Talk:Sailor Moon

The Japanese characters (I assume that's what they are) aren't displaying in the first line. -- Zoe

Likely possibilities: 1) You don't have Japanese fonts installed. 2) Your browser isn't configured to display Japanese characters in a Japanese font. 3) Your browser is old/limited/text-mode and doesn't recognize them anyway. Since the Japanese title is just supplementary information (it's additionally transliterated into roman characters immediately thereafter), this shouldn't hurt you much, though. --Brion VIBBER

My browser is IE 6.0.2600, so it's pretty new. No, I don't have Japanese fonts installed, and most users of wikipedi will not, either. Should we require users to download special fonts? -- Zoe

This seems odd -- characters look fine to me. I'm at work right now using IE 6.0 that was installed with all the defaults. Konqueror 2.2.2 at home displays them as question marks, but mozilla 0.9.6 is able to display just over half of these type of characters (not sure if is displays these particular characters). --maveric149

The general consensus is that for things like that (the original-language form of a name mentioned in passing), the audience that will find it useful (ie, can read Japanese) will mostly already have the necessary fonts installed. Most people without Japanese fonts can't read Japanese, and would skip over the funny squiggles anyway. So there are four possible ways to deal with this:

Don't include the original form of the name, therefore making Wikipedia less informative and useful. Having the romanization helps, but romanizations are often not unique, especially with scripts like Japanese and Chinese.

Include the name as an inline image. Awkward to do and revise (anti-wiki), looks bad printed (low resolution), doesn't scale to larger font sizes, and you can't cut-and-paste the name into a search engine or word processor.
Include the name as characters; relatively easy to revise, can be cut-and-pasted, prints/scales as well as the fonts on your computer. Users who don't have fonts installed for the language in question will generally see question marks or boxes; for those who are actually interested in the information but don't have fonts, getting them is usually a straightforward issue. Windows users can simply visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ and download the Japanese font pack, for instance.
Include both an image and the characters -- now you've got four forms of the name in a row, two of which are identical; this is getting pretty awkward, and the audience that will get use out of the image but not the characters is limited.

This has already been discussed in Wikipedia:Unicode and elsewhere. --Brion VIBBER

In an earlier version of this article, the main group of antagonist characters in Sailor Stars was referred to as "Anima-Maids". An anonymous visitor corrected that, saying the following: '"Anima Maids" is wrong; アニマメイツ is the official spelling of the name in Japanese, and that cannot be "Anima Maids."' Denelson83 09:09, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The anonymous user is correct. "maid" in katakana is メード (meedo) or メイド (meido); "maids" would probably be something like メイドズ (meidozu) although I haven't seen that anywhere. メイツ is "meitsu" and is pronounced basically like "mates", so their alternative is reasonable. DopefishJustin 06:35, May 10, 2004 (UTC)

Is there a reason why Outer Senshi names have the weird accent on the "ô"? No one is going to search for "Haruka Ten'ô", but they might search for "Haruka Ten'ou". Should we correct this? (26 Feb 2004)

Translation of "bishoujo senshi": 12.16.156.230 says the literal translation is "pretty girl soldier". However, my Japanese dictionary lists "bi" as "beauty", and "senshi" as "warrior". So, which is it?

I can answer this question for you.
- 美 ("bi") = Beauty
- 少 ("shō") = Youth
- 女 ("jō") = The female gender
- 戦 ("sen") = War
- 士 ("shi") = Soldier

Denelson83 06:32, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"Warrior" and "soldier" aren't different enough that you can really say one word translates to one and not the other.Ken Arromdee 20:42, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm planning to go through the individual character pages and clean up the Senshi Attacks and Powers list. I noticed (see Hino Rei in particular) that some list the english dub attacks as primary and the original attacks secondary. I think it's best to list the original version attacks first. It makes more sense (since it is the original) and is easier because many times the dub (especially in the S and SuperS seasons) gives multiple names for the same attack.

Speaking of that, does anyone see the need for an entry outlining some of the differences between the various versions of Sailormoon, perhaps in particular listing some of the eccentric incidental names from the english dub, and so on?

Silvermask 17:09, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hey, while you're at it, Silvermask, do you think you can try writing the Kaiou Michiru article as well? Denelson83 09:06, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'd be glad to. That reminds me of something. Is there any particular consensus about how to romanize the family names of the outer senshi around here? I've noticed that we tend towards using the O with circumflex instead of ou. I'll be the first to admit that I know very little about Japanese, but I've most often seen ou used much more often (in fact I can only think of having seen the circumflex O in the context of Sailormoon, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence). Personally I prefer it for aesthetics and simplicity, although I've most often seen them as Kaioh/Tennoh/Meioh which I suppose just means people didn't want to look up ô on the character map. Ok, I'm rambling.

What I was getting around to is: Shouldn't it be under Kaiôh Michiru or shouldn't we also change the others to Ten'nou (or Tennou) Haruka and Meiou Setsuna?

You didn't sign that last post, but oh well. You should use the title that I put into the navigation frame at the bottom of the article. Denelson83 20:08, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There are standards for how to romanize Japanese in Wikipedia at Wikipedia:Manual of Style for Japan-related articles so those should be followed here. That article's talk page is the place for any disputes. To summarize what it says: short o in the title (Kaio), long ō in the article (Kaiō), although ō is even harder to type than ô. :P DopefishJustin 06:35, May 10, 2004 (UTC)

It also says the apostrophe after n should be avoided in article titles, so "Teno" for the title and "Ten'ō" in the text. I'll probably sort these out when I get some time. DopefishJustin 17:03, May 10, 2004 (UTC)

I've changed over Kai&#333 and Ten'&#333, but Mei&#333 will need a redirect deleted first, I've listed it on Wikipedia:Speedy deletions. I've also done some work on the character list in this article - we really only need the dub name and the standard romanization of the Japanese here, the orgy of alternate names that was there before belongs either on the article pages or nowhere. Some of the names also have justifications in brackets for the spellings used, those really belong here on the talk page and not in the article, but I haven't moved them for now. DopefishJustin 18:55, May 10, 2004 (UTC)

I've deleted the redirect, but I get an error when I try to move Meiou Setsuna to Meio Setsuna. It says to get an adminstrator to help with the move. Wikiwikifast 19:12, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Someone else took care of it. Thanks, though. DopefishJustin 20:13, May 10, 2004 (UTC)

Images

Dispute resolved. Discussion deleted because it is no longer applicable and is useless for future reference. Wikiwikifast 02:09, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Justifications for name spellings

These were in the article itself, I moved them here because they don't really belong in the article. DopefishJustin 22:44, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

Tuxedo Mask: ["Tuxedo Mask" appears most often in the official Japanese sources, including the manga]
Prince Demand: [official Japanese sources say "Demand" in Roman letters]
Death Fantom: [the manga shows "DEATH FANTOM"; "fantom" is a variant of "phantom"]
Amazones Quartet: ["Quartet" appears several times on the Japanese sources]

TokyoPop manga names replacing Japanese names

I think that the romanizations in the English manga should be used in the article titles for the characters instead of the ones they have right now.

Big long snip now that the massive holy war is over (amazingly, it never quite broke out into flames). For future reference, the arguments for the TokyoPop names are summarized here:

Wikipedia should use official names wherever possible, and the manga is an official publication.
Wikipedia is English and should thus use English names, as in Christopher Columbus (as opposed to Cristoforo Colombo).
The Yu-Gi-Oh! articles use the translated manga names, so the Sailor Moon articles should too.
The translated manga names are a good compromise between the original names and the dub names.

And against:

The article concerns the entire Sailor Moon metaseries. Since the use of the TokyoPop names is limited to the translated manga, while the original names refer to all of the original manga, the original anime, the musicals, and the live-action series, the original names are preferable.
The names most commonly used for the characters by speakers of English (according to Google) are the original Japanese names (in Western order). Thus, by various manuals of style, we should use those.
The TokyoPop names especially are relatively little-known, as there are few readers of the TokyoPop manga (and few of those are unfamiliar with at least the dub names); thus they are the least preferable, not a 'compromise'.
Nobody seems to think the dub names should be used anyway.
'Official' names should not be relevant: witness Jimmy Carter versus James Earl Carter, Jr.

Anyone who wants to open this can of worms again is asked to make sure they understand the arguments presented. --Aponar Kestrel 04:44, 2004 Jul 28 (UTC)

I google hitted other names and they seem consistent with your conclusion (English-order Japanese names are more popular), but I still don't understand why this is the case. WhisperToMe 03:12, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I can't say for sure, obviously. But, in the face of massive, widespread inconsistency, people will generally seek some standard to fall back on. "Usagi Tsukino" (and "Tsukino Usagi") provided that consistency; anything else (such as "purism" or "precedent") was icing on the cake. "Usagi Tsukino" probably has the advantage of being consistent with most Anglophones' experience concerning proper names, as well. --Aponar Kestrel 04:44, 2004 Jul 28 (UTC)

Ack. I can't move Amy Mizuno to Ami Mizuno, so instead I moved it to Mizuno Ami. I keep getting "Error: could not submit form" when I used the 'move' function. Wikiwikifast 22:27, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Taken care of manually. I hate doing that -- it doesn't preserve the history -- but. (Oh, nuts. I just thought of a better way to do it. Well, lesson learned.) --Aponar Kestrel 04:25, 2004 Jul 31 (UTC)

Position of SOS link

Looks like we got a small edit war in this article. An anonymous user puts the SOS link at the top, a known user returns it to its old position, and then the same anonymous user puts it right back at the top. Denelson83 02:18, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Fine. Let's justify it then. Here are some sites that explain why people hate SOS:

--Wikiwikifast 12:22, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Honestly I don't care about SOS one way or another; it's just that Hitoshi Doi's page is almost certainly going to be more useful to the vast majority of readers than the SOS page is. The only reason I can see for Wikipedia to have the SOS link there is if it did, in fact, make history (as its text blurb implies). --Aponar Kestrel 19:18, 2004 Jul 14 (UTC)

Actually, it did make history, albeit in a negative way. "Saturday, December 14th, 1996... a day that shall remain in infamy," (from the first link, in reference to the SOS Strawberry Pop Tarts debacle). But yes, Hitoshi Doi's page is the canonical Sailor Moon reference. --Wikiwikifast 22:38, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)