A dream of dreams that dreaming children have – What I learned from Sailor Moon
Part Two of a Four-Part Series
Anime girls in short skirts go around prattling about love and justice. Lesbians are really just cousins. Winged horses are perfectly fine candidates for soul mates. This is the world of Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon. In America the show is known by its English dub, one that toned the show down considerably to aim it at children, or in other words completely butchered the original work and destroyed any credibility it may have had in the states. I was one of those target children, so why has it taken me this long to come to like the series? It’s been history in Japan for thirteen years, and ten or nine in America. The answer is that much like my good friend RabbitSnore, I was too ashamed to admit that I was somehow intrigued by it. 
However many years later when two of my favorite online associates Thereisnospoon303 and Dillrod90 made watching Sailor Moon a public event, I wanted to take part, partially because I value their opinions, but more honestly because I had definitely reached a point where I thought attractive anime girls might not be such a bad thing. I was ready for Sailor Moon. I had no idea what I was signing up for, and it ended up being a complete surprise. Now, having seen all two hundred episodes of all five seasons and two of the three movies, I can say I have gotten myself quite deep into the franchise. I know what the Japanese names of all the girls mean, I can recite the lyrics of countless opening and ending themes by heart, and can draw the characters without missing a detail. There are a lot of reasons for a person like me to like Sailor Moon, but should something like this be obvious from the offset? I am in no way the target audience, being male, American at that, and supposedly too old to fall for sappy love stories, so this shouldn’t be for me, am I right? What is it about this series that could make it so likable? What gives it this undeniable charm?
For me this series turned out to be a great find. It’s a perfect example of how anime was produced in the 1990’s – featuring beautiful backgrounds, lots of scenes involving school and ordinary everyday life and not to mention funky Jpop music mixed in with a beautiful orchestral score. It was tons of fun to see the enigmatic Tuxedo Kamen throw roses at giant tennis ball monsters and for Sailor Moon to defeat enemies with attacks such as “Starlight Honeymoon Therapy Kiss.” This kind of silliness is not for everyone however, and there’s plenty of skepticism to be had for a series that sells its characters on the fact that they show a lot of leg, but it was not too difficult for me to look past that to get a clearer vision of what it’s really about.
My friends Thereisnospoon303, RabbitSnore and Dillrod90 probably view the series from the point of view of the reserved and mature college boyfriend, Chiba Mamoru. As a high school student I didn’t quite see it from that perspective, instead I see the plot from the point of view of the five girls. I can identify with them in a certain way; if it’s goofing off one day then being serious about studies the next, believe it or not these girls cover a lot of the same ground that I do. The character I feel I connect to most is Rei, serious, jiving, and highly supportive of the naïve and childish Usagi. Underneath the Shrine Maiden that greets people at the Hikawa Shrine, there is a young woman that harbors deep feelings of determination to fulfill her aspirations, having an “international life of success.” Rei’s character is written in such a way that tells me that it’s fine to dream big, and the more open and determined one is the greater their likelihood to achieve their goals.
Points such as these are scattered all throughout the series, there to encourage young viewers as they grew up with the characters. I’m required to think about adolescent issues daily, and I deeply appreciate being able to bring my own life to the characters of this campy show. They all live in a bright world where adolescence is happy and innocent, and evil is repelled with the power of love and friendship. It isn’t accurate, but it is inspirational. I’ll take this over watching Michael Cera get wasted in SuperBad any day. It can be disappointing to see many types of questionable behavior advertised in entertainment to the teenage audience, so it is refreshing to see something so far on the other end of the spectrum for once. The world is by no means as peaceful or optimistic as Usagi-chan would make it out to be, but hell I believe in a world where one can go for their dreams, and maybe even have a miracle romance. It may be sappy; it may be unrealistic, but it’s sweet, and it’s something I can appreciate. It has proven to me that shoujo anime is not something that should simply be written off as substandard kiddy fare, and that it can in fact communicate important messages. There is much to say for how the writers decide to bring in these themes, and they rarely have anything to do with the skirts.
So what is the purpose of tackling a project as large as watching 200 episodes? It is to be entertained, to learn something new, and perhaps to achieve an unexpected result, such as learning something about yourself. If one looks hard enough they can discover a lot in this series, and whether it’s to like it for its lighthearted and silly scenes or its more reflective and dark ones is entirely the preference of the viewer. I’m sure to most the fanbase seems onerous or averting as is often the case with anime fans, but it is important to remember that different people enjoy things for different reasons.
I like Sailor Moon because it showed me an optimistic and enticing fantasy world that hits close to home, and perhaps it even gave me a better idea of how my miracle romance may turn out some day, all in the format of a campy action and romance ‘90s cartoon. Others may like it for simply the skirts alone, or for the bizarre humor. Whatever reason one may have, there’s plenty to find and appreciate in this quirky yet strangely alluring tale.
That’s what Sailor Moon says.
About a week ago, on January 29, I rushed back from class to my apartment in New York City. Wasting no time, I grabbed the bags I packed the night before and hopped on the closest bus, riding it to the house of 
TINS and I have administrated YouChew for approximately two years. If you were to have told me, as we began the transfer of administrative power from Conrad Slater to us, in two years, that as a direct result of maintaining the forum, I would find myself in Columbus, Ohio to meet people I had up till then only known online, I would have looked at you incredulously and asked you if your brain was running on 
Thanks largely to the preparatory efforts of Dillrod and thanks to our mutual ability to get along, the meeting was a striking, if surprising, success. Indeed, some of us had less than optimistic expectations for the potential gathering of forum members. “I thought the meet up would be a horrible failure,” TheSfarioBros told me. “Ohayocon is held in a very large building, making it difficult to coordinate groups of people. I expected people to be lost, confused, and frustrated most of the time. I also feared that, if we even found each other in the first place, that people would divide themselves up into groups and go do their own thing without really talking to or getting to know any of the members that were present. All of these pessimistic preconceptions were dashed when everyone eventually got together and we ended up having a great time.”
We all spent a good amount of time attending events around the convention, enjoying each other’s company and conversation, and engaging in general merriment. We reveled in the antics of TINS infiltrating a Sailor Moon cosplay photoshoot, dressed as TF2’s BLU Spy, disguised as 
By the following evening, we had all gone our separate directions, back home, bidding each other farewell and, “See you on the forum.” “Honestly the hardest part of that entire meetup was leaving,” said TheSfarioBros, “as corny as that may sound.” And I must agree with him. After spending a great weekend with great people, going back to New York was the sorriest part of the trip. As TINS, Puffin, and I took up our bags from the convention center and we began making our way to the airport, the radio came alive in the taxi, playing Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time. “It has to be a sad song that plays as we’re leaving,” remarked TINS, “doesn’t it?” Indeed, TINS. It must be a sad song from the mid ‘80s. It must. That’s just the way these things work.
Around the middle of September this year, I began watching the Sailor Moon anime. I began watching the show because a thread about it had grown on the 
At the time I am writing this, I have watched 120 episodes, which amounts to 48 continuous hours of time spent watching a Japanese cartoon about magical schoolgirls in the ‘90s. If in August you were to tell me that in three months I would have spent that much time watching a cartoon which as a child engendered embarrassment for me to even stand in the same room as a television playing it, I would have said you were crazy and should have a CAT scan performed to investigate the possibility that a brain tumor was perhaps pressing on the part of your brain which keeps you from being fucking stupid. But that would have been the socially awkward child in me speaking, the child who my therapist keeps telling me is sad, alone, and afraid to form interpersonal connections.
But perhaps it’s not so strange that I ended up liking Sailor Moon enough to watch over 120 episodes of it, put 
There’s a charm about Sailor Moon I quietly detected as a child, even from the shitty English dub I was originally exposed to, and after watching the subtitled Japanese version, I can better understand what it is that gave it the staying power of over 
# 1: Do not mistake your preferences for an objective measure of quality. Remember that what you like is not necessarily reflective of the media’s objective quality. In fact, I would argue that media does not have objective, quantifiable goodness or badness; there are merely opinions and responses. If some media appeals to one person or group and not to you, it can be difficult to understand what the hell they see in it…. I have this trouble with fans of the Twilight series all the time…. But if you accept the fact that people can feel differently about different things, you come to realize that nothing is good or bad in any real sense. This is not to say, however, that you should not allow yourself to get riled up about media. If you didn’t, things would get quite boring, now wouldn’t they?
At the end of the day, you should be able lay in bed and to feel good about the way that Mark Hamill played The Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, and you should be able to say to yourself, “My god, I hate 
My point is that you should strike a balance between accepting the flaws of your favorite things and loving them madly; these things are not incompatible. Don’t take things too seriously, and you will do just fine. Love what you love, and don’t get too hung up on trying to defend it from all criticism. It is my suspicion that, at worst, not practicing the suggestions I’ve outlined here can lead to elitism and xenophobia, sometimes to the extent of the old “War on AIDS” debacle. At best, however, you can have a damn good time not taking things too seriously, lying back and enjoying the way Tuxedo Kamen always shows up just in the nick of time.
the Influence spots (from deflated girls to boys with their fists in their mouths). These commercials have all been blown away with probably the newest of the Commercial YouTube Poop source: “Raisin Brahms“. The commercial is just great, better than the other PSAs I have seen, but what made me go towards this commercial was RideTheCatfish’s poop, “Johannes Brahms Can’t Make Up His Mind to Steal a Small Black Child“.
Lynch production. For example, when Brahms steals Suzy and travels back to 1860s Germany, the father is just dumbfounded by the series of events. After gaining enough strength to speak his mantra, he states, “Suzy?” as if he was shocked by what happened. That one line tells if the father’s going to get revenge on Brahms for stealing his child and that answer is yes. His tone and his act of questioning resonates his inner feelings for the German composer.
five because it’s, in my opinion, one of my favorite poops that has a compelling story, acting, and some good product placement I do not regret. Why it does not earn a possible five is because most of the time, Brahms is spent yelling at the black family “GUTEN TAG” and traveling back in time. If he had stayed with the family, then the poop would be a little bit better. Still, I laughed, I cried, I urinated in my skinny jeans, and I applauded for this poop.
Critiquing Poop as if it were conventional film or literature may seem counterintuitive. Poop by its nature is resistant to analysis and criticism that tries to make some kind of meaning explicit from what may outwardly seem confusing and inarticulate. To some reviewers with lofty ideals who perhaps hope to or already do boast BA’s and MA’s in literary or film studies, this kind of analysis has appeal however. It does in fact have appeal to me as well. The overwhelming majority of critical articles, however, seem to view Poop under the lens of film terminology and literary terminology applied to more conventional art.
