Welcome back to Mooniversity, our column for all things “Sailor Moon.” After an unplanned break before the holidays and the new year, we are now back on a tangent, discussing N.D. Stevenson, DreamWorks Animation, and Netflix’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, which marked its fifth anniversary last year. While a reboot of an ’80s He-Man spin-off, a huge reason I enjoyed the show was because it tapped into my nostalgia for “Sailor Moon,” and its conclusion in 2020 was partly why I got back into Naoko Takeuchi’s creation during lockdown. Having had time to rewatch all 52 episodes of the show over the holidays, I wanted to compare both series, and look at how they offer different but equally great magical girl adventures.
Firstly, “Sailor Moon” is an adolescent superhero story set in a contemporary Tokyo (a Japanese Spider-Man, or Ms. Marvel as it were), while She-Ra is a sword-and-sorcery epic about the world of Etheria. Protagonist Adora is not an ordinary schoolgirl, but a soldier raised by the evil Horde to believe the Princesses of Power are “vicious, violent instigators,” until she discovers the Sword of Protection, and becomes one of them (the She-Ra) herself. Whereas “Sailor Moon” is an unapologetic celebration of femininity, She-Ra makes that subtext text with a heroine whose reaction to seeing herself as a princess for the first time is abject horror, even asking if her appearance is “contagious.”
Adora’s outfit for the first four seasons is, to put it plainly, messy, with her long hair, cape, skirt and shorts all creating the appearance of someone unsure of, and not fully comfortable with the feminist mantle they’ve been given. Like Usagi Tsukino and Minako Aino, she is a gluttonous klutz, far from the sophisticated example of perfection you’d expect from a superhuman princess.
What makes this all the more interesting is that Stevenson, who was living as a woman during the show’s production, came out as a transmasculine, non-binary person after it ended. People mostly took notice of the theme of gender in She-Ra after the introduction of the non-binary shapeshifter Double Trouble, but it was there from the start. When Adora gains the power to become She-Ra without the sword in the fifth and final season, her new, streamlined look also reflects someone who is finally at ease with both halves of herself.
This brings us to how the show offers significantly more diversity than its ’80s counterpart, or “Sailor Moon.” Physically, curvy or muscular princesses Glimmer, Scorpia, and Spinnerella offer much more representation and variety in character design, as does the decision to racebend or change the ages of several characters. As groundbreaking as the LGBTQ+ representation in Sailor Moon was too, it still centered on a straight love story, whereas She-Ra was, from the start, the story of Adora and Catra’s evolution from friends to enemies, to lovers, even if it doesn’t confirm that until its closing moments. Still, that knowledge, which makes a rewatch all the more rewarding, turns the series into an even greater piece of LGBT storytelling from a children’s cartoon.
Something She-Ra also doubles down on is giving almost every villain a redemption arc. While lead antagonists Catra, Scorpia, Entrapta, and the three main Horde soldiers (Kyle, Lonnie, and Rogelio)’s storylines were baked into the show from the beginning, even secondary foes like Light Hope and Shadow Weaver try to make amends before bowing out. The biggest surprise is that theme extends to Hordak, who’s generally depicted in the franchise as being an even greater villain than He-Man’s nemesis Skeletor, with him being revealed to be the “defective” clone of Horde Prime. His backstory, of someone who was taught to be cruel by an abusive older sibling, reminds us no one is actually born evil, and that no one is inherently irredeemable.
By the final season, there are so few bad guys, that Horde Prime deploys that very Sailor Moon tactic of brainwashing various friends, something that also circles back to the LGBTQ themes: Prime is essentially an evangelical leader, his ship styled like a church, complete with a baptism pool, practicing conversion therapy on his army. Ironically for a would-be god, he is merely using his followers, who are primarily clones, as vessels for his mind, making them in his image but refusing to grant them free will. Like a demon, he is ultimately defeated when She-Ra exorcizes him from Hordak. Would he have been redeemed if there had been anything of him left? Never say never, but I highly doubt it.
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Now, here’s a major question: is She-Ra an American anime? It’s not often discussed in the same vein as Avatar: The Last Airbender, probably because the show’s approach to character design is unmistakably Stevenson’s, albeit with larger eyes, and the action is pretty conventional (ie. no backgrounds disappearing behind kinetic lines.) However, like Avatar, or DreamWorks’s Voltron: Legendary Defender, the show was animated by a South Korean studio, NE4U (alongside Australian company Dave Enterprises), and there’s a definite anime vibe with elements like sparkling eyes, the renderings of blushing, dirt, tears, and drool, and last but not least, the dazzling fashion with which Adora transforms into She-Ra.
Regardless of whether it is an “American anime” or not, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is a wonderful show, and in my eyes, the true heir to the original Sailor Moon anime and manga for this generation, not Crystal or its film sequels. Hopefully, Sailor Moon will get a reinvention as fresh and bold as this someday. Until next time friends: go with the honor of Grayskull in the meantime.
