The idea of a strong female main character was by no means new in the early or mid 1990s. What was new and growing was the influence of fans over the genesis and development of each new character franchise. Remember those kids from the 1970s and 1980s? Well now they had money to spend and televisions of their own. The advantages available to 1990s executives were literally science fiction to all previous forms and titles in entertainment.

What Sailor Moon established conclusively that prior titles had only hinted at was that not only could a female character drive a narrative on her own, but that the story could be told on her own terms. Never before had the entire burden of defeating evil been placed in the hands of a hero more likely to confuse audiences.

The western concept of the female hero dates to the Greek myths of antiquity. While it also exists in eastern cultures, the female ideal familiar to western audiences can be found in the myths that form the foundation for all our heroic narratives.

Where a male hero is required to be strong, a female hero must be resilient. Where a male hero wins by decisive action and overwhelming force, a female hero wins by superior planning and overwhelming timing. It was not accidental that Athena represented wisdom while Ares represented war. It was also not accidental that Athena was chosen to carry Aegis, Zeus’s shield.

The question of how to communicate all this through children’s television in a way nobody ever had before was key to DIC’s success. If a girl must fight, how will she win? If a girl must defeat evil, where will she get the courage? How will she overcome the belief among our viewers that girls are no match for the villains familiar to western audiences from animated features and Saturday morning television?

These questions, among others, had to be on the mind of DIC executives when they were considering adapting Sailor Moon for U.S. and other English-speaking audiences. “If we are going to put a girl front and center in the fight against evil, how do we convince the audience her victories are authentic?” It’s a fair question, because up to that point, outside of television and film, there were few comparable examples of what Sailor Moon was about to unleash.

Then there was the obvious question of how the parents would react. Would American mothers accept the idea of a girl “never running from a real fight?”

Children’s television in the United States is a sacred enterprise. There are some things parents are willing to tolerate, and others they are not willing to even discuss. Handled improperly, images of a young girl being kicked, slapped, choked, thrown against walls, burned, restrained, tortured and beaten would be the television equivalent of a wagon filled with nitro-glycerin headed for a cobblestone staircase. Authentically portraying Usagi as a girl who can face down those kinds of challenges and win was not a luxury. It was an imperative.

The magnitude of the risk DIC was shouldering was nearly inconceivable. Andy Heyward was betting his company and reputation on the proposition that he could persuade an American audience Sailor Moon was not the work of “crazy Japanese animators” and was also not a stunt by a rapidly growing American company and an over-ambitious executive.

It would have been one thing if Sailor Moon could be presented somehow as a show like The Bionic Woman. The 1976 Kenneth Johnson series was a prime-time live action show, but it had a female superhero lead character and its primary audience was kids and teenagers like many other action series. At least then, any potential shock would be diluted by the traditionally broader audience of such shows.

Sailor Moon was targeted directly at children by a company that made children’s television: an audience that parents generally insist be shielded from anything exceeding a ‘G’ rating. There was no built-in hiding place if things went sideways. This was DIC Entertainment charging directly into the teeth of the unknown without a shred of justification provided by past success. Three years earlier, Sailor Moon didn’t exist, even in Japan.

One thing everyone could agree on in 1995 was that Sailor Moon was anything but a ‘G’ rated kid’s show. Given the reaction some 16 years later to the images of torture and death in Pixar’s Cars 2, it must have seemed to DIC executives they had pulled the pin on a live hand-grenade. One might have wondered if Andy Heyward had gone right around the bend.

Sailor Moon was going to suffer her share of defeats. What DIC had to do was balance those defeats with authentic victories and do a little sleight-of-hand to divert attention from the rest. It was going to be shocking enough to parents and children that girls were teaming up and defeating leering demon monsters with arms that turn into huge axe blades. There was nothing to be gained by adding to the confusion.

Then there was the question of nightmare imagery. Anyone familiar with Sailor Moon knows the scene in the first episode of the animation where a hag-like creature is raising a zombie army in a jewelry store. Most existing Sailor Moon fans have probably given little thought to that scene, but parents in 1995 must have been leaping to the defense of seven-year-olds nationwide when the unprecedented “claw reaching out of the television” shot appeared.

One can only imagine a wide-eyed audience of Strawberry Shortcake fans clutching their favorite blankets as the sound of Sailor Moon screaming filled the airwaves. Of course, our heroine wins and saves the day, but that image and subsequent fanged, misshapen and glowering beasts had the definite potential to become nightmare fuel for an audience that literally had never seen anything like it before.

Even invoking past Disney examples would not have helped. Maleficent in all her evil splendor would have run for her black-hearted life had she come face to face with some of the hideous irredeemable fiends Sailor Moon was encountering on a weekly basis. Usagi didn’t get to sleep through the battles either.

What DIC had to avoid at all costs was a label reading “UNSAFE” being pasted on their hard-won Sailor Moon license. Outrage was already being piled on music and video games from every precinct of child-concerned America. The last thing anyone in children’s television needed was attracting the attention of the FCC and parochial groups of politically-motivated parents with stories of traumatized second-graders, to say nothing of a show about a girl wearing a short skirt, long ponytails and a big red bow being attacked by packs of rabid carnivorous monsters.

A healthy appreciation for this level of risk seemed to escape the entertainment media. Journalists were distracted by misunderstandings of Sailor Moon’s battle cry and were busy forgetting that Lynda Carter had donned what they called “go-go boots” some twenty years earlier in the live-action Wonder Woman series. Lost on them was the forward-thinking genius Andy Heyward demonstrated. He knew the world was changing. He was determined to be a part of it and he chose to take audiences exactly where they wanted to go. His vision was the bigger story. It still is.

What Andy Heyward saw was a hero. He saw through the controversy and the noise and the risk and focused on what nearly every executive agreed made Sailor Moon’s appeal resonate with audiences everywhere. Sailor Moon is a hero, and heroes appeal to children in many of the same ways they appeal to their parents.

Yasumasa Shimizu, the president of Kodansha Publishing, said “We believe that part of the lasting appeal of “Sailor Moon’ comes from the empowerment that it provides.” While “empowerment” is trendy political terminology, the central point Shimizu-san makes is instructive. “Lasting appeal” is shared only by those characters that make an emotional connection with their audiences.

Andy Heyward knew that appeal would give him the ability to turn all of the characters’ “shocking” disadvantages into suddenly powerful reasons why Sailor Moon was not only important, but vital. How much more effective would images of a girl’s heroism be if she were fighting the most unimaginably hideous monsters? How much more attached would the audience become if he could show them she faced the same limitations they did? The same vulnerability? The same need for love? What would they learn?

Shimizu also stated “It is a story that encourages young people to stand up for themselves, be independent, and fight for what is right. Sailor Moon’s journey is one of friendship, determination, magic and love.” Themes like “determination” were in short supply when it came to 1990s cartoons, and the ideas of romantic or idyllic love were nearly absent. For a man with the proper vision, bringing this show to American living rooms was not optional. It became a mission, whatever the attendant risks.

When asked, Mr. Heyward said he recognized the appeal in Sailor Moon because of her vulnerability. She was a “regular girl” and he was certain that Sailor Moon would benefit from exactly the same dynamics present in the Power Rangers. Although the Saban series was far more concerned with high-energy battle sequences and completely over-the-top action, the core idea of a team in which each audience member can find at least one hero to identify with and root for is an effective one. Both Saban and Heyward helmed billion-dollar franchises built on that basic idea.

George Irwin, the CEO of Irwin Toys and the primary manufacturer of licensed Sailor Moon merchandise in the North American market agreed wholeheartedly with Mr. Heyward’s assessment of the basis for Sailor Moon’s appeal. According to him, Irwin “had Dragonball Z and knew the power of Japanese anime.” As a result, they were actively looking for a property like Sailor Moon that would deliver on the same level. Irwin wanted “good clean entertainment for girls” and a show that would provide “empowerment” for those same girls.

Heyward’s DIC Entertainment was counting on the fact that their audience would see through to the heart of the show even if parents balked. It was a multi-million dollar bet on the ability of children to perform the ultimate supermarket check-out line persuasion routine and get mom or dad to grudgingly agree that strange girl and her magical tiara wasn’t so bad after all. When Irwin Toy added their forward-looking merchandising to the mix, the table was set for a powerful success story.

Months later, many young Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z fans were dragging mom and dad to anime conventions, where what Heyward accomplished started to attract the attention of all the companies that preferred a second-place trophy in the race to try something new.

Everything was set for one of the great triumphs in animated entertainment. There was just one problem.

Sailor Moon was licensed at a time in the United States when media companies were consolidating their power into larger corporate structures and more vertical markets. Networks, and more importantly nationwide networks, were becoming more and more the key to success in television. This drive towards media consolidation is one reason Disney merged with Capital Cities. They needed the kind of nationwide reach ABC Television could bring them.

Up to the mid-1990s DIC Entertainment had done very well with the syndication model. Many television series have seen gigantic success in syndication. The most prominent example is Star Trek. During its three year run on NBC, Star Trek never reached anywhere near the audience it had accumulated through syndication by the early 1980s. Other syndicated shows like Inspector Gadget and Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog had performed very well for DIC prior to the release of Sailor Moon. Inspector Gadget was even adapted into a live-action film by Disney in 1999. Sonic followed in 2020.

Heyward’s company had no reason to believe Sailor Moon would not succeed with the same model. Using a standard 13-week schedule as a template, DIC took episodes from the first season and part of the second season and produced a 65-episode syndication package with a new soundtrack, new voice actors, ten original songs including a new theme based on the original “Moonlight Densetsu” with lyrics written by Mr. Heyward himself, and a new title sequence. Through veteran syndication company The Program Exchange, DIC began distributing the show to television stations all over the United States.

Meanwhile, in Canada, Sailor Moon was picked up by YTV, a national cable and satellite network very much like Nickelodeon in the United States. This state of affairs delighted Irwin Toy. George Irwin’s company worked directly with YTV to “establish strong broadcast advertising real estate during the after school time slots that ultimately set the stage for the successful launch of Sailor Moon.”

While Sailor Moon rocketed out of the gate in Canada, the show stumbled in the United States. The problem was individual stations were picking up the show, but they were broadcasting it in inconsistent time slots. The possibility of building a large fan base was going to be difficult if fans were required to set their alarms for 5AM to find the next episode.

Sailor Moon’s success in Japan, France and Italy was based almost exclusively on merchandising. If DIC was to repeat that success in America, they had to have both pieces of the puzzle. They had to find a large enough audience for the show so they could sell a large enough volume of toys, games, apparel, dolls and action figures. If the show didn’t get that audience, it couldn’t build a fan base. Without that early fan base, merchandise sales would suffer, and without the merchandising, the entire business model for the show was likely to fail.

DIC Entertainment’s plan was absolutely the right idea at exactly the wrong time. The new world of broadcast television was going to revolve around huge conglomerates with massive network reach. YTV was proving it in Canada. Sailor Moon had much more consistent early success with Canadian audiences than it did in the United States.

What had worked previously with Inspector Gadget and Sonic just wasn’t going to work for Sailor Moon. With television in a state of transition, there just wasn’t a stable enough selection of time slots for the show. Andy Heyward’s vision would have to wait.

As it turned out, he would only have to wait two years.