Moonlight Legend
Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon is an eighteen-volume manga series, then turned into a 200-episode anime, then a forty-nine-act live action series. The manga debuted in serial form in Nakayoshi, a shoujo magazine published by Kodansha, in 1991 (side stories were published in Run Run). All fifty-two chapers were published in tankouban form from 1992 through 1997. The anime was co-produced by TV Asahi and Toei Animation, and it started its run in March 1992, a month after the first manga issue was published. Anime scholar Fred Patten credits the series for reviving the magical girl genre.1
The story focuses on Tsukino Usagi, a clumsy, emotional, ever-hungry, boy-crazed fourteen-year-old who discovers that she is the incarnation of the moon princess and the sailor-suited fighter for love and justice, Sailormoon. One-by-one Usagi finds the other chosen soldiers, and the sailor team battles on behalf of the moon against numerous villains. They are aided by two talking cats, Luna and Artemis, and Tuxedo Kamen.
The plot is divided into five arcs or seasons: Sailormoon Classic (Dark Kingdom arc), Sailormoon R (Romance or Return) (Black Moon arc), Sailormoon S (Super) (Infinity arc), Sailormoon SuperS (Dream arc), and Sailor Stars (Stars arc). These arcs are represented in both the anime and manga with only a slight discrepancy at the beginning of Sailormoon R (the Makaiju mini-arc was inserted before Black Moon because Takeuchi needed more time to finish the manga's story arc).
1 Sailor Moon. Wikipedia.
Emerald Star © 2000-2009 Kotono. Kino Makoto and Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon © 1992 Takeuchi Naoko. This shrine was created in whole by the webmistress and is not to be copied. It is part of the Paper Cranes collective.