(There are obviously spoilers here for the anime and manga.)

These are my own personal top five, of course; if you asked ten different Sailor Moon fans you’d get ten lists. But these five are good examples of why I keep coming back to this manga/anime again and again. Three manga moments, and two from the anime.

5) Sailor Moon Super S manga – Dream 6: New Guardian Dream. I chose this chapter for many reasons. First of all, it’s fantastic to see the Outer senshi at rest, as it were. For all that they tend to be seen as the driven and pragmatic counterparts to the more emotional and caring senshi, they’re still meant to be high school girls, after all. (Well, mostly. Setsuna is debatable, see my previous post.) Here we see them all living as a family, celebrating their six month anniversary of having done so, since the end of S when Hotaru became an infant. They’ve also been unable to transform, so it’s been a bit of an idyllic rest for the three of them. However, Hotaru (who has gone from baby to 4-year-old in 6 months, and ages here to approximately 13 or so) is also there to remind them of their duties as senshi, and notes it’s time to get involved. This chapter, showing a different side of Haruka, Michiru and Setsuna, was so much fun that the anime, which had removed the Outers from the Super S story, went back and redid it as a prelude to Stars, just so they could show off how cool it was. I love the Outers, and this chapter is basically just seeing them all relax, then seeing them all kick ass. It’s great.

4) Sailor Moon Super S manga side-story – Rei and Minako’s Girl School Battle. Sailor Moon is a very funny series. However, I’ve noticed that a lot of the people talking about how funny it is tend to focus only on the anime. Now, it’s true that the anime has some side-splittingly funny episodes – I could easily have picked Nurse Minako from R or Minako’s Heart Crystal from S here as well, and debated it. But I went instead with this small chapter as I think it showed that Takeuchi’s characters are still her characters, and that they don’t need the expansion/exaggeration the anime sometimes gives them in order to be funny. The Rei we see here is definitely the manga version – the cool beauty and queen of her school – but we see how she gets driven to be just as angry as her anime counterpart. And Minako is simply fantastic – her drive to find out about Rei’s private school, completely being unable to fit in, and accidentally releasing the monster of the chapter through her own foolishness. And, of course, there’s the part that *everyone* remembers, which is Minako asking Rei if she has ever farted. Leaving aside that it’s Minako’s own way of trying to get Rei to admit that she’s just another girl like the rest of them, it is gloriously in character. What’s more, the punchline to the chapter – where Rei angrily says she has never farted, and that she’s nothing like Minako at all, makes me laugh hysterically – because of Takeuchi’s little side comment of an arrow pointing to a blushing Minako saying “has farted before”. Glorious.

3) Sailor Moon R – The Movie (climax). Sailor Moon had 3 movies made for the theater while it was running. But in general, when people talk about Sailor Moon movies, they mean *this* one – the first, and the best. Towards the end of the movie we see the other inner senshi watching Sailor Moon get throttled by the villain of the piece, and they all have little flashbacks to their lives before Usagi. And they’re all *incredibly depressing* – each one shows the girls being ostracized for being different or strange. Ami the intellectual, Rei the shrine maiden, Makoto the supposed “thug”, and Minako “always leaving” but unable to say she’s Sailor V. It’s beautifully done, and heartbreaking. Then later on Sailor Moon has defeated the villain, but there’s still the small matter of an asteroid headed for the Earth. Everyone teams up to stop it, and we see the Inner Senshi having another set of flashbacks – these showing Usagi coming into their lives, and her honest kindness and friendship being more than anyone could ask for. It shows how closely linked these five girls are, and it’s simply brilliant.

2) Sailor Moon R manga – Never Ending. This is the first of two to deal with the deaths of a sailor senshi. It’s a credit to both Takeuchi and the anime that even after we know about the senshi’s tendency to be resurrected and reincarnated, death is still a horrible, tear-jerking thing. This is the final chapter of the second arc, and all seems completely lost. Chibi-Usa is possessed as “Black Lady”, and Prince Diamond is about to cause a time paradox that will destroy not only Crystal Tokyo but causality. This leads Sailor Pluto to do the unthinkable – she stops time, allowing Sailor Moon to resolve things. As this happens, though, we see a much younger Pluto talking with Queen Serenity in a flashback, and she is told point blank that stopping time is forbidden, and that if she ever does it she will die. And that’s what happens, with Pluto barely getting time to say farewell before passing away. That’s not, however, why this is here. This is #2 because of Black Lady, who is startled to find tears streaming down her cheeks, becoming unpossessed and reverting to Chibi-Usa again. What’s more, Chibi-Usa has finally become able to unlock her powers – she transforms, and is now Sailor Chibi-Moon! Delighted, she turns to Pluto (who previous chapters have shown is essentially her only friend) and remarks on her transformation – only to become hysterical as she sees Pluto’s corpse, and begs her to open her eyes. I don’t think anyone can read this chapter and not be affected – it’s been over ten years since I read it, and I’m still tearing up just typing this.

1) Sailor Moon anime, episode 45. Yeah, there really wasn’t any question what number one would be. If the climax of R is, in my opinion, the manga’s finest hour, the climax of the first arc is where the anime surpassed it, both in dramatic tension and in heartbreaking loss. It should be noted that the anime does not exactly make this a big secret – the episode is TITLED “The Sailor Senshi Die!”. And sure enough, that’s what happens, as the senshi travel to the North Pole to take on Beryl. Now, there is a manga equivalent here – the senshi die there as well, though in a completely different situation – but the tension and agony are just incredible in the anime, where first Jupiter, then Mercury, then Venus and finally Mars sacrifice themselves so that the others can continue, each showing off just how powerful and badass they are even as they are killed. And Sailor Moon, her despair growing with each death, is left alone at the end – except that the spirits of the four fallen girls appear once more, telling her that they will always be with her and giving her the strength to go on. The anime came close to hitting these highs later on (Episode 125 comes closest), but never quite topped it – an episode that shows that even a magical girl may need to pay the ultimate price in order to save the world.

So those are my five favorites. If you think I missed something, let me know in a comment!

I touched yesterday on the differences between the source manga and its anime adaptation when I discussed villains. Of course, it doesn’t get limited just to them. Any anime adapted from a manga is going to need to expand and add in order to make it viable. 23 minutes of screen time vs. 30-40 odd pages means you need to figure out ways to remain true to your material while exploring new boundaries. And given that the original manga is 52 chapters, and the anime counterpart is 200 episodes… there’s a lot of stuff that can best be categorized as “anime only”. There’s added on plot arcs, like Ail and Ann; there’s changing events to make things more dramatic for television, such as the end of the first arc. And sometimes, there’s changes of the main characters themselves.

Sometimes this cam be small. Usagi cries a lot more in the anime, but this isn’t really that out of character for her. Likewise, Minako’s ditziness gets really ramped up as the series goes on, but you never find yourself thinking “Wait, she’d never do something like that.” There are three characters, however, that I’d argue the anime alters enough so that fan opinion on them changes depending on what people are more familiar with. And let’s be honest, for 95% of Sailor Moon fans, that’s the anime.

Mamoru and Usagi end up falling for each other straight away. And in the manga, despite the occasional ‘being possessed by evil’ that happens to love interests all the time, this is never in doubt. The series is not really about “will they get together or not?”, especially after the second arc shows us the future in Crystal Tokyo. As a result, one main element used to pad out an anime is missing from the manga – romantic tension. Not to worry, though. Simply have Mamoru be far more aloof and unconcerned with Usagi’s feelings, and have Usagi be even more insecure and jealous than she is in the original. Plus throw in a few rivals for their love. Presto! … Of course, the problem is that this makes Mamoru look like a jerk at times. Thus, for those who grew up with the anime, it’s not “wow, look at their beautiful love” but “what does she see in him?”

(I haven’t been able to track down a source, but several folks have noted that the director of Sailor Moon R, S, and Super S, Kunihiko Ikuhara (better known for Utena and Mawaru Penguindrum these days) has openly stated he couldn’t stand Mamoru, and wanted Usagi to end up with Rei.)

Mamoru, of course, is still at heart a “nice guy”, meaning that it’s harder to hammer on his character flaws the way one can with crybaby Usagi or impulsive Minako. Sometimes, though, when a character does have known character flaws, hammering on them TOO much can cause issues. This is what happened, to a certain degree, with Chibi-Usa in the anime. She is, especially in her debut, meant to be a bratty kid who glomps on to Mamoru and doesn’t like Usagi. While this improves in future seasons, like “crybaby Usagi”, her default seems to be “bratty Chibi-Usa”. And fans, as a whole, tend not to like bratty kids that much. She’s a bit bratty in the manga as well, but it makes her shyer as well, and gives her a lot more bonding moments with Usagi. But again, we run into what happens when you have to fill time. Need to have conflict in an episode? Have Chibi-Usa fighting with Usagi. I like to think that the two of them are finally getting less hatred from fandom, but it was quite bad for a time.

Sailor Mars, aka Hino Rei, is quite different. With a few exceptions, she never got the hate that a lot of folks had for Mamoru and Chibi-Usa. Of course, she was also dealing with a different problem. Mamoru and Chibi-Usa were still recognizably their manga characters, just with several negative traits brought to the fore. But Rei… Rei was *changed*. In the manga she may get angry with Usagi at times, but it’s more of a grumpy irritation, and in general Rei epitomizes the “cool and aloof” type. She also shows no interest in Mamoru whatsoever, and in fact notes a few times that she doesn’t like men. (I think that’s meant to be more of a “teenage boys are immature” thing than a yuri thing, not that that’s stopped anyone.) In the anime, however, she’s an angry hothead whose fiery temper matches her element. And she’s the main rival to Usagi for Mamoru’s affection in the first season.

Why the huge change? Again, it could be to add conflict. It’s not as if Usagi was going to get into shouting matches with Ami, after all. And what’s more, Makoto doesn’t show up till episode 25, leaving a lot of space where it’s just Usagi, Ami and Rei. Someone has to offset the others. What’s more, Rei’s loud and angry persona gives her more easily exploitable flaws – it’s shows right off the bat that she and Usagi are more alike than they want to admit – and also allows them to grow closer as friends once this is discovered. Usagi and Rei grow to be best friends in the anime, whereas in the manga I’m not sure that’s the case. (Rei in the manga tends to match up with Minako, who displays many of the same qualities and has the same ability to drive Rei nuts.)

As a lifelong Doctor Who fan, one thing that’s been driven into my head is that canon is fluid, and it’s really best to be able to keep several conflicting realities in your head at once rather than remain wedded to one to the exclusion of everything else. The Sailor Moon anime and manga both have strengths and weaknesses, several of which actually offset each other quite well. But in the end, I think fans are still going to have to clarify when they’re debating a pairing or a plot point, “Are you talking about the anime personality or the manga one?” And let’s not even get into Minako’s changes in the live-action series…