James Raggi and The Albatross?

 

Yah, its weird to me to be making a post regarding LOTFP stuff two times in a row, but I saw something that got my goat a bit and got me thinking.

Like I mentioned at one point in that last post, I've gotten to like James Raggi. I never disliked him, I never knew him other than a small contact online with him a decade and a half ago. 

But as I show in that last post I've got a bit of interest in some of the stuff he has brewed up. Plus for some months I have followed him on his FB, looking in to see what he is up to with his business and life in general. Health issues (the guy apparently has leg problems, but travels the world for con appearances to sell boxes of merch, so good on him). What seems to be very early jaunts to local small heavy metal shows. And making the occasional youtube video, often out in the snows of Finland. Yeah, I have developed a sort of fascination, but also a certain fondness. I think in the last post I stated he had a sort of "grotty charm," and that if he did live plays of him GMing his stuff, I would watch them. A fan? I dunno. I have never used any of his stuff in my games, but that does not mean I have no interest. 

I guess I have paid attention for some years. When the Zak Smith cancellation thing went down (Zakgate?), I read about him somewhere having to cut ties with Smith for the sake of his business, and in the following year or so him suffering personally from it. Crying in his sleep, soiling the sheets. I don't know enough to be able to determine for myself if this was hurt over a true friend, or just frustration with cancel culture in general. But hell, he seemed to recover from it. He seems to be doing fairly well in recent years without his association with Smith. 

Before I looked at his Facebook, I did see a thread reprinted somewhere a couple or three years ago. An argument between James and Zak apparently about James not working with him anymore. It was kind of brutal. I don't remember all the details, but the gist seemed to be poor James getting gaslighted over it all, and James at one point stating simply "all I know is your life keeps hurting my business." To the point, and yeah pretty fair. Protect the business. An actual money making business. 

Then in more recent times I noticed that James would complain about some regular real-world issue, and often ZS would chime in "what are you going to do about it?" I mean, it happened all the time. Like, this guy is supposed to be his conscious?  It was happening enough that I wondered if it was just some kind of performance art. Often ZS would just fully make it about himself and start laying out his own misfortune and why isn't anybody helping and doing anything about it? Ok, whatever. The guys are friends I guess so you tolerate a certain amount of things for the sake of the friendship. But it kind of smacked of the bullying of a fairly mild dude to me. 

Fair enough, but now James has tied his business back in with Zak. He gives ZS a couple of minutes to have his say about the new relationship.

Big news, in some circles. OSR? I'm kind of out of touch. In the last 5 years I have been using 5th ed, and I have mentioned both Zak and LOTFP in casual conversations about various gaming themes, and not a single person has heard of them. But I guess there are enough people in those certain circles, because as I said before James seems to be doing well. 

But some things about Zaks comments here kind of got my goat. Not just the simple "weird metal head who says and does fucked up shit" comment. But he called Raggi "stupid and cowardly."

Was James stupid and cowardly for breaking from working with Zak? Or was he being a smart businessman having to make a hard decision like many businessmen do? But whatevs, to me the standout here is that James Raggi is offering Zak Smith a new lease on his work (Zak made a post about being "brought back from hell") by bringing him back into the business that seems to be doing very well without him. The insults are kind of harsh in light of that. It kind of bothers me.

OK, so on Raggi's FB we once again have his friend making something that is positive for James all about himself and the negatives of his life. Will it hurt the business? Who knows. James is elated at somebody making a positive review of LOTFP, and because the person/people in question were part of the "hate mob" (I'm no expert and really don't know who most of the actors in all this in the last 5 years are) Zak makes it about the negatives in his life and seems to endorse people bothering the reviewer about it. One commentator on the thread does just that, in fairly nice terms, but yeah makes it all about ZK and his issues. 

Christopher 'Staples' O'Dell

Done. This is what I posted:

Great to see you continuing to review LotFP material.

I recently heard that you used to have reviews of three of Zak Sabbath's books – A Red and Pleasant Land, Vornheim, and Maze of the Blue Medusa, the first two of which are LotFP – but I'm not seeing them in your Reviews playlist anymore.

Between the court cases and the Clio Belle Weisman's Medium piece, it seems to be clear that Zak is innocent of the abuse charges that were leveled at him in the OSR community.

Would you be willing to put your reviews of Zak's material back up? If not, would you be willing to explain your reasoning?

I'm a very happy backer of Knave 2e and have been using it for my gaming. It's a great system and I want to be able to continue to support you with a clear conscience. Thanks!

Oookay. Honestly, Zak has a handful of super dedicated faithful (one guy who I think is named Semen in Ukraine pops up a lot as a staunch defender in Zak threads and has a blog that seems entirely about repeating Zaks talking point) who seem to step right in line with ZS's wants and I don't know if this guy is one of them. But yeah, somebody who was positive about Raggi's business is suddenly targeted with Zakness. Old negatives being hauled out. Of course, not being stupid nor cowardly James is not happy (I could screenshot some stuff, but I don't want to do that from somebody's social media, but here are snippets)

James Edward Raggi IV

oh for fuck's sake if the result of Ben reviewing LotFP is him getting bombarded by people bugging him about Zak (pro or con) the fucking result is going to be him not reviewing LotFP stuff anymore.

Zak Smith

James Edward Raggi So you let the bad guy who participated in cannibalizing your company because you want his attention. I am not in on that

Me, me, me. 

Look, I have no dog in this fight. A decade and a half ago I posted about Zak and company and was fairly complimentary, though I was not especially informed on everything regarding it all. Back then I had come off of years of listening to Howard Stern and that leaked into my blogging vibe. Now I'm a lot older and kind of identify as a Buddhist because of my constant search for balance and peace, so I don't want to judge. But I simply cannot wonder if James has made a major boo boo by essentially going backwards at a time when things seem to be going well. People (including humble old me in my last post) saying positive things about him and his work. Is it all going to have a taint of somebody else's apparent negativity and life problems attached to it from here on out? 

I mildly followed the Zak controversies in recent years. I'm not that informed these days on the general gaming community out there. I mainly look at some posts by Tenkar and one or two others. But it is a fascination story, and at some point I found myself having some sympathy for Smith. I saw a post where he had teeth pulled and an eviction notice due to lack of funds (sadly for the most part probably lining the pockets of lawyers). I get it. He got me too'd pretty hard. But is what he now brings to the table going to be an improvement for Raggi and his bottom line? If that line gets damaged, will it be out of his sense of friendship, or raging against the machine that cancels both a person and their works? I dunno. I could not offer advice because in my life I have not always made the best choices in terms of the friends I chose or the causes I championed. So I will try not to judge others in those regards. I can only wish Raggi the best with his business. I'm actually thinking of buying one of those 300 buck prestige format Virginia game packs i would likely never run just to more quietly support him. And I'm going to hope, like I would for anybody, his choices don't hurt him. Whatever those choices are, I won't think of him as stupid or cowardly. 

Cheers

All reactio

A True Relation of the Great Disastrum of Virginia

Since starting to work mostly from my home office the other year I watch a hell of a lot of YouTube. I have to be honest. I find it fairly distracting. All these 10 to 20 minute bits on all kinds of subjects I like or have interest in.

So every now and again a short, James Raggy video will pop up. So kind of more in touch with his stuff than i've ever been really. I had moments of fascination about some lotfp stuff such as years ago, hearing about the module, Death Frost Doom being a rip off of one of my old favorites, the Lichway from White dwarf magazine (as it turns out, only the ending gimmick was, but otherwise the Lichway was a far more approachable and gameable adventure module in general).

So, the other year he had a giant PDF sale with rock-bottom prices and I picked up a handful just to finally satisfy my curiosity about some things I didn’t want to spend more than a couple of bucks on. I still haven’t brought myself to read even the barest fraction of the stuff. There might be some tiny bits to steal, but overall a lot of the stuff just doesn’t fit with how I do things for my old school game world but I do believe that old style DND in itself is generally fairly weird unless you really try to make it not so. Back in the 80s I remember us playing albums with our games like John Michael Jarre’s strange Zoolook which is pretty weird and inspired lots of creep. But certainly not “your characters penis turns into a live eel” kind of creep. 

Over a decade ago in the early and chaotic beef-filled days of my blogging I remember messaging James regarding how he found players for his game in the city he was not native to. I got a quick reply and he seemed like a nice guy. I didn’t explore his stuff over the years because I generally don’t really purchase a whole lot of game material, again, I really don’t know how much use I would’ve gotten out of any of it. I supposed at some point, I’ll take a closer look at some of those PDFs bought for a song. I think I got Red and Pleasant Land and I'd like to see what the fuss is about. Vornheim just kind of baffled me. I run a lot of city stuff and certainly not how that is presented. 

So some time ago a Raggi Youtube video popped up. I always tend to pay a bit of attention. I kind of like the guy. I knew a lot of metal heads back in the day in Venice Beach, but he seems fairly harmless and amiable compared to those sketchy chuckleheads. It was mostly the metal loving surfers I got in to scrapes with in the beach parking lots (the movie Point Break had a lot of true to life bits in it). I mean there is some ick there. I mentioned in a previous post some time ago about his comments about "why would you bother cleaning the inside of your toilet"(uh...maybe cuz it is in the house, and maybe a girl will come over?). But fair enough. I don't think he drinks, but I could see having a beer and a shot with him and talking some games. Since I've been of a mind to leave the country in recent years I would probably also ask his advice on being a stranger in a strange land. 

But anyway, he introduced this...

“Being an Account of the Rising of a new Star to the West of the Virginia Colony,
And its Derangements of Space,
The Engines of a Second Creation,
Rains of Fishes and burninge Coales,
The Mazement thus brought to Heathen and Christian,
And the Prodigies, Sports of Nature, and invasive Creatures from Spheres beyond,
Now disportinge upon the Earth

After years of raids and massacres, the Powhatan Confederacy and the Virginia Colony find themselves in an uneasy peace. The people of Jamestown and outlying plantations again trade with Powhatan neighbors, and English planters again ship tobacco to markets across the Atlantic.

Then the land to the west of Powhatan territory seems to rupture skyward, a new star rising into the sky. Down the James River soon come reports of strange happenings, strange beasts, and stranger people.

The English were not the only ones seeking a New World.

A True Relation of the Great Disastrum of Virginia, 1633 is a campaign for use with Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing and other traditional role-playing games. This set comprises a sourcebook for the Virginia Colony, rules for exploring an altered wilderness, keyed encounters both in Virginia and far beyond, new Magic-User spells and miscast tables, and more than eighty new monsters”.

So, a high-quality campaign set, some kind of prestige format, and very different it seems from his usual modules with titles like "The Whores Bloody Guts" or "Honey, I fucked the kids."

Super interesting, I think. Colonizer days? Possibilities there (probably triggering in our current soy-boy society. Inspired by "Annihilation?" Cool. Super high quality and something like 300 bucks? Yow. Do you get a pdf with it so you can wrap the books in lead and put them in a safe?

My first thoughts though when I heard about it was "how the hell would I get players for this?" Is there a LOTFP forum with a player search thread? Because its getting hard enough to get players for DnD in the Roll20 forums. I want to do some Runequest and am mostly afraid of being to find enough players for it. Or at least a mixed gender group. I hate sausage fests. But not sure how the ladies, or even dudes I guess, would feel about running characters in buckle shoes and big stove pipe type hats (also with buckles). Stuff usually associated with Thanksgiving. Though The Witch (VVitch?) film was cool. I might use that as an example. 

It has struck me that this might work for Call of Cthulhu, and couched with that in mind may be the easiest ways to approach players. I do have a thing for different historical periods for CoC. I see Drive Thru has the PDF for 25 bucks, and I'm thinking of getting that just out of pure curiosity. 

I sure as hell would love to see some live play of this. It has been out awhile, but I see nothing. Not even a review. So maybe this is so far just being bought in the expensive form by the faithful and placed in protective plastic on shelves. But Raggi himself, with his odd, grotty charm, should be doing videos of him running this for some people. 

Will we ever get a proper cinematic Doctor Doom?

 It seems highly unlikely in my lifetime.

At comic-con and Hall H during a Marvel cinematic universe symposium, they made a dramatic reveal of Robert Downey Jr. coming out in a Dr. doom mask and revealing himself to rousing applause. of course, if you were just to cut a loud smelly fart in Hall H you would probably get big applause. Anyway, I found this quite cringe worthy and I will tell you why.

This is clearly a desperation move by Disney to generate some interest for Upcoming avengers movies that are going to be featuring characters from failed films and TV shows of the last few years. They needed to replace the woman beater who is playing Kang in various movies and shows and who was going to be the big bad in the upcoming projects. Personally, I always found Kang to be kind of weak sauce as far as a cinematic villain. Or comic villain. In general Dr. doom sounds like a far more interesting villain, and the reports about the upcoming Fantastic Four film despite Pedro Pascal being wildly miscast as Reed Richards Sounds pretty good.

But besides the Downey desperation move the fact that he already has been the flagship actor playing the flagship character in the more successful phases of the marvel cinematic universe makes this a baffling decision. So what are we going to get? Is he going to be an evil universe version of Tony Stark? or is he going to play Victor Von as essentially a completely different character and the plan is to make him look as different from Tony Stark and sound as different from Tony Stark as they possibly can. Neither of these sound like acceptable things to me.

I was an avid comic book collector from around the age of seven years old when my parents first brought a stack of comics from a swap meet to when I was around 25 years old and had decided that three dollars or more was far too much to pay for what amounted to less than 30 pages of comic book panels. On the face of it a single comic that doesn’t sound that bad but I was a type of person that would go every couple weeks and get a nice stack of about a dozen or more comics. dr. doom was just about my favorite villain. The arrogance and capability. The fact that he was a scientist and also a magician who every year on all hallows Eve did rituals to try to fight demons through a portal to hell to release his mothers gypsy soul from torment. and that time the fantastic four went to Latveria to confront doom and found it all messed up from their previous visits. They had left the place in a state of Apocalypse and the people were looking to Dr. doom as their rightful heir and savior and them as the enemy. This was just amazing stuff that you just can’t find in the comics today.

I remember at some point my mid teens, me and a couple of friends would sit around pretending to be our favorite comic book villains, and arguing about the events of the day. One friend was the red skull doing a German accent. Another one was Ultron doing a robot voice. and I of course, was Dr. doom. 

My only real hope is what I mentioned above the possibility that Robert Downey Jr. will be trying to go through some kind of acting transformation to be a completely different character other than Tony Stark. But that level of thespianism just doesn’t seem to be his bag. He seems to be at his best when he’s all snarky and snippy. But I would like him to prove me wrong.

I don’t collect comics anymore and in all honesty the last year or so I’ve been slowly trying to drizzle them away through eBay. I still have some decent old comic runs that at times seemed quite valuable. But my most valuable comics I had sold off and made thousands of dollars around the time eBay first came around. nowadays, people just aren’t paying as much money for the good stuff. but I still have emotional attachments to a lot of the stuff, and I found the marvel cinematic universe has given me just as many painful moments as it has great joys. And the painful stuff is deadened by the fact that it’s usually characters I never cared much about anyway. The comic versions of Captain Marvel and Modoc and others never mattered much to me. At least, and they’re more modern iterations. 

(spoilers for Deadpool and wolverine below)

But I think there is more pain to come than joys. But this last weekend I saw Deadpool and Wolverine and I found a lot of joy in there. Wesley Snipes Blade and Chris Evans Human torch. The original X-Men films, actors and characters like sabertooth and toad. Those really tickled my nostalgia bone.

I guess I’m just going to have to see. These next avenger movies are years away and aren’t really gonna be filled with characters I care much about. so I’ve mostly checked out emotionally from these films. But Deadpool and Wolverine really ignited the nostalgia in me. So who knows?

Jonesing for Glorantha. An impulse buy.

 I’ve talked about my old love of Runequest  here, here and here. And, well, over the years I probably at least mention Runequest in posts a dozen times so if you want to seek them out just type in Runequest in the search bar. Oh, I talked about in one of my articles for now defunct Film Goblin (the owner of the site was a hopeless, hardly functional drunk). 

The point of this quick post though is about this impulse buy…I don't buy many physical books anymore.

Running Cthulhu of late certainly has me thinking about Runequest just due to the basic role-playing similarities. Then it quickly leads to me thinking about Glorantha,  Probably my favorite game setting of all time.

It was one of those alternatives to dungeons and dragons. I discovered early on as a kid hanging out at Aero hobbies in Santa Monica. I ran a dragonnewt for a long time there, at least in young person time. Probably for like a year. but when owner Gary and the older dudes decided to move onto another game, like Traveller or Empire of the petal throne, we younger people went along with them. How I discovered so many games early on in the hobby.

It was my older teens and onward when I’d much preferred playing with my own friends or groups rather than a hobby shop with a bunch of stinky, aging wargamers and college aged nerds. That along with playing sports, surfing and of course girls I graduated from that dusty musty place to get a short campaign or two of RQ going with friends between my late teens and early 20s, but there were just so many things I loved to run. Primarily DND but I loved champions and also Cthulhu here and there. DnD always had to take the lions share of game time, but I had other loves and in every group I put together I would unleash another genre on them. They would resist but then love it. 

Then probably something like a break from RQ that lasted decades before I ran a shortish campaign of it with my group around 10 years ago in Santa Monica. 

Well, now I’ve got this bug again and I just decided to get the main book of the latest edition just to have a read through and see if I wanna go through the player finding process for it. It’s fairly thick and heavy book. More reading than I generally like to do these days ha ha. But I’m really going to buckle down and try to get a few pages in a night.

Its a really thick jampacked book. So much information on the cults and societies and all that. Far more than I remember in the ancient second edition book. Too much really I think. In the day we had to fill in a lot of the gaps ourselves. But I also realized I should’ve maybe gotten the quick start rules. there’s just so much crunch in this book. So much background info. And the Quickstart rules come with cool maps of Glorantha and of towns and stuff. I actually didn’t get the quickstart because It didn’t seem like elves and dwarves would be in that book. But they’re not in the main book either. For that you have to get the Glorantha Bestiary.

 I may just go ahead and get the quick rules anyway. The main book is kind of intimidating. Prob still gotta get the Bestiary. 

But, damn, I just want to run some Glorantha. I have used Gringles Pawn shop and the Rainbow Mounds so much for D&D it is time to experience them with Runequest again! We'll see. But it's fun reading.

Cheers

Orcs are South Americans now?

 Here’s a recent image of Orcs from the new DND (Players Handbook?) and it sure seems to have some kind of gaucho thing going on..

notice they’ve also managed to add in a body positivity orc in there.

Since I’ve done posts about orcs in the distant past, I just mention this in passing. This image related to the newest D&D shows a group of orc hunters and they appear to be some kind of South American cowboy types. Gauchos. my main complaint actually would be that they just look too human in general.

Even weirder since starting some years ago the woke low foreheads of gaming decided that orcs are racist, and that everybody thinks of them as Black people. Although me or nobody I’ve ever known since I was a child ever once uttered words that would make you think we thought they were Black people, this is the actual racism that woke people tend to show when you peek beneath the hood.

yo, G…

For all we know this is just this particular artist rendering of a particular situation and that’s fine. But I will repeat as I have again and again I love, nasty cannibal, rape you and then eat you Tolkian orcs. But that seems to be kind of a singular thing in my case. Most old schoolers like their DND orcs to look like those stupid pig head orcs from the original monster manual that are clearly a misinterpretation of the Hildebrandt brothers artwork orcs. 

But whatever it is I’ll also repeat like I have again and again that attaching racist things to fantasy creatures that have been around forever is stupid as fuck.

YMMV

The Darkest of Dungeons

 

I think I first heard about the darkest dungeon video games at some point early last year. Or, since the game is several years old, I may have been hearing bits and pieces over the years.  I had started watching a lot of YouTube on my TV in my home office because I started working mostly from home during the week. As I would plug away with multiple databases and files opening on my two monitors I was discovering all kinds of things. About video games, politics, comic books. Anything that struck my fancy. Anything I could have on in the background that wouldn’t affect my productivity too much.

So I heard about these two video games; Darkest Dungeon one and two. Essentially fairly low animation based dungeon crawlers featuring multiple kinds of characters going into fairly brutal dungeon environments. One of the most interesting things about them was the characters could get stressed out by things like torches going out, monsters harming a teammate or from all kinds of things. if the stress would get bad enough you get afflicted. Kind of like sanity. They might get some kind of syndrome like a kleptomaniac or a sex addict. But also, at least in the first game, a character dying was permanent. You lose that character then you can no longer access them.

Vestal going ape shit

When I found out recently that the second one was still only available on computers and not consoles, and that the first one was available on Nintendo switch that decision was made. I wanted more games for my switch. I’m taking a break from Breath of the wild which I’m probably in the last 8 to 10% of as far as finishing it up. And the other game I have is called Cuphead and it’s hard as hell as far as platformers go and I got kind of tired of that one around the holidays. As I said I had been watching YouTube videos about DD for a long time and now that I’m a couple weeks into playing the game, I’m still watching those videos because it’s a steep learning curve.  

Crusader goes bat shit

And this last weekend I had started paying attention to the individual characters, character sheet menus, and their statuses, and all that. I would play a couple hours, going through a couple of the dungeons set ups. Practice using the menus. Over several hours of restarts I think I’m finally getting the basics. Knowing enough to think a little bit more long-term. This game from what I’ve heard has many hours in it. as far as this game and breath of the wild goes, the Nintendo switch for an older little system sure does not skimp on the size of gameplay. 

I want to have a real good idea on how to play this thing before I go for the long game.  I’ll prob  post again about the experience when I get about another 30 or 40 hours into it. Gets apparently more brutal and hard as you go along. A true old-school killer dungeon Master haha. 

Gravedigger goes bugnuts

below is a relatively short and very funny video about the game.

and of course, like any good dungeons and dragons video game the inspiration is there for your own real life games with people. I don’t know about the sanity style mechanic, but it certainly inspires you to run a killer, easy death campaign. And besides the town and all its facilities, the dungeon areas and the final castle just alone are inspiring for locations. Not a direct adaptation, but I can see running a campaign based on this. Characters coming to town by carriages and helping you or your ancestor whoever left you the place you get the joint cleaned up Tegal Manor style because oh boy is everything corrupt. Almost as much as characters who come here.

And yeah, you heard that right. Ancient module/setting Tegel Manor certainly comes to mine. The atmosphere the horrible monsters that also tend to have some gonzo humor in there, and even some portraits play large part of the game. 

Anyway, looking forward to even more brutal game play. 

Cheers

I love Sailor Moon

 That is a hell of a statement. That I love Sailor Moon. But it’s true. I don’t necessarily mean the character herself. Although I often find her completely and deliriously hilarious. The true embodiment of a silly, giggly japanese schoolgirl. But she’s not my favorite Sailor Guardian/Senshi. I mean the show itself. In recent months, it’s become my favorite anime. Yep more so than Dragon Ball Z. More so than Lupin the third. 

Years ago, I had a girlfriend who loved the English dub. It was around the time I was in full-blown Dragon BallZ love and fascination. Those Sailor Moon western dubs seemed so lame. I had no idea at all about the original Japanese versions. It just seemed clearly made for little girls. But that was a conceit of the dub version. G rated. Of course DBZ did the same in their own way. Instead of being killed folk were “sent to another dimension.” But Sailor Moon was so deeply steeped in Japanese culture and tradition It was often confusing about what was going on. And it took place in real world Japan, in Juban, an actual Tokyo district where the manga author lived. The western dub removed as much of the Japanese cultural stuff as they could, and also a lot of the battles. 

But thanks to my Roku and Pluto TV I discovered the original Japanese versions, and I was gob smacked. Early last year Pluto TV added a Sailor Moon channel. Showing all five seasons in order. And I was binge watching this shit much like I did with Lupin the third.  Much like with that, I often just have it on in the background and over the months I probably watched the entire series multiple times. There’s a lot to unpack in there. in a nutshell, according to the first couple paragraphs of her Wikipedia her first few episodes are described thusly…

A 14-year-old underachieving young schoolgirl named Usagi Tsukino meets a magical talking cat named Luna. Luna gives Usagi the ability to transform into a magical alter ego — Sailor Moon — tasked with locating the moon princess and battling the evil forces of the Dark Kingdom. When Usagi transforms for the first time into her magical sailor suit with Luna's help, she overreacts and reluctantly accepts her fate, not sure what has happened to her. At the time she does not know the enemies she will face, the friends she will make, or the experiences ahead of her.^[4][5][6] As she moves forward, she accepts her fate, and realizes the importance of fighting evil.

In that first season, Sailor Moons fellow Senshi start showing up one at a time. First, she meets Mercury, then Mars, Jupiter, and finally Venus. Usagi/Moon has the adorable yet slightly annoying personality of a temperamental baby. It automatically sort of makes the other sailors who come along protective of her. Although Mars, who is pretty known no nonsense, outright hates her at first.

The original Senshi of the Inner Planets

Mercury

Sailor Mercury is the brains of the outfit. Basically a computer nerd but is good at almost anything academic. She mostly cares about studying and constantly lectures the other ones especially  on putting in the work to do good at school. Her powers are water-based and her first attack appears to be the fairly mild aqua illusion. But it comes in handy pretty often as it puts up a mist that can obscure the battlefield which is helpful because most of their opponents tend to seem to be more powerful than they are. 

Mars

Sailor Mars as I said it kind of no nonsense. She lives and works when not in school at her grandfather’s temple. She works there  as a temple girl. Back in history, they seem to have more important roles, but in modern times they seem to be more like tour guides and janitors constantly sweeping up.

 I didn’t really know anything about them until I watched this show. But the temple girls take up sort of a pop culture status in Japan. Mostly in high school or college who do it part time as a job and eventually move on from it. Mars original attack is called burning Mandala. It has nothing to do with Nelson Mandela. Apparently Mandala Is some kind of spiritual circle made up runes. In terms of how the attack is summoned and how it looks, it’s probably my favorite attack of all the scouts. 

Mars is somewhat dismissive and unapproachable, constantly criticizing Usagi/Moon and calling her out for acting like a baby. 

Jupiter

Sailor Jupiter is a tall tomboy and appears to have supernatural strength both on the athletic field or in battle. Attacks are lightning based and seem to be the strongest of all the attacks at least at first. and unlike the others, she also seems to show superior strength when she’s not in her sailor guardian form. Jupiter seems to have had a bad break up with some boy at some point in the past and it comes up from time to time. Like most of the girls she has a tendency to be boy crazy. She is the most mature of them though but bottom line at first they’re all basically 14 and 15-year-old schoolgirls.

Venus and her "Love Me Chain"

Sailor Venus is the last of the guardians to come along. And she has the most interesting background of all of them. The most experienced. In fact before the series was created, and before Sailor Moon was even conceived the creator of the manga Originally made The series about Venus. It was called sailor V. She wore The Sailor outfit but also wore a mask. In the Sailor Moon series, her background had her though originally being Japanese having lived in England for a time operating as sailor V. She fought not just monsters, but gangsters and other criminals, she was kind of famous and they made video games and action figures of her. When she meets the other guardians, the assumption is she is the moon princess that they are all looking for. She was a hero of Sailor Moon before moon even became a guardian (all this was left out of the english dubs). Her first main attack and probably my second favorite one is called Venus Love me chain. A ridiculous name for an attack, but it’s pretty devastating as she summons up a supercharged chain that she can grab things with or smash people with, and all kinds of uses. Potentially the most versatile of all the attacks.

Around mid series, Chibi moon appears (cringingly called Mini Moon in America). you can find a lot of criticism of this character amongst the fandom online. Truly kind of hated much like Scrappy doo. But her background is interesting. She’s a daughter of Sailor Moon and Tuxedo mask from the far future. luckily, she’s only around for a season or two. Although in the final season, what appears to be an even younger version of her appears, but it’s not actually Moons daughter, but the representation of the goodness of Galaxia (more on her later) that was pushed out of her body.

Later in the series, more sailor guardians start showing up. Sailor Uranus and sailor Neptune arrive, and as they seemed to represent the outer planets of the solar system, they are known at least by fandom as The Outer Senshi. like all new sailors that come along later in the series after the original core group, they seem to have ulterior motives and come off as potential enemies. But most interestingly about these two is they are clearly lesbians, are a couple and Uranus dresses and acts more like a male. and non-Japanese dubs of the series they are typically portrayed as cousins, though you don’t have to look too closely to see an intimacy there. it’s not exactly shocking as in the original Japanese versions at least a couple of enemy characters have been portrayed as gay and trans. Though they look female enough that American dubs at least they are portrayed as females. This was the late 80s and early 90s so pretty ahead of its time stuff. I haven’t seen a ton of that kind of thing in anime but I am pretty particular about my faves. Sailor Pluto, another Outer Guardian, is their ally.

Pluto, Uranus, Neptune, and "The Messiah of Silence"

The final season known as Sailor Stars introduces the concept of a past Sailor Wars, where the sailor guardians are somewhat common throughout the universe. They were really kind of like Green Lanterns, protecting certain planets and sectors of outer space. rather than resurrected or awakened space goddesses, they’re kind of avatars of planetary bodies. The final boss is Galaxia, who it seems has been behind all of the guardians troubles from the very beginning was a Sailor Guardian, who was possessed by the forces of chaos. 

In the final season known as "Sailor Stars" the Sailor Starlights appear. Three sailor guardians from Deep Outer space who played the role of pop singers on earth and the songs they sing our messages trying to attract their lost princess. Again, gender lines are broken here. The  Starlights are female but their mortal pop star forms are male.   

A very small part of the manga, they are a very large part of the final season of the original series.

Lots of this fifth season is serious is a heart attack. Dragon BallZ style power creep is in full effect and Galaxia represents a complete invincible power who decimates everything at will. The final battles where Sailor Moon finally comes through with her full power and the great warmth of her light saves the universe. But not before everyone dies (the Sailor Senshi actually die and are resurrected at least a couple times in the series) and it appears like all the Sailor Scouts have been brutally killed (In silhouette it appears their torsos are blown open). But it was never in doubt that there would be a happy ending. But silly Sailor Moon truly goes through Jesus like trials, emotionally and physically, and proves herself finally to be worthy of the princess title. 

The run of the series is full of repeated musical themes, from typical Japanese pop to moody blues and uplifting jazz. Title song of the final season, “Dont give up”  it’s one of the better and more dramatic pop songs. but considering what happens later in the season and all the death and degradation, it can be later looked at as more of a finger snapping dirge. A call for help. and one moment of this opening song, you see the fanged silhouetted face of anyone of Moons many enemy women smiling as she plummets to earth backwards. I love this song and it’s towards the top of my playlist. 

Even though there are often dramatic situations and dire circumstances (The sailor guardians tend to get their asses handed to them by their enemies in almost every encounter despite their powers) it is indeed a silly show. But the deeper I got into it the more I saw the more adult humor within it. Sailor Moon often comes into the battlefield with hilarious speeches. Such as when they fight a demon who is making the food rot in a supermarket Sailor Moon enters and proclaims. “You have angered the fresh Highland vegetables and mouthwatering shabu shabu beef.”

Often theres  little things that just make me laugh out loud. Such as when the girls are on the beach and  Mars is looking around with binoculars and suddenly a man's bulging crotch comes into view. Mars Freaks out and shouts and tosses aside the binoculars. 

Then there was a time Sailor Moon is stuck in some bushes and crying like a baby as usual. Then a little bird flies in and lands on her butt and starts pecking on it and moon starts giggling. One of my favorite comedy moments is when one of the beautiful full grown female enemies of the scouts refers to them is having square bodies. Sailor Moon declares “actually for teenage girls are bodies are quite typical” I find these little moments outstanding and I’m sure you won’t find them anywhere in the western dubs. 

Some years after the original show around 2015 I think, They did a full reboot of the show called Sailor Moon crystal. This series throws out most of the superfluous content that was never in the manga and adopted the art style used in the original books. I had my doubts, but it’s actually pretty good. Better animated and despite some silliness still being there because of course Japanese schoolgirls it’s much more dramatic in tone. And instead of all the pop music it’s more like a classical gospel score. It’s actually very interesting to compare the differences. and watching the newer one lets you know how much filler they created for the original series to pad out the Manga stories. and during the run of the original series, like a lot of anime, they made several movie length episodes to play in theaters in Japan at the time. The Pluto TV channel shows all this stuff. 

Sailor Moon creator Naoko Takeuchi

Since I started writing this post earlier this week, I actually went by a local authentic Asian market the only one in town I think. Haven’t been in there in quite a while. But they feature some anime and Manga merchandise in the back. And they had these Sailor Moon character figurines, and the only two left were my favorites, Mars, and Venus. They were only 9.99 and they’re very well detailed and I could see these selling the convention for 30 bucks or more. Had to snap them up. Of course, I told the girl at checkout they were for my niece ha ha. Cheers!