The Morning Realms Dispatch No. 5
Sailor Moon and 90s girl power
This is the free monthly edition of The Morning Realms Dispatch, in which I share with my lovely readers some behind-the-scenes content and teasers for GUARDIANS OF DAWN: ZHARA, the first book in the Guardians of Dawn series, forthcoming AUGUST 29, 2023. If you would like even more secrets, why donāt you consider becoming one of my ģ ģ¹?
I am part of the OG T.O.M. Toonami lineup generation.
Real ones know.
When I was in school, I didnāt often have a chance to come home and watch afternoon programming, mostly because I was either in after school daycare, or otherwise involved in extracurricular activities like piano lessons or art classes. My parents were very much into āenrichmentā for me when I was young, but what I wanted more than anything when I was twelve years home was to get home from school by 4PM in order to watch Sailor Moon.
Back then, the lineup I remember most was Sailor Moon at 4PM, ReBoot at 4:30PM,1 Dragon Ball Z at 5PM, and The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest at 5:30PM.2 I loved every show in this lineup (save for Dragon Ball Z, which I didnāt dislike so much as I was bored by the fact that we spent over 900000 episodes on one goddamned battle), and Toonami was my first real exposure to anime.
I had grown up with Japanese animation; Iād seen almost every Studio Ghibli film to date, not to mention memories of my earliest summers in Korea are filled with me watching episodes of Candy Candy with my much older cousins. I was familiar, too, with shows like Voltron, but having grown up in the US in the early 90s, I tended to conflate that show with American ones like Transformers and Thundercats. By the time I reached middle school, I was only vaguely aware of anime, mostly because video stores in the mall3 were starting to carry them.
But I wasnāt much into otaku culture, at least not yet, mostly because it seemed to be populated with a lot of much older boys, not to mention my very tiny, very preppy middle school was more into skateboarding and creating our own ska bands than imported media. And on the outset, anime didnāt seem to be for me; most of what was easily accessible was shounen4 anime with lots of mecha fights or endless powering up narratives. I didn't mind a boy protagonist, but I didn't often relate.
And then came Sailor Moon.
If anime like Dragon Ball Z, Gundam Wing, or Akira did not necessarily keep my attention, I couldnāt stop watching Sailor Moon.
Because there were girls in it.
I think, sometimes, we now forget just how few girl characters were in existence in the 90s and early 2000s. Most often girl characters would show just up as a male characterās distaff counterpart (Lola Bunny for Bugs Bunny in Space Jam) or simply a token female character (Smurfette). To have a leading cast of five teenage girls and one (1) token male damsel in distress?5 Unheard of.
But it was more than the presence of multiple, well-rounded three-dimensional girls that made Sailor Moon stand out to me. It was that this show was as much about these girlsā relationships to each other as it was saving the world, and the best episodes of the show were often the ones that focused on the small details of their friendships. The stakes were as much about each other as it was about whichever villain-du-jour was hellbent on destroying Tokyo this time.
Last month, I binge watched The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House on Netflix, and talked about it on the phone with my mother, giving it a full-throated recommendation.
āIt has that intimate, slice-of-life feel that Japanese media often does really well,ā I said.
āThe Japanese do slice-of-life incredibly well,ā she agreed. āAnd also very weird. There is no in-between.ā
To some extent this is true. The Japanese sense of humor is often very surreal and strange, and may not translate very well to other cultures.
Sailor Moon has both.
What I love so much about Sailor Moon are the details about these girlsā lives. Where they go shopping, what they do after school, what they care about (often very girly things like wanting to become a bride or being a model). I often feel incredibly nostalgic watching Sailor Moon, because itās the little life details that transport me back to Asia, and it often feels like a strange sort of homecoming just looking at the background art.
The show is also incredibly weird.
The villains-du-jour (usually referred to as youma, or monsters) usually came from the slice-of-life details that the girls were undergoing, and therein was the charm of this show. When youāre a teen girl, the smallest thing can feel like an all-consuming monster, and Sailor Moon often turned this figurative obstacles into literal monsters.
In the 90s, there was this notion of girl power, which was this idea that girls could do anything boys could do. You know, proto-girlboss feminism. This usually meant a Strong Female Character was stoic, or tragic, or physically strong, or flawless in every sense of the word. The burden of frequently being the only girl character in a show meant that the Token Female had to be everything to everyone at once, which meant she was usually incredibly unrelateable or unrealistic.
But Sailor Moonās strength was that it had had so many girls. They represented all sorts of femininity ā from ultra-girly, crybaby Usagi, to tomboyish and domestic homemaker Makoto, to gender non-conforming butch Haruka.6 They won battles not because one of them was stronger than the other, but because they worked collaboratively. Sailor Moon was not the leader of the Sailor Senshi because she was the best or strongest or bravest; she was the leader because she had the biggest heart. Usagi's greatest power was her compassion, and it was never saccharine or twee. A lot of shounen anime would teach boys the lesson that you must soldier on through hardship, that if you're caught with your back against the wall, you go even harder. And sometimes thatās a lesson you need to learn.
But Sailor Moon taught me that it takes just as much strength to be kind as it does to win through skill.
When I initially pitched Guardians of Dawn to my publisher as being inspired by Sailor Moon, I was really thinking of it from the magical girl perspective. I wanted to write something that made me feel the way Sailor Moon had ā warm, nostalgic, girlish, and full of joy. But I think the reasons I felt that way was because of the lessons I had subconsciously taken away from it: that kindness can sometimes be stronger than violence, and friendship is a kind of armor of its own.
Thatās all for this monthās issue of The Morning Realms Dispatch! Next month Iāll talk about fairy tales and Cinderella, so be on the lookout for that. I will also be elaborating on the specific places Sailor Moon inspired Guardians of Dawn: Zhara for my ģ ģ¹-only The Guardians Gazette, so if you would like to check out that, why donāt you consider subscribing?
UTTERLY UNDERRATED! I FUCKING LOVED THIS SHOW! STILL DO! I HAVE ALL THE DVDS!
I canāt remember if this show was good ā I suspect it wasnāt ā but I do recall being very invested in the romance between Jonny and Jessie? Even though Iām pretty sure season 1 (which had an entirely different animation style????) indicated that the romance was between Jessie and Hajji????
The mall lolsob
Marketed toward boys
They never did translate Sailor Moon S by the time I stopped watching Toonami, although I went and watched all the seasons myself.
Incidentally, Haruka was the first crush I ever had on a fictional character.