Just a few thoughts I had while reading this chapter. Essentially spoiler-free for this story, if you've watched/read Sailor Moon before.
> It also kept me in contact with the Minato-kai
Why is there a Minako-kai? I now have this image of a row of men in suits bowing before Boss Mina-ojou-chan vowing to protect her honor.
> But though her attack on the Moon Kingdom and the whores who had ruled it had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams
This hurt to read. In a good way, I suppose, but it still hurt. Evil people are so... evil.
> Luna of the Mau reflexively pawed the blinking panel.
Surely she would have had lunar citizenship by now -- but I guess that doesn't matter if your country is dead. Of course, her home planet is -- there's a lot of tragedy in Sailor Moon, okay?
> "And how is my little firefly?" he murmured into her hair as he kissed the top of her head."
Oh, are we merging the two best plot arcs of BSSM? I can live with that.
> Mu, Atalante, Hyperborea and the rest of the continents
And here I was thinking that Hyperborea was the place where D-Point was. Shows you what I know!
> she reminded me of Belldandy
The best compliment.
> I stuck my hand up. "Waiter? A tuna salad sandwich and a glass of milk for our friend here, please?"
Is this the kind of meal Kat is into? And on this whole conversation, how did you manage to drag several seasons of exposition out of Luna into episode 1? I realize her memory had swiss-cheezed, but I guess it helps if you know the right questions to ask.
>"A beautiful girl called 'Sailor Moon' and a brave, handsome man in grey saved me from a horrible monster!"
... two scenes later ...
>(And how did he know what she was called, anyway? The only ones who should know were Luna and Sangnoir-san.)
Don't be so dense, Usagi-ttara.
You did not disappoint. Looking forward to the next chapter!
EDIT:
In the concordance:
> This is mainly because smoking is as thoroughly pervasive in Japan today as it was in the United States in the early 1960s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_in_Japan
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4843a2.htm
Compared to the U.S. (current rate 15.1%), the current rate in Japan is high (19.3%), and even higher among men. There's still more social acceptance, but laws in districts are really starting to change now, like they did in the early 1990s in the U.S. And if you see in the graph, the current level of smoking is more akin to 1993 levels in the U.S. And as you can see from the other graph, 1960s levels were much higher, though that graph excludes children so the numbers aren't directly comparable. Basically tobako smoking in Japan is like 25 years ago in the U.S. This gap might get pushed tighter by internationalization for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, we shall see.
> This, I further speculate, was because the identity of the Sailor Senshi as the princesses of the various planets was actually a state secret.
This is a terrible state secret for a couple reasons: I don't know how it could possibly kept secret, except perhaps by Princess Mercury sending reporters to the reeducation chamber; and because traditionally monarchs and feudal lords in basically every society led their forces into battle. It's one of the main jobs of the nobility. And if the last episode of S didn't confirm a feudal society amongst the sailors I don't know what it meant at all. To me, more likely, it's a glamour added to the function of the pens, because Serenity wanted her friends to have a normal life, and to be safer in a time with no kingdom to protect them.
> It was a messy retcon in my opinion.
Yes, but less messy in the manga, if only because there was less to retcon. There wasn't a lot of information about Mau, Nyanko, or our mooncats' past either. Perhaps Luna and Artemis are the names of minor planets in the same star system as Mau, and were Sailors stationed as envoys to the Sol system. So that's why they could transform. Or maybe it's like you said, and it's a whole planet of henshin catgirls. I get the feeling that there's so much BSSM fanfiction precisely because the setting is so broad and shallow. There's a whole living universe to explore with a past and a future, with just hints of what's out there to explore. It's a little like UF CORE in that way, except with more monsters inflicting SAN loss.
-- ∇×V
> It also kept me in contact with the Minato-kai
Why is there a Minako-kai? I now have this image of a row of men in suits bowing before Boss Mina-ojou-chan vowing to protect her honor.
> But though her attack on the Moon Kingdom and the whores who had ruled it had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams
This hurt to read. In a good way, I suppose, but it still hurt. Evil people are so... evil.
> Luna of the Mau reflexively pawed the blinking panel.
Surely she would have had lunar citizenship by now -- but I guess that doesn't matter if your country is dead. Of course, her home planet is -- there's a lot of tragedy in Sailor Moon, okay?
> "And how is my little firefly?" he murmured into her hair as he kissed the top of her head."
Oh, are we merging the two best plot arcs of BSSM? I can live with that.
> Mu, Atalante, Hyperborea and the rest of the continents
And here I was thinking that Hyperborea was the place where D-Point was. Shows you what I know!
> she reminded me of Belldandy
The best compliment.
> I stuck my hand up. "Waiter? A tuna salad sandwich and a glass of milk for our friend here, please?"
Is this the kind of meal Kat is into? And on this whole conversation, how did you manage to drag several seasons of exposition out of Luna into episode 1? I realize her memory had swiss-cheezed, but I guess it helps if you know the right questions to ask.
>"A beautiful girl called 'Sailor Moon' and a brave, handsome man in grey saved me from a horrible monster!"
... two scenes later ...
>(And how did he know what she was called, anyway? The only ones who should know were Luna and Sangnoir-san.)
Don't be so dense, Usagi-ttara.
You did not disappoint. Looking forward to the next chapter!
EDIT:
In the concordance:
> This is mainly because smoking is as thoroughly pervasive in Japan today as it was in the United States in the early 1960s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_in_Japan
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4843a2.htm
Compared to the U.S. (current rate 15.1%), the current rate in Japan is high (19.3%), and even higher among men. There's still more social acceptance, but laws in districts are really starting to change now, like they did in the early 1990s in the U.S. And if you see in the graph, the current level of smoking is more akin to 1993 levels in the U.S. And as you can see from the other graph, 1960s levels were much higher, though that graph excludes children so the numbers aren't directly comparable. Basically tobako smoking in Japan is like 25 years ago in the U.S. This gap might get pushed tighter by internationalization for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, we shall see.
> This, I further speculate, was because the identity of the Sailor Senshi as the princesses of the various planets was actually a state secret.
This is a terrible state secret for a couple reasons: I don't know how it could possibly kept secret, except perhaps by Princess Mercury sending reporters to the reeducation chamber; and because traditionally monarchs and feudal lords in basically every society led their forces into battle. It's one of the main jobs of the nobility. And if the last episode of S didn't confirm a feudal society amongst the sailors I don't know what it meant at all. To me, more likely, it's a glamour added to the function of the pens, because Serenity wanted her friends to have a normal life, and to be safer in a time with no kingdom to protect them.
> It was a messy retcon in my opinion.
Yes, but less messy in the manga, if only because there was less to retcon. There wasn't a lot of information about Mau, Nyanko, or our mooncats' past either. Perhaps Luna and Artemis are the names of minor planets in the same star system as Mau, and were Sailors stationed as envoys to the Sol system. So that's why they could transform. Or maybe it's like you said, and it's a whole planet of henshin catgirls. I get the feeling that there's so much BSSM fanfiction precisely because the setting is so broad and shallow. There's a whole living universe to explore with a past and a future, with just hints of what's out there to explore. It's a little like UF CORE in that way, except with more monsters inflicting SAN loss.
-- ∇×V