Question about when Minako became Sailor V

[Vilkath]

I was wondering if any one knew what age she was Sailor V? Manga wise wikipedia listed it at age 13, but in the anime where she went to England nothing is really mentioned.

I also have some doubts of the orginal date as well. Minako was Sailor V long enough to not only become famous and get video games by the start of the Sailor Moon series but if you take the idea she worked in England into acount they got the games distributed to foreign countries as well.

Are not the inner senshi about 14 years old at the start of the series? I find it hard to believe Sailor V got popular and they designed and produced the games, manga and all the other merchandise all within less then a year.

Just wondering what any one else thought about this as I was planing on using Minako in a slight Harry Potter/Sailor moon cross over, where Harry meets Minako as a kid before both them have any magical powers.

[FOG3]

That is her quoted age in her manga, but it should be noted canon is kind of broken in that respect.

The Sailor V series was conceived as a manga first, with an emphasis on minions similar to the Sailor Moon anime while the follow up Sailor Moon manga series played things differently, and in a form that was honestly compacted way beyond what is prudent. This resulted in rather under developed characters in the manga as there was really no time spent doing so, unlike the Sailor V series. Plus the Sailor V manga never has her in England, although she does visit Greece and China so it's not really even relevant to the anime storyline in many respects.

To be fair the game shown is a rather basic arcade game, and 1992 was DOS/Win 3.1 i386 & i486 era. The original Pentium wouldn't even be introduced until 1993, and Windows 95 until 1995. Hence no multimedia, which required a Pentium circa 1995, and relatively simple coding and sprites. Betrayal at Krondor came out in 1993 and Quest for Glory 3 in 1992, and more or less represent bleeding edge games of the period. The original Duke Nukem, a simple jump and shoot game, which came out in July 1991 is more analogous to the Sailor V game and I suspect is not that hard to code after the initial engine is setup for moving block sprites along the plane of the playing field. Commander Keen 1-3 was brought out in 1990, with the later half of the Commander Keen series with a new improved game engine released in 1991 afterall.

Or to make a long story short, for this time period getting a new game out in a year wasn't that hard. As the Commander Keen series shows despite being vastly more complex in all features then the observed Sailor V shooter game, although not to the point the Sailor V game isn't plausible as a product for the era it is credited to. Nor is there indication it has any dialogue or otherwise requiring translation. It's not like the other merchandise wouldn't be produced in parallel or would require that much lead time to make a product of the observed quality either.

The real area of contention is just the popularity aspect, which is basically just a handwave by the author. Of course to be fair, the Sailor Moon manga more heavily implies that the cats had something to do with this by having the machine pop out a transformation wand at one point and otherwise, instead of just being a communication terminal. Not that any explanation is ever given for just how said cats managed to pull all this off or otherwise.

[Tovath]

I also have some doubts of the orginal date as well. Minako was Sailor V long enough to not only become famous and get video games by the start of the Sailor Moon series but if you take the idea she worked in England into acount they got the games distributed to foreign countries as well.

Actually you don't have to worry about foreign distribution Sailor V also worked some in Japan to. It is mentioned in ep 1 that she stopped a jewelery robbery.

[DarkFyre99]

I was wondering if any one knew what age she was Sailor V? Manga wise wikipedia listed it at age 13, but in the anime where she went to England nothing is really mentioned.

The best answer to this question is "at whatever age, and for however long, you need her to be." The anime continuity a bit messed up, given that five years pass on screen, while only three years pass "in story," so there's considerable wiggle room to play with the timeline a bit, depending upon which of the girls' academic milestones you use as a touchstone, and whether each season represents a year (as seen on screen) or half a year (based on said academic milestones).

The most accurate answer, which comes from Sheer Lunacy! A nitpicker's guide to Sailor Moon (down right now ), is that Minako was active before the beginning of the first episode of the anime (age 13-14), apparently left for England around summer break, and was back in Japan by November at the latest... if we take mentioned dates in the anime at face value (see previous comment about anime continuity), so she spent about four months, at most, in England.

I also have some doubts of the orginal date as well. Minako was Sailor V long enough to not only become famous and get video games by the start of the Sailor Moon series but if you take the idea she worked in England into acount they got the games distributed to foreign countries as well.

One important thing to remember is that the Sailor V game in the Crown arcade, in both the anime and the manga, wasn't created by human beings, but is actually a high-tech computer system from the Moon Kingdom, disguised as a video game.

edit: Wow... didn't realize how old this topic was when I replied to it...