Sailor Moon Sets Her Sights On U.S. Market
You may think, moms and dads of America, that the comings and goings of a 14-year-old Japanese eighth-grader named Usagi Tsukino have nothing at all to do with you. You may think that Usagi’s loyal friends Ami and Rei, her darling kitten, Luna, and her golden-horned pet unicorn have no relationship to your life.
But if you think that, moms and dads, you’re likely to be proven seriously wrong very soon.
As tens of millions of fervid young fans already know, Usagi Tsukino is the secret identity of the mighty female superhero Pretty Warrior Sailor Moon, a cartoon and comic-book star of immense popularity in Asia and much of Europe.
About two weeks from now Sailor Moon and her all-girl squad of teenage justice fighters will fire up their power crystals and invade the American TV market with their own Saturday-morning cartoon show. The predictable raft of Sailor Moon books, dolls, toys, T-shirts, toothbrushes and other tie-ins will follow, with the first shiploads of licensed goods appearing in U.S. stores well in time for the Christmas rush.
For any American parent who has had the duty of waiting in a long line at the local mall in hopes of snatching up a toy bearing a likeness of the Power Rangers, this may all sound distressingly familiar.
That’s hardly surprising, because the first wave of Sailor Moon toys will be brought to you by the same folks who turned the Power Rangers into a $400 million-per-year retail phenomenon: Bandai Corp., Japan’s biggest toy maker.
And Bandai has no reluctance about stating its goal for the junior high heroine. “We think,” said Bandai president Makoto Yamashina, “that Sailor Moon can be as important in the lives of American girls as the Power Rangers are for boys.”
America’s major toy retailers, from national giant Toys R Us to the local mom and pop stores, seem to agree. “We are really encouraged by the initial orders,” said Trish Stewart, of Bandai America Inc. “Our distribution for the Sailor Moon line is considerably better than it was for Power Rangers at this time in 1993, when Power Rangers was also new.”
In Japan, at least, the eighth-grade adventurer long ago passed her male rivals in the teeny-bopper superhero trade. Sailor Moon TV shows, books and movies here draw much bigger audiences than the Rangers. Sailor Moon toys bring in more than $250 million per year, five times the level of Power Ranger sales.
The promoters of Sailor Moon think they know why. It’s all about gender.
The long-legged teenager is the first female to become a cartoon superhero in her own right - in contrast, to, say, Supergirl or the female Morphin Rangers, who were copied from male stars. “In Japan and all over the world, women are assuming more and more positions of power in society,” noted Bandai’s Yamashina. “They don’t want to be discriminated against as soft or gentle; they want to grow up to be tough and forceful. And Sailor Moon is a role model for that type of girl.”
The creator of Pretty Warrior Sailor Moon is a young Japanese woman of that type. When she finished college in 1990, Naoko Takeuchi landed a job on a hospital staff. Yet she dreamed of going out on her own. In 1992, Nakayoshi magazine, a fat monthly collection of serial comics, accepted Takeuchi’s proposal for a new series based on a somewhat klutzy school girl who turns into a superhero in each episode to save the world from evil.