Revived Spotlight: Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon Special

Recently, a new meme in Facebook had nearly everyone uploading photos of their childhood cartoons for their profile pictures. This is what my profile looked like, attached to it are the meme instructions:

Via: Dong Jong Santos
Change your facebook profile picture to a cartoon from your childhood and invite your friends to do the same. Until monday, there should be no human faces on facebook, but a stash of memories. This is for eliminating violence against children.


I actually had another photo in mind, also with Sailor Uranus in it, but thought that despite the love it depicts...parents might get scandalized. LOLLERZ. So this is a "safe" photo. =^.^=

While all this was going on, I began to identify which generation my contacts belonged to. Those who had Candy Candy, Voltes V or Daimos in their profiles definitely lived in the 70s; Voltron, He-Man, She-Ra, Visionaries lived in the 80s...and we all know which era the butch-y girl in the skimpy sailor outfit above belonged to.

I had been meaning to unearth the original Spotlight archives but I couldn't find the right timing for them. Seeing all the childhood memories flood our Facebook walls, however, I think I've found the perfect opportunity to reminisce. The irony is, I just bought the entire Sailorstars season DVDs a week before. It was the only season I didn't get to finish. (Besides SuperS, which I didn't really care for since it was about that brat Chibiusa.)

The very first Spotlight article was written by Firesenshi for our October 2001 special. While many of our Spotlight articles were lost due to hard drive failures and many other unfortunate accidents, we were lucky to have kept the first. Of course, she began with the anime that started our interest on the web. Here is her original write-up:

October 2001 Special: Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon
World famous shoujo by Naoko Takeuchi, aired from 1992-1997
by Firesenshi

<< Naoko Takeuchi with her boss, Osabu. She usually puts comments on the side of her mangas with her "usagi" (bunny) trademark.

Naoko Takeuchi

mangaka of Codename wa Sailor V and Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon.

Born on March 15, Naoko Takeuchi is a Pisces and lives in Juuban, in Tokyo, the same area where Usagi Tsukino, the main character of her highly successful manga and anime, Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon lives. (My, that's an affluent neighborhood!)

She was said to have many aspects of herself in the characters of all the sailor senshi (soldiers) but any BSSM fan would know for sure that the main character Usagi Tsukino seems to have been patterned after Naoko herself. And from that, I assume that she is total romantic ^.^ not only because she's a mangaka of a famous shoujo manga, but you can see it from the stories, interviews and the songs she writes.

Yes, she writes some of those nice songs from Sailormoon with Route Venus as her favorite and something she actually relates to! ^_^

The success of Sailormoon actually began with a manga called Codename wa Sailor V. The main protagonist is Minako Aino, whose last name "Ai" means "love" for she is a soldier for love and justice.

When it was decided that her manga had potential to become an anime, Naoko decided to further expand the story and add more characters. So Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon was born!

Try to take a backtrack though and see for yourself how Sailor V was in fact Sailormoon. Aside from the fact that both protagonists had guardian talking cats who gave them their brooches to transform into sailor senshi, Minako Aino had her own special mysterious MASKED protector named Kaitou Ace a la Tuxedo Kamen. Actually, the funny thing is...

<< Minako has actually met Usagi in Sailor V. She has even encountered Rei, Ami and Makoto, the people we would know later as Sailormars, Sailormercury and Sailorjupiter in the BSSM manga and anime.

The rest is history. We now know how hugely successful BSSM was in television where it had countless dubs in various countries and officially released in uncut subs, the soundtracks, the art books, the various manga to the merchandise till it was one of the main anime featured in TIME magazine talking about how Japanese pop culture is sweeping across Asia.

Now from where I come from, everyone has heard about Sailormoon... even those dark people who only aspire to take anything gothic. And every Sailormoon fan has indeed heard about Naoko Takeuchi.

Naoko has been involved in various projects such as The Cherry Project and the recent one after Sailormoon, called PQ Angels. Shoujo material but none has eclipsed the enormous success of Sailormoon so far, an anime that ran for 5 years and 18 manga volumes.

Omoshiroii!!!

Naoko Takeuchi was married in January 6, 1999 to equally famous mangaka of Yuu Yuu Hakushou, Yoshihiro Togashi.