Some Thoughts on Sailor Moon

I believe I must have seen the Sailor Moon anime the first time it was broadcast in the US. It now seems strange to me that I liked the show so much when I'm a guy and the show is so obviously aimed toward teenage girls.

Why is that so obvious? Sailor Moon is a school girl. She is someone the average school girl could imagine herself to be. She looks like a normal girl who was granted magical powers. If not for the presence of Luna, the talking cat, she wouldn't have a clue on what to do with her powers.

Let me describe a typical Sailor Moon battle when she was the only Senshi fighting the bad guys. She poses, she makes her little speech about how she will punish the villain and then the monster of the week attacks. Moon screams and ducks, screams and dodges a few times. After a few scenes of that she finally uses her magic attack and takes out the monster.

In the later episodes she lost the tiara attack and with it went the main aggressive fighting move she had. In those later series she had to wait for the other Senshi to weaken the monster before she could use her attack to either destroy it, or (if the monster was a possessed human) to cure, exorcise or otherwise free them from possession.

Any series of Sailor Moon, be it R, S, Super S or Sailor Stars followed a formula. When it came down to the final confrontation between the good guys and the bad guys, it was almost always Moon alone. And she always won, not because of the excellence of her fighting skills, but because of her unquenchable courage and her loving, compassionate heart. (A very WAFFy concept.)

So how did a guy like me get interested in a show that was aimed at girls so much? I explained it to a relative not long ago. What attracted me because during the transformation sequences of Moon and the other Senshi going from just girls to superheroes, they are naked for a part of it. True, all you ever see is a glowing silhouette, or in some cases a rear view before the costume appears. So it was more the idea of nudity than anything.

After a few decades I have matured (at least I hope so) and my perspectives have changed. I recently took advantage of the fact that it is possible to view episodes of the show online and viewed all of the Sailor Moon TV show. I found that my feelings have changed. It is still a good story, but I found that Moon's pathetic lack of fighting skills bothered me.

I would think that Usagi would have enough intelligence (either her own or through the advice of her cat companion) to see that it would be in her best interest to get some martial arts training. From her performance against the monster-of-the-week, it would appear that the only practice she got was in actual battles. The other Senshi seem to improve in their fighting skills and I don't just mean getting more powerful attacks.

Is there a point to this article? I'm getting to it. I'm an avid reader of fan fictions and through that came to start writing them. So far the only fics I've written were Ranma 1/2 or crossovers. I've written Ranma/Sailor Moon crossovers where Ranma becomes Sailor Terra and I've written one where he becomes Sailor Galaxy (Not Galaxia).

I've read many fics where Ranma becomes one of the regular Senshi. In those he's become pretty much every one of the Senshi. Although now that I think about it I don't recall seeing one where he became Venus, but I've seen fics where he is Mars or Jupiter or Saturn. A good one that I remember is "Forever the Tomboy" where he became Neptune.

I've read some where Ranma was a stand in or replacement Moon. I've even read where he became a bizarre Usagi clone or turned into Usagi. I don't really feel those qualify as Ranma stories, because she acts almost nothing like Ranma.

With that thought in mind I came up with my own concept for Ranma as Sailor Moon. Obviously it is an AU but one twist on this is that they know they are in an AU. The prologue I have written features a meeting where the current Pluto of this AU meets with the future version of herself and they have a chat.

What the current Sailor Pluto perceives as a problem is that the Senshi are born way too late. And yet the Negaverse doesn't start attacking until toward the end of the first decade of the 21st century. At this point, the Senshi are not 14 year old Junior High students, they are 17 and 18 year old Juniors in high school. In addition, the current Pluto has not been able to find the reborn Princess.

Future Pluto explains that things are not happening the way current Pluto expected because they were on an alternate timeline. She hadn't been able to find the princess because she was looking for a blonde haired girl when the reborn princess was born as a black haired boy. That black haired boy had gained the ability to change into a red haired girl.

When Luna found Ranma she tried to do a mind meld to cure him of the Nekoken. As I write it, the attempt works but caused Ranma to gain full and total access to memories of the Silver Millennium. That way we know right from the start that there is no need to "search for the Princess." She is also friends with Ami, Makoto and is trying to make Rei her girlfriend so she knows right from the start who the rest of the Inners are.

When cured of the Cat-fist, Ranma has courage to spare, just like canon Sailor Moon. I can also see him having the love and compassion in his heart for facing down the boss at the end of the story arc. But before he (as she) has the skill and strength to seriously kick butt. On top of that he will train the rest of the Senshi.

Well, for now that's all I'm going to say, because I don't want to give too many spoilers about my story.