#sailor quartet

While I obviously grew up on the 90s TV version of 'Sailor Moon', and it's really impossible not to love it (it's visually beautiful, it has an incredible soundtrack, and this absolutely ridiculously charming filler arc where Mamoru becomes an Arabian prince) it's also impossible to deny that as an adaptation of the manga, this, at the very least, raises some questions. When I first read 'Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon' when I was 12 (i.e. an eternity ago), I was surprised by how different in tone they are, but I never really thought about how much the anime adaptation has shaped the perception of this story in the media space - the gradual devaluation of Mamoru as a character, the overt masculinization of Sailor Starlights, the focus on Seiya and Usagi's relationship, the whole Minako drift, the antagonization of Shitennou and the attempt to write their characters more complex through a new lines which never existed (Nephrite's tragic love story and a subtle homoerotic context between Kunzite and Zoisite) entirely ignoring their obviously existing connections to the past (the Senshi/Shittennou line and the importance of their connection to Endymion), writing additional and not always meaningful romantic lines for secondary characters, erasing certain characters at all (especially at the end), as well as such obviously important key storylines as the stories of the Sailor Quartet as warrior guards of the future princess and the entire Sailor Cosmos arc (and this is the minimum I can recall from my old memories). I have an emotional attachment to the old anime, and it's hard for me to underestimate its iconicity, but I love the manga with all my heart because it's truly beautiful and thoroughly unique, and because it's the only truth in all of this, and if you ever want to know the story of Sailor Moon, you have to /read/ it.