Monthly GM Essay - December 2000

The Origins of Sailor Myth

So you’re probably thinking I started Sailor Myth after being in role-playing games for a while. In truth, I started this game far before I ever started doing anime-based role-playing. It may even have been before I started role-playing, period, but the exact date I started simming is undeterminable.

Sailor Myth actually started at the first North American broadcast of Sailor Moon. It began with a simple enough practice which most fans probably played with at one time or another: the creation of a fan senshi. Mine was called Sailor Omega. She had brown hair that was braided and purple eyes. Her main fuku color was purple and her bows were green. She wasn’t particularly special, really, just another silly fan senshi. Her powers were wind; one of her attacks involved a tornado and the other was “Wind Wall.” (How’s that for an inspirational attack name?)

I have always been a writer and artist, so it was only logical that eventually this fan senshi develop essentials such as a name, personality, and history. Her name, I decided, was Cassai gian Fourdr. She was from far outside our solar system - the Omega Nebula to be exact. I went so far as to create a language for her homeland, and in it her name meant “Flower of Wisdom.” Even back then I was no fool. I knew enough of the history of the Sailormoon universe to come up with something a little better. The reason she had not been destroyed by Queen Beryl (or any other evil creatures from centuries past) was that her planet and star system had been concealed inside the nebula, and it wasn’t really a nebula at all, just an illusion. In that manner she and her people survived. I quickly added another character to the mix, a brother named Tuthau gian Fourdr. I forget what “Tuthau” was supposed to mean. He was really a Tuxedo Mask/Kamen-type character, except instead of a tuxedo he wore a spiffykeen dark green uniform and threw - get this - dandelions. He had yellow eyes and short light brown hair. By this point, I had also decided that the Omegans’ eyes changed color based upon their mood. To help put this into perspective, Sailormoon was just beginning to repeat for the first time on TV.

So how did that become this? Well, I turned my characters into a fanfic story. It was barely started and never really saw the light of day, but it was mine nonetheless. Basically, Cassai and her brother came to Earth and assumed Earthling identities to look for the senshi. As a peculiar twist, they ran into some pseudo-senshi in Greece who were, you guessed it, based on the Greek gods. The leader of these senshi was Sailor Athene. I even designed her to an extent, with a nifty hairstyle black in color. So, anyway, that was the beginning of the Graikos Senshi.

I guess I should note that as I learned more about Sailormoon (via the Internet) I revised my concept. Not only did Cassai and Tuthau come from a planet hidden in a nebula, their mother, queen of the place, had made arrangements for Tuthau to be married to the one and only Moon Princess, as well as for Cassai to be married to - wow, rocket science - Darien/Mamoru. I even managed to pull the Moon Princess’s father into the mix, always having been confused as to why he was never shown in the original show. He was still alive, too. Time passed different on Omega, so he had aged only a few physical years. His name was Tanpopo, if I recall.

So maybe the ideas were strange, but here’s where the major SMyth stuff comes into play. I have a good friend named Rueben Williams, another artist. He had created a senshi. I think originally she was Sailor Sun, though at one point she was also called Sailor Aurora. She became known as Sailor Universe. She had long blond hair and blue eyes at first and instead of angel wings like Sailormoon, she had butterfly wings.

Sailormoon was still on TV (third bout of reruns, which was coming near the end) and neither Rueben nor I had any idea of the butterfly wing symbolism in the Japanese version of Sailormoon. Just an interesting fact.

Anyway, Sailor Universe is the original concept that SMyth’s Universalis Senshi was based upon. Later on Universe had white hair and blue eyes, and shortly after Rueben and I left Sailormoon almost altogether. In fact, if you want to hear another interesting semi-relevant fact, I have a character named Tanaka Ishida in a roleplaying game who’s a math teacher. He’s based on a character who was planned to appear in the fanfic series but never quite made it. The original character’s name I forget, but he was a prince from somewhere far away who came to earth and disguised himself as the school principal. He replaced Jadeite as Cassai’s love interest. (Will wonders never cease? Somehow nearly every Sailormoon fan got the same ideas without ever being in contact... Jadeite was the best general, though.) The only reason I replaced Jadeite was because a friend showed me something in a Sailormoon manga that had Jadeite in it and I was scared of using him after that point lest I interfere with the real story.

And if you’re really interested (I’m guessing you’re probably not) this entire original series eventually became known as Sailormoon U(ltimate/Universe) and supposedly took place after Sailormoon Sailor Stars. Tuthau’s dandelions gave the normal senshi the ability to reach eternal forms when combined with Mamoru’s roses and the entire thing established Crystal Tokyo. Yeah, it was intended to bring the anime up to the manga’s development and then take it further.

Okay, so that aside (finally), you can see where the Astronomia came into play. The brief moment that Sailor Universe was called Sailor Aurora was the source of the Romanus. The Graikos were in there, too, if you recall. The idea just stopped there for a while. Then, suddenly, I picked it up out of nowhere and got the idea to include as many different gods and goddesses from as many different religions as possible. The polytheistic religions were easy, of course, but after deliberation I chose angels to represent Judaism and Christianity because I just wasn’t comfortable with, say, a Sailor G-d or Adonai or something along those lines. (Or a Sailor Christ - oy vey.) I don’t think many monotheists would have liked that, anyway.

So that’s how all the senshi groups were formed. Well... I put the idea aside for another while until about a year and a half ago when I was inspired to work on it again. So I did work, typing up information and working out ideas. I stopped again. About half a year ago I finished it, and the rest is history.