Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon × TeNQ Exhibition
Over the Sailor Moon: An Invitation to Outer Space

15 December 2017 – 15 April 2018
TeNQ Space Museum

 
“Sailor Moon” is a popular manga by Naoko Takeuchi, published in the monthly magazine “Nakayosi” (Kodansha, Tokyo) since 1991. It has been translated into 17 languages and adapted into animated TV series and movies, live-action TV shows as well as musicals. The animated series was a huge hit in Japan and abroad, aired in more than 40 countries.

The story is about Usagi Tsukino (Serena to many overseas audiences), a clumsy school girl with two large blond ponytails who transforms into a superheroine “Sailor Moon”. She fights against interstellar and intertemporal evildoers in the name of the Moon, leading a strong team of girls called the Sailor Guardians. The characters and plots took much inspiration from astronomy, Greco-Roman mythology, astrology and gemstones, among others.

This space-themed girls’ comic, currently celebrating its 25th anniversary, will come in conjunction with the space-themed museum TeNQ for its 12th special exhibition.

TeNQ and Sailor Moon

The space museum TeNQ (a pun for the Japanese word “tenkyu” meaning the celestial sphere) is a high-tech attraction added to Tokyo Dome City in 2014. It consists of nine theme areas, equipped with large screens and special effects to experience the universe.

The present exhibition features Sailor Moon from a unique perspective of TeNQ, whose mission is to convey the wonder of the universe to a wider audience.

©Naoko Takeuchi/PNP, Toei Animation

Highlights of the exhibition

◆Sailor Guardians in the Galaxy

The Sailor Guardians have the solar system’s planets as their guardians, such as: Sailor Moon and her compatriots Sailors Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus. In the exhibition, the Sailor Guardians will be located in the Galaxy and interpreted from the astronomical and ancient mythological perspectives.

◆ “The Lover of Princess Kaguya” and the Moon

The Moon is the heavenly body nearest to Earth. In “Taketori monogatari (the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter)”, the 9th to 10th-century Japanese narrative based on folklore, Princess Kaguya descended on Earth from the Moon.* One of the displays features the Moon and the legend-inspired Naoko Takeuchi’s manga “the Lover of Princess Kaguya”. The latter was adapted into the animated film “Sailor Moon S: The Movie”, released in Japan in1994.

*A celestial beauty full of light, she was made to spend some time on Earth with the mortals to expiate her sin and to ascend back to the moon kingdom.

◆Moon, Earth and Sailor Moon

What Earth would look like, when Princess Serenity sees it from her legendary moon kingdom? Were it not for the Moon, what Earth would be like? Sailor Moon’s intimate relationship with the Moon and Earth will be explored from a scientific viewpoint.

◆Audience participation

Pick up a sheet of Sailor Moon illustration specially prepared for the exhibition. Color it and add comments on it! Your unique piece of art will be part of a special display.

To complete your space journey, how about posing at a couple of selfie spots? One is in the theme of the Silver Millennium (inside the exhibition hall) and the other depicts the universe of Sailor Moon (at TeNQ’s entrance hall named “Imagination”).

TeNQ’s “Imagination”