Homosexual Analysis: Sailor Moon By Naoko Takeuchi

Sailor Moon is well-recognized among audiences around the world as one of the famous 90s Japanese children’s anime based on Japanese shōjo manga series Pretty Guardians Sailor Moon written by Naoko Takeuchi. The story is about teenage girl named Tsukino Usagi or Sailor moon who is chosen to keep the peace and protect the world from danger. She, later in the story, reunites the rest of sailor guardians. They become best friends and fight against dark power together. Apart from previously mentioned, if we observe closely in the anime version, we could see that Sailor Moon does not contain only a typical story of shoujo manga about teenage female group protecting the world but it also includes the topic about gender and sexuality, especially in

Haruka and Michiru are one of several homosexual relationships presented in Sailor Moon. In the series, we always see them together as if they were married couple. Even though it does not state clearly, we know that they are “important partners” to each other. Haruka is described as young, masculine and ideal good-looking tomboy character who enjoys dangerous and competitive sport like car racing just like the character of Seiya. On the other hand, Michiru is portrayed with ideal feminine role. In this sense, it is like a heteronormative relationship except one fact that they are both female. Moreover, there is also a scene where Hotaru (Sailor Saturn) called Haruka as her father while she called other two scouts as her mothers. In the anime, she said “Haruka papa and Michiru mama, I was studying with Setsuna mama.” Seeing this kind of overlapping gender roles and identities, they are considered to be under the queer umbrella as well. Nonetheless, from the previous statement, it could be interpreted that Haruka and Michiru are queer in a different way. In other words, Haruka is seen as masculine whereas Michiru is seen as feminine. We could see that although they are under the queer umbrella, we cannot identify or view them collectively as “in the queer universe, to be queer

So, the story usually deals with the topic of coming out, experiment and so on. By giving the message that young people are allowed to experiment or try out different gender roles, at the same time, it also strongly emphasizes that this concept is not acceptable in adulthood circumstance. Regarding this topic, I agree with Orbaugh’s idea because Sailor moon series promote the gender representation and convey positive messages to all groups of gender, especially LGBTQ. Characters are portrayed in different aspects and perspectives. They are not only limited to heteronormativity or the role of social norm. However, similar to what Orbaugh mentions, Sailor moon series are embedded with the message that the idea of gender ambiguity is unacceptable in the reality. For example, we could see that at the end of the story that the heteronormativity is more preferable. Even though Mamoru is left unsaid in the story, Seiya still cannot be with Usagi. It is the preferable ending of the author. That woman has to be with man. On the other hand, it might not be the perfect ending that other groups of people would