Sailor Moon "Fridge Logic" That I Never Understood

February 16, 2012

Sailor Moon “Fridge Logic” That I Never Understood

sailorfailures:

How come nobody recognises the Sailor Soldiers when they look, like, exactly the same!?!?

This one is the most WTF? “observation” for me. I mean, they transform and fight and attack with magical sparkly nonsense. Isn’t it kind of obvious that there’s some kind of magical force that stops people from recognising them? It takes a very determined person to see a series where characters are treated as unrecognisable post magical-sparkly-transformation, are canonically stated to “look different” when transformed, and still decide that it’s an error.

How come nobody, like, attacks the Sailor Soldiers when they take a BAJILLION YEARS to transform!?!?!?!?

There are a couple of scenes where we can see that their transformations actually take no more than a few seconds to complete, and the shiny sequences we see are basically just that - shiny sequences for our viewing pleasure. Considering that the “ribbons” they use to transform do seem to exist (they can be seen again whenever Usagi de-transforms), it’s most likely that we’re seeing their transformations in a kind of slow-motion “bullet time” effect. A good example of evidence is the scene with Usagi + Mamoru in the elevator with a fireball headed their way; Usagi transforms with only a couple of seconds before it hits, but still manages to escape with Mamoru. With this one it’s easier to understand the confusion, since it’s more of a Japanese trope - kids there are kind of brought up with stock footage like that, so they understand that what they’re seeing isn’t really what’s happening, much in the same way that you might’ve watched an old Loony Tunes cartoon and known that when a character’s heart popped out of their chest and their eyes exploded in excitement at seeing a member of the opposite sex, they hadn’t just suffered a horrible and painful death; it was just something we were seeing so as to be funny/cool. So for a person (especially a kid) watching Sailor Moon with no experience with the magical girl genre/anime in general, it can seem strange. I still wish this question would die out though.

Like, how come nobody knew that Sailor Moon was the Moon Princess, right??!!???

Basically this boils down to “this person came from the same place as the Princess, OBVIOUSLY THEY MUST BE THE PRINCESS and everyone else is dumb as a box of hair for not realising!!!!”.
The fact that Usagi is Sailor Moon is actually a point against her being the Princess, since Luna + Artemis are expecting the Princess to not be a Sailor Soldier. They’re also expecting her to be Princess-like, already have control over the Silver Crystal, and to remember more about the Silver Millennium than they do. So to meet the totally-incompetent, un-Princess-like, knows-nothing-about-this-stuff Usagi, and the only suggestion as to why she might be the Princess is that she protected the moon, why would they think that?

I dunno, this is a bunch of I MAD but this stuff kind of gets under my skin, especially since everyone seems to think they’re the first person to ever point out what a TOTALLY OBVIOUS LOGICAL FALLACY these are. Like, I mean, SM is hella damn full of plot holes. These aren’t them.

^ THIS!!! I could have sworn that they explained there was a magic in the pen that made it so no one would know who they were. I remember the episode with Princess D where Usagi turns into a princess, and tests it out in front of her dad..Buuut, I can’t find it so I guess I am crazy.. But I totally agree with you..

It’s pretty much canon that there’s magic that keeps them from being recognized and/or they actually look different upon transformation and their looking the same to us is for the benefit of the viewer (or in the case of the manga, reader). There’s even notes in the manga where Naoko was originally planning on having their hair color change and everything. And the fact that (again in the manga) Usagi’s hair starts growing like mad and she says essentially “I’m changing into someone else” suggests that in their past lives they had different appearances, so I know a popular fan theory is that when they transform they take on the appearance of their past selves.

It’s always been my headcanon that the magic that protects their disguises is in the gems of the tiaras for all but Sailor Moon. Because Sailor Moon uses her tiara as a weapon and later doesn’t have one, hers is in her odango hair gems. And if those were to be broken/removed, their glamour/disguise would be undone and they could be recognized. But that’s just my personal headcanon. However you think the magic works, that there is some magic there is pretty much accepted.

As for the transformation stuff, as stated above, there are a couple of examples in the show of quick transformations that make it clear that transforming actually only takes a second and is near-instant.

And, for the record, the other reason they never attack when they are transforming is because the girls don’t transform in front of the villains. The villains don’t attack because the girls aren’t there to attack. They are hiding. Because the girls don’t want to give their identities away by transforming in front of the monster (I will admit some of their hiding places are kind of hard to believe, but if you accept the story they feed you that they cannot be seen there, then the villains not attacking because they can’t be seen!)

(via simplysailormoon)

3:59pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMbepxGX8YX7

(Notes: 84)

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