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As a kid, Rachel Fox Von Swearingen pleaded with her local comic book store in Southeast Ohio to start bringing in manga to their shelves. The store was chalk full of comics that were marketed to young men with very few options for anyone else.

After they refused, Fox Von Swearingen drove 30 miles away to the next closest comic book store, which finally accepted Fox Von Swearingen’s proposal and started to stock their shelves with manga. One of the mangas that were brought in was “Sailor Moon,” a manga and anime that went on to become one of the most influential franchises that still carries a legacy into today’s manga and anime.

“In the ‘90s, you would walk into a comic store and be surrounded by male dominated superheroes, male dominated stories,” Fox Von Swearingen said. “That was another (reason) why ‘Sailor Moon’ was a gateway.”

Fox Von Swearingen began collecting “Sailor Moon” memorabilia, whether it be manga, trading cards or even a replica costume of the sailors, much of which is now on display in Bird Library’s exhibition “In the Name of the Moon: A Story of Sailor Moon Fandom.” For this exhibition, Fox Von Swearingen teamed up with Stephen Singer, a technology consultant and exhibits coordinator for Bird Library. The two wanted to focus on the importance “Sailor Moon” had on spreading more stories for and about women, especially in the comic book and gaming communities.

“The Sailor Moon manga was licensed for English translation in North America in the mid-nineties,” Fox Von Swearingen said. “Up to that point, no one had been translating and officially publishing and marketing manga that was for women.”

The “Sailor Moon” manga started being serialized in 1991 in Japan, and due to its popularity there,it became an anime in 1992. It was not until 1995 that “Sailor Moon” started being shown in the U.S., following the success of Studio Ghibli movies and the sci-fi thriller “Akira” from the early ‘90s.

The series focuses around a group of young girls who find out they are reincarnations of alien princesses and use the powers from them to defend the Earth. “Sailor Moon” is an example of a “maho shojo” or a “magical girl anime,” a genre that gained popularity after the series release and focuses on young women with special powers who use them for heroic purposes.

Before popular series like “Pokemon” or “Bleach” took off in America, accessing anime and manga was much more difficult, Fox Von Swearingen said. Fans in the U.S. were forced to use early chat rooms, blog posts and bootlegged videos to consume this content.

Much of the exhibition shows how these early fans dealt with those difficulties. Over the years, Fox Von Swearingen had collected memorabilia—anything from trading card games to a “Sailor Moon” themed Monopoly set — from eBay and gifts from friends.

Even with these early barriers, “Sailor Moon” was an instant hit in the U.S. after first being aired in 1995, and gained even more popularity after Cartoon Network picked up the series in 1996 and started showing it on their anime broadcast Toonami.

Since then, “Sailor Moon” has become a household name in anime and is frequently referenced in other anime and pop culture at large. For many, like junior Erina Uddin, Sailor Moon is a nostalgic anime, but also something she was not expecting to see in Bird Library.

“I thought it was surprising that Bird of all places wanted to do a ‘Sailor Moon’ event,” Uddin said. “It shows (Bird Library is) perceptive to students’ interests and shows that ‘Sailor Moon’ is a big anime that everyone has watched and is very merchandised.”

This perception was an important part of the curatorial process, Singer said. He actively wants to make exhibitions that students can relate and interact with. As a part of the exhibition, Bird Library even gave out buttons to commemorate the exhibit that say “I Got Mooned at Bird Library.”

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“We want to tell the stories of the community,” Singer said. “It’s about telling your story and your perspective and things that you have a passion for, like Rachel does with ‘Sailor Moon.’”

Next to one of the exhibitions, Fox Von Swearingen set up manga, books and comic books, many of which were written by women or about women, to display what has come after the “Sailor Moon” franchise.

“(The exhibit) gave me the opportunity to retrospectively look at the ‘Sailor Moon’ fandom from an academic, historical standpoint, because I was a fan. I experienced it in my late teens, early 20s, and then through the present,” Fox Von Swearingen said. “It was like leaving a cultural and historical fandom story, and with my own, less academic experience at the time.”

The exhibition, which will be on display until the end of March, also emphasizes the importance this anime had on gender norms in cartoons and gaming, Fox Von Swearingen said.

Having media like this at a young age was very significant for Uddin as a child. Now she looks fondly on “Sailor Moon” and the empowerment she got from it.

“It’s something everyone watched as a child — especially young girls — at a time when every show, every media was male dominated or showed gender stereotypes. ‘Sailor Moon’ showed that women can be powerful,” Uddin said.

Published on March 21, 2023 at 11:41 pm