Book Review: The Incredible Untold Story of Sailor Moon

Now it's time for another new series of posts I wanted to do, and that is the book review section where I take a look at a book regarding cartoons and animation.'

Our first review will tackle the latest book about Sailor Moon.  Written by Theodore Jefferson, The Incredible Untold Story of Sailor Moon talks about how important Sailor Moon is when it first came out in North America.

First of all, there is no denying how important Sailor Moon is in the anime industry.  This anime had all 5 characters being the heroes as girls saving the world.  Sailors Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter, and later Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Saturn, and Sailor Mini Moon were a group of guardians sworn to protect the Earth and their princess of the Moon Kingdom, Sailor Moon.  This was a major hit in Japan, and even in North America, Sailor Moon had a major influence in young girls.  So why not add some more icing to the cake as to how important Sailor Moon is.  That's what the book supposedly attempts to do with the renewed interest in the series now that Crystal has come out.

This book starts out kind of funny.  It talks about a brief history of anime, but then it turned into a history of fandoms and the fandom of fantasies such as Dungeons and Dragons.  The point...."this is how Sailor Moon is HIGHLY influences" as the book somewhat tries to argue.  And to be fair, that's not an exact quote, I'm just summarizing the idea.  While I'm sure stuff like that inspired the industry as a whole, I'm very sure this wasn't the MAIN REASON for Naoko Takeuchi to create the manga Sailor Moon.  The book then talks about the English adaptation and how it became "the #1 show".  To be fair, there are some facts that in later years the show had success on Cartoon Network as part of Toonami, and to be fair again, the book at least said that when it first came out in America, it bombed due to bad time slots in syndication.  However, I must argue that even though Sailor Moon was a hit, it wasn't a MONSTER hit like Pokemon or Spongebob.  I never recalled a lot of merchandise.

Speaking of merchandise, the book also goes off saying how Sailor Moon helped Marvel when it needed it most.  I got news for you, the book hardly mentions the heroine in that chapter.  It just says that Sailor Moon toys and books were selling and it helped the company out of bankruptcy, but when it went into details as to how, I never saw a true explanation as to why and how it was Sailor Moon.  I think it was Spider-Man if you ask me because that was the name that showed up the most.

Then we go into another connection....Disney.  The book claims that "Disney at one time owned Sailor Moon because it was a DIC show which Disney owned at that time."  Yes it's true, DIC was owned by Disney (hense the Inspector Gadget movies).  However...Takeuchi still owned the characters of Sailor Moon and Toei who produced the anime licensed the show to DIC.  Disney only had home video rights to the show.  Girls....sorry to spoil your fantasy or the book's fantasy that Sailor Moon was the first "Disney Princess" in terms of modern day licensing.....she isn't.

There was one thing the book did do right and that was talking about how Sailor Moon did very well, and then all of the sudden, until recently, she went away.  This was because there were management changes.  Two companies where handling the same property (DIC and Cloverway), and Takeuchi got full control of her characters back.  So once some contracts ended, it was all over.  I will argue that if Sailor Moon stayed that she would be somewhat mainstream.  Not a monster of a franchise, but enough where you can go to the store and find some merchandise.  Even now with Viz having the rights, you could go to your favorite anime store of something similar and find Sailor Moon stuff there.  I'm not here to say that Sailor Moon was never popular, nor am I discouraging anyone to watch it, but what I do see in this book is that everything is far fetched.  It also doesn't help that, despite all factual, the book goes into so many tangents it's hard to keep up.

Finally, the conclusion the book seems to make is that Sailor Moon should have been and still could be if the cards are played right as big as Marvel, Harry Potter, DC, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.  The book backs this up by saying the Disney Princess line was highly influenced by Sailor Moon as was stuff like Monster High, some of the Marvel stuff, DC Super Girls, and even Harry Potter.  Folks.....there are no quotes in the book that can prove that.  And there isn't even a mention of the Barbie doll if I can remember.  THAT'S the influence.  And why Marvel Movies?  Why Harry Potter?  That's apples and oranges.  It makes no sense.  Again...no quotes from ANYBODY saying "Oh....Sailor Moon was the reason we made all those Spider Man movies."  And don't get me wrong, Sailor Moon is my favorite anime, but I'm a realist.  I simply cannot see Sailor Moon as the base of today's entertainment industry.  I just can't.  I'm sorry.

This book is nothing but a biased argument with very little proof of the pudding.  It's like reading one of those long PDF files a major university professor created to make his or her own arguments.  Some people love or want a series or franchise to be obnoxiously out there like Star Wars.  I have problems with that.  I like a lot of things, and when you do that, you overshadow everything else (yes it's true...look at last Christmas with the new Star Wars movie...that's all everyone talked about).  Never before have I gotten so angry after putting a book down.  This is the first time.  I must sadly not recommend this book due to the bias and very little facts.  Go buy a book from someone who as done research and/or was there to work on Sailor Moon. Skip this one...there are still plenty of resources left to learn about this anime.