Manga Fans

Like Metal Gear Solid and Hello Kitty, Sailor Moon is a seemingly random sequence of English words, ostensibly put together by some Japanese person with no regards to their meaning or grammatical function. And yet, like the other two examples, they form a combination recognisable even to the lay man. The reason why such a bizarre collocation trips off the tongue has something to do with the anime's long-lasting appeal. An appeal which I am only beginning to understand.

Following Sailor Moon's story requires quite considerable suspension of disbelief, even more so than other shows where school-age girls magically change outfits to fight monsters with their super powers. You see, once you've taken all that for granted, Sailor Moon still provides so many plot holes and flaws that it's a wonder the whole thing doesn't fall apart. To begin with, the characters with "secret identities" look no different from their everyday selves, making everyone who doesn't immediately realise that Sailor Moon is Usagi Tsukino seem profoundly stupid. The show even goes as far as to rub salt into this wound when supposedly intelligent characters mistake innocent bystanders for a girl with the most ridiculous hairstyle this side of Dragonball Z. For some, this may form part of the show's camp charm, but it was something I found hard to reconcile.

Although Sailor Moon is capable of drama, and even serves it up on a couple of occasions, the fight scenes lack anything of the sort. The combat is loathsomely formulaic, with very little in the way of innovation. Tuxedo Mask's appearances quickly become predictable, and at no point does defeat for the Sailor Warriors ever seem possible, let alone probable. Battles occur almost as a formality or a ritual, with the monster's howl of defeat rarely delayed by anything other than a conversation between the Sailor Warriors, depriving the show of any suspense.

Another driving force behind Sailor Moon is the romance. Unfortunately, this is just barely more successful than the fights. There are two or three scenes which are pleasant and well developed enough to give a warm, tingling feeling but a lot of the romantic subplots are ruined by the immature attitude of Usagi and a couple of others towards love. Usagi may well be a fresh new take on the female lead, but I felt no burning desire for the show's central couple to get together, an issue which greatly reduced the eventual payoff and impact of the show's conclusion.

Luckily, the show finds salvation in its comedy. While Usagi is hardly an ideal romantic heroine, her wacky antics never once failed to put a smile on my face and really helped to propel me through the endless monster-of-the-week onslaught and make the whole package entirely more palatable. If it wasn't for her cowardice, laziness and overwrought fantasies, the series would have given me far too little to love.