the early series that contributed to the first anime boom in America. Previously, series such as Macross and Beast King Go-Lion had been changed and adapted into Robotech and Voltron, but anime, or “Japanimation” as it was known back in the 90s, hadn’t reached mainstream consciousness.
The first English adaptation, done by DIC Productions, featured extensive alterations to make the show align more with Western audience preferences. These included changing the Japanese names of characters, editing episodes, and completely cutting episodes. Homosexual villain characters, such as Zoisite and Fisheye, were changed to females so their relationships would be straight-coded. Two of the hero characters, Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus, were changed to being cousins rather than lovers. (Dornemann)
This created a certain mystique around the American fanbase, where websites highlighted what was cut or altered, such as Sailor Moon Uncensored or Hitoshi Doi’s Fanpage. Fan activism, centered around a website called Save Our Sailors, worked to get uncut versions released and keep the show on the air. Despite the changes and release/dub setbacks, thanks to airing on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block, Sailor Moon still became popular in the US. The success of the anime shows on Toonami, such as Dragon Ball Z (another 90s anime property that has had a similar cultural impact as Sailor Moon in America) or Gundam helped found anime fandom that continues to grow with each year. According to NPD Bookscan’s 2021 sales reports, taking out the graphic novels intended for children or middle-grade readers, manga are the only other property that appear on the top 20 list. If one searched for DC or Marvel-style graphic novels, they don’t appear until #164. (The Beat)
“The merchandising opportunities were endless, and it didn’t stop at the original dolls, wands, and other toys that were manufactured in the 1990s and early 2000s.” (Givens) According to 2014 figures from Japan Times, Sailor Moon has generated an estimated 13 billion dollars in merchandising revenue. Sailor Moon merchandise is easily found in retail stores like Target, Hot Topic, or Gamestop. Items now span from clothing to makeup to home goods. Sailor Moon was even co-opted into the fight against syphilis by releasing Sailor Moon branded condoms. (Philippines Daily Inquirer) Because the show is celebrating its 30th anniversary, merchandise is now created to accommodate the range of fans from adults who grew up watching the initial airing of the show to younger anime and manga fans.
Humanities Lens
The influence of Sailor Moon is seen in multiple properties for girls. The strongest influence is within its own genre, magical girl, but even western properties such as the Netflix adaptation of She-Ra, Steven Universe, or Adventure Time’s Fionna and Cake, make references to Sailor Moon. Though the mechanisms of the magical girl genre, such as transformation sequences, fashion, merchandisable trinkets, weaponry, and large expansive casts are notable, the more enduring impact is the emotional Usagi and how she changed the way girl heroes could be viewed and characterized.
Sailor Moon, Usagi Tsukino, begins the series at the age of 14. She is introduced as a crybaby, both in the opening title card, “The Crybaby: Usagi’s Beautiful Transformation” and first battle, in which her wails are transformed to supersonic sound waves that stun her enemy. Cartagena notes, “Throughout the series, characters unpack layer upon layer of intergenerational and extraterrestrial trauma as they remember and forget, die and are resurrected. And unlike Sailor Moon’s contemporaries Buffy Summers or Xena the Warrior Princess, Usagi is soft.”
Usagi is very much a typical 14-year-old girl. She’s interested in her friends, crushing on boys, food, and fashion. She’s not a good student, doesn’t like to study, and she’s not good at sports either because of her clumsiness. Continuing the comparison noted of Buffy and Xena, Usagi seems weak due to her lack of special skills or determination. But those qualities are what make her identifiable and timeless. Any young girl can see themselves as Usagi, whose strongest trait seems to be her kindness and willingness to do the right thing. “Sailor Moon has influenced several modern American animated television series that are also groundbreaking in their centering of kindness, empathy, and queerness—in particular, Steven Universe and She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power.” (Bose)
The queerness mentioned is another one of the elements that defined Sailor Moon as ahead of its time. Sailor Moon had queer representation in the 90s when queer representation wasn’t exactly something on the forefront of creators’ minds. Naoko has said before the inspiration of Haruka or Sailor Uranus’ character is in Takarazuka Revue. (Allen) Takarazuka Revue is an all-female theatrical production house that is noted for its strict standards of entry and division of actresses into “Otokoyaku” and “Musumeyaku” (male and female), meaning that Otokoyaku actresses will only play male roles during their tenure in the Revue. In an interview from a webarchive translation from an Italian interview with Takeuchi in 1996, she states even more explicitly, “It wasn’t easy to make children understand how there could be true love between two women. Haruka is a tomboy, she talks and dresses like a boy, and therefore it’s natural she falls in love with Michiru (Sailor Neptune).” (Kappa Magazine, Vol 51 September) There is no strong way to confirm this source, considering the age of the magazine and the appearance on a fan website, but it does track with the way the couple is characterized in the manga adaptation and the animated adaptations. At the very least, even if the interview cannot be confirmed, the source material provides evidence. One of the biggest influences after Haruka and Michiru’s debut is found in the series Revolutionary Girl Utena. While Haruka and Michiru are side characters to Usagi’s story, Utena and her love interest, Anthy, are explicitly coded as being in love. The director of Utena, Kunihiko Ikuhara, was also the director of the “S” season of Sailor Moon, the season that debuts Haruka and Michiru. Bailey notes, “Utena and Sailor Moon attempt to confront and rewrite these cultural prejudices, portraying alternative trajectories as feasible, valid, and even heroic.”
While the impact of Sailor Moon can be seen in the magical girl shows that followed her popularity, the strongest aspects of the characters and storytelling can be seen in how Usagi shows a different kind of female protagonist can be seen as strong despite being kind and welcoming and the representation of queer identities.
The Natural and Applied Sciences
Sailor Moon has been re-released several times over the years. It originally ran in a monthly anthology magazine called Nakayoshi, beginning serialization in the December 1991 issue. The initial release of the first volume of collected chapters set a record for shoujo manga first editions at 1.3 million copies sold. (Junji) The popularity of Sailor Moon also assisted the popularity of Nakayoshi, which began circulation at 800,000 copies but by 1993 had increased to over 2 million. (Junji) The popularity of Sailor Moon also lead to other series in the same magazine becoming popular, such as CLAMP’s Magic Knight Rayearth and Card Captor Sakura or Minami Tachikawa’s Saint Tail.
Over the years, the manga has been recompiled and reissued several times. The initial release run, clocking in at 18 volumes, were estimated to have sold (x) in Japan. In 2003, it was released as 12 volumes with revised cover and interior art and doubled in paper size to A5. In 2013, it was released again in 10 volumes with revised artwork. Finally, in 2020, a new edition released that is a smaller A6 paper size but has the same interiors as the 2020 edition. The estimated total sales, including digital releases, is over 46 million. (Minami)
The 1990s animated series was also popular. In Japan, it aired Saturday nights at 7pm and had a 12% viewership rating. (Grigsby) In America, it initially was broadcast in 1995, but “its ratings only grew when it was broadcasted on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block on weekday afternoons […] the year 1998 became a tipping point in the history of anime on American television”. (Daliot-Bul, et all) Unfortunately, hard ratings numbers aren’t available for this time period outside generalizations of a show being popular, so it is difficult to compare to the Japanese market directly. However, like Japan, the airtime of Sailor Moon during the Toonami block placed it in a prime-time slot for the demographic on Cartoon Network. Daliot-Bul also theorized that the cross-genre mix of “friendship and romance, and the superhero squad genre” helped sell the show to girls and boys. On June 14, 2022, VIZ Media released a repackage of the first season of the animated show, which on release date, reached #1 sales rank on Amazon for Anime and #98 for Movies and TV categories overall. (Amazon)
These show the persistent popularity of Sailor Moon. The Toonami block was considered an integral part of the initial anime boom in America. Despite its age and the relative glut of animated series released since the 90s and currently airing, Sailor Moon seems to be an evergreen product that will continue to sell.
The Social Sciences
Sailor Moon is a unique property because it is an import from Japan. Thus, there is a natural language barrier to overcome. There is also a cultural barrier. Usagi is not a normal name found in the English language. Japanese schools are not structured like American schools. Outside Usagi, other Japanese cultural artifacts are specifically coded into the lead cast. Ami Mizuno attends cram schools, Rei Hino is a Shinto priestess, Makoto Kino makes bento box lunches, and Minako Aino wants to be an idol (a specific type of pop singer). What Usagi does show is the universal teenage experience. She is pressured by her parents to succeed. She would rather hang out with her friends, eat sweets, and play video games over doing homework or studying. She has to balance the weight of saving the world with living a normal life. As a teenager, she wants to fall in love and discover who she is by exploring her identity. Themes like that are common in young adult works and the teenage experience across the world.
The fandom around Sailor Moon is a big part of its continued popularity and success. The website Miss Dream is a digital archive of media that has never been officially released in America, such as the live action Power Rangers show, subtitled videos of the musicals, or interviews in Japanese exclusive magazines. On Archive of Our Own, a Hugo award-winning fanfiction hosting website, there are over 11,000 works uploaded under the Sailor Moon category. On Fanfiction.Net, a fanwork archive that has been around since 1998, over 45,000 works are uploaded. The fandom is still actively creating derivative works for Sailor Moon despite the lack of new content being created or released.
Another aspect that contributes to its continued relevance is current media works making quick “easter egg” references to Sailor Moon, showing the creators as fans having been influenced by the property. Several fandom reference websites, such as TV Tropes or Sailor Moon Wiki, have extensive lists that categorize each reference or appearance. Another aspect that contributes to the fandom experience is nostalgia. In 2022, Sailor Moon celebrates its 30th anniversary. Many of those who watched it as children are ripe for experiencing nostalgia for pop culture artifacts from their youth. Using nostalgia to target an aging fandom is also part of the campaign for the Crystal animated series, which is a new animated adaptation that follows the story beats found in the manga closer than the original 90s animated adaptation. The series director, Munehisa Sakai, states “Actually, our focus is on women who read the manga and watched the anime when it originally aired. We’d like the girls who have become adults to immerse themselves in the dream world of “Sailor Moon” all over again. Rather than making them feel nostalgic, we want them to once again experience that dream-like feeling they felt when they looked up to the Sailor Guardians.” Another contributor to nostalgia being a motivating factor in Sailor Moon’s popularity is the state of the world on the 30th anniversary begins in. “Research supports the efficacy of nostalgia as a coping mechanism. As a result of engaging in nostalgic recollections, people often report experiencing a more positive mood, feeling more socially connected, and having a greater sense that their lives are meaningful.” (Feldman) The pandemic of 2020 along with other stressors such as the economic state of the world or political strife makes the nostalgic crowd an even more potent demographic. The positive messages of Sailor Moon also may contribute to this.
Conclusion
By viewing Sailor Moon through the four lenses, the social and economic impact of the property can be seen. A popular story resonates with society and can help create social change. This is also seen with movies, such as Super Size Me changing the fast food industry, Blackfish changing the way Sea World handles their animals, or crime documentaries creating public pressure for retrials of wrongly convicted. For Sailor Moon, the powerful representation of girls and queer individuals resonates with audiences to this day. In the later years, not altering the Japanese cultural elements also helps teach viewers about another culture’s norms.
Sailor Moon helping to usher in the anime boom in America has helped grow and transform anime into a global industry. The challenges in analyzing Sailor Moon come from multiple avenues. One, the digital preservation of media in the 90s is not strong. Internet Wayback Machine archives some of the more popular sites, but there are smaller websites that could contain lost media. The analytics for things like television show ratings or DVD sales are not available. Being originally in Japanese, if one cannot read Japanese they are reliant on translators for information. Also, it could be harder to search and find primary sources from Japan.
Pop culture provides an avenue for communication that can lead to greater discussions. For instance, the portrayal of Usagi in Sailor Moon can prompt discussions of how female heroes are portrayed in American media as a contrast, the difference in norms for teenagers in America and Japan, whether Usagi is portrayed as an object, or larger things like the ecological themes in the storylines, or even more controversial subjects like the discussion of whether the SuperS season of the animated adaptation is a metaphor for assault. Pop culture facilitates discussion of difficult topics by giving them a degree of separation. It is easier to talk about a character than talk about a real person, by which emotions may become charged and render discussion impossible. Pop culture also shows a state of society’s people by the themes that resonate with larger audiences. In that aspect, something that was not expected to become a pop culture event could become one. The Marvel Cinematic Universe only occurred because of the success of a mid-budget film from a character that wasn’t considered very popular before the success of the film. The success of that film revitalized the superhero industry and created a cinematic event that hadn’t been executed in cinemas. While something like studying pop culture may sound trite on paper, when viewed through the four lenses it provides a complete picture of society’s relationships with themselves and the outside world.
Works Cited
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Cartagena, R. (2022). Battle Cry: Sailor Moon the Supersensitive Superhero. Bitch Magazine: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, 93, 78–79.
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Sailor Moon continues to help Japan fight against syphilis. (2017, October 11). Philippines Daily Inquirer (Makati City, Philippines).
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Grigsby, M. (1998). Sailormoon: Manga (Comics) and Anime (Cartoon) Superheroine Meets Barbie: Global Entertainment Commodity Comes to the United States. The Journal of Popular Culture, 32(1), 59–80. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1111/j.0022-3840.1998.3201-59.x
Daliot-Bul, M., Otmazgin, N., Daliot-Bul, M., Otmazgin, N. (2020). The Anime Boom in the United States: Lessons for Global Creative Industries. United States: Brill.
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Feldman, D. B. (2022, 7 January). Why nostalgia is on the rise. Santa Clara University. https://www.scu.edu/illuminate/thought-leaders/david-b-feldman/why-nostalgia-is-on-the-rise.html