She’s Still Here

Sailor Moon’s got this weird permanence. Three decades on from the original Japanese broadcast, and you’ve still got artists everywhere drawing it, reimagining it, pouring their own sensibility into these characters. That’s not typical. Most anime from the ’90s are historical artifacts now. Sailor Moon is still living.

Michelle Macias, a Mexican illustrator, is one of the people keeping it alive. She’s taken the Sailor Guardians and rendered them in her own aesthetic. What’s interesting to me as a designer is how much room there is in these characters for reinterpretation. They’re archetypal but specific enough that you can actually make them your own.

The show’s staying power comes partly from the characters themselves, and mostly from Bunny. She’s a disaster—lazy, constantly eating, constantly complaining, would rather be anywhere but saving the world. The show doesn’t moralize about it. It just loves her. I think that’s the secret. That’s why people keep returning to it, why Macias can take her and find something new. There’s something underneath that won’t exhaust itself.