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shinneth · 1 year ago

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My souring sentiments on Sailor Moon's manga

It'll be a surprise to no one who knows me even remotely that Sailor Moon was my everything back in my childhood. From the age of 9, I was utterly obsessed with it.

That was just a couple of years shy of 30 years ago.

Since then, I've often revisited the series. I watched the entirety of the Viz dub of the classic anime; all 200 episodes.

And I loved it all the same, if not more so than before. Because now I have context for why exactly the anime was the way it was, including its gradual diversion from the manga source material. And I respect the hell out of the staff who poured their life into this work, while concurrently running with the manga and doing whatever it could to not completely outpace it in the narrative.

Are there a lot of fillers in the OG anime? Yes. Too many? Well, not so from a functional standpoint (this show had to run weekly for 5 years), but there are definitely some fillers you could skip and miss nothing in doing so.

But a story like Sailor Moon honestly needed some breathing room in order to properly flesh out the cast.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, the live-action reimagining of the show, was phenomenal back then (despite looking low-budget even by 2003 standards), and having re-watched the whole series recently, I can safely say PGSM more than holds up and deserves way more love and respect than it gets. It's THE perfect example of reimagining the story of Sailor Moon while still respecting its roots and maintaining the soul of the franchise.

Which is exactly why I couldn't stand Sailor Moon Crystal. We knew from the off that it was supposed to be completely faithful to the manga, but one look through @crystalvsmanga will show you Crystal took shitloads of "creative liberties", and the amount of changes I could dare to call "good"? I could count them on one hand.

The animation is low-hanging fruit, because everyone and their dog knows how godawful it was for the first two story arcs. But more than that, I actually loathed the general art design. Yukie Sakou's style DID NOT closely resemble Naoko Takeuchi's. People kept saying it, but I couldn't really see it. The eyes especially are a far cry from Takeuchi's style. And Sakou's style did NOT facilitate the OTT cartoony expressions that were definitely present in Takeuchi's manga; everyone looked so goddamn soulless, like overly-expensive porcelain dolls.

My biggest gripe with Crystal was the story, of course. While a great deal came from just being from the manga (which I'll get to in a bit), the changes they made went a long way to actively make the manga's story worse. My main takeaway from Crystal S1-2 is that it took itself waaaaay too seriously.

That being said, I did like Crystal's third season a lot better BECAUSE Chiaki Kon had way more competence and held a lot more respect for Sailor Moon. Like, my god, for once it felt like there was a soul in this show! It can actually take the piss every now and then!

Some silly things kinda broke my immersion (such as the Senshi just being able to fuckin' fly and Chibi-Moon in particular was literally sky-stepping), but most of that can be blamed on the source material it was adapting. While I was fine with Crystal3, I definitely didn't feel it was anywhere near as good as Sailor Moon S. Outside of Hotaru/Sailor Saturn having more of a presence, there wasn't really much in Crystal's take on Infinity that I liked better than S.

But most of that comes down to the fact that I liked S more than manga's Infinity arc to begin with.

Which is a good segue to talk about the manga proper.

I have not yet watched Eternal or Cosmos. the movies that adapted the last two manga arcs, but it'd be redundant since I know ahead of time what they're going to be about, and so far I haven't heard about any of them deviating from the source material, so it'd be moot to talk about them even if I had watched.

When I first got my hands on the manga, which was when I was around 12-13 and thus got the crappy MiXxZine translations, I was fine enough with it. Thought it was too fast-paced and didn't care for 99% of the villains being one-and-done jobbers, but I was also reading it with my impressions of the 90's anime characters still intact. I was reading the manga like an extension of the anime, rather than the other way around.

It wasn't until many years later when I grew older, when the manga was properly translated, when I acquired the wisdom my teenaged-ass self lacked, and learned to look at the manga as a completely separate entity that I started to see the cracks in the manga's narrative.

Further rereads have left me in something of a mindfuck, as I experienced the manga the proper way. And I realized:

The more I read the manga, the more I disliked it.

The manga is lauded for having an infinitely better depiction of Mamoru, as well as his ~Miracle Romance~ with Usagi.

Objectively, the manga definitely spends lots more time giving UsaMamo attention as a couple than any other aspect of the story...

I'd say they're also more developed as individuals in the manga too, but usually the beats, uh...

... let's say they usually ring hollow, when these two (and sometimes their daughter) are the only ones who consistently get shit done across the series. Hell, on the rare occasion that the Inner Senshi weren't rendered into street pizza, Neo Queen Serenity basically told them to fuck off and let her daughter, past self, and past hubby take on motherfucking DEATH PHANTOM/NEMESIS BY THEMSELVES.

It's likely because my first exposure to Sailor Moon was via the 90s anime, which had more of a focus on friendship and comradery between Usagi and her friends than it did her romance with Mamoru. I mean, romance was DEFINITELY a prominent thing even in that iteration of the story, but that wasn't where my interest lied. I was, am currently, and always will be more interested in Usagi's galpals than I'll ever be interested in her love life.

And, well, I'm sure this qualifies as a hot take, but...

This one moment with Usagi and Mamoru in the elevator (hell, their interaction across this entire episode was great) resonated with me far more than any ultra-romantic declarations of eternal devotion that Usagi and Mamoru kept regurgitating at each other in the manga.

Granted, the manga had a FEW moments early on where their dynamic was more playful, but they were pretty much confined to the early chapters and this element of their chemistry pretty much died not long after this.

Some say 90s anime Mamoru was far too mean-spirited in his teasing of Usagi. And I mean, sure, he was kind of a douche at times, but he usually got some karmic blowback from it (I remember one time he made Usagi cry without even really meaning to, and she cried so loud in public that randos nearby were giving Mamoru the evil-eye or a scolding). But honestly, after R, Mamoru kinda became a bland, generic love interest, just as he almost always was in the manga. The only difference was that anime Mamoru was never granted powers that were literally equal to Usagi's. The manga gave him a GOLDEN FUCKING CRYSTAL.

There was that infamous break-up arc in R that, yes, was shitty in concept and execution. But if I had anything positive to say about it, it at least shook up the status quo. It didn't make him immediately fall into the bland, generic love interest he would soon become. And it gave us some of the most emotionally-charged Usagi moments in the entire anime.

Conversely, in the manga, we had THIS shit for our UsaMamo "drama":

(the former incident with Usagi literally accusing her boyfriend of falling in love with a kid, by the way, happened while MOST OF HER FRIENDS WERE KIDNAPPED BY THE ENEMY AND COULD'VE BEEN DEAD FOR ALL SHE KNEW AND YET SHE FUCKING HAD TIME FOR THIS STUPID SHIT)

Everything seemed to revolve around Usagi and Mamoru (sometimes Chibiusa too). It lowkey came off that way at times even in the 90s anime, but in the manga or Crystal? You'd be hard-pressed to find the girls engaging in their stated hobbies at most points in time, because they're usually all together and talking about their prince and princess.

Hell, even Haruka - Sailor Uranus herself - seemed much more interested in Usagi than she ever did in Michiru, her actual girlfriend.

So... am I just missing something? I've seen people say that as they grow older, they prefer the manga/Crystal to the 90s anime. But I've never seen anyone other than myself express the opposite sentiment.

But it's true - unless I completely leave my brain at the door, I have a hard time enjoying the manga for what it is. The characters I'm most interested in or attached to quickly get swept aside for the characters I have the least interest in. No more does that ring true than the Stars arc of the manga, where Naoko Takeuchi basically speedruns killing off literally the entire cast until Sailor Moon's the only one left standing. Most characters don't even get to go out in a blaze of glory or anything - it's got nothing on the finale of the 90s anime's first season in that regard. If you're lucky, you'll get a single panel where your entire existence is ripped to shreds - but sometimes you'll be killed literally off-screen!!

There's a number of questionable manga-exclusive aspects that rubbed me the wrong way as well, such as poor Sailor Pluto being assigned as a child to guard the Door of Time in complete and total solitude. While I appreciate more Silver Millennium lore that the manga provided (the anime hardly mentioned it past the first arc), it was more than a little uncomfortable knowing the OG Queen Serenity conscripted the Inner Senshi as small children to become Princess Serenity's guardians. Really casts Queen Serenity and her Moon Kingdom in a much darker light - like maybe Queen Beryl and Queen Nehelenia had a point in trying to take them down (though the manga I believe retcons all past villains as incarnations of Chaos, so that arguably removes all prior villains' agency?). Lots of little things that I didn't think twice about, but now that I look at them again, I'm wondering WTF Naoko Takeuchi was thinking.

Though I don't want to be too hard on her. Poor girl was working under stress far longer than she'd planned to (she'd intended on ending the story either by the Dark Kingdom or Black Moon arc), so it's no surprise there's a lot of clunk and clutter in the narrative.

I often wondered if Naoko Takeuchi really wanted to make Sailor Moon with a Super Sentai-esque setup in the first place. After all, her first big hit was Sailor V, which was exclusively Minako and Artemis fighting evil with Minako having her own masked love interest she ended up being at odds with and he eventually died. With a scant few secondary characters here and there.

It led to me thinking about what Sailor Moon would be like if Naoko kept the cast to a more Sailor V-like size. That, perhaps, the Sailor Moon she really wanted to make would be quite a different beast from how we know it to be today.

So this lengthy diatribe about my personal conflicts with my waning fondness for the manga versus my strengthened love for the OG anime and live-action show was actually a preamble to a bizarre AU I wrote an outline for over a year ago but never posted in public. I had considered posting it to Sailor Moon's Reddit back then, but I (probably wisely) held off, as my musing went way off the rails.

But I figured now's a good time as any to share it here, at least. Though it'll need to be its own post since I wrote so goddamn much in this post alone, wow.

On that note, I'll end with this: The only iteration of UsaMamo that I unironically enjoyed and rooted for is...

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xtruss · 4 months ago

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‘A Beacon of Hope’: Indigenous People Reunited With Sacred Cloak In Brazil

Denmark Sends 300-Year-Old Feathered Cloak Considered An Ancestor By Tupinambá de Olivença to Rio

— Tiago Rogero | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 🇧🇷 | Thursday 12 September 2024

The Cloak will be Publicly Unveiled at a Ceremony on Thursday. Photograph: Niels Erik Jehrbo/Nationalmuseet

The scene resembled a funeral: seven Indigenous people, overcome with tears, gathered around a loved one resting in a coffin-like wooden box. Instead of grief, however, it was a moment of celebration: the long-awaited reunion between the Tupinambá de Olivença people and a sacred feathered cloak that was taken from Brazil at least 335 years ago.

The relic – which the Indigenous people consider not as an object but as an ancestor – had been at Denmark’s National Museum until July, when it was sent to Rio de Janeiro.

Chief Jamopoty and six other Representatives of the Tupinambá de Olivença people reunited for the first time with the cloak taken from Brazil at least 335 years ago. Photograph: Tiago Rogero/The Guardian

It will be publicly unveiled at a ceremony at Brazil’s National Museum on Thursday attended by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But the first private encounter between the Tupinambá of Olivença and the cloak took place on Sunday, in an intimate moment witnessed by the Guardian.

The reunion had been eagerly anticipated: after the cloak’s return to Brazil, the Indigenous group had complained that they were not initially given the chance to perform their reception rituals for the sacred relic, which they refer to in the same terms they would to a person.

“We spoke to him, and he responded,” said Cacique Maria Valdelice Amaral de Jesus, 62, known as Jamopoty Tupinambá.

About 200 Tupinambá de Olivença made the 1,250km journey from their land in Bahia to Rio de Janeiro and have been camping near the National Museum. Photograph: Tiago Rogero/The Guardian

Jamopoty said the cape had returned to resolve the numerous land disputes threatening Indigenous communities across Brazil, adding: “He said we must have our lands demarcated.”

She was joined in the temperature-controlled room by six other representatives of the Tupinambá de Olivença, who for about 20 minutes prayed and spoke to the cloak, which lay under an oxygen-free glass dome, as technicians carefully monitored the humidity.

Jamopoty’s remarks were recorded by the documentary director Carina Bini who, with the Indigenous leader’s consent, shared them with the Guardian.

“You’re lying down, but you’ll stand up. We came to visit you,” she said.

“I don’t even have words. It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” she said as tears ran down her face, which was painted with the red dye of annatto seeds.

Her partner, Averaldo Rosario Santos, told the cloak that its return was “a beacon of hope for all the Indigenous peoples that remain in this once-invaded Brazil.”

Maria Valdelice Amaral de Jesus, 62, known as Jamopoty Tupinambá. Photograph: Tiago Rogero/The Guardian

Tupinambá cloaks – typically made from thousands of scarlet ibis feathers – were used as ceremonial vestments by coastal Indigenous peoples, said Amy Buono, an assistant professor of art history at Chapman University.

“These capes probably functioned as supernatural skins, transferring the vital force from one living organism to another,” said Buono, who has studied this cloak and 10 others still in European museums in Denmark, Italy, France, Belgium and Switzerland.

“Tupinambá capes were some of the most sought-after artefacts in the early 16th century,” she said. Several Tupinambá cloaks were worn by the courtiers during a 1599 procession at the court of the Duke of Württemberg in Stuttgart.

The newly returned cloak was first inventoried by Denmark in 1689 as part of the collection of Frederick III, possibly after it was taken from Brazil by Dutch forces, which occupied the state of Pernambuco from 1630 to 1654.

“When the cloak was taken from us, it weakened our community,” said Jamopoty.

A Parade in Stuttgart at the Court of Duke Frederick I of Wurttemberg in 1599. Photograph: Album/Alamy

The Tupinambá de Olivença’s fight for the cloak’s repatriation began in 2000 when it was loaned for an exhibition in São Paulo. Jamopoty’s mother, Nivalda Amaral de Jesus, who was known as Amotara, visited the exhibit and demanded its return to Brazil.

At the time, the Tupinambá were not even officially recognised as an Indigenous people – they were even described as extinct in history books.

Under pressure from Amotara (who died in 2018) and other leaders, the Tupinambá de Olivença were finally recognised in 2001 by the Brazilian government.

Eight years later, the first step was taken towards demarcating their territory – an area of 47,000 hectares spanning three municipalities in Bahia.

Since then, however, the Brazilian government has made no further progress in mapping their territory, which has led to land grabs by cocoa farmers and tourism developers.

Indigenous Leaders Frustrated Despite Cloak’s Return to Brazil after 300 Years! Denmark returns artefact but Tupinambá leaders say they were prevented from performing the necessary rituals to receive sacred relic. Cloak is made with about 4,000 Red Feathers of the Scarlet Ibis Bird was first inventoried by Denmark in 1689, but some believe it was taken from Brazil nearly 50 years before. Photograph: Niels Erik Jehrbo/Nationalmuseet

‘We Wanted To Perform Our Rituals, With Songs and Incense Using Our Herbs … It would have been a Special Moment for Strengthening Our Identity,’ said the Chief of Tupinambá de Olivença People. Photograph: Niels Erik Jehrbo/Nationalmuseet

About 200 Tupinambá de Olivença made the 1,250km journey to Rio to receive the cloak, camping near the National Museum, which is still being rebuilt after a huge fire destroyed about 85% of its collection in 2018.

The museum’s director, Alexandre Keller, said the cloak would go on display to the public when the museum reopens in April 2026. Until then, it will be available only to researchers and Indigenous people.

There is no indication that any other Tupinambá cloak will be repatriated but Buono argued that they should all return to Brazil: “These capes were collected by Europeans to be displayed as curiosities and studied for their materials.

“But for the Tupinambá these were, and continue to be, sacred, living forces. Their presence in Brazil will be an extremely important marker of communal identity and evidence for land rights and other legal matters,” she said.

#Indigenous Peoples #Brazil 🇧🇷#Rio de Janeiro #Americas #Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva #Denmark 🇩🇰#Features #Sacred Cloak #‘A Beacon of Hope’#300-Year-Old Feathered Cloak #Ancestor | Tupinambá de Olivença | Rio #The Guardian USA 🇺🇸

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