1. Cat tells girl she’s a magical super hero who fights monsters.
2. Girl is bad at fighting monsters.
3. Girl finds local friends who fight monsters with her.
4. Girl likes mysterious guy who saves her from monsters all the time, but no one knows who the guy actually is.
5. Girl finds out who mysterious guy is and starts dating him after many trials in a “One True Love” sort of deal.
6. Girl finds older friends who fight monsters with her.
7. Girl finds space alien friends who fight monsters with her.

I loved writing fanfiction about Sailor Moon.  There are a lot of good characters to play with and a lot of interesting dynamics to dabble in.  My favorites are the blue-haired genius from the first group of friends (the girl’s inner circle), because she’s shy and thus I can identify with her and get into her head for a story; and the bubbly blonde from the inner circle, who (according to the canon comic book) used to be the leader of that group in their previous lives (instead of the main girl).  I find the blonde makes the most fascinating material for character studies, simply because she yearns to be outgoing and girly but has a heavy sense of responsibility too.

The mysterious guy also had a group of friends in his previous life, though they . . . didn’t reincarnate as nicely as the girls.  One idea the comic (manga) artist dabbled with and rejected was the possibility of the main girl’s inner circle of friends and the mysterious guy’s friends (four each) being paired up as couples in their previous lives.

Though she didn’t run with the idea for longer than one painting, it’s something fans ran with.  Me in particular.  The idea was too adorable to pass up, and the love interests for them in the cartoon were gag-worthy.

The live action show tried to stay truer to the feel of the comic than the cartoon did.  The cartoon was targeted more toward kids with lots of filler episodes, whereas the live action placed emphasis on story progression and the growth of the main girl and mysterious guy’s romance.

The live action was also, like the comic book, a lot cuter than the cartoon (particularly the cartoon as dubbed into English — in the early years of dubbing, TV executives thought that children were the only ones who watched “Japanese cartoons,” which is now a phenomenon among teens and adults, so the execs gave anime characters goofy Barney the Dinosaur voices).

All that to say I’m going to watch through the Live Action again.  It’s a-dorable.