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Creator / Naoko Takeuchi

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Naoko Takeuchi (武内直子, born March 15, 1967) is the creator of The Cherry Project, Codename: Sailor V and the world famous Sailor Moon manga, which codified the Magical Girl Warrior Sub-Genre. She is married to fellow manga-ka Yoshihiro Togashi, and has had two children with him: a boy in January of 2001, and a girl in 2009. A pharmacist-turned-mangaka, she has been a Shōjo inspiration for many years.


Naoko Takeuchi provides examples of:

  • Approval of God: Naoko loves reading Sailor Moon fanfic and encourages different interpretations of her work heartily
  • Author Appeal: White haired Bishōnen, racing cars (her favorite is a Ferrari 512M), figure skating, and modern fashion, namely. Sailor Moon was inspired by Wonder Woman (1975), which gives the inspiration of most of the senshi having combat stilettos. She likes drawing shoes. Her Material Collections are full to the brim with characters wearing outfits inspired by fashions she's seen in magazines, and she puts great work into drawing each individual fold of fabric. Also, much like her husband, she loves writing about LGBT characters, in part because she adores the openly homoerotic Takarazuka Revue.
  • Author Avatar: Usagi is stated to be this in Sailor Moon. Also, in the Sailor Moon manga, there would occasionally be notes or messages from the author and Takeuchi would draw herself as a cartoon rabbit.
  • Creator Breakdown: invoked Sadly, Takeuchi recounts in Punch that she was burned out after completing the last chapter for Sailor Moon. As she put it, she was working on artbooks, script consultations for the anime, drawing and merchandise approval. Then on her vacation, she was working on a new manga at the behest of her editors. The final straw came when Kodansha lost several pages of PQ Angels and kept passing the buck; Naoko quit and didn't finish the series.
  • Executive Meddling: A victim of it in her early years, though in many cases not to her detriment:
    • Had it not been for executive meddling asking her to add more characters to the cast, Codename: Sailor V would have never become Sailor Moon.
    • Sailor Moon's iconic Primary-Color Champion costume was the result of an editor telling her that her original mostly white costume would look bad on magazine covers.
    • For that matter, this is also the main reason that the series continued beyond the final battle with Queen Beryl at all - she had originally planned for the end of the story arc to be the end of the manga itself, with all five sailors DYING - for good!
    • Naoko herself also enforced this when it came to approving the new dub of Sailor Moon from Viz Media. She had to personally approve the new cast in order for the dub to become a reality, otherwise, Viz wouldn't be able to re-release it.
  • I Was Just Joking: When she came to her boss one day in the 1990s and said that she would like to draw a manga about a female superhero, the editor remarked: "Right. A female superhero. Maybe a schoolgirl at that, who is a crybaby, and yet saves the day?" And thus, Codename: Sailor V, and by extension, Sailor Moon, was born.
  • Fangirl: Naoko Takeuchi is a huge fan of Captain Harlock and recounted in an interview that she would watch it again and again.
  • God Never Said That: There has been a viral post in social media regarding Naoko Takeuchi saying "I was in a low place, so I write about girls I wish were my friends." This quote is false, fabricated to pretend the author is some sort of underdog that didn't have any friends. Naoko Takeuchi is known for being quite reclusive, and one of the very few interviews she gave stated that she created Sailor Moon based on how she and her friends don't need to rely on men all the time.
    Naoko Takeuchi: “I was a regular college student and got a regular job and then started drawing. So I have quite a few normal students and OL [office lady] friends....My friends and I would have chats about relationships or work and we'd always conclude that we shouldn't depend on men. I think that women are actually stronger, and I wanted to draw that in Sailor Moon.”
  • Lap Pillow: Says of this cute drawing: "I love sleeping with my head on someone's lap. I also love having someone's head on my lap. Since both really put me at ease, I can be happy."
  • No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: This was what killed PQ Angels. She had submitted the original drawings to Kodansha, who proceed to lose enough pages that were a chapter's worth. No one could find them, and the editors and executives played the Blame Game.
  • Only Six Faces: A lot of her characters look very similar to each other, having the same face and body-type.
  • Orphaned Series: Several after Sailor Moon:
    • PQ Angels ends on a cliffhanger where Peanut and Kyuuri haven't found the queen, but they are celebrating a new year.
    • Love Witch goes into Love making a Sadistic Choice to sacrifice Yuu to gain the powers to save his life.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: Usagi has a father named Kenji, a mother named Ikuko, and a younger brother named Shingo, just like her creator, Naoko.
  • Rule 34 – Creator Reactions: She enthusiastically encourages and enjoys reading fanworks based on it, including hentai material, and has been known to say so in her manga marginalia.
  • Shout-Out: She makes one of them as part of an artbook drawing, since she loves when fans homage her works, and compliments it back as she can.
  • Tender Tears: In an artbook she comments that "Naoko is prone to tears". She cries when she is overwhelmed by something beautiful and from touching letters from fans.
  • What Could Have Been: A lot of the elements she wanted to include in Sailor Moon can be found in her artbooks, but most especially the Materials Collection she released as a doujinshi. Tuxedo Mask was supposed to play a much larger part (and would have been named Mysterious 2098 Face!), Makoto would have been a smoker and sukeban leader... the list goes on.
  • Write Who You Know: Usagi's parents and brother are based on and named after her own family members. She also did miko work at a shrine, using this experience as the basis for Rei's character. Likewise she's stated that Michiru/Sailor Neptune was the hardest character for her to write because Naoko is in no way that calm or reserved.

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