We are concluding our Summer Comics Binge of Naoko Takeuchi’s manga “Sailor Moon” this week, with three standalone short stories that are not part of the ‘Chibiusa’s Picture Diary‘ or ‘Entrance Exam Wars‘ series. They consist of ‘Casablanca Memory,’ a sad, somber tale about Rei Hino/Sailor Mars; ‘The Lover of Princess Kaguya,’ a holiday special starring Luna; and ‘Parallel Sailor Moon,’ an imaginary story published two years after the conclusion of the series to mark the new millennium, and the Year of the Rabbit in 1999.
‘Casablanca Memory:’ Set early on in the first arc (before Venus’s arrival), Rei’s character spotlight begins on her birthday, when she receives her annual gift of Casablanca lilies. We learn Rei’s father is a busy politician, who she resents because she feels he was not there enough when her mother died, and only sees him on her birthdays. In contrast, she became very close to his secretary, Kaidou, who is actually the one who chose the lilies on her father’s behalf, knowing they are her favorite flowers.
However, she fell out with Kaidou, feeling betrayed after discovering he got engaged to the daughter of a politician, though not exactly for the reason you might think: Kaidou once told her he had no interest in entering politics or getting married to forward his career, causing her to see him as the antithesis of her father — his engagement proved otherwise though. (That’s not to say Rei doesn’t have some feelings for him, or at least she thinks she does, she is a child after all.)
The actual plot (technically speaking) involves the appearance of a group of music boxes, one of which is given to Rei by Usagi and Ami as a birthday present; it plays a melancholy piece called “Rain Song,” which increases the amount of rain over the summer, and causes listeners to gradually fall into a depressed daze. Rei eventually confronts the shapeshifting creator of the boxes, who preys on her insecurities, allowing her to confront them, and reassert herself as a strong, independent young woman, who will not be weakened by heartbreak, but instead clear focused on her duty as a Sailor Guardian.
As I said last time, ‘Casablanca Memory’ is undoubtedly the best “Sailor Moon” story, a poignant tale of unrequited love that adds so much depth to Rei’s history and character via a sophisticated flashback structure. The lush artwork of rain especially helps generate a wistful atmosphere that makes you empathize with her, and I love the way Rei’s distance from her father is conveyed by never fully showing his face. Plus: there’s a very amusing “post-credits” page where Rei demonstrates that, as disinterested in boys as she is, she’s not above using her beauty to get free drinks.
‘The Lover of Princess Kaguya:’ This lengthy Christmas story (at least double the size of a typical “Sailor Moon” chapter, at over 100 pages) takes place between the ‘Dream’ and ‘Stars’ arcs, and sees Luna fall in love with the aerospace scientist Kakeru Ohzora, after he takes care of her following a car accident. Kakeru, a sickly dreamer who was unable to become an astronaut as a result of his health problems, believes in the legend of Kaguya, the princess from the Moon, much to the derision of his colleagues. His closest friend is Himeko Nayotake, an astronaut, who adores him, but wishes he’d just grow up.
I must admit, despite reading this story twice, seeing the animated version twice, and watching a stage musical version of it, I don’t find it especially memorable: it’s a bit of a slog to get through, presumably because I’m not invested in this (admittedly bizarre) love triangle between Luna and the two new characters. It feels padded, with everyone constantly speculating over what’s going on with Luna, and Kakeru repeatedly suffering from dizzy spells, while the villain, who comes to be dubbed “Princess Snow Kaguya,” is hardly the most interesting Sailor Moon foe. The artwork has far too many white spaces and faded grays, although that’s understandable given the Yuletide setting.
However, we do get an iconic moment at the end, when the Sailor Guardians use the Silver Crystal and the Holy Grail to transform Luna into a human, granting her her Christmas wish to share a kiss with the man she loves. She takes Kakeru dancing in the stars themselves, and nobly reminds him his true Princess Kaguya is out there as well, while Himeko is shown floating in her shuttle against the backdrop of space — even in its weakest installments, “Sailor Moon” still has plenty enough magic to leave you spellbound.
Continued below‘Parallel Sailor Moon:’ Takeuchi’s final Sailor Moon comic is another lighthearted addition in the vein of ‘Chibiusa’s Picture Diary’ and ‘The Entrance Exam Wars,’ imagining a world where Usagi never becomes Queen Neo-Serenity, and the Inner Guardians have normal lives with their own daughters, who are each their spitting image, and share their respective names. Usagi and Mamoru have a second daughter, Kousagi, a fairly tiny kid with a sweet tooth who the other girls only put up with because all their moms are friends.
Kousagi stumbles on a pink cat resembling Luna, while the other girls witness an army of rabbits descending from the sky. The cat tells Kousagi to summon the power of Parallel Sailor Moon, transforming her and her “friends,” and they defeat the rabbits by summoning all the stray cats in the area to form a giant bobcat, which swallows the space invaders whole. The girls then wake up, believing the whole incident was a dream, a comment the pink cat winks at the reader about (something I found doubly amusing because the whole comic is, canonically speaking, a weird fever dream.)
That’s the “Sailor Moon” comics covered — join us next week as we begin looking back at, well, everything else from three decades of the series.
