Beautiful Sailor Moon Artwork by Nozomu Ikeuchi

Artist: Nozomu Ikeuchi

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Sailor Moon, known in Japan as Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Naoko Takeuchi. Fred Patten credits her with popularizing the concept of a team of magical girls, and Paul Gravett credits the series with revitalizing the magical girl genre itself. Sailor Moon redefined the magical girl genre, as previous magical girls did not use their powers to fight evil, but this has become one of the standard archetypes of the genre.

The story of the various metaseries revolves around the reborn defenders of a kingdom that once spanned the Solar System and the evil forces that they battle. The major characters — the Sailor Senshi (literally “Sailor Soldiers”; called “Sailor Scouts” or “Guardians” in Western versions) — are teenage girls who can transform into heroines named for the Moon and planets. The use of “Sailor” comes from a style of girls’ school uniform popular in Japan, the sera fuku (“Sailor outfit”), on which Takeuchi modeled the Sailor Senshi’s uniforms. The fantasy elements in the series are heavily symbolic and often based on mythology.

Before writing Sailor Moon Takeuchi had written Codename: Sailor V, which centered around just one Sailor Senshi. She devised the idea when she wanted to create a cute series about girls in outer space, and her editor suggested she should put them in sailor fuku. When Sailor V was proposed[by whom?] for adaptation into an anime, the concept was modified by Takeuchi so that Sailor V herself became only one member of a team. The resulting manga series merged elements of the popular magical girl genre and the Super Sentai Series which Takeuchi admired, making Sailor Moon one of the first series ever to combine the two.
– Wikipedia