Today is June 30, which happens to be Usagi Tsukino’s birthday!
If you don’t know that name, she’s the civilian identity of Sailor Moon, one of the most iconic characters in shoujo manga and anime. Her series defined the magical girl sub-genre, full of magical battles and navigating everyday life with friends and family. The series remains a nostalgic favorite, with plenty of lore, fun characters and relationships, despite some of the it’s shortcomings.
And it took me a long time to like Usagi herself.
Back when I was first exposed to Sailor Moon via the DiC dub, I HATED Usagi so much. At the time, I felt engaging characters, and especially protagonists, had to be of a certain mold. High ambition and Type A personalities were a must. Confidence and extroversion were great signs of the leadership a protagonist should display. Wit and smarts were a big plus (but not too smart, they couldn’t be straight A students, that’s for the introverted one with glasses). Basically Jason from Power Rangers or Scott Summers from X-Men, or a good chunk of 1980’s and 1990’s cartoon protagonists.
Usagi on the other hand, was “whiny”, “cries too much”, “head in the clouds”, “not leadership material”. To me, she was more “forced” on the audience than an engaging character, and soured my enjoyment of the anime.
My old mindset of what made an ideal protagonist basically told myself that someone with my personality type couldn’t be a protagonist. I was smart (maybe too nerdy), but I had bouts of self doubt, could have crying fits, and while determined, I didn’t have Type A ambition. I had too many character flaws to lead a compelling story and was doomed to be a background character, I believed.
Thankfully, in the years following, I learned more about stories and got exposed to different types of protagonists, and that being a lead character wasn’t limited to certain personality types or traits. Character flaws were fine, in fact, they are a good thing, as we’re not perfect. The only thing protagonists needed to do was drive their own stories. Which is something anyone can do.
Fast forward to the 2010’s and I’m buying the reprints of the Sailor Moon manga (though there are some translation issues). And I’m liking Usagi a lot more! She’s still not my favorite Sailor Guardian (that's still Ami Mizuno/Sailor Mercury), but I appreciate her personality and where she is in her life. At the start of the manga, she’s just a normal girl, doing poorly in classes, shrugging off responsibilities in favor of having fun or taking shortcuts, and looking for something to be good at. On the other hand, she’s a kind and caring friend, befriending others easily despite nasty rumors swirling around them. She saves Luna from bullying kids at the start of Act 1, which kicks off her heroic life. With Usagi seeing the best in people, it helps her new friends become their best selves.
It’s not long before she becomes Sailor Moon and is thrown into life or death stakes, and that’s gotta be a shock for most of us, especially since she doesn’t recall any major trauma in her life prior to this. While she eventually adjusts, Usagi’s in panic mode and crying for a good chunk of the earlier battles, and instead of groaning as I might have done years earlier, I appreciate her adjustment period. She’s a sensitive and emotional young girl, wearing her heart on her sleeves, while good for her determination and brimming optimism despite terrible odds (most of the time at least), also leaves her prone to crying fits. There’s a panel in Act 3 of the manga I love with Usagi in tears after she’s told by Luna (via intercom) that crying will make everything in the warped dimension she’s in worse and possibly kill the people she’s supposed to save, and it’s a great mix of her determination and her emotional side.
She might not be the smartest, with below average grades in school (the 1990’s anime implies she’s barely literate in terms of Japanese Kanji), but she does develop a strong moral backbone, which grows throughout the series, and it helps her to become a strong leader in her own way, empathetic and friendly.
Through this 2010’s read and now my current re-read, I’m realizing how much of Usagi is relatable to me and my personality without my own misbeliefs and poor presentation getting in the way. Plus, her character goes through a tremendous amount of growth throughout the manga’s 60 Act run (plus some side content), more confident in her strengths of reaching out to others and optimism, but still has the shades of the girl we met in Act 1.
Through this 2010’s read and now my current re-read, I’m realizing how much of Usagi is relatable to me and my personality without my own misbeliefs and poor presentation getting in the way. Plus, her character goes through a tremendous amount of growth throughout the manga’s 60 Act run (plus some side content), more confident in her strengths of reaching out to others and optimism, but still has the shades of the girl we met in Act 1.
Usagi made such an impact on me with that 2010’s re-read that she essentially was a big part of my own stories. Jovita Salazar, my protagonist for my forthcoming Spark and Blizzard series, is very much Usagi with a big helping of STEM and a bit less naïveté.
I would like to apologize to my younger self for treating Usagi so poorly, it was bad dub writing, dismissing my own personality as flawed, and my poor understanding of what makes a good protagonist! Happy birthday Usagi!
Screencaps from Sailor Moon Crystal, produced by Toei Animation. Original manga by Naoko Takeuchi.