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| Too pure for this world, going through a lot, and disaster bi. |
Sailor Moon… is not that good. Putting aside the low quality animation that pads out scenes to the point of ruining the timing of their jokes and has entire sequences reloop so they can save money (one notable scene being when Sailor Moon’s mom finds out about her grades and it holds on her for a second too long), the Supporting Cast is largely unlikable to the point where the best episodes excise them completely to focus on the main trio. The only ones who aren’t a complete shitheels (and are actual characters) are the guy who works at the game store and Sailor Moon’s muggle friend. And even then, the muggle friend is the kind of person who would steal someone’s incomplete love letters and the guy who works at the game store is implied to be Tuxedo Mask, who is the worst. (Seriously, why was he involved when Sailor V is literally around the corner?)
I can understand the appeal of the series. There’s certainly an anticapitalist bent to the plot episodes Freezing Inferno commissioned me to work on (Episodes 1, 3, 8-10, and 13). For the most part, these episodes pertain to the Sailors dealing with a capitalist villain manipulating the system to break the wills of the women of Tokyo. These plots include trapping kids in a system of tests that favors those who can afford tutors, making people wake up at bizarre hours to do the work that needs to be done, and abusing a religious setting via selling poisonous talismans. The first episode is literally about abusing people to sell jewelry. Even the final episode of the bunch that doesn’t have any anti-capitalist undertones has the Sailors fight cops and the patriarchy (the other “non anti-capitalist” episode deals with a call in radio station and the media they consume).
The problem is that the Sailors refuse to fight the cops until they realize that they aren’t actually cops. The fight against the patriarchy is concluded with the Soldiers being applauded and patronized by Tuxedo Mask, to which they reply with a desire to get into his pants. And the anti-capitalist aspect of the series is a minor theme that never gets followed up on, in favor of a time travel plot about how Future Tuxedo Mask was grooming his past self to fall in love with Sailor Moon. The problem with talking about Sailor Moon is that there isn’t much to talk about in and of itself. The best I could do would be to wax lyrically about a potential reboot akin to what Devilman got. “Sailor Moon Crybaby” would be a fitting name for such a series.
But instead, I’m going to talk about a different series based on a work by Go Naga: Re: Cutie Honey! Based on the magical girl manga and directed by Neon Genesis’ Hideaki Anno, Re: Cutie Honey is a three episode OVA series about a detective by the name of Natsuko Aki having to deal with a group of demonic beings going under the name Panther Claw. When things feel like they’re overwhelming her, a magical girl by the name of Cutie Honey comes to help her out.
There are many ways in which Cutie Honey is similar to Sailor Moon and improves on its flaws. Both are within the magical girl genre of anime with a slightly anti-capitalist bent to them (though Re: Cutie Honey is more muted in that regard with comments about how the cruel can abuse people’s desire to help as a means to gain power and torment those they despise. Most notably in the second episode where the cutesy character is framed as the worst because she’s codifying monstrous ideas in more palatable words. Imagine an idol going on about how it’s not her fault she’s kidnapping all these women and destroying these buildings, it’s Cutie Honey’s fault for not dying. She’s a menace to society who brings about mass destruction). Both have extremely blatant queer subtext (though Re: Cutie Honey’s is louder [the bit Frezno gave me did not have Neptune and Uranus. Depending on which arc of episodes they could have picked with Neptune and Uranus, that might have been a good thing]). While the same length as the selection Frezno gave me, being a short OVA series as opposed to a selection of episodes from a 40+ season of anime allows for the pacing to be slightly more in tune. And Re: Cutie Honey is sensible enough to cut out their comedic sexual assault character whereas Sailor Moon relegates him to a single episode of this mini-arc and only implies his comedic antics of assaulting both men and women as well as age up the sexualized main character to not be a minor.
But perhaps the best place to compare the two is between their titular characters. Both Cutie Honey and Sailor Moon can be described as ditzy blondes who disguise themselves to fit into the situations they find themselves in and always doing the right thing because of it. But where they differ is that Cutie Honey has agency. Throughout the episodes Frezno provided, Sailor Moon seems to be more thrust into situations against her will than throwing herself against the cruelties Panther Claw wishes to bring about to the world.
But perhaps the biggest difference between the two is in their respective queerness. On the one hand, Sailor Moon is perhaps one of the most famous examples of queer people in anime with the characters Neptune and Uranus (who, again, don’t pop up in the bit I was asked to cover, but for the sake of being fair, let’s actually use them). Equally, the rest of the Sailor Soldiers (because that’s what the anime calls them: Pretty Soldiers) have a queer interpretation bursting throughout every aspect of their being of the anime. Sadly said interpretation is smothered in the crib in favor of sacrificing Neptune and Uranus to the alter of herteronormativitiy (literally, rather than giving them boyfriends) so as to bring about a relationship between Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask, King of the doucebags. (Really, if I were to cover that arc, I would have something to say about Sailor Moon beyond “It’s historically important, but man is it crap.” It would be howls akin to those I make when I watch Dirty Pair: The Motion Picture, but it would be something.)
Re: Cutie Honey on the other hand goes for a bit more of an explicit queer relationship. That is to say, the main couple has several moments together building a relationship with one another (as well as a few suggestive scenes where they lie atop one another naked) and they actually gets together in the end. (Indeed, the closest thing the show has to a Tuxedo Mask character, Seiji Hayami, is actually delightful and charming as opposed to being a shitheel who is destined to be with the main character. Indeed Seiji is more akin to Uranus and Neptune in terms of role within the series as someone who has a different worldview to Cutie Honey but is ultimately swayed to her line of thinking.) But more than that, the queer romance is core to the series’ values. Sure, it wears the suit of an action series in much the same way Hannibal wears a procedural, but at it’s heart, the show is a meet cute rom com about a bitter cop opening her heart up to someone after her last love was lost. It’s a show about empathy and personhood and how love can help us through even the most traumatic of experiences. In short, it’s the ethos of Steven Universe put into an adult anime.
In the end though, I had a lot more fun watching Re: Cutie Honey than I did Sailor Moon. I understand why it’s important to so many people (and especially to Frezno, who has written a much better series of articles on the show), but it just didn’t work for me. And I’m disappointed that the “But you didn’t do anything” bit wasn’t in the actual anime. I figured it wouldn’t be, but I’m saddened that it wasn’t. (The smug bastard does two things in the six episodes given and the show acts like he’s been helping the Sailors throughout. Gah, why couldn’t he be Sailor V instead?)
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