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Introduction
Sailormoon is a comic book and cartoon series that has achieved wide popularity in Japan and abroad. It is aimed at girls.
Usagi Tsukino is fourteen years old, lives in Tokyo, is in eighth grade, has long blond hair and eyes that take up at least one third of her face and transforms into a superheroine called "Sailormoon" in order to support "justice." Along with the black cat Luna and white cat Artemis, Sailormoon (Usagi) and her friends Sailormercury (Ami), Sailormars (Rei), Sailorjupiter (Makoto) and Sailorvenus (Maiko), fight against the "Dark Kingdom."
In 1992, Sailormoon was introduced. Since that time the comic magazine Nakayosi, that it appears in has doubled in circulation to two million. Since March of 1992, an animated version of Pretty Soldier Sailormoon (Bishojo Senshi Seiramun) has been aired every Saturday night at seven o'clock by TV Asahi. Its rating of 12% is high, considering the prime time competition (Nishimura 7).
In the Fall of 1995, Sailormoon debuted in the United States. It is already the number one children's action adventure television show in Japan, France, Italy, Spain and Hong Kong. Taiwan and Korea also air Sailormoon, and the Scandinavian countries and Thailand are scheduled to do so soon. An Indonesian version is also being created.
Sailormoon has been made into a musical and a film, and best selling videos, laser disks, CDs and game versions are also available. Anything bearing the Sailormoon trademark sells well. The success of spinoff products reflects the huge consumer market of children and their parents, but it also reflects the high value the Japanese place on brand names, trademarks and logos.
In the past two years, Bandai, the largest toy company in Japan, has sold about $400 million (at wholesale) worth of Sailormoon character goods in Japan. Bandai has total revenues of $1.8 billion. Mattel's Barbie line grossed a record $1.1 billion (wholesale) worldwide last year, but then Sailormoon has not yet debuted in the huge U.S. market (Eisenstodt 58). This year, Bandai will introduce Sailormoon products in the U.S. Bandai's first U.S. success was with its Mighty Morphin Power Rangers line of action figures. "The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers TV program is a campy good-versus-evil live-action show that is based on a long running...