Sailor Moon is one of the most popular Japanese media franchises of all time, spawning two anime series, live-action films, musicals, art exhibitions, merchandise, and even a pop idol group. Its massive popularity has persisted for more than 30 years since the release of the original manga, and it's carved out a distinct place in not only Japanese but global pop culture. However, despite everything, video games for the series have been lacking.

Fighting games based on anime and manga have been popular for several decades, both in competitive communities and for casual play. This year alone has seen the release of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R, with upcoming games set to release for other series including Dragon Ball, which has had a similar legacy to Sailor Moon. However, the majority of these anime fighting games are based upon shonen series -- those that are meant to appeal to adolescent boys. While there have been a number of Sailor Moon video games, the majority of them that have been released since the 1990s have been puzzle games. A fighting game for the series is long overdue.

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Sailor Moon Kick

Though it has elements of romance, and friendship is a uniting principle in the franchise, at its core, Sailor Moon is a fantasy action series that focuses on a protagonist with magical powers who fights forces of evil. Therefore, a fighting game would be perhaps the best way to highlight these parts of the series. One of the groundbreaking parts of Sailor Moon was that, unlike previous magical girl series, it featured a group of magical girls with different skills and abilities. For instance, Sailor Mars could channel the fire element and Sailor Pluto had the ability to stop time. This is the perfect material for a fighting game -- the strengths and weaknesses of characters could be quite unique, allowing casual players to simply pick their favorite characters while more competitive players could choose them based on abilities that best suit their playstyles.

Sailor Moon is a shojo series, which means it's meant to appeal to a primarily adolescent girl audience. This may be why most games have focused on a more casual experience. However, the idea that girls would not enjoy a more action-heavy Sailor Moon fighting game is rather outdated. It also doesn't really reflect the reality of video games, as young women have played a number of different genres across gaming history, from farming simulators to first-person shooters.

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Sailor Mars, Sailor Moon

This idea also does not reflect the diverse audience of Sailor Moon, which is not exclusively young girls given that it's one of the most popular franchises of all time. Sailor Moon is extremely recognizable worldwide and across a wide age range, even among people who have never seen a single episode of anime. Occupying this uniquely widespread and timeless spot in pop culture, Sailor Moon in game form would appeal to a wide audience.

This is seen most prominently in the quiet resurgence of a once-negatively received 1994 Sailor Moon game. Released for the SNES, Bishōjo Senshi Sailor Moon S: Jōgai Rantō!? Shuyaku Sōdatsusen looks a lot like Street Fighter and other arcade fighting games of the era. Though at the time of its release it received mixed reviews, more recent reviews of the game have been quite positive, noting its unbalanced mechanics as being a fun element of gameplay. It currently holds a cult following in the fighting game community, even being featured at recent major gaming tournaments such as the Evolution Championship Series. Evidently, the game has a wider audience than people are assuming. Just because it's a series about teenage girls does not mean that its appeal is limited to that same demographic.

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Sailor Moon and Sailor Mars square off in Sailor Moon S.

Of course, such a game would one of the few fighting games that features mostly non-male characters, with young women and non-binary characters making up most of the series' core. While some might consider this factor to be a risk in creating a Sailor Moon fighting game, it might also be a huge draw. The series' focus on characters who are female and queer -- with canonical non-binary characters, lesbians, and more -- has made it quite popular with real-life queer communities. Whereas many video games have issues with largely male fans harassing female employees and gamers alike, the game's more diverse characters might welcome a more diverse audience, making the community safer for people of various genders and sexualities.

While there have been various Sailor Moon fighting games, there hasn't been one released since the mid-1990s, and it might just be the time for that to change. While there are a few more risks associated with making a game based on an older series versus the newest popular shonen series, Sailor Moon revolutionized the shojo genre and continues to reach new audiences in manga and anime. Who's to say that it won't do the same for video games?