User:AnnabethChase204/Sailor Moon

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Sailor Moon (Japanese: 美少女戦士セーラームーン, Hepburn: Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn, originally translated as Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon and later as Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon) is a Japanese shōjo manga series written and illustrated by Naoko Takeuchi. It was originally serialized in Nakayoshi from 1991 to 1997; the 60 individual chapters were published in 18 volumes. The series follows the adventures of a schoolgirl named Usagi Tsukino as she transforms into Sailor Moon to search for a magical artifact, the "Legendary Silver Crystal" (「幻の銀水晶」, Maboroshi no Ginsuishō, lit. "Phantom Silver Crystal"). She leads a group of comrades, the Sailor Soldiers, called Sailor Guardians in later editions, as they battle against villains to prevent the theft of the Silver Crystal and the destruction of the Solar System.

The manga was adapted into an anime series produced by Toei Animation and broadcast in Japan from 1992 to 1997. Toei also developed three animated feature films, a television special, and three short films based on the anime. A live-action television adaptation, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, aired from 2003 to 2004, and a second anime series, Sailor Moon Crystal, began simulcasting in 2014. The manga series was licensed for an English language release by Kodansha Comics in North America, and in Australia and New Zealand by Random House Australia. The entire anime series has been licensed by Viz Media for an English language release in North America and by Madman Entertainment in Australia and New Zealand.

Since its release, Sailor Moon has received acclaim, with praise for its art, characterization, and humor. The manga has sold over 35 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling shōjo manga series. The franchise has also generated $13 billion in worldwide merchandise sales.

Sailor Moon[edit]
Main article: Sailor Moon (TV series)

Toei Animation produced an anime television series based on the 52 manga chapters, also titled Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon. Junichi Sato directed the first season, Kunihiko Ikuhara took over second through fourth season, and Takuya Igarashi directed the fifth and final season. The series premiered in Japan on TV Asahi on March 7, 1992, and ran for 200 episodes until its conclusion on February 8, 1997. '''Upon its release, the show quickly rose to be Toei Animation's highest ranked TV series. ' Most of the international versions, including the English adaptations, are titled Sailor Moon''.

Reception[edit]
Sailor Moon is one of the most popular manga series of all time and continues to enjoy high readership worldwide. More than one million copies of its tankōbon volumes had been sold in Japan by the end of 1995. By the series's 20th anniversary in 2012, the manga had sold over 35 million copies in over fifty countries, and the franchise has generated $13 billion in worldwide merchandise sales as of 2014. The manga won the Kodansha Manga Award in 1993 for shōjo. The English adaptations of both the manga and the anime series became the first successful shōjo title in the United States. The character of Sailor Moon is recognized as one of the most important and popular female superheroes of all time.

Sailor Moon has also become popular internationally. Sailor Moon was broadcast in Spain and France beginning in December 1993; these became the first countries outside Japan to broadcast the series. It was later aired in Russia, South Korea, the Philippines, China, Italy, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia and Hong Kong, before North America picked up the franchise for adaptation. In the Philippines, Sailor Moon was one of its carrier network's main draws, helping it to become the third-biggest network in the country. In 2001, the Sailor Moon manga was Tokyopop's best selling property, outselling the next-best selling titles by at least a factor of 1.5. In Diamond Comic Distributors's May 1999 "Graphic Novel and Trade Paperback" category, Sailor Moon Volume 3 was the best-selling comic book in the United States.

'Academic Timothy J. Craig attributes Sailor Moon'' 's international success to three things. First was the show's magical girl transformation of ordinary characters into superheroes. Second was the ability of marketers to establish the international audience's connection to characters despite their culture being Japanese. The third was the fact that the main superhero was female, something which was still rare in pop culture in countries like the United States during the 1990s.'''

In his 2007 book Manga: The Complete Guide, Jason Thompson gave the manga series three stars out of four. He enjoyed the blending of shōnen and shōjo styles and said the combat scenes seemed heavily influenced by Saint Seiya, but shorter and less bloody. He also said the manga itself appeared similar to Super Sentai television shows. Thompson found the series fun and entertaining, but said the repetitive plot lines were a detriment to the title, which the increasing quality of art could not make up for; even so, he called the series "sweet, effective entertainment." Thompson said although the audience for Sailor Moon is both male and female, Takeuchi does not use excessive fanservice for males, which would run the risk of alienating her female audience. Thompson said fight scenes are not physical and "boil down to their purest form of a clash of wills", which he says "makes thematic sense" for the manga.

Comparing the manga and anime, Sylvain Durand said the manga artwork is "gorgeous", but its storytelling is more compressed and erratic and the anime has more character development. Durand said "the sense of tragedy is greater" in the manga's telling of the "fall of the Silver Millennium," giving more detail about the origins of the Four Kings of Heaven and on Usagi's final battle against Queen Beryl and Metaria. Durand said the anime omits information that makes the story easy to understand, but judges the anime as more "coherent" with a better balance of comedy and tragedy, whereas the manga is "more tragic" and focused on Usagi and Mamoru's romance.

For the week of September 11, 2011, to September 17, 2011, the first volume of the re-released Sailor Moon manga was the best-selling manga on The New York Times Manga Best Sellers list, with the first volume of Codename: Sailor V in second place. The first print run of the first volume sold out after four weeks.

In English-speaking countries, Sailor Moon developed a cult following among anime fans and male university students. Patrick Drazen says the Internet was a new medium that fans used to communicate and played a role in the popularity of Sailor Moon. Fans could use the Internet to communicate about the series, organize campaigns to return Sailor Moon to U.S. broadcast, to share information about episodes that had not yet aired, or to write fan fiction. In 2004, one study said there were 3,335,000 websites about Sailor Moon, compared to 491,000 for Mickey Mouse. Gemma Cox of Neo magazine said part of the series's allure was that fans communicated via the Internet about the differences between the dub and the original version. The Sailor Moon fandom was described in 1997 as being "small and dispersed". In a United States study, twelve children paid rapt attention to the fighting scenes in Sailor Moon, although when asked whether they thought Sailor Moon was violent, only two said yes and the other ten described the episodes as "soft" or "cute".

Westernization
After the Sailor Moon anime was released in North America and dubbed in English, fans and academics alike noted that the dub had westernized Sailor Moon '''from how it had been released in Japan. In the 1990's English version of Sailor Moon, the westernization of the characters is seen in how a majority of the character names are changed from Japanese to English names. Sailor Moon's civilian name, Usagi Tsukino, is turned into Serena. The love interest of Sailor Moon, Mamoru Chiba, is turned into Darien. Other examples of westernization referenced by Sailor Moon 's audience were things like flipping scenes of traffic to have cars drive on the right side of the road along with the english dub changing any conversations between characters that contained references to their culture. According to Bandai America, the company in charge of Sailor Moon merchandise in the western hemisphere, the approach to advertising Sailor Moon was to make the show and super-heroine "'culturally appropriate' for the American market".'''

LGBTQ+ Censorship
The 1990's Sailor Moon anime also faced censorship internationally of characteristics regarded as LGBTQ, or not "heteronormative". Censorship ranged from changing a character's gender to removing gender fluidness in characters, or editing romantic pairings into close relationships between family members. English Professor Diana Burgos of Florida Atlantic University identifies that the 2014 remake of Sailor Moon titled Sailor Moon Crystal retains a lot of the central themes about gender and sexual identity that is showcased within both the manga and Japanese Sailor Moon anime, but removed from the 1990's Sailor Moon dub. 'Sociology professor Rhea Hoskin specifies that the removal of homosexual and gender fluid characters in the 1990's Sailor Moon'' highlights the exclusivity of what was otherwise representation of LGBTQ in a female-leaded superhero show.  For more specific details on the differences between the 1992 dub and Japanese version, refer to the editing section on the Sailor Moon (TV Series).'''

Legacy
With their dynamic heroines and action-oriented plots, many credit Sailor Moon for reinvigorating the magical girl genre. After its success, many similar magical girl series, including Magic Knight Rayearth, Wedding Peach, Nurse Angel Ririka SOS, Saint Tail, Cyber Team in Akihabara and Pretty Cure, emerged. Sailor Moon has been called "the biggest breakthrough" in English-dubbed anime until 1995, when it premiered on YTV, and "the pinnacle of little kid shōjo anime". Cultural anthropologist Matt Thorn said that soon after Sailor Moon, shōjo manga started appearing in book shops instead of fandom-dominated comic shops. The series are credited as beginning a wider movement of girls taking up shōjo manga. Canadian librarian Gilles Poitras defines a generation of anime fans as those who were introduced to anime by Sailor Moon in the 1990s, saying they were both much younger than other fans and were also mostly female.

Historian Fred Patten credits Takeuchi with popularizing the concept of a Super Sentai-like team of magical girls, and Paul Gravett credits the series with revitalizing the magical girl genre itself. A reviewer for  THEM Anime Reviews also credited the anime series with changing the genre—its heroine must use her powers to fight evil, not simply have fun as previous magical girls had done. The series has also been compared to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Sailor Moon also influenced the development of Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir, W.I.T.C.H., Winx Club, LoliRock, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, and Totally Spies!.

In western culture, Sailor Moon is sometimes associated with the feminist and Girl Power movements and with empowering its viewers, especially regarding the "credible, charismatic and independent" characterizations of the Sailor Guardians, which were "interpreted in France as an unambiguously feminist position". Although Sailor Moon is regarded as empowering to women and feminism in concept, through the aggressive nature and strong personalities of the Sailor Guardians, it is a specific type of feminist concept where "traditional feminine ideals [are] incorporated into characters that act in traditionally male capacities". While the Sailor Guardians are strong, independent fighters who thwart evil—which is generally a masculine stereotype—they are also ideally feminized in the transformation of the Sailor Guardians from teenage girls into magical girls, with heavy emphasis on jewelry, make-up and their highly sexualized outfits with cleavage, short skirts, and accentuated waists.

The most notable hyper-feminine features of the Sailor Guardians—and most other females in Japanese girls' comics—are the girls' thin bodies, long legs, and, in particular, round, orb-like eyes. Eyes are commonly known as the primal source within characters where emotion is evoked—sensitive characters have larger eyes than insensitive ones. Male characters generally have smaller eyes that have no sparkle or shine in them like the eyes of the female characters. The stereotypical role of women in Japanese culture is to undertake romantic and loving feelings; therefore, the prevalence of hyper-feminine qualities like the openness of the female eye in Japanese girls' comics is clearly exhibited in Sailor Moon. Thus, Sailor Moon emphasizes a type of feminist model by combining traditional masculine action with traditional female affection and sexuality through the Sailor Guardians. Its characters are often described with "catty stereotypes", Sailor Moon's character, in particular, being singled out as less than feminist.

Merchandise
'As of 2022, Sailor Moon'' has grossed $14.3 billion in global sales, with $13 billion coming from merchandise alone. Since the early 2000s, Toei Animation has collaborated with various different brands to create merchandise outside of children's demographic. On February 20, 2020, ColourPop released a Sailor Moon inspired makeup collection. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of Sailor Moon in the U.S., streetwear brand KITH released clothing like hoodies and t-shirts with Sailor Moon graphics on them. In honor of Sailor Moon' s 30th year anniversary, brands like Sanrio, Uniqlo, and Maison de FLEUR announced a collaboration on January 2022.   '''