Sailor Moon: Modern Myth

[thepanda]

Sailor Moon: The Modern Myth

   From time immemorial, through epic myth to more contemporary media, there are those whose stories stand apart from the norm. These are our heroes, though many can scarcely be identified as such by today's standards. The media of graphic novels and animated film, especially the 'anime' which originates from Japan, showcase many incarnations of the hero's journey. A prime example is the hero Sailor Moon, whose trials touch upon many of the aspects of the classic hero's journey. Her story gives evidence that the modern hero still serves many of the same purposes of its ancient counterpart.

   Joseph Campbell, the American mythologist, says it best when he describes the hero's journey as, "The quest to find that inner thing you basically are..."(Myth and Mythology 89). He clarifies:

      "And what one may learn from them all, finally, is that the savior, the hero, the redeemed one, is the one who has learned to penetrate the wall of those fears within, which exclude the rest of us, generally, in our daylight and even dreamnight thoughts, from all experience of our own and the world's divine ground."(Myth and Mythology 13)

   Every hero shares this one basic trait. Their stories are about this journey, be it physical or spiritual. What then is the role of the hero to those who partakes of his story?

   If the hero is one who experiences the journey, the role of the hero in any story, then, is to be a point of reference for that audience who is receiving it. The western world and the eastern world have approached hero character from two different directions. In the west, the typical hero is a personality. That is to say, he is 'I', removed from the forces of nature and god to stand alone. "This great man" is a term used often in the west when speaking of any great hero from the traditional mythologies. Being a single person, the hero is doomed to face the world as a single, tragic being, set upon on al sides by a hostile universe he must tame.

   The eastern world has the opposite doctrine with its heroes. The hero is a caricature of a person, without a distinct personality. "This great man" is not so much an actual person, but the idea of a person and how that person reacted to the situation. The name doesn't matter, nor does it matter that he preformed the feats; what does matter is that someone did perform them. The eastern hero does not look to tame the world. Rather, he looks for his place in the world with gods and nature.

   For both the eastern and western hero, "the hero goes beyond the lifestyle characteristic of his traditional culture" (Myth and Mythology XIV).

   The journey of the hero is threefold. First there is the departure from the society from which the hero begins. Secondly, there is the initiation and travels through the new land. Finally, there is the hero's return. Every hero from every land has begun the journey, but not all of them finish. But fail or pass, these are the steps all must go through.

   A young girl is awakened by her concerned mother. It seems that the child has over slept yet again and must hurry least she be school. Making what is shown to be a routine dash around the house, the child rushes to get dressed, eat, and make it to school on time. In her rush out the door she steps on something in her path and tumbles to the ground. Hurt, but not badly, she stands and turns to see what it is she has tripped over. On the sidewalk lies a black cat. It is obvious that the feline is the cause of her present mishap.

   "I'm so sorry, little kitty. Are you hurt?" she inquires while lifting it from the ground. On a childish impulse she tries to kiss the cat's pain away, for which she is rewarded with several scratches to the face. The child draws back, but still holds the cat firmly. She presently notices the band aids over the cat's forehead, which the feline is trying to remove with little success.

   "Here, let me take it off for you," she offers. The moment she removes the band aids the cat leaps from her arms. They stare at each other for a long moment, the girl marveling at the crescent moon marking the band aids had been covering. A bell rings.
The child rushes to beat the late bate, all thoughts of strange cats taking a backseat to more immediate needs of the world.

   Thus begins the adventures of Usagi Tskino, the girl who will become know as Sailor Moon. The story is a classic example of the beginning of a hero's adventure. The encounter- seemingly the product of merest chance- brings the hero into contact with unknown, possibly supernatural, forces. In the story, this is the first and most crucial of meetings. The hero has reached the beginning of the departure stage of the hero's journey. First the fall over the black cat, an animal associated with difficult change, and next the strange emblem revealed on its forehead act as signs of things to come.

   The cat is the Harold, "A preliminary manifestation of the powers that are breaking into play"(Hero With a Thousand Faces 51). Traditionally, the herald signals by either its appearance or death the call to adventure. Whether it be a mysterious figure, an animal, a place or something different, the herald always has a transforming power, and the hero will find that he has suddenly outgrown that which was familiar. In the case of Sailor Moon, the cat represents the end of childhood and the beginning of a destiny.

   In the modern tales, as well as in the classic, the hero is given aid in some way to conquer the impossible task laid out before him. The aid can be spiritual, as with the blessings of the gods, intellectual, as in a father's advice, or supernatural. In Sailor Moon, the cat again meets with Usagi and tells the child of her destiny to find and protect the reincarnated Moon Princess. The princess, then, is the goal of her adventure. Usagi is a child, though, and has no special skills. She is shown to be below average in her studies, a telling point as the modern Japanese culture stresses academic excellence. In response the cat, Luna, produces a magical amulet which allows Usagi to transform into the beautiful warrior Sailor Moon. The abilities she gains from the transformation range from combat skills to flight: she is even able to see her friend who is in dire trouble in a different part of the city.

   The herald has told her of her destiny and the supernatural aid has been given: now there is only the threshold to cross. The threshold is the encounter which truly opens the path toward to the unknown. For each hero there is a guardian who bars passage through the gate. The gate guardian can take numerous forms from a troll baring passage across the first bridge, to the hero's own fears and prejudices. It can be as malicious as a demon or as seemingly innocent as a lovers remembered kiss. The guardian's purpose is to stop the hero's transformation.

   Sailor Moon, seeing the plight of her friend, rushes to save her from a youma. Youma are evil creatures. Upon reaching the area she jumps into battle, but the surreality of becoming Sailor Moon is now replaced with by the reality that she could be killed. She' is inexperienced and it shows as she blunders her way through the battle. Faced with her own mortality she becomes disheartened and almost flees, but the accidental activation of supernatural aid, coupled with the advise of her helper, allows her to finish off the youma. She has defeated her gate guardian and can now proceed to fully mature into the role of Sailor Moon.

   Not all heroes head the call to adventure. To adventure is to leave the status quo, that box in which society confines itself. Breaking the status quo is and has usually been looked down upon. The stigmas of troublemaker and outsider, as well as the threat of death, have enough force to cause would-be heroes to turn from the path. The consequences of doing so vary, but they are usually ones that the failed hero must deal with the remainder of his life.

   The four servants of Endymion, the prince of the Earth, betray their master and the result is the fall of the Silver Millennium, the kingdom that had bought peace to the Earth for millennia. They are reborn in the present and the same evil that had once swayed their hearts found them again. After fighting Sailor Moon and her fellow senshi (warriors) only the servant Kunzite remained. During a battle Sailor Moon breaks the evil's hold over him, but he continues as its agent in order to his reincarnated prince. He captures Endymion and hands him over to the evil. He now realizes his actions, however.

   "Is it too later for us...? Now that we've chosen to live this way..." (Sailor Moon v 3 38)

   He gives his soul to evil believing it is to protect his prince in the past, and his price is killed because of it. Ironically, he is in the same position in his new life.
   Having vanquished her foe, Usagi begins searching for her princess. She has reached the most popular part of the hero's journey; the initiation into the outside world. It is here that most encounter with the unknown will be made and most insights will be gained. Simply put, everything that does leaving or rejoining the home society is the initiation phase of the journey. The hardships endured and the knowledge gained further the metamorphosis of the hero from what her once was to what is to become.

   Usagi, having bested the enemy and saved her fiend must now balance saving the worlds with saving her grades. There is also the problem of her growing infatuation towards the mysterious Tuxedo Mask. He, along with her increasing number of fellow senshi, represent the helpers she gains to allow her to finish her journey.

   Together, they take on the increasingly difficult task of fighting the youma and finding the princess. The girls grow close, and Usagi ventures further from the child she begins as. The most important change is her love for Tuxedo Mask. What begins as infatuation grows into something much deeper. This is significant because another transformation is taking place.

   The senshi have come close to defeating the last of the evil savants with the help of Tuxedo Mask when disaster strikes. Tuxedo Mask shields Sailor Moon with his body from a lethal attack. He is nearly dead afterward. It is now that a second, more powerful transformation begins. The original transformation is one of was one of the body. To become Sailor Moon Usagi's clothes were replaced with the senshi uniform. This transformation, however, is one of the heart. Grief stricken, Usagi's tears become a magical crystal renown for its purity and power. She transforms from Sailor Moon into Princess Serenity. The same princess they had been searching for is revealed to be one of their own, though even she hadn't known about herself.

   She saves Tuxedo Mask's life by leaving a shard of the crystal inside of him. The crystal is a manifestation of her soul, so she literally leaves a piece of her soul with her loved one, the reincarnation of Endymion. Unfortunately, he is kidnapped by the evil before anyone can react. The purpose of the adventure, finding the princess, has been completed, but this new development insures the adventure continues.

   Eventually, having passed the trails laid against them, the senshi defeat the evil that kidnapped the prince in its own lair. The evil strikes one last blow before dieing, wounding the prince so that he appears dead. In her grief Sailor Moon impales herself on a sword, if only to be reunited with her prince in the next world. With both the prince of the Earth and Princess of the Moon dead, the greater evil that ad been held at bay by its lesser counterpart breaks into the world. This relationship between the evils can be seen mirrored in Beowulf between Grindal and its mother.

   The creature, Metalia, engulfs the world in darkness. She absorbs the power the senshi use against it, and eventually swallows the prince and princess. The power of the princess's pure crystal fuels the growth of Metalia's evil more than anything it has ever feed upon. What's being shown is the power evil has when good souls give up.

   In the belly of the beast the prince and princess aren't quite dead, but lay incased in crystal, dreaming of their past lives. The princess only wants to be with her prince regardless of what happens to the world. This is an example of the trouble the savior hero type must go through. She has what she wants, the prince, so why should she go back into the world? Even Buddha was pressed to find a reason to return to the world.

   This is also an example of the difference between the modern hero and the classical hero. In times past the focus was on the society. The hero had to put the society first of he was a failed hero. The modern age has reversed this thinking.

      "Then all meaning was in the group, in great anonymous forms, none in the self-expressive individual; today no meaning is in the group- none in the world: all is in the individual." (Hero With a Thousand Faces 388)

   The four senshi left decide on a course of action; none of them are powerful enough to strike down the foe, but if they combined their power they could revive the princes. They understand that she holds the power to defeat the enemy. Using the last of their power they give their lives in an attempt to wake the sleeping princess. This is the reason for returning to the world that she needed. Sailor Moon awakens once more and is surprised to find her prince alive. Kunzite, upon his eventual death, had reverted into the stone that bore his name. Endymion had carried it around with him, and as a last redeeming act the stone had blocked the attack thought to have killed the prince. Kunzite, the failed hero, is redeemed.

   One final transformation takes place as Sailor Moon does battle with Metalia. The first had been a transformation of the body. The second had been a transformation of the heart. Now Usagi experiences a transformation of the soul. Facing impossible she calls upon a power greater than herself to destroy the monster. She calls upon the power of faith, her own and the faith others put into her. As David defeated Goliath, Sailor Moon found and exploited her enemy's one weakness. Tales of the power of faith are countless. The Bible, Koran, and every religion since the dawn of man has said it before, and Naoko Takeuchi has said it again: Nothing can stand against the power of faith.

   The world is saved thanks to the bravery and faith of the senshi, their two adviser cats, and the prince of the Earth. However, the final battle coasts four senshi their lives. Usagi has one last act to perform before she can return back to her society; she must obtain the great boon. The boon is the ultimate end by which any means is acceptable in obtaining it. Enlightenment, immortality, and riches beyond the hero's dreams are some of the more common boons in mythology.

   For Sailor Moon the boons granted here are the lives of her friends and an even more powerful crystal. The third boon, the revived Silver Millennium, is turned down. She prefers to live on the Earth with the people she loves, than rule the derelict kingdom. The buildings had been fixed but the lives of the people who died during the its fall thousands of years ago could not be returned.

   Usagi's refusal to claim the kingdom marks her return to society. Every hero must return, and it is that return that shows what the hero has learned. The hero's reaction to his journey falls within one of three categories: the first is the hero who, upon completion of his travels, finds that he much prefers the norms and society from which he originated. The second type realizes that there are some things out there that he prefers to his own society, and he tries to integrate the two. The final archetype prefers the things he has come to see or experience outside of his original culture. Sailor Moon falls into the second category. She retains her friends and powers from the journey, the metamorphosis having transformed her from a clumsy, somewhat annoying child into a young adult. She understands the need for battle, but keeps her dislike of fighting. She has learned the value of friends.

   Usagi Tsukino has traversed all off the stages of the hero's journey. She has departed from her old society. She has faced the trails and tribulations of the initiation phase. She has returned, knowing and accepting the things she has gone through and bringing a boon back to her civilization. She is but one of many heroes known the world over. Her purpose, as is Beowulf's and Heracles', is to be an example for the society of today. Given her world renown, it is safe to say that she is doing so wonderfully.

[Dracos]

I wince at some of the typos and minor errors that riddle this work.  "Grindal"?  Grendel the fearsome beast who's claws doth rend the flesh and bone would be most distraught at such a name.  I don't think your analogy using him is that good... your david and goliath one being far better.

Regardless, I must run if I want breakfast.

Amusing read overall.

Fearlesss Leader

[Anastasia]

Yeah, it is an interesting read.  I'm not crazy about the comparisions you used, however. While I suppose Beowulf and Heracules might fit the role, it gives it a rather strong contrast between them.

[thepanda]

Dracos: It was spelled that way in the book I looked the name up in. ^_^;;

[Dracos]

o_O

It's unfortunate that I don't have that book with me, but it was spelled Grendel in both the book "Beowulf" as well as the book "Grendel"

*Sweatdrops*

At least, as I remember it...

Fearless Leader
*Read both books*