When I was writing about Makoto, I used her own personal name in the header. We first meet her as a normal teenage girl, and despite becoming Sailor Jupiter and defending justice and the like, the manga follows her life as a normal teenage girl. When we first meet Sailor Pluto, though, in the middle of the second arc of the manga, we see her as the senshi first and foremost. We don’t even realize she has a civilian identity until the third arc, when we finally “meet” Setsuna Meiou. This fits rather well, as Pluto’s arc is time in reverse compared to the others – she’s the no-nonsense soldier of the future, then upon her return she’s allowed to live a (somewhat) carefree life.

We know next to nothing of Sailor Pluto’s actual past. One flashback in the manga shows Queen Serenity telling Pluto the three rules of time that she is never allowed to break. Leaving aside the fact that she has broken all three of them by the end of the manga, what’s striking is that she’s telling this to a Sailor Pluto who looks to be about 7 years old. I mentioned before that these Sailor Senshi are not going to grow up and get married, but grow up and take on their duties as defenders of the Earth. Pluto, on the other hand, seems to have been born to this duty. It’s a rather jarring. What’s more, throughout this first arc we see that Pluto’s life in Crystal Tokyo is a solitary one… her only friends seem to be Endymion and Chibi-Usa. One would imagine even in Crystal Tokyo the other inner senshi all still hang out. Is Pluto’s task really that important?

Speaking of which, why isn’t Pluto’s task actually being the Senshi of Death? There are rumors that Naoko Takeuchi got Pluto and Saturn confused when she was writing the manga, and then gave Hotaru powers equivalent to “death” when she realized it was too late to go back and change it. In any case, guardians of time are not new in the land of fiction, or even manga, and it’s actually more of a surprise that Pluto doesn’t abuse her powers *more*, given the obvious temptation. Then again, Pluto is… well, not exactly a stoic, but her personality definitely tends towards the cooler end of the spectrum. Even when she’s living as Setsuna in present-day Tokyo, we learn very little about her personal life, her likes and dislikes, etc. She has no romantic scenes or pairings, even with the other senshi; the manga hinted she might have a crush on future King Endymion, but even that was mild. It does seem that she’s enjoying her time as Setsuna, at least. Probably the first time she’s had to relax in thousands of years.

We have no real idea how old Pluto is. Her parents are unknown, and she seems to be a young girl in the Silver Millennium when talking with Serenity. Her future is… confusing, given that she dies in Crystal Tokyo and then is reborn into the past to live in the present with Usagi and company as a (presumed) 18-year-old college student. Is she caught in a time loop? I’d like to say she isn’t, given I think that might be a bit too cruel. I imagine the combination of her own powers and Neo-Queen Serenity’s was able to work something out. (In the anime, of course, she doesn’t die in the first place, rendering all of this moot.)

Fan opinion on Pluto is mixed. As I said, there’s a lot of “with great power comes great responsibility” to her senshi powers, and that, combined with her cool and somewhat aloof personality, means that there’s a lot of fanfics and fan opinion portraying her as a manipulator. Heck, I’ve done it myself. In terms of the canon, though, I appreciate Pluto for her role as the Senshi of time, and her ability to show us what duty and sacrifice really are; but I also appreciate just as much her time as Setsuna from the third arc onwards, if only as we do see a teasing and fun side to her, and she’s a devoted parent (along with Haruka and Michiru) to Hotaru. Setsuna is time reversed from the other senshi – we see her as a soldier, then we gradually see her civilian self. As for which is her “true” self, well, that’s a hard question to ask for any of the senshi.

We’ve got some excellent links from Day One of this Manga Moveable Feast!

Aaron Kooienga tells us all why he’s so find of the magical girl genre, and also reviews the second volume of Codename: Sailor V.

Erica Friedman wrote a great article for Hooded Utilitarian a while back about why Sailor Moon was such a huge influence on North America.

Ed Sizemore found that he had issues with Usagi as a heroine in his review of Volume 1, but he was able to get behind Minako more. Ed also did a podcast about the series with Erica and Emily Snodrass.

Erin Jamison gives us a look at what lessons one can learn from Usagi Tsukino.

I’ve reviewed the first two volume of both Sailor Moon and Sailor V here, and I also discussed the character of Makoto Kino/Sailor Jupiter.

And that’s just Day 1! What will other days bring?

When I thought about what I wanted to write about for this month’s Sailor Moon MMF, I decided I wanted to get away from my two favorite senshi, Minako and Hotaru, mostly as I’ve discussed them to death. (You can argue I’ve done the same with Setsuna, but I reserve the right to come back to her later this week anyway.) So I started to wonder if there were senshi that I liked but hadn’t really delved into why I liked them in great detail. Makoto was the first that came to mind. Because really, she’s terrific.

Introduced at the end of the first re-released volume/halfway through the first season of the anime, Makoto pretty much makes an instant impression. She is 5’6″, which given she’s 14 and Japanese, is really significantly tall. She also has many of the features and clothes that a fan of Japanese shoujo manga would instantly associates with ‘yanki’, or a girl in a gang – she has ‘wavy’ hair (the manga goes to great pains to have her note that it’s naturally that way and not a perm), she wears a long skirted school uniform, a carryover from her old school, which one could easily hide weapons in (it’s noted she’s so tall the school can’t get her a new uniform right away – in fact, she doesn’t get one till high school). And of course she’s rumored to have been expelled from her old school for fighting. (Apparently Takeuchi’s original plan was for Makoto to actually *be* a yanki, but her editors told her to dial it back.)

Of course, we eventually find out that Makoto is quite feminine, and loves to cook and do gardening. The interesting thing about this, though, is that this is not followed by her explaining everything else is a misunderstanding. She does fight at school – she fights bullies picking on others. And even though she gets ostracized by her classmates for her scary appearance and tendency towards fights, she’s not going to stop doing this. This becomes even more obvious when she awakens to her role as a senshi, Sailor Jupiter. She takes her role of protecting her princess, Sailor Moon, very seriously, and does not hesitate to treat youma exactly the same way she would treat a bully. Makoto hates injustice as much as the rest of the senshi, and if she can use her height and strength to stop it, well, that’s fine.

I feel I should also mention something else – of the entire inner senshi, Makoto is the only one with no parents – or even parental figure – at all. Takeuchi actually gives us this information offhandedly in a comedic side-story – Makoto gets terrified when she hears an advertisement for an airline, and tells us her parents were killed in a plane crash. Now, Ami and Rei also have parental issues – Ami’s parents are separated, and Rei’s mother has died and she’s estranged from her father. But Ami does at least live with her mother, and Rei has her grandfather. Makoto, from what we can tell, lives alone. How she manages to swing this we’re never quite shown – one fan idea is that she’s given enough for an apartment and necessities from a distant family member – but certainly it does give another reason why she’s good at cooking.

And then there’s the old boyfriend. Now, the manga briefly touched on this in her debut, but the anime began to use it as a running gag. And then once fans got a hold of it and began using it in fanfics… let’s just say that if you ask Sailor Moon fans about Makoto, one thing they will always discuss is that “she always things every guy reminds her of her old boyfriend”. A constant source of humor, it also underscores the loneliness in Makoto’s life. From what we see, Makoto was devastated by the breakup (this is even more true in the anime – the manga downplays it somewhat by having her awaken to her destiny) and is having a lot of trouble getting over it. Sailor Moon is not a series short of girls wearing their hearts on their sleeves, but even among those Makoto stands out.

Again, among the Inners, Makoto has a tendency to be “the normal one”, who can play straight man when any of the others go insane. One can argue Ami also fills this function, but Ami is a “genius type”, whereas, height notwithstanding, Makoto is far more easy to identify with as “one of the girls”. We usually find Makoto talking Usagi and Rei down from a fight (anime only – manga Rei rarely gets that hotheaded) or trying to walk Minako and Usagi back from a harebrained scheme. But as a character, she’s just as notable. Showing female readers and viewers that you don’t have to be either a ‘tomboy’ or a ‘girly girl’, but can feel free to love aspects of both. Oh yes, and also feel free to take no guff from any bullies who might be picking on your friends. Makoto is a fantastic part of the core Sailor Moon cast.

And she’s ‘talented’, too. (Sorry, had to get that in there.)