Inspired by my current reading material, Volume 5 of Sailor Moon, Eternal Edition, I have been thinking about the concept of “queerness” in Sailor Moon. This essay has no thesis – that is to say, I am not trying to prove a point, or make any conclusions, I’m simply musing on a topic that has fascinated me for many years. Our ideas of, ideals of, and language about gender and sexuality have altered tremendously in the last 25 years. I’m not the first, nor will I be the last to discuss Sailor Moon as an iconic | series for queer | fans. I encourage you all to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments. All respectful comments will be welcome – even and especially, those that disagree with any of my thoughts. As I say, I’m not making a point here, I’m merely thinking out loud in text. ^_^
To begin with, I’m going to write up the list of characters in the original anime or manga (thus, Crystal) that I consider overtly queer. You may not agree, and you may also not consider this list comprehensive. This is what I consider to be a survey of the as-explicitly-as-we got queer characters. I’m leaving out common fan pairings, like Rei’s obvious feelings for Usagi (which was surfaced in her song during Sailor Moon Super Live,) Hotaru and Chibi-Usa, Ami and Makoto, because while they are all a totally valid way to interpret the characters and their dynamics, they were not created with explicit intent to be seen as what we now think of as “queer.”
Part 1: Queer Characters in Sailor Moon
Season 1: Sailor Moon / Dark Kingdom
Zoisite and Kunzite – Two of the four generals of the Dark Kingdom, serving under Queen Beryl, Zoisite and Kunzite are explicitly written as lovers in the first season of the original anime. Zoisite’s death in Kunzite’s arms is the motivation for a desperate attempt to defeat Sailor Moon which amounts to a suicide by the final general. They are portrayed very much as a Kabuki pair, with Zoisite playing the part of the onnagata, the actor who plays women’s roles.
Season 2: Sailor Moon R / Black Moon
Fiore – In the Sailor Moon R movie, Fiore’s story reads as a love story gone bitter, a kind of gender switch Kijo (which matches with Mamoru’s gender switched role as “damsel” in the series.) Fiore’s resentment of not being Mamoru’s beloved turns him into an avenging alien/demon set on the destruction of Earth and Sailor Moon.
Season 3: Sailor Moon Super / Death Busters
Haruka and Michiru – This perfect couple can be seen in multiple ways. Takeuchi famously declared them lesbian lovers in several interviews, and she also mentioned that Haruka was originally meant to be a Takarazuka performer. In the text of the manga, Michiru declares Haruka to be a man and a woman, which was understood by Japanese fans to refer to Ribon no Kishi‘s double-hearted lead, Sapphire. In 21st century terms, Haruka is genderfluid and can be seen wearing both women’s and men’s clothes in artbooks.
Haruka and Michiru are consistently portrayed as a couple, in all versions of the series. Never as openly as we might hope, perhaps, but the Sailor Moon musicals now have a long tradition of playing up their flirtation, their bickering and their innuendo, as well as having them launch across the stage to die in each other’s arms in seasons where that is relevant. ^_^
In Sailor Moon Super S Special and Sailor Moon Stars, their relationship is surfaced in scenes where Michiru proclaims that she has no interest in saving a world without Haruka, and the two tease each other in intimate terms. A quarter of a century after they first appeared, there’s still a lot to say about them.
Season 4: Sailor Moon SuperS / Dead Moon Circus
Fisheye – One of the Dead Moon Circus’s Amazon Trio, Fisheye is not human, but in human form, is assigned male at creation. The entirety of Fisheye’s arc is, however, testament that this is incorrect. Fisheye primarily presents as female in human guise and has a clear preference for men, making her a fairly strong transgender character. (Stronger, I would argue, than the Starlights, who were not originally intended to be men.)
Season 5: Sailor Moon Stars / Galaxia
Sailor Lead Crow and Sailor Aluminum Seiren – As Animamates, Crow and Seiren do not get a lot of screen time in the original anime, but the time they do get is memorable. When they encounter Haruka and Michiru, they are the only ones in the entire series to comment on the rose petals which accompany them. (In my head canon this is their gaydar.) They bicker often and Crow appears to have little respect for Seiren, but as their arc goes on, it becomes clear that they can be seen as a romantic couple.
Sailor Stars – In the Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon Volume V Original Picture Collection, Takeuchi says that she was “shocked” to learn they’d be men before transformation in the anime, which indicates that the manga Starlights are all women passing as men. Nonetheless, in the original anime, the Sailor Starlights are gender variant, which opened up a whole new way for the audience to experience and identify with the characters.
Part 2: Is Queerness in Sailor Moon Progressive?
On Twitter, as I was pondering the place of Queerness in Sailor Moon, specifically, I saw a post on Twitter by E. Simins talking about anime being progressive, generally. This tweet got me thinking – in a good way. And here are some of the fruits of that thought. One of the series tweeted about was Sailor Moon because it has such positive representation of what-we-now-call-queer characters. I wanted to expand on the general idea.
In thinking about the idea that anime is “progressive” I have to say that to be progressive, I require an anime to have more than just positive representation in the narrative (or, more realistically, accidental positive representation,) I would expect to see call to action. So much of what people see as progressive thought in past anime series is either a misinterpretation (willful or misguided) about intent or origin. So if we talk about Haruka and Michiru as a “Takarazuka couple” in which Haruka is otokoyaku and Michiru is musumeyaku, we’re sort of handwaving the queerness, because Takarazuka can be interpreted as queer, but is not inherently meant to be seen that way. We’re supposed to see a man and a woman in a heterosexual partnership in a Takarazuka show. On the other hand, we know that we are supposed to see Haruka and Michiru as two women in love. Are we supposed to we think of their relationship as a positive representation of an inherent butch/femme dynamic, as genderfluid/femme couple or as a stereotype of hetero-normative male/female dynamics?
If we really want to talk about Sailor Moon being progressive in 2019, we kind of have to look at progress across time as well as geographically.
Looking at older series in which queering them makes them queer, or the queerness can be interpreted differently, is too much like saying fanon is more important than canon (which can be valid, don’t get me wrong!) It certainly was more overtly progressive than American animation in the mid-1990s. But would that make it “progressive”? Compared with something like the predatory lesbian of 1985’s Patriot Games, yes, clearly. But is that a reasonable comparison? I don’t think so. So…let’s not compare it to western media at all. Apples to apples.
So, to discuss whether anime in general or Sailor Moon in particular is progressive, let’s look at something that is not a 25-year old series. How about Asagao to Kase-san /Kase-san and Morning Glories? Both manga and anime are very positive representation of two young women falling in love. The anime was explicitly handled in a way to show “love is love.” High marks on positive representation. 10/10 for that.
Let’s compare Kase-san to Sailor Moon. Haruka and Michiru are represented as a queer couple. They were *intended* as a positive representation of two women in love. So are Kase-san and Yamada. So, relatively equivalent. Now…here’s the major question. Is there any progress between the mid-1990’s portrayal and the late 2010’s one?
Sort of.
Kase-san and Yamada are explicitly more a “couple.” So that’s one more step for representation.
How about social or political “progress”?
Not so far.
Kase-san and Yamada have discussed living together, but there has been no discussion of real-world challenges; of talking about their relationship to family, to government, to anyone. No concerns about health or finances (okay, legitimately, they are in college, so that’s not a super important priority, but…)
What I am saying is that I see Kase-san as a positive representation – with intent – which is a form of progress, but not “progressive” in the sense of calling for social or political change. Give us Kase-san and Yamada at a Rainbow Pride parade……where an older couple of a famous race car driver and violinist come out and make rousing speeches for social progress and *then* I’ll be like, “Yes, this is progressive!” ^_^ (Which calls to mind the live action 2008 Japanese drama Last Friends, which did star a non-binary motocross rider Ruka and her beloved musician friend Michiru and it did explore issues of gender and sexuality, at least a little.)
I believe that at 16 years-old Haruka has never really thought about her gender or sexual identity, because she’s worried about the end of the world and more concerned with her identity as a Senshi. But ….after Stars, after dying twice, after building a family with Michiru, Setsuna and Hotaru…a few years later at, say 20, what is she thinking? How is she identifying herself? We can’t know with certainty, because the story will never tell us. We have the original anime, the anime adaptation of the manga, and the manga, but we don’t have the “25 years have passed and *we* understand gender and sexuality differently” version.
What happens in that version, when Hawkeye tells Fisheye, “We’re all boys here.”? What if Fisheye turns to Hawkeye and says, “No. We’re not. You two are boys. I am not.”
What happens in that version when Minako asks Haruka “are you two lovers?” or Usagi asks Haruka “are you a man or a woman?”
We can conjecture what those things might look if they were created now…but we have to accept that they might not be all that fundamentally different. It might not ever be “progressive.”
Fans of anime, despite watching media that does have positive queer representation don’t always themselves translate that into real-world progress. Although that is changing for the better in most cases, *.*gate notwithstanding. If anything, the reactive, reductive, anti-progress factions’ existence argues that progress has happened. Fans, like all humans, tend to view their entertainment through the lens of their experience. ^_^
Representation might be critical to progress, but by itself it is not “progressive.”I can acknowledge that Sailor Moon was inclusive/diverse for the time in which it was created, having been part of progress without it having been progressive . And I can accept that anime or manga I want to see pushing that needle forward might never actually go where I want it to go. ^_^
So…what is a good example of a manga that is overtly”progressive”? Shimanami Tasogare is a manga by and about sexual and gender minorities. So that stands out as a manga that is asking for genuine social change.
Whether Sailor Moon is “progressive” is open for discussion, but Shimanami Tasogare clearly asks us to move forward. And that’s progress.
This is an interesting thing to think about, because Sailor Moon has in Western fandom been such a lightning rod for both sides of the debate over representation (often well beyond anything the creators had in mind).
Your tack here uses the term “progressive” as a societal, structural force. But I’d like to take a different angle and assert that art and media can be “personally progressive” – that is, it can catalyze or advocate a sea change in viewpoint for individuals.
This is what happened to me. Without going into too much detail about my life that no one cares about but me, before college I was a shitty person. Thanks to my shitty family and friends, I held a lot of shitty viewpoints, among them homophobia. When going through some very rough personal times in college, I somehow stumbled across Sailor Moon and started watching it, at first because, hey, cute girls in skimpy clothes fight stuff! But I got sucked in by the narratives and the heartfelt emotions – I had never seen anything like it. When Kunzite and Zoicite showed up I was very conflicted – here were two gay men, “bad guys” yes, but the way they loved and cared for each other came across so clearly and touchingly. I had never watched anything with non-stereotypical gay characters, and I really didn’t know how to feel about it. Suddenly I was seeing that you could be a man and be beautiful and powerful and vulnerable and cool and yes, even all those things and be gay. This was the beginning of years of rethinking and rewiring my prejudices, a gateway to meeting people, ideas, communities, and media that showed me how much more there was to the world. There was nothing comparable to SM in Western media for my age group at the time, except maybe Buffy. So to me, SM was progressive in that it progressed my personal bubble around LGBT representation and issues, which would have been impossible any other way.
I guess the only other thing I’d want to say is, to go back to your usage of the word: you compared Kase-san to BSSM, but what if you were to compare BSSM to what came before it? Couldn’t it be considered progressive just for showing representation if, previously, there was no other anime that was such a massive mainstream success with such overt representation? Nowadays, so much of anime (and especially niches like yuri) has ossified around tropes, but if you were the show that defined the tropes, isn’t that kind of progress for the time? If media was demonizing or ignoring a certain kind of person, just seeing a sympathetic portrayal of them was progressive, right?
All very good. Yes, in this essay I’m using the word “progressive” in a socio-political sense and yes, of course there is personal progressiveness, as well. Media representation definitely drives that – we’ve seen it over and over. Ellen coming out, Will & Grace, Friends, are credited by a lot of people as the moment they came to the conclusion you did.
I would compare backwards…but there is no more groundbreaking series than Sailor Moon behind it. We keep talking about it *because* it was the first to have overtly queer characters, not just fanon queer.
Before Sailor Moon, it was all in our heads. ^_^
In my opinion, the main sign of “progressiveness” is when qeer content is not used as a political statement, fanservice or plot tool, but as a simple part of the personality and character relationships, and this does not cause any problems for the audience.
Of course, we still live in a world where being gay is a kind of political statement or where many people just hide behind their “tolerance for LGBTQ” in order to “justify” their love of homoerotics with characters of the opposite sex (for example, guys who adore yuri and declare their tolerance, but are disgusted with gay males), but I personally think that “true progress” isn’t be separated with the attitude to LGBTQ as to normal members of society.
So, I may be unaware of any Takeuchi’s “true” intentions, but what I saw in Sailor Moon can be called a neutral image of qeer characters who are created with a love for their personality, and not with an exceptional desire to make any political statement or satisfy yuri fanboys.
“where many people just hide behind their “tolerance for LGBTQ” in order to “justify” their love of homoerotics”
Why would anyone need to justify their love for what you call “homoerotics”. Homophobes don’t care what LGBT people think so they have no reason to fake tolerance. If you believe that gay people are just as normal as straight people. Then you wouldn’t assume that people that like yuri must have some weird fetish while straight romance and erotica is just viewed as normal.
There is some real-world evidence of humans consuming media that portrays queer content without actually caring about queer humans, as I mentioned. Fujoshi were, for some years, notoriously not-at-all welcoming of gay men into BL spaces. And, as a lesbian I was repeatedly told that Yuri was not for me. I didn’t care, obviously. ^_^
Homophobia, like all human forms of bias can be quite complicated.
Oh, among a male audience, this often takes on much more hypocritical forms. For example, there are many male yuri fanboys who openly write that BL is supposedly “perverted and unnatural”. Some people do not think about the very essence of same-sex relationships, for them it’s just a fanservice for an audience of the opposite sex.
I’m calling all of that “representation.” It is important, and a basis upon which progress can be built. ^_^
Thanks for the comment!
I am always ready to express my opinion, if it is interesting to you :). So, it is I who must thank you
Well, speaking of representation, I like how SM or CCS relates to this. The authors of these franchises never try to give “special meaning” to their qeer characters or use them as a fanservice, they just show that qeer people exist and this is completely normal.
This is especially noticeable against the background of male-focused media, because a rare male author is ready to portray gay males as full-fledged characters. For example, Sunrise even had to call Mari Okada to seriously portray male homosexuality at Gundam.
Thank you for an interesting and thought-provoking read! :)
It will also be interesting to see how yuri/lesbian anime and manga develops further down the road. I haven’t read much newer stuff, but I’ve gotten the impression that it’s getting more common to have characters actually identify themselves as lesbian or gay in recent years?
Also have to say I was really happy with seeing how Bloom Into You handled it, with both having several characters that were attracted to people of the same gender, and also having older mentors. I would love for that to become a more common part of manga and anime! As much as I love Class S stuff and the sweet teenage stories about people who just suddenly happens to fall in love with someone of the same gender, I would love to see more stories about people who are overtly queer, older queer characters, more variations in the themes of the stories and so on.
Thank you for always offering interesting reads and updates!
Thank you for reading! I feel like queer identity is still the one thing lacking from most Yuri manga. In fact one of my definitions of “Yuri” is lesbian content without lesbian identity.
You have unintentionally confused me. By “overly qeer” above, did you mean only the lack of identity, or the presence of explicit intent and openness in the image of characters as actual couples?
It’s rare enough for a character to outright call herself a lesbian that Tonari no Kyuuketsuki-san manages to stand out for having Ellie introduce herself to a new girl as “the world’s sexiest lesbian vampire.”
However, there are quite a number of current yuri series where it’s clearly implied that a character is well aware of not being straight. For instance, Tsuki to Koi wa Michireba Kakeru’s latest chapter had some talk about who was out to who.
It’s hard to tell whether it isn’t just something that increases in proportion to the genre in general.
Well, I don’t know the true intentions of the author, but in Tonari it also looked like a reference to the popular archetype “lesbian vampire”. However, the “token yuri” characters in such non-yuri works as Monogatari and Azumanga either spoke directly about their sexuality or were involved in discussing this.
Ironically, both Suruga and Kaorin referred to the difference between Japanese and Western qeer terms. Nishin as Araragi even threw a hint that a girl who loves girls remains so regardless of what she calls herself.