Female Characters Meme

[evey_w]

Wherein I am supposed to list 100 female characters that I love. I'm going to stick to the ones that I at least like moderately, and leave out the ones that I only like a little. I probably can't get to 100, but I'm determined to at least make it to 50, with minimal padding.

Comments

[evey_w]

>Hell, I still want to be just like her. Really, the only thing she's missing is a dozen dogs (doesn't want to scare the crows away, after all).

I think I have second thoughts about the crows after a group of them keeps gathering at a tree close to my window in the summer. They are SO FREAKIN' SOUND and starts squawking at like 5:00 am in the morning and shit. >:(

>Kind of curious about this one. Not in a sarcastic way--it's just that all I know about Sailormoon comes from PGSM and osmosis.

This is uh, sort of a weird one for me. To understand it you would have to know about her story, which I'd link you to wiki except it's mixed up with the anime version and confusing and stuff, so here goes:

Basically, Hotaru is the human incarnation of Sailor Saturn, who gets the most extremely crappy job of appearing every once in a while after huge catastrophes, to destroy everything that is left over so that things can start anew. In the process of wrecking havoc, she then dies herself. For example: The last time she appeared was after the moon kingdom was destroyed, when she wiped off everything from the moon while Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune were the only ones left to watch.

As a child, Hotaru was involved in a fire accident where she and her mother were critically injured. They were both supposed to have died (thus Sailor Saturn should never have awoken in this era), but Hotaru survived because some evil aliens appeared and helped her scientist father save her by installing cybernetic stuff into her body. In return, she becomes host to one of the evil aliens called Mistress 9, who will slowly take over her body.

Anyway, she grows up constantly ill, is quiet and introverted and doesn't have any friends, until one day she met Chibiusa who befriended her, and slowly she opened up to the sailor gang.

But not everything is sparkles, as Uranus and Neptune (and later Pluto) have all been searching for Sailor Saturn so that they can stop her from awakening to destroy everything. As all clues pointed to Hotaru, they decided that they must kill her. The other people are of course against the idea, but then at the moment Mistress 9 completes the transformation, bumped out Hotaru's soul, and then ripped out chibiusa's silver crystal which sent her into a coma.

Although just a floating spirit now, Hotaru somehow managed to take back the crystal and returned it to chibiusa, and then she said her farewell and disappeared, presumably dead.

Then everyone fights the evil alien, fails miserably, Sailormoon does her super power things, and then they are all down, and Sailormoon appears to be dead. At this moment, Sailor Saturn awakens and single-handed defeats the evil alien while destroying everything else around her along with it. Then she asks Pluto to seal her up and this time she really dies. And then we see Sailormoon is not actually dead and does her rebirth thing yada yada and they found Hotaru reborn as a baby in the end.

[evey_w]

...

Okay, SO. I think I like Hotaru mostly because she's the only character in Sailormoon with a comprehensive and interesting backstory as a human civilian (i.e. with the others you can just kinda sum it up with "Makoto is physically strong, and likes to cook", or "Haruka likes car racing and dresses like a man", etc). She is strong as hell in Sailor form and has an awesome glaive (seriously, Kaness has a glaive because I liked hers so much that I gave him one.) Her existence also makes the other characters interesting, in that we see chibiusa can be a warm and caring person rather than just a goddamn brat, and the outer senshis are willing to kill an innocent girl for the greater good.

Story and art-wise, the Sailor Saturn arc is also the most well done in my opinion. There are the least plot holes, the story is actually quite complex but still understandable, and the last showdown contains some of the prettiest shoujo style fight scene I've ever seen (aside from Clamp). I consider this to be the peak of the series' achievements, after which everything just goes downhill from volume 12.

...Oh, what the hell. I'll also admit that I have a soft spot for lonely, kind-hearted, introverted characters who are not emo or suicidal, yet nonetheless are self-sacrificing for the people they love, kinda like Ernest, actually. XD;

Oh wow. This ended up being really long. I...I'm embarassed orz;.

[oshortie]

Actually I'm glad you made a super long post on this; it was really interesting.

And from your list I heart Azula, cause she's evil but mostly b/c her voice actor is incredible.

[that_oneill_guy]

Oh, I would have dogs, definitely. I don't want crows. XD I just did not want to imply that Ursula's lack of puppies was due to any lack of foresight on her part.

Thanks for the Hotaru explanation! I like the idea of Sailormoon, but functionally, shoujo tends to do nothing for me aha. Reading this, though, I may give the Mistress 9 arc a shot at some point. It sounds pretty damn cool, and I feel like I should open myself to a variety of experiences, fiction-wise.

Don't be! I really like reading other people's long-winded opinions/explanations of things, especially when I know little about them myself. Thanks again. *g*

[evey_w]

The unfortunate thing about Sailormoon is that--while the idea has a lot of potential, Takeuchi sensei seems to have little interest at in improving the artwork, storytelling and character development vs. just rushing everything through to finish the pages. As a result, by the time she gets to the 4th arc and beyond, we get an explosion of new characters with fugly designs, little personality and backstory, and is on top of that drawn badly.

And then the fight mechanics. I mean, most of shoujo fighting tend to be just throwing around non-descript powers (heck, Clamp did that for chapters in the showdown of Tsubasa), but most of Sailormoon's power flinging is just damn goofy. Like in this scene. Seriously, is that the best you can do, Darien? Aim with your power and yell? No wonder the earth is in so much trouble you useless prince. ="=

But yeah, anyway, the Sailor Saturn arc (which spans from the middle of Volume 7 to nearly the end of Volume 10) is probably the most you'd want to read, and by reading that you'll also get to understand what people are talking about re: the often mentioned Uranus and Neptune. Beyond that arc nobody gets any more proper character development.

[that_oneill_guy]

PAHAHA that Helios guy is like a pegasus-unicorn thing, right?

*lol @ the power flinging* Those last few chapters of Tsubasa were just yaaaaaawn. Manga should try to feel more like a video game. That's what I think.

Volumes 7 to 10. Got it. Thanks again for the info.

[evey_w]

>PAHAHA that Helios guy is like a pegasus-unicorn thing, right?

Yea, something like that. You know that it's horribly wrong when even Takeuchi sensei admits that his design is a disaster.