Naoko Takeuchi



Naoko Takeuchi is the creator of The Cherry Project, Codename: Sailor V and the world famous Sailor Moon manga, which codified the Magical Girl Warrior sub-genre. Married to fellow manga-ka Yoshihiro Togashi. A pharmacist-turned-mangaka, she has been a Shojo inspiration for many years.


 * Author Appeal: White-Haired Pretty Boys, racing cars (her favorite is a Ferrari 512M) and figure skating, namely. Sailor Moon was inspired by Wonder Woman, which gives the inspiration of most of the senshi having combat stilettos. She likes drawing shoes.
 * Author Avatar: Usagi is stated to be this in Sailor Moon.
 * Creator Breakdown: Naoko admits that she was burned out after finishing the final chapter of Sailor Moon. She said that she needed a break, according to her Punch! memoirs; her body was breaking out in hives from five years' worth of stress that required multiple injections. While the manga company gave her five months, she had to spend those five months doing supplemental Sailor Moon material and planning another series. Her editor made her start a new story under contract before changing jobs to a shounen company. That's why although PQ Angels started strong, she didn't have the energy to finish it after Kodansha lost seven pages of the manuscript.
 * Executive Meddling: A victim of it, often.
 * This is what killed PQ Angels, according to her Punch! memoirs, when Kodansha lost seven pages of part two and passed the buck between the anime company and a subsidiary. Naoko hadn't wanted to do another series because she needed a break, but her editor mandated that she work on her vacation per her contract. She quit Kodansha after they failed to find the pages and expected her to draw them from scratch again.
 * Fanfic: Naoko loves reading Sailor Moon fanfic and encourages different interpretations of her work heartily.
 * Hot Mom: She's pretty cute and has had two kids with Togashi-san.
 * I Was Just Joking: When she came to her boss one day in 1990s and said that she would like to draw a manga about a female superhero, the editor remarked: "Right. A female superhero. Maybe a schoolgirl at that, who is a crybaby, and yet saves the day?" And thus, Codename Sailor V, and by extension, Sailor Moon, was born.
 * Lap Pillow: Says of this cute drawing: "I love sleeping with my head on someone's lap. I also love having someone's head on my lap. Since both really put me at ease, I can be happy."
 * Left Hanging: After Sailor Moon concluded, most of her next few series have lacked conclusions:
 * PQ Angels ends part one with the girls celebrating Christmas, and wondering how to find their queen. They also learned that kissing boys would revert them to cockroach form.
 * Love Witch ends with the protagonist Love preparing to sacrifice her beloved-- her brother Yuu-- to gain the powers needed to save his life.
 * No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: This killed PQ Angels. Takeuchi sent seven pages of Part Two to her editor. They somehow got lost, and in this time period no one did photocopy backups. No one at Kodansha could find the pages, and they kept passing the back while remaining oblivious to Takeuchi's understandable distress.
 * Odango: She has famously worn them, like her Author Avatar Usagi.
 * Orphaned Series: Several after Sailor Moon. They include PQ Angels and Love Witch.
 * Real Life Writes the Plot: Usagi has a father named Kenji, a mother named Ikuko, and a younger brother named Shingo, just like her creator, Naoko.
 * Rule 34/Creator Reactions: She enthusiastically encourages and enjoys reading fanworks based on it, including hentai material, and has been known to say so in her manga marginalia.
 * Shout-Out: She makes one of them as part of an artbook drawing, since she loves when fans homage her works, and compliments it back as she can.
 * Tender Tears: In an artbook she comments that "Naoko is prone to tears,". She cries when she is overwhelmed by something beautiful and from touching letters from fans.
 * What Could Have Been: A lot of the elements she wanted to include in Sailor Moon can be found in her artbooks, but most especially the Materials Collection she released as a Doujinshi. Tuxedo Mask was supposed to play a much larger part (and would have been named Mysterious 2098 Face!), Makoto would have been a smoker and sukeban leader... the list goes on.
 * Write What You Know: She did Miko work in a shrine, using this experience as the basis for Rei Hino's character.