Fighting Evil by Moonlight

I was reviewing some of the messages I'd received lately on Patreon, when I came across a recent comment on the JRPG video by a new Nightingale patron, Brett Turner, concerning Sailor Moon.

Here's his comment, below:

"Hi, so, first, this is my favorite video, because you actually take a moral stance with some message of hope at the end, which isn't so common to hear anywhere.  

Second, speaking of influences on Japanese media, we were watching classic Sailor Moon just now, and 14 episodes in, the monsters have all been sexy demon ladies, some even with corsets. I hear it's a long show, going to be hard to keep that up: is there some cultural reason these monsters are attractive women?"

I had come up with a short, simple answer, at first. But the story here, the context, is interesting enough that I think it might warrant its own post. Such a fascinating question, Brett, thank you for asking it. 

Sailor Moon's creator, Naoko Takeuchi, is an absolutely brilliant woman, and despite the show/manga's rather simple, sparkly appearance, there are a lot of feminist themes explored in Sailor Moon within the scope of Japanese culture, albeit again, in that sort of high context manner. 

I have a personal theory as to why the monsters are attractive women, and its pursuant to the same reasoning as to why the heroines are also "bishoujo senshi" -- "beautiful girl soldiers." 

Sailor Moon explores femininity in a way that is pretty revolutionary, even today. On the surface, Sailor Moon may come across as shallow in how girly it is, with its cute outfits, and teen romance subplot.  But Sailor Moon is anything but shallow, and unlike a lot of media aimed at girls in the 90's, including, I'd argue, many of its contemporaries, Sailor Moon was not afraid to explore the very real feelings of being a teenage girl, which meant exploring both the anxieties involved in being a girl, but also the anxieties involved in becoming a woman.

If you really sit down and look at what occurs in Sailor Moon, at the themes explored, and then apply that filter of Japanese high-context, you'd be shocked, I suspect, to see just how many important topics for girls that Sailor Moon touches on.

Sailor Moon shows us, but doesn't often directly tell us, a lot about the anxieties of teenage girls, and the show helps its intended audience engage with those anxieties: anxieties such as the feelings one might have towards boys, about those same feelings between girls, ranging from friendship to love, and about fitting in, and belonging, despite being different.

But perhaps more than any other single theme, Sailor Moon explores the idea of "beautiful", hence the original name, the meaningfulness of which is a bit lost in the translation. The name "美少女戦士セーラームーン" was translated into "Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon" -- in English, this implies that the soldier, sailor moon, is pretty.

But, in Japanese, there is a bit of a play on words: "pretty" here is more accurately translated as "beauty" -- Sailor Moon is a soldier who is beautiful, but she is also a soldier who fights for the cause of beauty.

The show talks a lot about what "beauty" should mean vs. what we commonly think it means. For example, Sailor Moon teaches us that being beautiful can involve many different kinds of personality types: how gentle can be beautiful, how elegant can be beautiful, and how tough can also be beautiful.

How being beautiful isn't about the outside, but also the inside... and how being a "soldier" fighting for the cause of "beautiful" is about engaging with and also standing up for, literally fighting for, the "inside" beauty.

Sailor Moon herself is not at all the stereotypical 90's ideal of a "beautiful" women in Japanese society: she is not well-kempt, nor particularly demure. She's a huge dork: clumsy, and silly. Some of her friends are well-kempt and/or demure in that more traditionally Japanese way, and that's OK too: they are also beautiful.

Many of the monsters that the Sailor Scouts, the "beautiful soldiers", fight are externally beautiful: it is a high-context way of driving home the point that there is a difference between, ironically, pretty and beautiful, and a way of exploring as well, an anxiety common not just amongst teenage girls, but amongst women in general -- the conflict between being "beautiful" and being "yourself."

I suspect that this is also why Sailor Moon, more than any of its contemporaries, is also so important to so many of the trans people I've gotten to know, even if it might be tough for them to vocalize just why that is.

The pretty monsters in Sailor moon also serve as a stand-in for society's expectations when it comes to beauty -- the "evil" that Sailor Moon fights by moonlight is, in part, the notion that beauty is only skin-deep, or that there is some societal standard for "beauty" -- that to be beautiful, women must change themselves to be what society expects of them, or worse, that a woman should be as the monsters are -- beautiful on the outside, but having lost their selves, their beauty, on the inside, and then enforcing that status quo on other women.

I could go on and on. And honestly, after thinking so much about this topic, I might just do that in a future video.

Thank you for the great question, Brett. I hope this post provides the context you were looking for!