Okay, my last rant about Sailor Moon for the time being.

As I said, Sailor Moon is pretty childish a lot of the time- so as a grown woman (okay, so maybe at nineteen I’m not QUITE grown) who watched/red it for the first time this summer, I guess you could say it appealed to my inner eight year old girl (if my inner eight year old had known about lesbians and nekkidness and violence like the subbed has, anyway)

I guess that’s why when I was googling the WW thing, I took offense at Bertlasky dismissing it (I pretty much stopped taking him seriously after he called Wonder Woman a Mary Sue, something that might as well be code for FEMALE CHARACTER GIVEN AN OUNCE OF RESPECT I DON’T LIKE in fandom nowadays)- because he doesn’t have an inner eight year old girl. so how can he talk?

Here’s the post:

I appreciated the naked wish fulfillment in Twilight.

Okay, I can’t take anything he has to say seriously anymore, but let’s soldier on, because I need a springboard for my point somewhere.

(TWILIGHT OVER SAILOR MOON ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS USAGI HAS A SENSE OF SELF WORTH ARGH)

He then says the art is “cluttered” or something, which may have a point in the first volumes, but I find it funny he takes an image of CardCaptor Sakura that…well, there are plenty of SM images uncluttered like that one was. Whatever, I don’t care.

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

That part about Serenity obliterating “Bunny” is so not true it’s not even funny (and apparently he had difficulty understanding what happened there…I…wonder how he follows REALLY COMPLICATED plots then, if Sailor Moon is challenge…) .

So yeah, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that fine. He’s still an okay person, I’m not ragging on him, I just wish he’d stop mansplaining. This is just the spring board for my point.

Yes, Sailor Moon doesn’t have terribly deep characterization. There are no hidden depths of angst and inner torment. It’s all a bit cutesy and shallow. Unlike Noah suggests, they do HAVE characters, there’s guilt and conflict, we know Usagi’s flaws, we know her strengths, she has a certain voice that isn’t interchangeable with Rei or Ami’s or Mammoru’s. She isn’t Bella Swan.

She is, however an archetype, like Superman or Spiderman. Noah was right in saying girls can project onto her, but not because there’s NOTHING there. She’s a girl who sucks at pretty much everything, who is lazy and silly- like all of us. But she’s brave and she has a good heart and she loves her friends and she believes in herself- and that’s why she saves the day. She is that archetype of the everygirl who becomes a force to be reckoned with just by being herself- and her friends are archetypes too- the Smart Girl, the Tall and Athletic girl, the Spooky Psychic Girl, the Fun Girl, The Awesome Hardcore Couple, the Reticent Mother Figure, the Quiet Girl, the Bratty Little Sister.

They could all be your friends, they could be any girl. They aren’t terribly deep, but they are there- Ami is serious and studious, but she’s also lonely and likes trashy romance novels- she’s seen as subtle criticism of Japan’s school system as well. Mako struggles insecurely balancing her femininity and tomboyishness, she loves to fight and she loves to cook, she wants a big family because she lost hers so young, she feels constantly rejected- a criticism of how tall and gutsy woman are seen as hardened delinquents and treated by those around them, particularly tall women in Japan? Yeah, I could go on.

He’s right about the plot though, it’s really silly, occasionally contrived and nothing special. But that doesn’t matter- it’s fun. There’s monsters to fight, drama to be had, and the day to save. The plot barely matters, because the center of Sailor Moon is emotion and action- and the anime does a damn good job with emotional moments, I remember seriously being scared, depressed, teary during some really well done dramatic scenes- and the manga does good drama too. What it’s about here is the friendship, and the power and the unity- and I’ll take that over some super twisty plot about misogyny and murder any day. (Yet I still like Death Note…) The characters may be shallow, but you care about them.

And then he compares Sailor Moon to McDonalds for “filling a need”. um, what. Fast food is made without care or heart, stories (even bad ones) always come from someone’s heart, and Sailor Moon certainly came from the heart of a cutesy Japanese Women who believed in Girl Power and invested herself in the story. So don’t compare writing to fast food. No one can deny Sailor Moon has heart.

So in conclusion- Sailor Moon- it may be silly, it may be shallow sometimes, annoying tropes may pop up (Suicide- no, bad Usagi…anime, stop having her just stand there when flying projectiles attack, repetitive plot points etc) but ultimately it’s about a girl and her friends. They are super fun, they have a talking cat, they save the world, and tell girls that they can do it to. They aren’t afraid to be who they are. And that’s why it’s awesome.