Minako Aino is another character whose personality shifts depending on which version you're watching. In all incarnations she has a ditzy, scatterbrained side and does things that other people might think is reprimandable. She is an avid Idol chaser and is accustomed to slipping behind security to meet her favourite stars. Her dream is to be an Idol herself oneday, particularly a singing one, and by the end of Stars she's managed to net herself a contract. However she puts it away for a rainy day, saying she can become an Idol any time she likes, and that now is a time to spend with her friends. She is prone to misquoting sayings or taking them out of context, much to her annoyance.
She is often credited as 'The Original' or 'First' Soldier because she fought a year before any of the other Soldiers as Sailor Venus, Codename: Sailor V! Aside from having a plethera of strangely-named Attacks, she was the prototype for the whole Sailor Moon Series as well as the character herself. As such, many people mistakingly see her as an Usagi clone, whereas in reality it's the other way 'round - Usagi is the one mimicking Minako. The two are actually quite different, however; while both ditzy and a little under-average-intelligence, Minako is silly where Usagi is clumsy; Minako is lazy where Usagi is a bit thick. As Sailor V she fought with Artemis, the white talking transvestite cat, and was a role model for Usagi before she joined the team as Sailor Venus. As Sailor Venus, she fights with love-based attacks thanks to her Venus/Aphrodite Mythology, but also metal because the planet Venus is associated with metal on the Asian table of elements.

Minako is probably the character most avidly searching for love, and it seems she is doomed to be single forever. She is constantly getting new crushes on handsome boys she meets, and one of them told her that she'd look good with a red ribbon in her hair. So she wore one. Then she found out that he told every girl that because he was a cad. SCANDAL! Fortunately he was a Dark Kingdom monster in disguise and so she got her own back by turning him into charcoal. She decided she looked good with the red ribbon and kept it, and we're lucky she did because it's a big part of her iconic appearance. In Sailor V, Minako's biggest squeeze was Kaitou Ace, a maybe-villain maybe-ally Tuxedo Mask-esque character around Minako's age. We later find out he's Danburite, a Dark Kingdom minion working under the Four Heavenly Kings, and was also Adonis in his past life, a lowly foot soldier on Venus. He'd fallen in love with her as Princess Venus and felt that he finally now had enough rank to approach her. He dies holding her hand, telling one last fortune, that she would be doomed forever to be without romance. During the course of the Manga she also had a small crush on the handsome police officer Wakagi who unfortunately despises Sailor V with a passion (maybe she should stop showing up the Japan Police Force then). In the Anime, her past as Sailor V was very different, and while staying in England with a friend + Police officer called Katarina fell in love with an older man called Alan. Unfortunately he fell in love with Katarina. Aww. ): Then she pretended to be dead when a grenade blew up a ware house (?) and went back to Japan. In the S Series she has a crush on a volleyball player at her school, Asai. She's determined to give him a love letter but turns up at the gym to see him being kissed by the volleyball captain. Dammit! Dx In the Manga, Naoko Takeuchi played with the idea of having the Sailor Soldiers paired up with the Four Heavenly Kings. The only pairing that made it into Canon was Sailor Venus and Kunzite, who knew each other + were obviously in love in the past (which we find out in the Sailor V Manga). They don't fall in love again in the current timeline, however. It's hinted that Minako and Artemis might also have feelings for each other, but Artemis + Luna hitch up in the future, so nothing stems from it (if you needed more evidence because you aren't put off by the fact Artemis is a cat). Even though she's one of the only members of the Sailor Team not to have a crush on him, a popular fan pairing is Minako and Motoki Furuhata.
In PGSM, there's more Four Kings x Sailor Team hinting, only this time with totally different pairings. Minako x Zoisite is heavily implied in the Live Action.

• Minako's not a lesbian, and especially not with Rei. A lot of fans think so because of an out-of-context line from the Manga - "We don't need men" - that makes it seem like they're talking about each other. In-context, it's evident that they're talking about the Princess instead.
• Sailor V never fought in France. People seem to think she did because the French Manga translation is the only one that got either of the stories right.
• Minako was not born in England, she just went there for a while.
• Minako is not related to Motoki at all, which is an odd rumour that keeps popping up.
• Minako is not related to Usagi at all, which is a much more persistant rumour. They just look alike. They weren't related in the past and they aren't related now.

• In the Anime, Minako spent quite a while in England as Sailor V, where she met Katarina and learnt to speak English. As such, she speaks it fluently. However in the Manga she's never been to England and she's about as competent at it as Usagi.
• In the Manga + the Live Action, Minako pretends to be the Princess of the Moon when she's first introduced as Sailor Venus, to act as a decoy for both the enemy and the reader. In the Anime, we find out the episode after she's introduced that she isn't the Princess. In the Dub, we find out that very episode, because they're 'tards.
• In the Manga + Anime, Minako is striving to be a famous Idol and leaps at every chance she gets. This wish is finally granted in PGSM, where she is a very popular and well-known Idol and therefore has an assload of Image Songs and cowboy hats. ?
• Believe it or not, Venus is the one who killed Beryl in the Manga. But Beryl + Metaria didn't join up in the Manga, so Moon still had to go on to defeat the main villain.
• Unlike her normal cheerful, scatterbrained self, in PGSM Minako is very serious and takes her duty as a Soldier almost too seriously, putting it above her career + her life. Occasionally she will slip back into the practical-joke-loving spazz-out Minako we know + love, but not often. She's much more badass after she dies.
• Oh? You didn't know she dies? Ok, here's the spoils: In the Live Action, Minako has a deadly disease that can only be cured by an operation with an insanely low success rate (it's never stated, but consensus is that it's Cancer). She chooses to keep fighting to protect the Princess rather than take the risky operation, in case she dies on the table. Then, just as she's making friends with the other Soldiers, she chooses to have the opration and she dies. Shitsucks. At the end of the Series, though, she's reborn with all the other Soldiers after PMSerenity destroys everything, and apparently without a Cancer this time. She kicks her Idol career back into top gear and starts living life a little now that she's not so hell-bent on her destined duty.

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Mythology

Venus and/or Aphrodite is the Goddess of Love + Beauty and fertility, and is often linked with women (such as the line of Venus lady's razors, with their tagline being their product will make you feel like a Goddess).

Legend tells of ritual prostitution held in the Temples of Aphrodite, which sounds much better than any Church service I've ever been to.

The story of Aphrodite's birth is a strange and squicky one. Cronus for one reason or another shanked off Uranus' genitals and tossed them into the ocean. From these genitals, Venus was born as a fully-grown adult, having no childhood. Which is odd, since Minako is almost perpetually childlike.
Because in that story, the lack of a childhood is the strange thing. Not the fact that one guy's endingfeather in the big blue is apparently substitutable for sex in the creation of a Goddess all about sex.

One of the most obvious similarities between Sailor Venus and her Goddess is the painting 'The Birth of Venus' by Sandro Botticelli, where it shows Venus as a naked figure standing in a half-shell while other Gods rush to cover her modesty even though in every sculpture of her she's got radio-dial nipples. This background is jazzed up a bit and used as a background for Sailor Venus' pose in the R Series Fillers. Although it's not a perfect replica, the similarity is obvious enough for most people to notice without being told.

Adonis was a big part of Aphrodite's mythology. Wikipedia tells me "Aphrodite was Adonis' lover and a surrogate mother to him." which is creepy enough and only gets better from here. According to legend, Adonis, Sailor V's smooth-talking card-tossing love interest, is the child of incest (heh, kinda like Voldemort, eh wot? You'll never see it coming). Myrhha, the daughter of the King of Cyprus, Cinyras, commited slander of epic proportions when she said her daughter was more beautiful than Aphrodite. The Gods punished her by making her lust after her own father, who (in a fashion apparently uncommon at the time these stories were written) was disgusted by this. Myrhha, the clever insatiable minx, disguised herself as prostitute and had her way with him, and fell pregnant. The baby boy was - guess who! - Adonis.
Along comes Aphrodite, spots baby Adonis (whose mother was turned to a Myrhh tree before she gave birth to him so she can't look after him) and gives him to Persephone of the Underworld to look after. As he grows up he gets better looking and Aphrodite comes back for him. The two Godesses bitchfight over who gets him, and Zeus declares that 1/3 of Adonis' year shall be spent with Aphrodite, 1/3 with Persephone, and 1/3 with whomever he pleases (and he pleased to be with Aphrodite). Then Ares (or Mars), one of Aphrodite's lovers, attacks Adonis as a wild boar while he's hunting and castrates the poor fellow, who dies from loss of blood. Fortunately this means he went back down to the Underworld with Persephone, and once again Zeus decided his love life for him, settling it so it was 6 months with Persephone + 6 months with Aphrodite.
Poor guy. Life in Ancient Rome + Greece must have been weird.

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Technical

Sailor Venus' Voice Actress in the Japanese Anime is Rika Fukami. She's a fairly famous voice actress and plays several other characters in popular Animes, such as Regine from Futari wa Pretty Cure and Aquelda from Wedding Peach. She's also made appearances in Naruto, Lucky Star, Mobile Suit Victory Gundam, New Cutie Honey and Digimon Frontier. She also plays Fran from the Final Fantasy XII game.

For the North American dub, her Voice Actresses are (in order of appearance) Stephanie Morgenstern and Emilie Barlow. Stephanie is an acclaimed Canadian film star + director in both French + English, her most popular films being The Sweet Hereafter, Maelstrom, Revoir Julie and Forbidden Love. She also directed the Movies Curtains and Remembrance, which were both Genie (Candian Academy) Award Nominated. Emilie Barlow was the second voice of Mars in the Dub who switched over to Venus when the first Mars returned.

In the Sailor Moon Musicals - Sera Myu - Sailor Venus is played by 11 Actresses. From the left;

First Stage: Nana Suzuki
Soya Chizuru
Kanatsu Nayaka
Akiko Miyazawa
Second Stage: Miyu Otani
Nao Inada (also Third Stage)
Third Stage: Yuki Nakamura
Ayumi Murata (also Fourth Stage)
Fourth Stage: Mizuki Watanabe
Momoko Shibuya
Erica

Ayumi now finds work as an Anime Voice Actor, but no major titles as of yet. Mizuki now goes by the name 'Miz' and is a popular J-Pop + J-Rock artist, especially over in Germany. Momoko has also appeared in a couple of different films. Erica is a popular half-American idol.
Another actress was cast for Sailor Venus, Sakae Yamashita, but for reasons unknown she never actually appeared in the Musicals even though promotional photos of her in the costume had been taken. She can only be heard on the CD for one of the Musicals (Yume Senshi - Ai - Eien ni...).

In the Live Action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon she is played by Ayaka Komatsu, who is one of the most popular post-PGSM Actresses, probably tying with Keiko Kitagawa (Mars' actress), although they're famous for different reasons. Ayaka has become somewhat of a Gravure Idol, who are girls who pose in a raunchy manner generally wearing things like swimsuits + other such provocative attire for the enjoyment of men. They stop at nudity and explicit acts, however. A lot of Ayaka!Venus fans were positively apalled at this behaviour and serious butthurt ensued.

WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!1

Most fans who aren't turned on by it are fine with it, since she's not a little girl any more and she can do whatever she wants whenever she wants in front of whatever number of cameras she desires.
Despite having stated that she wasn't a particularly good singer at the beginning of her PGSM run, she's one of the only post-PGSM Actresses to release another single, namely 'Cross My Heart' which is entirely in English. And the funniest thing is, it's not Engrish. The grammar is immaculate and the lyrics, aside from a little cheesy, are just fine. Her pronunciation is also near-perfect with a slight Southern American accent (although she stumbles on the word 'trying', saying it as 'tlying', which is unfortunate as it's part of the chorus). The song itself actually appeared spontaneously in an Australian Toyota Kluger add, coming from the stereo of a pompous mid-life-crisis businessman's sleek red sports car, which is probably where it's actually played most.
Any pictures of Ayaka naked or partially unclothed are simply FILTHY DIRTY LIES!!1!

Sailor Venus' Image Songs are 'Anata no Yume wo Mita wa' ('I Saw Your Dream'), 'Route Venus', 'Setsunakuteii' ('I'll Stand Alone') and 'Ai no Megumi no How To Love' ('The Goddess of Love's 'How To Love''). 'Route Venus' is sung in-Series and it's the song she uses when she auditions as an Idol. In PGSM, since she is an Idol, she has a bottomless pit of titles; 'Happy Time, Happy Life', 'Kiss!² Bang!²', 'I'm Here', 'Katagoshi ni Kinsei' ('Venus Over my Shoulder'), 'Romance' and 'Sayonara ~ Sweet Dreams' ('Goodybe ~ Sweet Dreams'). The one that gets played to death like Nagaraboshi He in a Stars Series Promo, though, is 'C'est la Vie', and it's her major Image Song. The song's name, pronounced 'Say-lah-veeh', is exactly the same as how one would pronounce 'Sailor V' in Japan ('Se-ra-bui-'). It's a good name for a good song. She has no specific Image Song in the North American Dub, but 'I Wanna Be A Star' sung by Jennifer Cihi is used as one. It's the only song that isn't sung from the POV of a specific character in the Series, and the theme of the song fits Venus. The CD version, though, has a speech in the middle from the POV of Sailor Moon.

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