This is the story of a girl without friends. One day, overwhelmed by the reality she was born into, in one of the most prosperous, advanced, and technologically developed societies in human history, she had to turn to her imagination and, above all, to her creativity, amateur as it was, to shape in a series of manga and later in the famous anime that made her world-renowned what she would have liked to have in her own life at that time. Remember, we are still speaking about that girl with no friends. That is how Sailor Moon was born.
As you can see, it is not as simple as we sometimes assume while sitting on our couches, innocent and excited in our childhood, watching our favorite anime on television in our respective countries. I can understand that Sailor Moon was not especially popular among boys the way it was among the vast majority of girls, yet I am honestly intrigued by the fact that pain and the absence of empathy and understanding were what fueled the creative and artistic drive of its author, Naoko Takeuchi.
A chemical engineer by profession, she created an unforgettable anime for billions of people around the planet. And so we arrive at how a story about school friends who fight fantastic villains while discovering the harshness of the world and the bitterness of pain managed to resonate so deeply with all of us. To this day, Sailor Moon’s legacy remains powerful and unmistakable. Personally, I do not know anyone who has not at some point wished to belong to a group like the one we see in this anime. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.
Looking even deeper, the importance of love as a solid argument in this story is vital and profoundly substantial to the plot and serves as a confessional component on the part of its author. There are certain details that can only truly be appreciated once one no longer possesses the innocence and idealism of a child. No male character ever outweighed the bond that unites Sailor Moon with her friends and the other Sailors. That all for one and one for all approach strikes me as both beautiful and slightly utopian. Deep down, I am now the same age the creator of this anime was when she first made it, and I can understand many things that would never even have crossed my mind before.
Sailor Moon is an icon, a marvel, and a massive fragment of my existence and my life. It ties me to a period of solitude that shaped my personality to this day, but it is also part of the inheritance I share with my little daughter. I trust that when she is older, and therefore more aware, she will understand many things that now seem like mere anecdotes and small details. You may ask, is an anime about girls and fantasies truly that transcendent? Undeniably and unavoidably, yes. And I know that in this communion I will stand alone. Not only because I am a woman. Many men watched it and loved it as well.