Pyramid: The Sailor Moon Roleplaying Game

Pyramid Review

The Sailor Moon Role-Playing Game and Resource Book

Published by Guardians of Order

Written by Mark C. MacKinnon

$24.95
Two admissions: I'm not a fan of anime, Japanese animation. And there wasn't anything in Guardians of Order's Sailor Moon RPG that turned me into one. That said, it was easy to put myself in the shoes of a typical anime fan -- and looking at this book from that point of view, it rocks.
Sailor Moon is one of Japan's most popular television shows, also spawning a comic and several feature films. The English-language videos available here in the U.S. are big sellers. Of the various anime-based RPGs done in the past few years, Sailor Moon is probably the most popular series adapted to date.
But Mark MacKinnon has done more than just deliver an RPG; Sailor Moon is also a resource book for fans of the series. MacKinnon starts off with a well-researched essay on the history of the "magical girl" genre, or shojo anime, and how Sailor Moon was a breakthrough in combining the elements of shojo, previously targeted to a young female audience exclusively, with "fighting team" elements of shonen anime targeted at boys, resulting in a huge hit. MacKinnon clearly understands and loves the subject, and explained it in such a way that a novice like me gained a whole new appreciation for the symbolism and subtlety of the art form.
The Sailor Moon roleplaying game uses the same "Tri-Stat System" as in their generic anime RPG, Big Eyes, Small Mouth. There . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.

Article publication date: January 8, 1999

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