Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

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Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

Postby Crescent Pulsar R » Sun Feb 13, 2011 1:14 am

It's been illustrated by authors that Naru is threatened by, or runs into, monsters-of-the-week often enough to assert a certain magnetic quality. Since she's not featured that often in the manga, and my knowledge of the anime is limited, I was wondering exactly how many times she had encountered baddies in the latter, and whether the amount would warrant that conclusion. (I'll only count Nephrite's attack (energy drainage) on her, since the other encounters either weren't threatening or by chance.)

As far as I remember, I know that she gets attacked in the first episode (1), has a friend that plays tennis that gets targeted by Nephrite (2), has her energy drained by Nephrite (3), gets kidnapped by Zoisite (4), is near the priest when Zoisite targets him (5), is targeted by Zoisite because he wants to turn her into a youma (6), and, if my memory serves me correctly, I think she was present during a dating/couple contest with Umino (which Michiru and Haruka participated in) when a daimon/daemon (whatever they're called) showed up (7?).

Did I miss any, or get any of the above wrong?
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Re: Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

Postby Wyrd » Sun Feb 13, 2011 9:24 am

I believe she gets targetted in every single season, sometimes multiple times, except the last one, where she doesn't show up at all. Maybe she moved away from Juuban because she was tired of all of the attacks. Umino likewise gets hit several times, though in some of those times both he and Naru are attacked.
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Re: Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

Postby WG_Writer » Sun Feb 13, 2011 11:57 pm

Her getting attacked is about the same as Akane getting kidnapped if you don't do it at least once you aren't a proper villian, (Having servents that do it counts as doing it)
Storm trooper effect works against good guys as well.
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Re: Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

Postby AdmiralTigerclaw » Tue Feb 15, 2011 12:30 am

To think, the Bad Guys could have won easily if they had just moved their Area of Operations elsewhere...

Like France.

Or Nepal.

Or even Kyoto. Any place that pulls them away from the Sailor Senshi's main stomping ground... A 5 by 5 mile area of downtown Tokyo.

No seriously. Look up Azabu Juuban on Google Earth. All the key areas aren't just in Tokyo, they're all within reasonable day-trip WALKING range.

Of course, someone mentioned the Senshi have some kind of ability that draws enemies to them like flies to Honey. I cannot confirm nor deny this supposition at this time. Might be fanon.
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Re: Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

Postby Crescent Pulsar R » Tue Feb 15, 2011 12:50 am

It's like that, for the most part. But it probably doesn't matter where they went, since we know that the senshi can go elsewhere if they find an enemy somewhere else (such as China and Greece (Sailor V in the manga), England (Sailor V in the anime), and the Arctic). It's probably done that way because it makes things less complicated.

Anyway, no other specific times? Does seven only make Naru (un)lucky, rather than a magnet? :P
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Re: Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

Postby PCHeintz72 » Tue Feb 15, 2011 12:54 am

Crescent Pulsar R wrote:It's like that, for the most part. But it probably doesn't matter where they went, since we know that the senshi can go elsewhere if they find an enemy somewhere else (such as China and Greece (Sailor V in the manga), England (Sailor V in the anime), and the Arctic). It's probably done that way because it makes things less complicated.

Anyway, no other specific times? Does seven only make Naru (un)lucky, rather than a magnet? :P

They should have branched out into multiple simultaneous operations that were lower key and unlikely to be places they would go...

The simple fact is the Senshi's enemies had bricks for brains when it came to tactics. Smart mobile enemy = senshi loss...
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Re: Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

Postby Crescent Pulsar R » Tue Feb 15, 2011 1:19 am

Well, yeah. But what else should we expect? How would girls relate to the characters if they had to effectively run away from home and everything else so they can hunt down and find the bad guys? Going to school, hanging out with friends, vacations and other social outings... living normally, basically, provides that kind of connection. Even a more sophisticated magical girl series, like Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, has the setting very localized.

Besides, if you're aiming for a happy ending, and you don't want to turn off your demographic with a plot that's too serious and complicated, give the antagonists shit for brains so they lose. ;p (I mean, it goes well beyond tactics. They're using only one operative who only handles one operation at a time, so more mobility probably wouldn't make a difference.)
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Re: Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

Postby TerraEpon » Tue Feb 15, 2011 1:49 am

At least one fanfic universe (Sailor Moon Expanded) has it that the baddies HAVE to stay there, because it's a "synchronous zone" and that they simply can't survive on Earth anywhere else (which England being a weaker spot but they have to bounce off Tokyo or some weirdness).
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Re: Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

Postby Crescent Pulsar R » Tue Feb 15, 2011 2:50 am

Synchronous zone... Is that related to dimensional travel? Because I think that, for Beryl and them, they were located in another dimension. I could be remembering wrongly, though.
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Re: Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

Postby Wyrd » Tue Feb 15, 2011 10:44 am

They should have branched out into multiple simultaneous operations that were lower key and unlikely to be places they would go...

The simple fact is the Senshi's enemies had bricks for brains when it came to tactics. Smart mobile enemy = senshi loss...


The Senshi can also teleport. In the manga they teleport to the moon, so anywhere on Earth would be well within range. Sailor Moon teleports on her own on multiple occasions. The rest of the Inners apparently have to work together to do so, though Pluto teleports freely. Mask is also seen to teleport, though only over short distances.

As a result, as long as they were actively searching for youma elsewhere, they would be able to fight them wherever they were. They also had a tendency to just happen to be there whenever an enemy tries to attack somewhere outside of Juuban, so they might have decided that it wasn't worth the extra energy to attack further away from the 'weak spot*' in Juuban if the Senshi were going to show up anyways. We know that they were just lucky and getting by by the skin of their teeth, but their opponents did not know this. Beryl especially might have thought they were closer to the abilities that she knew they had in their prior lives than they actually were.

With the Black Moon Clan, the Senshi and their base of operation were their targets, so only attacking their area makes perfect sense. The Death Busters apparently had narrowed down the area where they could find the Talismans, then just started taking crystals near their base of operations. The Dead Moon Circus in the manga sealed off the area where they knew Helios was hiding before attacking people within that area. Galaxia's servants were after the Senshi as well, or their star seeds to be more precise, with Galaxia attacking the entire planet once she was personally involved.

*yes, this idea is fanon, but given how many interdimensional invaders target that exact same area, it is quite believable. Also, while the real life area of Azabu-Juuban is only a very small area, the areas hit are widespread enough that it is better to consider the entire Minato ward as their target area, or even a little bit more than that. The Senshi just live in Juuban.
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Re: Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

Postby AdmiralTigerclaw » Tue Feb 15, 2011 3:57 pm

It's serious plot mechanics to keep the coincidences going when you put distances at Intercontinental levels.

If Beryl wanted the Job done right, all four of her generals should have been fielded in their own operational sectors. Each running MULTIPLE schemes at a time. Even if the Senshi can get from place to place VIA Teleport. The kind of recon required to discover something this wide spread requires CIA levels of intel gathering. Five little girls would never be able to keep up. And even convenient coincidences are stretched beyond believability. Though, if they did manage to find them reliably in this dispersal, they would be stretched thin, and easily eliminated.
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Re: Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

Postby Crescent Pulsar R » Tue Feb 15, 2011 6:21 pm

In the manga, at least, that probably wouldn't be the case. In addition to teleportation (I think their personal teleportation is enough to send them anywhere in the world (Mars, Jupiter and Mercury had made it to the Arctic), while combining their powers had been necessary to travel to the moon), they have a secret control center that's capable of viewing and scanning things well beyond Earth; probably anywhere in the solar system. They also have the same kind of resources on the moon, which is where the late queen's AI was operating from in the beginning of the story, giving orders and information to Artemis and Sailor V. Then there's also the fact that, unlike the anime, each individual senshi is capable of defeating a general.

As far as tactics are concerned, I think that they would be able to work something out. Between Ami's intelligence and knowledge, Artemis' and Luna's experience and skill with advanced technology, and whatever the queen's AI could offer (the queen lived for millions of years, at the very least, so she's bound to be knowledgeable), I think they could manage the four generals. Or, at least, it wouldn't be certain that the bad guys would win.
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Re: Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

Postby Wyrd » Tue Feb 15, 2011 6:50 pm

If Beryl wanted the Job done right, all four of her generals should have been fielded in their own operational sectors. Each running MULTIPLE schemes at a time. Even if the Senshi can get from place to place VIA Teleport. The kind of recon required to discover something this wide spread requires CIA levels of intel gathering. Five little girls would never be able to keep up. And even convenient coincidences are stretched beyond believability. Though, if they did manage to find them reliably in this dispersal, they would be stretched thin, and easily eliminated.


There are many possibilities that could have made this unfeasible. For one, Beryl might have only been able to draw energy from one youma at a time as it collected it.

Manifesting outside of the sealed dimension could have required a constant investment of energy, so only having one operative at a time made managing their scant resources easier.

If she let more than one of her generals out of her sight at the same time, they would likely turn on each other.

If she let any of them have that much power available to them at once, they might have used it to turn on her and supplant her as Metallia's avatar/human link.

The only thing keeping the Senshi from scanning for the youma the moment they showed up was that their own energies created too much interference. I like this one because it gives a good reason to keep the Dark Kingdom's operations near enough to the Senshi's known area of operations to take advantage of their background radiation, hoping to stay hidden long enough to drain more energy than they are spending in setting up the various operations.

These are all possible answers to why Beryl didn't send out her armies to raid places all over the world. It is also possible that she was running two or more operations at once. In canon, either she was able to collect some of the energy her youma collected before they died, or she had to have other operations that were successful in gathering energy since she comments at several points that Metallia is growing stronger, but that they need more energy than they had been collecting to revive it entirely.
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Re: Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

Postby Crescent Pulsar R » Tue Feb 15, 2011 7:02 pm

Funny how we deviated away from Naru. XD Well, it's my topic, so it should be okay if I'm okay with it... which I am. :O

Well, I would like to add one more possibility. Aside from getting the ginzuishou, gathering energy was their priority. (Although they wanted the ginzuishou for its power, too, so it's essentially about energy. And it's how Metallia had grown big enough to affect the whole world, before Usagi got it back and defeated her/it.) They may have only used one operative because it was safer to invest and possibly lose a little energy at a time than invest a lot and possibly lose a lot. Especially because of Sailor V, who probably gave them the impression that she would be able to find them anywhere and end their operations, they felt that it would be unwise to throw too much out for the wolves to find, despite wanting to be the wolves.
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Re: Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

Postby Zwzn » Tue Feb 15, 2011 11:02 pm

I once read an article that claimed that if Naru appeared in an episode there was something like a 76% chance she would be attacked, but sadly I can't seem to find the article.

___________________________________________________________________

Keep in mind Beryl's base's entrance was near the North Pole. Her minors could have flew, walked and swum to anywhere on Earth from D-point.

The Doom tree just seemed to pick Tokyo for no good reason.

The Dark Moon was trying to destroy Crystal Tokyo's defenses before they existed, and capture Chibi-Usa.

The Death Busters were only found because of a direct result of Usagi's future self sending Chibi-Usa back in time on a mission to make friends, and Hotaru looked like an easy mark to Chibi. They had set up operations well before any senshi had ever been active which make you wonder why they didn't ever seem to fight Beryl's forces.

Nefy was after the Gold crystal which Tuxy had a direct connection to, and in the anime Helios was hiding in Chibi-Usa. It sounds like Crystal Tokyo trying to ensure a win.

Galaxia was attacking Sailor Senshi so it only makes sense for her to operate where the senshi are.
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