Okay, I'll admit it. There was a pretty big chunk of my life when I was a huge fan of Japanese pop culture. It started way back when with a magical girl show called Sailor Moon. Now, most people my age started watching it on Cartoon Network during their Toonami show block. But I remember seeing it during the wee hours of the morn some years before. I had been up early because of a cold and I remember being mesmerized. Cut to some years later, and I was hooked.
To say I was a Sailor Moon fan would be putting it lightly. I was obsessed. I ran home and watched the TV (laughing and crying all the way) and devoured the manga when I could. I dragged my mom into Hot Topic and made her buy me the cheesy merchandise. I still own the comic-style issues they printed. I spent hours on the internet, looking up the Japanese version of the manga. I printed out images and collected them in a binder. I'm pretty sure I got grounded once for using up too much ink.
I hunted down clips and listened to the music. I knew the Japanese theme by heart and even had a chance to listen to the German and French themes. And remember folks, this was before Youtube. Before Google even. *shudder*
I bought the badly dubbed movies and watched horrendous fansubs of the lost seasons. They made a live-action TV show and I was there, front and center. Hell, Sailor Moon was the reason why I bothered to learn Japanese.
Fanart? Check. Fanfics? Check. Fancomics? Double check. I cut my storytelling teeth on writing about my own Sailor Senshi. Am I embarrassed by it now? Yeah, a little. Did my passion wane? You bet. But this past August, Kodansha started reprinting the Sailor Moon manga Stateside and I've been in nostalgia heaven.
Moon Prism Power, bitches!
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