Sailor Moon Stars part 1 - The Death of Tuxedo Mask-

[ozaline]

So Sailor Stars Part 1 finally will make it's North American, English video debut tomorrow, though you can stream it on TubiTV subtitled only if you're Canadian right now. It's something that 20 or even 10 years ago seemed impossible. While they could get try to hide the LGBT content in the first seasons by switching the gender (or assigned gender anyway) of Zoicite, and Fisheye, and have Uranus and Neptune be cousins (which just made it so much worse!) There was no cost effective way of hiding the Starlights while not butchering the source material (a trio who shift from masculine to feminine bodies... feminine bodies in bikinis*). But now in the age of streaming, and the internet Sailor Stars can find it's audience without having to obey the rules of broadcast television.

The Sailor Stars Manga on the other hand... the Starlights' gender is unambiguous, and fixed... But what the anime and manga do have in common, is that they both start with the death of Tuxedo Mask....





















"What are you talking about, we ARE at peace! We should enjoy our young lives while we can."















Chibi-Usa the future daughter of Usagi and Mamoru decides to go back home to the future to catch up with her mom and dad... And if you know anything about Scifi time travel it's don't move about in time after your existance has been invalidated.





You know, series director for R-SuperS Kunihiko Ikuhara often commented that they wanted to kill off Tuxedo Mask since the tropey nature of their romance distracted from things (and indeed they did a good job of making it both more interesting and less in your face in S and Supers), but it's kinda weird that when Tux is taken out of the picture and replaced with a gender-fluid feminine love interest, was the same time that Ikuhara left the show... I really wonder what he would have done with it.

Here's one scene from the anime...

"Usagi misses Mamoru" (Watch on YouTube)

And what the heck... evil Tux from the the 2017 Musical

"The Guardian Who Lost Hope - Sera Myu 2017 - Hotaru Nomoto" (Watch on YouTube)

and to top it off the Sailor Stars theme

"Sailormoon Sailor Stars Opening" (Watch on YouTube)

*Not to mention the entire last episode involving lots of (barbie doll) nudity.

Comments

[kamino_neko]

That is a lot of sound FX. >_>

[ozaline]

I love it when glow and fade are sounds!

[locuatico]

Personally? If I were to guess, probably apply some of the ideas he had for Utena, only making it fit within the Sailor Moon framework, most notably the idea of a "prince".

[crinos]

Its actually interesting you decided to post this today. Out of the blue I was actually thinking about Sailor Moon, specifically Sailor Uranus and Neptune, and how they were both a pair of massive unrelenting chunkheads who made everything measurably worse with their edgelord "hard man making hard choices" bullshit mentality and their sneering arrogance towards the sailor scouts.

I've never seen Stars in any form, but as I understand it, they fuck up here even worse than in the series they were introduced right? As in "Actively help the villain and get several Scouts killed because they plan on betraying the villain and taking her out but oops, that doesn't work." fuck up.

[ozaline]

Yep (in the anime) they basically give Galaxia their souls so they can get the weapon that steals souls... except Galaxia doesn't have a soul (currently in her body).

[icon_uk]

Visually I adored the Outer Senshi, I thought their transformation, attacks, and the music for them was vastly better that the inner Senshi got.

Uranus as the ultimate butch and Neptune as the ultimate femme also seemed then, as now, as an important statement to make.

But yeah, for the most part, I didn't actually LIKE the pair of them very much. (Sailor Pluto on the other hand, was ALWAYS cool).

Though I will forgive Uranus/Haruka and Neptune/Michiru a lot for the scene where Uranus is near death due to a villain attack, and the villain is gloating that if Neptune tries to destroy the thing that's hurting Uranus, it will basically cause the world to end.

Neptune destroys it anyway, the world doesn't end and Uranus is saved.

The villain is appalled and asks how she knew he'd been bluffing. Neptune says she hadn't known, but a world without Haruka in it wouldn't have been worth saving.

Yes it's over the top, yes it's edgy, but I have to admire the STYLE! :)

[ozaline]

I mean I respect the anime verisons at least they are consistent. When Haruka learns SHE is one of the talisman holders she doesn't hesitate the pull the trigger on herself.

And in the Vampire Musical trilogy when Michiru is turned into a Vampire, Haruka tries to kill her (tearfully), when the reverse happens Michiru cannot bring herself to hurt Haruka.

They're main fault is being genre blind. No matter how many times they see that Usagi will save the day (and even the people who've already died!) with love and friendship, they refuse to believe it's going to work this time.

[elilla]

When I was a young confused girl I was so enthralled by the Starlights. I browsed Geocities shrines and I vividly recall one of them arguing that the Starlights don't actually change genders, that they have nothing to do with transexuals. Because they're really women to begin with. Women from another galaxy. They just need disguises to be safe in human society, and so they present with male bodies. But when they assume female bodies they aren't changing, they're just showing their real form.

That broke my heart without me understanding why. Even if I thought of myself as a boy, I felt that sweet feeling of representation melting away.

Decades later and living my life as a full-blown trans woman, my memories for some reason bring this up as a shower argument and I'm like, girl, do you realize you've just described The Trans Experience? (The Starlights theme is now my hormone alarm ring, haha.)

[…] it's kinda weird that when Tux is taken out of the picture and replaced with a gender-fluid feminine love interest, was the same time that Ikuhara left the show... I really wonder what he would have done with it.

Word on the streets is that Ikuni was being chastised for growing increasingly experimental in formalism and risqué in content, and then he went on to produce Revolutionary Girl Utena aka the Last Flower of Anime aka objectively the best anime in history. So my guess at an answer about what he would have done with it is, Revolutionary Girl Utena 👭

[ozaline]

That is pretty awesome. I should steal your alarm ring tone, and yeah I can remember some similar experiences.

[leahandillyana]

That’s a pretty anticlimatic scene.
German dub is fascinating. It heavily censors the violence, but is otherwise very faithful, leaving most if not all of queer subtext intact.

[ozaline]

It maybe could have spent a bit more time on it, but I like that it's sudden, comes out of nowhere and that Usagi simply blocks it out. In the anime Mamoru is attacked on his flight so Usagi has no way of knowing. Here she sees it, but can't accept it.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

What happened, exactly? She watches him get killed... and does nothing?

[ozaline]

She faints and has no memory of it happening. Her mind kinda fills things in and she thinks she saw Mamoru off.

[janegray]

There was no cost effective way of hiding the Starlights while not butchering the source material (a trio who shift from masculine to feminine bodies... feminine bodies in bikinis*)

Sure there was. It's what they did in Italy, where the series was aired normally all those years ago.

In order to solve the """problem""", they changed the dub so that now the three Starlights were actually a set of three twin siblings.

A brother and a sister, twins, had their two souls in one body, and took turns to take control of the body, which switched from male to female and viceversa when the twins exchanged place.

[ozaline]

I actually have heard of that. Though that really does a number on Seiya and Usagi's friendship/one sided romance.

But it's not like the cousins thing is any better.

[mizerous]

Shame we won't get this in anime form.