Sean here. Today we have a guest post by one of the more popular Sailor Moon fanfiction authors, John Walter Biles. John has been writing Sailor Moon fanfiction for over 15 years now. His most acclaimed stories include the epic Sailor Moon Z and the Arthurian pastiche A Tokyo Senshi in Queen Rei’s Court. John’s stories can be found at his website. Here he discusses in depth something I touched on in my villains essay: the differences between the manga and its anime, and how this affects Sailor Moon fandom.

It cannot be denied that the Sailor Moon manga is better paced than the animation. This is not unusual; even poorly paced manga tend to be outrun by any attempt to animate it at the same time the manga is coming out. Any fan of Japanese animation based on manga soon comes to expect the many tricks used by animated series in order to avoid having to pass the point the manga has reached.

Further, the Sailor Moon manga is tightly paced, especially in comparison to a lot of other manga in which people fight each other or monsters. Compare the disasterous spiral of bloat of the Bleach manga in the Hueco Mundo arc to any of the major manga arcs. (If you enjoy pain, anyway). Each arc lasted roughly a year of real time, setting up a set of interconnected conflicts, resolving them by the end. Indeed, with only 52 chapters, many foes die by the end of the chapter they first appear in.

The strength of this is that you end up with something which is complete in itself, doesn’t wander all over the place, and which does not contain any wastes of time. From a perspective of purely reading,
this is a definite strength.

But we live in an age in which reading (or in the case of TV, watching) is not the only use of media. Increasingly, many fans want to engage with media at a deeper level, whether arguing about the story’s direction on a mailing list or discussion board or Twitter, creating fan art, writing fan-stories, making music videos or other forms of secondary creation. Modern technology greatly facilitates this.

Ironically, for this purpose, the flaws of the animated versions of many manga become strengths. The more holes they are, the more space there is for secondary creators. It’s the series which are problematic which tend to attract the most fan writers, whether to fix the holes or to exploit the additional plotlines which have to be added. There is enough framework for a common fandom and enough room for improvement to inspire people to do so.

The massive army of Sailor Moon fanfics attests to this phenomenon. The flawed structure of the anime opens more room for fanfic, which is among the reasons there are more fanfics based on it than the manga. The fact that in the US, most people have not actually seen all of the anime contributes to this as well, leaving the series essentially open-ended for them (like, for example, Ranma One-Half, another series which launched a thousand fanfics).

Naru, for example, who is ephemeral in the manga, is given enough coverage in the anime’s first season to become a substantial character, then fades away as the show progresses. For many people, this does not please them, leading to a small army of stories about her, whether to make her a senshi, or just to preserve her friendship with Usagi instead of her fading away. (I plead guilty as one of those people, in my fanfic Sailor Moon Z.)

Thus, for those inclined to use a work as a basis for building their own story, something flawed and sprawling may well open doors for their own creativity. Which is not to say I wish Naoko Takeuchi had churned out a never-ending mess like the Bleach manga has become. Frankly, a lot of modern manga authors should be sat down and forced to read something with good pacing.

But the dual existence of the anime and the manga means we can have our cake and eat it too in this regard, having one version of the story to spark creativity especially well and one to deliver a tighter version of the tale for reading enjoyment.

(Hat tip to Animemiz for the topic for today.)

In a later post I’ll be discussing the confusion that sometimes appears in fandom when people discuss plot points or characterizations that are wildly different when seen in the Sailor Moon manga versus the Sailor Moon anime – or even, these days, the Sailor Moon live action series. But I want to talk about the villains separately here, as they get talked about a whole lot, and it’s quite fascinating how differently they’re treated by the various sources.

Naoko Takeuchi’s manga is excellent at giving its main characters well-developed and awesome character arcs. But the villains? Not so much. It’s got a lot to pack into its chapters, and the villains are there to move the plot along to its next point. Not to say there isn’t some thought given to each of them. The Four Generals being Endymion’s old bodyguards from the Silver Millennium was clearly thought out well in advance, and indeed gets brought up long after their deaths in the first arc. As for Super S, I’ll get to that later. But, especially in battle, generally a villain’s job in the manga is to show up, be horrible, threaten a few people, and then get zapped by the senshi (who, unlike the anime, have no issues whatsoever with killing them provided they prove to be monsters and not humans).

The anime had a lot more time to fill in its episodes, and the best way to do it was to flesh out the various villains. And so Nephrite begins to fall for a human, Usagi’s friend Naru, and in the end redeems himself for her even though he dies. (One can argue how acceptable this is, but the anime clearly wants you to feel sorry for him, even if many don’t.) Kunzite and Zoisite are in a relationship (which required the dub to make Zoisite a female, as heaven forbid a kid’s cartoon had suggestions of homosexuality). The Akayashi Sisters in the second arc, who were all complete cannon fodder in the manga, all get ‘redemption’ stories and are purified by Sailor Moon. The same thing happens to the Amazon Trio in the Super S anime – in the manga, they too are killed off. And Professor Tomoe’s story is equally tragic in both versions, but the anime gives him a heart he simply doesn’t have in the manga. It’s not a surprise to see why – Takeuchi made her minions, for the most part, to be funny and entertaining, and the more we see of them the more we got to like them.

(Tomoe’s redemption actually caused a nasty plot hole in the anime that had to be fixed later. This is why Pluto basically shows up at the start of Stars, takes his daughter from him, and proceeds to have her live with the other Outers. Which seems rather cruel of her. No need for this in the manga – he was far more irredeemable, killed off, and Hotaru went to stay with the others out of necessity.)

Of course, not EVERYONE got to enjoy a nice soul-healing redemption. The Witches 5 are just as wacky and fun to watch as prior villains, but they get killed off in ways that range from horrifying to *really* horrifying (hi, Mimete). Likewise, the Sailor Animamates in the final arc got huge expansions of roles (in some cases, they were only in the manga for a brief scene before being offed), but they manage to die all the same. In general, if the anime can manage to save the villain without harming the plot or having it turn too sweet, they might do so. but if the plot is meant to be dark (S, Stars), they’re far less lucky.

Then there’s Super S. The fourth arc in the manga, it’s the one that was changed the most for the anime. The anime, in fact, has a bad reputation, as it upped the cutesy Chibi-Usa scenes and removed the Outer Senshi from the story. It was probably the fluffiest of all the anime seasons. And because of that, it actually manages to redeem TWO sets of villains – not only the Amazon Trio, but also their replacements, the eccentric Amazoness Quartet, who in the anime are purified and become human girls. Now, for once, they Quartet are ALSO saved in the manga… but have a far more interesting role. Sailor Saturn (who, as I noted, was removed from the anime Super S) notices them and begs them to remember who they are. They ignore her, and are (we think) killed by being turned into glass marbles by the main villainess. Saturn grabs these, and once everything is safe and the villain has been vanquished, asks Moon to purify them. She does… and surprise! These four villains are actually SENSHI, Chibi-Usa’s bodyguard team from the future. What’s more, they even show up again in the next arc. This is probably the biggest villain redemption in the series, and it’s surprising that it comes in the manga (though this means it loses some of its impact as the Quartet didn’t appear as much).

This is not to say there aren’t scary and horrible villains. Each arc has its main general below the big bad (the big bad in each arc tends to be a horrible monstrous creature of some sort), and you feel no sympathy at all for them beyond the occasional “My God, What Have I Done?” moment. But in general, for Sailor Moon, it pays to be silly. The sillier the villain, the more likely you are to get out of the series alive. Especially since another of Takeuchi’s favorite techniques is also at play here (you can see it with Jadeite, Prince Diamond, etc.): if you are an asshole, particularly a male one, the heroines will kick your ass from here to Cleveland.