In both the anime and the manga, as civilians Mirchiru (Michelle US) is a very girly and beautiful musician and Haruka (Amara US) is an androgynous race car driver. Everyone who meets Haruka thinks she is a boy and it leads to some confusion and hilarity especially when Usagi (Serena) and Minako first meet them. In the manga and in the Japanese anime, it is established that they are in a relationship with each other. There are many moments, some funny, some very touching, to establish their relationship. It is taken as natural and normal. They obviously love each other and they have the most mature of the relationships shown in Sailor Moon.
When it came time to dub their episodes in the United States in 2000, however, their relationship was changed to "cousins" since it was believed that a lesbian relationship would not be acceptable for a children's cartoon even though there is nothing overt about their relationship other than some hand holding and a little "couple" talk. This made for some very interesting changes especially in the episode with the love challenge which was changed to the friendship challenge with only male/female couples besides Michelle and Amara. It also made the animation seem off since they would talk about one thing, but the images invoked a different sort of tone. There were also many changes of Haruka flirting with Usagi where Amara would say something about flirting with Darien (Mamoru) in order to make her "straight." It was a ridiculous change. I doubt that they would include the relationship if they re-dubbed the series, but I would hope they wouldn't make them cousins because it is just creepy.
Wow. I'd heard of Sailor Moon but didn't know they made those changes. That's...upsetting. :/
ReplyDeleteYeah, they took something wonderful and emotional and turned into something awkward. It was a horrible change.
ReplyDeleteYeah... that's a little creepy. I had heard abotu this in the past, a LONG time ago - I've never seen Sailor Moon in my life. But conceptually... really? I mean... that' s like if they translated Robin Hood into Spanish, and made Marian and Robin Hood, you know... just really close friends. Right...
ReplyDelete@Jason - I know, right?
ReplyDelete*grins* I kinda love you for this post. Their love was beautiful. I thankfully didn't see much of the English dub because my exposure to Sailor Moon was primarily through the few VHS tapes my uncle got for me, and they were all in Cantonese, but people have told me about the way they tried to make the Sailor Moon series 'straight'-friendly and it made me go all grrrrr T_T
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ReplyDeleteThey did something similar in first season, too. Remember Zoicite? In the Japanese (original version) Zoicite's a guy, but in the U.S. version they changed him to a girl b/c he was involved with one of the other generals. (I can't remember his name - he had white hair, though. Malachite?)
ReplyDeleteAh Yaun - Me too.
ReplyDeleteSakuraKat - Oh, yeah. But that was less icky because at least they didn't make them related. They did the same thing with FishEye in the 4th season too because he like the boys so they made him into a her.