If Sailor Moon were a shonen fighting show how would it be different?

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blondibear_17

Lumen Cinererum
Mar 3, 2017
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#1
I wouldn't imagine the characters as different genders but if instead of being a magical girl show how would it be different if it was more like a shonen jump series?

For one I think that Usagi and Rei would still be life long rivals that help each other grow to become stronger

I think as far as their powersets go they would be less cute but not quite Dragonball Z like maybe more like Hunter X Hunter or Jojo's like they have a particular attack or skill set that goes with their personality type that would make battles a lot more tactical in nature than just punching the other person over and over again and powering up and ascending to another level.

Usagi would still be a slacker with a heart of gold but it would be more of a journey that being a Senshi has helped her find her place in the world. Maybe instead of coming from a perfect nuclear family she would be an orphan or have at least one dead or absentee parent and probably be an only child.

Usagi I think would probably have some kind of issue controlling her more powerful Princess Serenity form it might be tinged with some kind of darkness somewhat like Princess Sailor Moon.

I feel like Mamoru would be a childhood friend that is always lecturing Usagi about being more responsible and he would be totally unaware of whats going on for a few seasons.

What do you think? How would you imagine Sailor Moon as a Shonen Jump type series?
 

lord Martiya

Aurorae Lunares
Dec 11, 2015
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#4
Maybe we'd get to see where Amano learned enough martial arts to overpower Luga.

Also, Minako would retain her awesome meelee skills.
 
Sep 13, 2009
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#6
If it was a shonen series it would have a male dominated cast for one.
This, pretty much, would be the biggest thing. The main lead would have likely been a male, even. The series would have probably started off with a team of three males and two females or four males and one female.

The schoolgirl uniform motif would be gone too since that would be too 'prissy' for a shonen series. The Senshi forms would probably be something more akin to Super Sentai or Saint Seiya instead. Tuxedo Mask himself likely wouldn't be tuxedo-clad either. He'd be more like a ninja-type character and, if he were to still have a romantic relationship with one of the girl characters, the romance aspect would be toned way down from how it was between Usagi and Mamoru in Sailor Moon, since shonen series tend to have far less emphasis on romance than shojo series do.

We're basically looking at what would be a whole new series from the ground up with only the most rudimentary of similar elements shared with Sailor Moon.
 

Neon Genesis

Solaris Luna
Oct 31, 2015
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#8
I don't think Sailor Moon would necessarily be more male dominated just because it would be targeted at guys as there have been magical girl anime made for male otaku audiences. Like Madoka, Magical Girl Raising Project, and My Hime are all anime aimed at guys that have primarily women casts. The 90s anime is already pretty shonen-esque as it is in comparison to the manga. I think one of the biggest differences is they would probably no longer have the cutesy magical girl items like wands and transformation items and their magic powers would probably come from themselves instead of an external item.
 

blondibear_17

Lumen Cinererum
Mar 3, 2017
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#9
I don't think Sailor Moon would necessarily be more male dominated just because it would be targeted at guys as there have been magical girl anime made for male otaku audiences. Like Madoka, Magical Girl Raising Project, and My Hime are all anime aimed at guys that have primarily women casts. The 90s anime is already pretty shonen-esque as it is in comparison to the manga. I think one of the biggest differences is they would probably no longer have the cutesy magical girl items like wands and transformation items and their magic powers would probably come from themselves instead of an external item.
I agree with this. I mean if the main characters were male dominated I don't think it would even be fun to think about. I think it would still be just as interesting even without the magical girl weapons. Each girl could still have elemental powers they could summon and the girls already do have the individual skills sets such as Jupiter's strength as mentioned Venus's acrobatic prowess and Amy's intelligence and Rei's spiritual powers. While I think I would miss the really pretty stock footage of the attacks and transformations I think seeing combat in real time would be interesting. That was one of the things that Crystal really had going for it.
 
Sep 13, 2009
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#10
Thing is, the topic doesn't merely ask if it were a "shonen" magical girl series but more specifically a "shonen fighting" magical girl series. That's a whole new genre layer added on top of this as, while Sailor Moon as-is is definitely an action-adventure series, it really isn't in the fighting genre since, while it can get violent at times, it's overall pretty light on its actual fighting content, relying more on its heroes shooting beams of magic and only ever rarely utilizing actual fighting moves and techniques.

There really aren't that many male-oriented fighting series that have a primarily female-dominated character cast. Unless it's a male show with female characters meant to be overly sexualized and oogled as eye candy by the male audience, it's traditionally regarded that male series involve male-dominated casts as, from a purely marketing perspective, young boys want to watch male heroes being cool, and are usually turned off by shows that focus on casts populated by characters of the opposite gender, with Sailor Moon being a notable exception since it dabbles in the superhero and action-adventure genres that boys like, and doesn't focus all too much on girl-only content without also balancing it out with another aspect that boys like: comedy.

Like has been mentioned, the 90's anime was already pretty close to being like a shonen Sailor Moon series without actually being a shonen Sailor Moon series since, as much as it tried to appeal to both genders, it still held true to its shojo roots. But in order for Sailor Moon to go all shonen (and "shonen fighting" even), there'd have to be some pretty drastic changes made in order to break it out of its original shojo genre and show that, without a doubt, it's meant directly for boys and not girls. A male-dominated cast would be just the ticket for making that happen.
 

lord Martiya

Aurorae Lunares
Dec 11, 2015
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#11
If one wanted to make a shonen fighting series out of Sailor Moon all they have to do is to get back to the roots: in the original pilot, and later in the rest of Codename: Sailor V, Minako was physically beating the crap of the youma and their minions, only breaking out the magical attack as a finisher or for special occasions.

Also, I think someone did make a few series based on the idea of magical girls beating the crap out of their enemies before using the magical attacks. Got a video right here, could someone identify it?:eyebrows:
 
Likes: blondibear_17

Neon Genesis

Solaris Luna
Oct 31, 2015
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#12
We have had some shonen action anime shows with large female casts that have been pretty popular with mainstream anime fans. That's what a lot of Rumiko Takahashi's series are like such as Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha and both series have large followings of male and female fans. If they had to make a major change, I could see them maybe shifting the focus of the plot to be more focused on Tuxedo Mask and make it like a harem series and have all the Sailor Guardians romantically interested in Tuxedo Mask.
 
Sep 13, 2009
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#13
InuYasha, while created by a woman, still had a titular male lead and more male characters in its main group of protagonists (InuYasha, Miroku, Shippo) than female (Kagome, Sango)*, a central male antagonist (Naraku), an equal gender number of Naraku's important incarnations (Kagura and Kanna; the infant/Hakudoshi and Byakuya), the all-male Band of Seven (despite Jakotsu's feminine appearance and voice), and ten main recurring male characters (Sesshomaru, Jaken, Kohaku, Koga, Hachiemon, Myoga, Totosai, Sota, Kagome's grandpa, and Hojo) while only seven main recurring females (Kikyo, Rin, Kaede, Kagome's mother, and Kagome's three friends from school).

* -- It's tricky to consider Kirara an actual character or not since 9 times out of 10 she was depicted as just an animal pet/companion with no personality beyond normal animalistic behavior.
 
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Sep 6, 2014
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#14
Not to generalize but the overwhelmingly amount of Inuyasha fanbase is female. I didn’t know it was considered Shonen anime since pretty much every fan I know is female.
 
Sep 13, 2009
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#16
Not to generalize but the overwhelmingly amount of Inuyasha fanbase is female. I didn’t know it was considered Shonen anime since pretty much every fan I know is female.
It's kinda like how a massive amount of the current MLP:FIM fanbase is male (adults, even) despite that franchise being meant for little girls. Some things just click with one audience or the other. ;)
 

Neon Genesis

Solaris Luna
Oct 31, 2015
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#18
Not to generalize but the overwhelmingly amount of Inuyasha fanbase is female. I didn’t know it was considered Shonen anime since pretty much every fan I know is female.
Inuyasha was published in a magazine in Japan called Shonen Sunday. A manga's genre is primarily decided by the magazine they ran in and not the number of male or female characters or what the majority gender of the fanbase is. X/1999 has more male characters than Sailor Moon and has a lot of graphic violent action scenes but it's still a classified as a shoujo manga. In this regard, the shonen and shoujo classifications are rather arbitrary.
 

Kerochan no Miko

Knight Radiant
Staff member
Site Admin
Feb 29, 2004
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#19
X/1999 has more male characters than Sailor Moon and has a lot of graphic violent action scenes but it's still a classified as a shoujo manga.
X/1999 is probably the only shoujo manga where, when you see sakura petals drifting by, you RUN AWAY.
 

blondibear_17

Lumen Cinererum
Mar 3, 2017
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#20
InuYasha, while created by a woman, still had a titular male lead and more male characters in its main group of protagonists (InuYasha, Miroku, Shippo) than female (Kagome, Sango)*, a central male antagonist (Naraku), an equal gender number of Naraku's important incarnations (Kagura and Kanna; the infant/Hakudoshi and Byakuya), the all-male Band of Seven (despite Jakotsu's feminine appearance and voice), and ten main recurring male characters (Sesshomaru, Jaken, Kohaku, Koga, Hachiemon, Myoga, Totosai, Sota, Kagome's grandpa, and Hojo) while only seven main recurring females (Kikyo, Rin, Kaede, Kagome's mother, and Kagome's three friends from school).

* -- It's tricky to consider Kirara an actual character or not since 9 times out of 10 she was depicted as just an animal pet/companion with no personality beyond normal animalistic behavior.
Well maybe I should have used my words much more carefully and said what if Sailor Moon were like a shonen anime/manga in a spiritual sense. Either way I feel like people know what I mean and while Shonen is obviously a male dominated genre by nature I still don't think it would be that different of a product if you replaced the male characters with female ones. It's just marketing and demographics and junk that makes Shonen what it is at the end of the day. I mean as people for example mentioned Rumiko Takahashi her stories are obviously shonen but they have a heavy female touch to them. Ranma for example is literally a girl half the time and hes still the same person on the inside. When I was younger I honestly never thought of Inuyasha as a Shonen series because while the title of the series clearly states who the main character it never really felt that way to me because the POV was from that of a female. Lots of series these days are not quite as stereotypically in the box as they used to be. I mean My Hero Academia for example is a really popular series these days and even if it's got a male dominated cast I feel like you could flip the main characters gender easy and it would be literally the same exact story. Deku in MHA actually reminds me a lot of Kamala Khan from Marvel's series Ms. Marvel