Sailor Moon: BISHOUJO SENSHI

[drakensis]

There was a terrible sense of deja vu to waking up under cozy covers, with a mother's voice summoning me to breakfast. It had, after all, happened to me more than once. Not that there was anything terrible about what I've described - not at all.
It's just that it wasn't the bed I'd gone to sleep in - nor a mother that I'd heard the voice of before.
Trust me, when you get deja vu about that, your life is getting just a teensy bit complicated.
"Bunny!" came the voice again. "It's past eight o'clock!"
I crawled out from under the covers and called "Coming!" loud enough, I hoped, to be heard by whomever was yelling at me. Then I braced myself for the worst and looked into the mirror on top of the bedroom dresser.
I started whimpering almost immediately.
Blonde hair - an almost perfect match for the shade I had enjoyed in a previous life. Blue eyes - not quite right but close - I think. It's getting hard to remember for sure but I think that mine were darker than the eyes was now looking out of. Female - oh well. Male would have been nice, but I'm sure I can manage being a girl again. Two incredibly long (practically floor length!) ponytails descending from fist-sized knots of hair sticking up in the approximate location of Mickey Mouse ears.
I whimpered some more. Not only were they very silly, the meatball-head arrangement was far too distinctive.
If you ahven't guessed whose body I'd suddenly found myself riding, then you've obviously been hiding under some damp rock for the last decade or so of pop culture.
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I got a chance to sit down and do some writing while I was on vacation. There's a bit more, but I'm just about to fall asl...zzzzzzzz
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Valles]

Usagi.
With Buffy's combat experience.
...
Score.

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[deadpan29]

Since the narrator indicates a preference for a male body, I think not. Though that would be an interesting take on things.
----------
No, I don't believe the world has gone mad.  In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.

[Valles]

Here's Your Accordion

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[ECSNorway]

Ergh.
Please, not "Bunny". I'd rather 'Serena' than that.
Otherwise... go for it. And some more Accordion, please, too.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[katreus]

Heee.
Bunny. Bunny. *G* What's so wrong with Usagi btw?
And I third the opinions thus far. More more more. ^_^

[Bob Schroeck]

Because "Usagi" of course is literally "rabbit", and we're getting the full mental translation effect. Mom says "Usagi", and the mysterious language handling center in his brain converts it to "Bunny" for the parts of his mind that still operate in English.
Oh, and by the way, yeah! More!
Of either or both!


-- Bob
---------
For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[Necratoid]

How long after seeing the broach pop out of a kitty cartwheel before Luna finds she has a crossbow with crystaline bolts in there? After much whining and demands for one of such items? They are energy vampires after all.

[katreus]

I guess.
It's been my experience that if you're familiar with a language, it wouldn't be translated to English.
For example, when I hear, "Ni hao ma?" (which means "hello" in Chinese), I hear just that, i.e. there's no mental translation to hello. The meaning is independent of English. In contrast, when I'm trying to translate a sentence, I do hear it out in English then translate each individual word (which leads to problems because Chinese and English grammar are not compatible). I might be explaining this oddly.

[WengFook]

1) Drakensis... nice we want more but on your timetable
this coud lead to excellence.. or serious funnies

2) Tjalorak I understand where you are coming from.. I think its more of attribution of meaning to a certain phrase that results in the non-transalation of a foreign word..
for instance if you accept "Ni Hao Ma" as hello, then your brain just registers it as a different way to say hello. like "Hi" or "Greetings" but files it as more suited to a certain trigger like the chinese language.
but when it comes to grammar and exact meaning, speaking and understanding sentences must be parsed through a higher function, your brain sets the transalation program on at full burn to decrypt and understand what is being said.
_______________________________
"We few, we happy few. We band of buggered"
_________________________________
Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.

[drakensis]

It's not that I have an axe to grind against the Sailor Moon cartoon or the protagonist (although Dawn was more of a fan). It's just that I'm about twice her age. It was bad enough going through the late teenage years again as Buffy. What malevolent fate had condemned me to experience the early teenage years as 'Bunny'? And what was with that name? I thought she was called Serena, or Usagi.
"I'm going to kill Whistler*," I muttered to myself and grabbed the school uniform hanging from the back of the door. At least the skirt was a decent length.
=/=
Not being the Slayer (or a reasonable substitute) is a tremendous drag. I'd almost forgotten over the last couple of years what it was like to lack the boundless energy and I didn't enjoy being reminded of it. It would, apart from anything else, have come in very handy trying to get to Crossroads Junior High School within a quarter hour. Particularly when I didn't know where it was.
As it was, I went around a couple of blocks before I got lucky enough to catch sight of a a big building that looked just like every Japanese school I ever saw in an anime, with a couple of girls in uniforms that looked like mine going in through the gates. I crossed my fingers for luck and ran as if I was fleeing hell, not heading for what might as well be another Hellmouth.
Naturally, that was the moment when something black crossed my path and I tripped over it. A black cat. Great, losing the Slayer powers hadn't saved me from the associated lousy luck, had it? And winding up flat on my fae on the pavement was just another reminder that being the Slayer had had some compensations that I was currently missing.
I looked closer at the cat, my vague recollections of the TV show suggesting that a black cat might be... yep. Two bandaids, stuck across the cat's forehead. Although, as I recalled it, Bunny (or Serena or Usagi**) had rescued Luna from a bunch of kids, not just tripped over her in the street.
Nonetheless, I seemed to have hold of her, so I shrugged off the concern and lifted Luna to peel away the bandaids from her crescent moon mark. "Try not to get trampled," I advised her, lowering her to the top of the wall beside the pavement.
Then the bell rang and I resumed my mad dash for the school gates.
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* - When I get round to that point in HYA, Whistler will explain the insertion mechanic and 'Buffy', not entirely fairly, blames him. She's even further off base now, but she doesn't know that. ;-)
** - When Buffy finds out, you will.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Bob Schroeck]

So far so fun...
What's weird is, yeah, I can almost understand the let down going from The Slayer to a mere Genki Girl when it comes to a sense of personal energy... (Not that "SerBunUs" is a real Genki Girl, compared to some Tomo, but she does dash around wildly a lot...)
The note about Dawn at the top amused me greatly, because I have notes for a scene in DW13 where Dawn sits Doug down and makes him watch the North American dubs... and the theme song triggers a message left in his head by Usagi... a message that Dawn can see, hear, and (for a little while at least) share popcorn with.

-- Bob
---------
For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[drakensis]

---

Tomo

---

Thanks. Now I'm reimagining the Inner Senshi as the Azumanga Girls:
Sailor Moon - Osaka
Sailor Mercury - Chiyo
Sailor Mars - Yomi
Sailor Jupiter - Sakaki
Sailor Venus - Tomo
If I had some decent pictures I could probably photoshop something...
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[HoagieOfDoom]

That would be an amusing project, but it's already been done by Amazon Mandy.
Well, not the exact matchups, but, eh.
1
2*********
Touched By His Noodly Appendage
www.venganza.org

[drakensis]

The school was, fortunately, the correct institution of torment... er, I mean learning of course. Even more luckily, 'Bunny' had marked her class number on her satchel, so I was able to track down the right classroom with relative ease. Just one of the ways that Crossroads Junior High was infinitely better than Sunnydale High I guess - at Sunnydale, rooms weren't marked all that clearly.
"You're late again, Bunny," called a girl from near the front of the room as I stepped through the open door. Fortunately there was no teacher yet, but I guess the girl in question must have been class president or something.
I raised one hand casually in greeting. "I'm sorry," I replied with considerably more cheer than I felt. "I got lost on the road of life." My stomach grumbled as I took my seat (those were numbered as well - say what you will about the Japanese, their schools are usefully anal about some things). Great. I'd been in such a rush to find school that I hadn't even managed to have breakfast - something that approaches a mortal sin in my personal cosmology.
I did manage to scare Miss H though - that was the homeroom teacher. She was actually Miss Haruna, but everyone called her Miss H. I didn't find out her real name until later. What scared her was the fact that I was paying attention. Bunny, it would seem, is even less interested in the 'wonders' of a modern education than Xander is - hard to believe, yet somehow true. The expression on Miss H's face when I started actually taking notes from her corrections to the English test was something to behold, although it was rather less amusing when I realised other students were edging their desks away from mine.
"Hey Bunny!" called one of the boys in the class after Miss H retreated in confusion. I was pretty sure I'd seen him in a couple of episodes but I couldn't recall his name off hand. Assuming that it was even the same as the one in the cartoon anyway. But he was a recurring character, so he was probably important somehow. "How come you're paying attention all of a sudden?"
I held up the English test with a grimace. It definitely hurt my pride to admit to a bad grade, particularly when it wasn't my fault! "I'm going to be in really big trouble for this," I predicted. "I can't let it happen again."
"But this test was a breeze! I didn't even study much for it!" the boy said, taking the paper from me.
"Nor did I," I said, reasonably confident that Bunnry really hadn't. "And I think I should have."
"Wow!" he said, looking at the score. "How'd you do this badly?"
"Oooh!" pouted the girl I was sat next to me, someone I thought was another important character. It was a little difficult to match actual appearances to the fairly stylized animated images I recalled. "You are obnoxious, Melvin!"
Aha! I knew that name, right out of the anime. I'd found myself a nerd-boy. That could be very useful.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[katreus]

"Melvin... build me a miniature Death Star that'll orbit around me and blow up youma. Please?"
*G* Hee poor Miss H. Liking what you have so far. ^_^
Edit: Eh... crap. I forgot the girl's name too. She's the one that falls in love with Nephrite right?

[Foxboy]

If you're using "Melvin" then the Girl's name is "Molly"
*shudders at the N.A. dub*
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

Well this is twisted.
Minor technicality that darn near no one knows: "Haruna" is actually her personal name. Sakurada Haruna, not that anyone in her class ever calls her Sakurada-sensei or anything.
--Sam
"Wow. Clark's fortress melts."

[drakensis]

In this continuity, she's Miss Patricia Haruna and probably won't have any actual significance. Actually, don't expect any major character development - I'm basing this off the manga and that compacts the course of events quite significantly.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Foxboy]

From the "official" English language translation, Usagi is Bunny... Gotcha.
But you just wanted to do "Bunny the Vampire Slayer" didn't you?

''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Florin]

Should be interesting to see what somebody competent can do against the Negaverse... as long as you avoid one of the things that's always bugged me about a lot of Sailor Moon fiction. That being, the mysteriously effective Generals. Way to many fics have them suddenly coming up with good plans and tactics for no apparant reason, when in the source material they have such amazingly brilliant plans as "Wait until they exhaust all thier energy just barely beating my minion... and then running away like a scared little girly man, despite possessing enough power to vaporize them all!"--
"An errand is getting a tank of gas or picking up a carton of milk or something. It is not getting chased by flying purple pyromaniac gorillas hurling incendiary poo."
--
If you become a monster to put down a monster you've still got a monster running around at the end of the day and have as such not really solved the whole monster problem at all. 

[drakensis]

Busted.
As for the general's tactics, that's not the case in the manga - the only one who does anything similar is Jadeite and that's just because he's observing from a distance and can't effectively intervene. Of course, the one time he does try to fight them head on, Sailor Moon and Sailor Mars doubleteam him and there's none of this frozen in eternal crystal malarky.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Bob Schroeck]

---

From the "official" English language translation, Usagi is Bunny... Gotcha.

---

If by that you mean the Noarth American edition of the manga, well, Usagi says in her own narration that her "real" name is "Serena" but that "Bunny" is a nickname everyone uses. I suppose that counts.

-- Bob
---------
For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[drakensis]

That's exactly right Bob. But 'Buffy' doesn't know that. Everyone thus far has called her Bunny - what else should she think?
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[drakensis]

The girl's name was Molly and she remembered being Bunny's friend, which would have made it awkward to ditch her. Besides, I'm fairly sure that I recall Dawn getting weepy about her tragic romance thing with one of the Dark Generals. Frankly, I thought it cut a bit too close to the bone - fortunately I'd not been dumb enough to get close to Angelus. But in any event, it meant that Molly was potentially important so her friendship would be useful for reasons beyond the usual motivations for making friends.
Oh dear. That sounded a bit cynical, didn't it. It wasn't meant that way.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I ended up eating lunch with Molly and a couple of other girls. Given the fact that I'd spenta good sized chunk of the last couple of years with Dawn as a sister and Willow and Amy as friends, I would have thought that my skills at 'girl talk' would have been well-honed, but I suspect that even Cordelia's girly-fu would have been challenged by the converation.
"Did you hear?" asked May. "There was another jewelry store robbery last night!"
"How scary!" Molly explained. Since her mother owned a jewelry store, that probably cut too close to home - prophetically so if I guessed correctly.
"Yeah, but Sailor V nabbed the thieves," Melvin assured her. I'm not quite sure how he managed to wind up eating lunch with a bunch of girls, but it was a skill that would doubtless be of use to him in the future.
"Sailor V?" I asked quickly. With just a a little bit of luck, I figured, Melvin could confirm how close matters were to my ever so slightly hazy recollections of how matters lay at this point in time.
"You haven't heard of her?" he replied in surprise. "Defending against evil in a schoolgirl uniform! Some say she's just an undercover cop, what will they come up with next!?" Melvin declared, obviously dismissive of the theory. "Toto, we're not in kansas anymore. Nope - this is the big city. With all the bizarre and hideous crimes nowadays, the news is more action-packed than a Schwarzenegger movie."
Ha ha. After two years, more or less, on the Hellmouth, I doubted that the 'hideous crimes' of a show aimed at twelve-year old girls would shock me that much. Sad but true: I'm a just a little bit jaded about such things. The other girls were more excited about the whole matter though.
"Wow, a jewelry store! I wish I could see those theive's loot!"
"Yeah, it must be full of gorgeous diamonds and rubies. I like diamonds," added May as an aside.
"Doesn't your mother own a jewelry store?" I asked molly.
"Yeah," she confirmed. "And you know what? She's having a huge sale. Wanna check it out?"
Melvin practically had to dive for cover as the girls converged on Molly instantly in a display of feminine enthusiasm. I guess that it's one of those things that you have to be all girl to understand though, so I kept at the back. My main reaction to gemstones these days is to wonder if they're cursed. I swear there must be a whole industry in laying curses on the damned things - and they're a pain in the ass to fence. At least if a vampire's been looting gold, I can melt it down and get weight value without having to worry about it being stolen someplace.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.