MG Project: Dark Magical Girls Part 3
Mar. 31st, 2012 08:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_sun_is_upSince I've been talking a lot about Dark Magical Girls lately, I figure it's about time to discuss one of the main codifiers of the trope: Sailor Saturn.
At a glance, Sailor Saturn looks like your typical by-the-book DMG. Dark hair? Check. Wears purple and black? Check. Cold, aloof, and stoic? Check. Angsty? Triple check. Starts out as an enemy of the heroes but later joins their team? Check. Has her frozen heart melted by the pink-haired heroine? Check. Has tons of parallelism and LesYay with said pink-haired heroine? Check. Hell, she even has a creepy-looking scythe as her signature weapon and she's prophecied to bring about the end of the world.
But there's one big problem with categorizing Saturn as a Dark Magical Girl: she's not evil. She's not even an antagonist. The Outer Senshi think she's their enemy, but she doesn't share that opinion. She gets possessed by the Big Bad, but unlike with Chibiusa turning into Black Lady, it's done by force instead of manipulation. Furthermore, the pink-haired heroine who's responsible for Saturn's redemption arc is not the protagonist but the protagonist's daughter, who spends most of her time as a joke character.
If Sailor Moon had debuted in the past ten years, I'd put Sailor Saturn in the same bin as Homura from PMMM: characters who are set up to look like Dark Magical Girls only to turn around and subvert the trope. However Sailor Moon came out in 1992, back when the DMG trope had barely started to exist and certainly hadn't been codified yet, so I guess Saturn falls into that weird category that TV Tropes calls the Unbuilt Trope: when a trope gets subverted before it even gets properly established. At any rate, even though Saturn technically isn't a DMG, I tend to put her in that category anyway because it seems clear to me that she had a major hand in defining the trope for later works. Tsubami from Cyberteam, Rue from Princess Tutu, Fate from Nanoha, Dark Cure from Heartcatch — they're all following in Saturn's footsteps.
At a glance, Sailor Saturn looks like your typical by-the-book DMG. Dark hair? Check. Wears purple and black? Check. Cold, aloof, and stoic? Check. Angsty? Triple check. Starts out as an enemy of the heroes but later joins their team? Check. Has her frozen heart melted by the pink-haired heroine? Check. Has tons of parallelism and LesYay with said pink-haired heroine? Check. Hell, she even has a creepy-looking scythe as her signature weapon and she's prophecied to bring about the end of the world.
But there's one big problem with categorizing Saturn as a Dark Magical Girl: she's not evil. She's not even an antagonist. The Outer Senshi think she's their enemy, but she doesn't share that opinion. She gets possessed by the Big Bad, but unlike with Chibiusa turning into Black Lady, it's done by force instead of manipulation. Furthermore, the pink-haired heroine who's responsible for Saturn's redemption arc is not the protagonist but the protagonist's daughter, who spends most of her time as a joke character.
If Sailor Moon had debuted in the past ten years, I'd put Sailor Saturn in the same bin as Homura from PMMM: characters who are set up to look like Dark Magical Girls only to turn around and subvert the trope. However Sailor Moon came out in 1992, back when the DMG trope had barely started to exist and certainly hadn't been codified yet, so I guess Saturn falls into that weird category that TV Tropes calls the Unbuilt Trope: when a trope gets subverted before it even gets properly established. At any rate, even though Saturn technically isn't a DMG, I tend to put her in that category anyway because it seems clear to me that she had a major hand in defining the trope for later works. Tsubami from Cyberteam, Rue from Princess Tutu, Fate from Nanoha, Dark Cure from Heartcatch — they're all following in Saturn's footsteps.
