At four o’clock yesterday I sat down to watch some Toonami. I know I wasn’t the only one. Yesterday was a special day: Sailor Moon S was starting. Oh how we had waited! Oh how we wondered! Oh how we were excited!

    With my VCR taping and me watching, Cartoon Network finally introduced us the fans to the rest of the series that we had been awaiting soooo long…

    At six o’clock my mom came through the room and I said,

    “Mom! Mom! Sailor Moon S was on today and I have it on tape and it was wild and do you wanna watch cause it was real cool and you wanna see what they did to Serena’s voice?!?!?!?!” To which she promptly replied,

    “No.” So I started up again,

    “But mom!!! It’s Sailor Moon! Don’t you wanna see what happens?!?!?!” I had been bugging her for about a week concerning it all. Again, she said,

    “No.” So now I was frantic and I began jumping around,

    “But mom!!! It’s Sailor Moon! They have new bad guys and the Japanese music and--and--!!!”

    “Alright already! Calm down! I’ll watch Sailor Moon!!!”

    I joined the Sailor Moon Fan Club through DIC a long time ago. They send you all kinds of goodies in one fell swoop: Plastic Sailor Moon bag, membership card, membership award, Sailor Moon pen, trading cards, and window stickers of your favorite scout (mine is Sailor Moon herself). Over the years I have compiled a small collection of goodies. It all started out one year when I found the original five Scouts in six inch doll form. I had no idea what they were exactly, but they looked swell so I conned my mom into buying one (Sailor Moon). After that, it came to TV suddenly and then I could find out what in the world this girl was with this wild outfit and this long hair… This year I got window stickee paper for my printer and promptly printed sheet after sheet of Sailor Moon stickers to adorn my minivan windows with. I even have a Sailor Moon watch and two t-shirts and a Super S video with subtitles!

    So yesterday was the day of days. I eagerly watched as the Scouts (also known as Senshi) presented themselves in new outfits (finally!) except for Rei and Darien (also known as Mamoru or Mamochan). And they all seemed to have voice changes except for Luna, Artemis, and Rei. The colours were bright, the villains were new (but has anybody else noticed that all the bad gals always always always have the same voice?), the plot was fresh! Oh the wonder! Oh the surprise! How grand it all was!

    And Serena (also known as Usagi or Usa-ko)… Well… That’s an odd little story there…

    I have an annoying voice. Apparently that of a twelve year old. (I’ve been informed I look it too!) I don’t get louder, I get more high pitched… I can’t yell, but boy! can I scream!

    But Serena’s new voice (the fourth version of it I’ve heard so far) makes my voice sound like music! And as I went on the internet I noticed that this was everyone else’s complaint. You see, poor Serena is apparently going through hormone treatments or something and this is causing her voice to fluctuate rather drastically… Yes, that must be the problem… Another odd occurrence with Serena is that her new outfit involves having her socks hiked up. I’m really not one to be talking, but I think she should scrunch those babies! But besides these small little problems, it was magic! Sailor Moon came back to America! Welcome back girls! We love ya!!!

    Now, if you’ve never seen Sailor Moon, you may perhaps be wondering what the big deal is. I’d like to give you, the uninformed reader, a short observation on how one small part of the show has heavily affected a few girls:

    Two of the characters, Uranus and Neptune (I know Uranus’s Japanese name, but I can’t recall Neptune’s) are about the equivalent of Quatre and Trowa in that they are the topic of lively conversation… In other words, it is highly believed that they are gay (well, I guess the proper term here is lesbian, but you get the point).

    I’ve only ever seen one website that said that Uranus and Neptune weren’t together. Some have hinted to the fact, but most gladly accept them as a happy couple.

    As the uninformed reader, you may be asking yourself, “Yeah? So? What’s the big deal?”

    Well, this one time I went on a website and these girls were pouring their hearts out about how they found themselves to be just like Uranus and Neptune (i.e. gay) but they didn’t have any where to turn. The cartoon characters of Sailor Moon made them feel better to know that somewhere out there there were other people just like them and they weren’t all alone.

    Now, for most of us it’s just a really rockin’ show with a whiny ditzy blonde girl for a hero (Hoo yeah! We whiny ditzy blonde girls kick butt!!!) and some wildly out of control bad guys and a couple of talking cats and a whole menagerie of cool subplots, but somewhere out there our little cartoon is making a difference!

    *sniff* My little Usagi is all grown up!