Well, you asked for it.  This page is more for the visitors who have made their way from 'Toonami: The Unofficial."

Sailor Moon has quite a following.  When the show first hit the airwaves of North America back in 1995, this was far from the case.  Like the true fighter that she is, well, at least the other Scouts, Sailor Moon is experiencing a revival of sorts here in 1998.  But now I'm getting way ahead of myself.  You want to know more 'about' Sailor Moon, the show, no the character.  No prob.

Meet Naoko Takeuchi.  Like many in her field, she was an aspiring animator, trying like so many to get by day to day life.  She had worked on a manga called 'Love Call', which in 1986 won the 2nd annual New Manga Artist award by the Japanese Magazine Kodansha.  She obviously had the talent.  She obviously had the ideas.  So, in 1991 she created a new manga, which, even though many North Americans aren't familiar with this, they still might have an idea after watching Sailor Moon, was titled 'Codename: Sailor V.'  This was the story was of a pretty suited teenage superheroine.  Believe this or not, Codename:  Sailor V was the original story that lead into Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon (known only as Sailor Moon in NA).  This is where the history of Aino Minako is built, from her first meeting with Artimis, to the discovery of her powers as the princess of the planet Venus, and how she built her reputation as an icon, posing to be Sailor V.  The popularity of this manga was so overwhelming that Naoko started a sequel to the series, focusing on a new character, Tsukino Usagi.  This started in 1992.

Tsukino Usagi, as we North Americans know her, is the Sailor Scout of the Moon, Serena.  Ms. Takeuchi melded the Sailor V concept into the new story Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon.  This focused around the exploits of a teenage girl who was just struggling to get by in her everyday life and then gets thrown a curve ball when she becomes the superheroine Sailor Moon.  While Naoko was drawing up the manga version of Sailor Moon, she was also working with TOEI Animation for the anime version of her popular series.  This has been a marketing / publicity ploy used for many series in Japan.  As a manga series goes, so does an anime.  Of course, these two things are worlds apart, since manga requires so much less space for story construction, so Naoko came up with ideas for the anime that were never used in the manga.  Examples of this go as far as the 'Rainbow Crystal' series from the first season of Sailor Moon anime to additional development in the characters of the Dark Kingdom (The first three Generals of Queen Beryl's were destroyed in the first four issues of the manga Sailor Moon, but it took more that thirty episodes of the anime to do the same).

As many know at this point, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon has ended production in Japan just recently.  What was built in the five years that Sailor Moon was around was an empire.  200 episodes and four movies were made.  Countless numbers of dolls / action figures are on the market, as well as trading cards.  More importantly, a series was created that somehow defied all types of odds.  The following for Sailor Moon is one of amazement.  Naoko Takeuchi herself said that she created the series for young girls and that she figured to be doing the series for only a year.  Instead, people of both sexes and all ages follow the journeys of the Sailor Scouts.  The manga and anime has been translated into many different languages for many countries.  The internet is loaded with hundreds of pages and shrines dedicated to their favorite teenage personalities.

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