Sailor Moon Redraw

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About

Sailor Moon Redraw also known as #sailormoonredraw is a fan art meme that involves redrawing a still image of Usagi Tsukino / Sailor Moon from episode 125 of the titular series. The trend that began on Twitter in July 2019 and reached viral spread in May 2020.

Origin

On February 11th, 1995, episode 36 "A Bright Shooting Star! Saturn, and the Messiah" of the anime series Sailor Moon S (episode 125 in the full series) premiered in Japan.^[1] In one scene of the episode, Sailor Moon gets tricked by Mistress 9 into protecting her from Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune and is thrown to the ground by their abilities. Upon realizing that she was tricked, Sailor Moon looks up at Mistress 9 from the ground, her eyes welling up with tears (still image shown below, left).

On July 2nd, 2019, Korean artist and Twitter^[2] user @O_NL44 posted the earliest known redraw of the still image as a part of Korean #원작그림체_내그림체로그리기 challenge, with the post gaining over 33,800 retweets and 79,600 likes (shown below, center and right).

From July through September 2019, more Korean artists participating in the challenge chose to redraw the image, with variations done by Western artists also being posted. For example, on August 5th, 2019, Twitter^[3] user @azolitmin posted a version that received over 2,200 retweets and 8,000 likes (shown below, left). On August 17th, @Lazoomaiga^[4] posted a version that received over 150 retweets and 560 likes and marked the first notable use of the hashtag #SailorMoonRedraw for that particular image (shown below, center). On August 29th, @rerukon_^[5] posted a redraw that received over 3,800 retweets and 12,400 likes (shown below, right).

Spread

The redraw trend saw a moderate spread online in the following year; for example, On September 22nd, Twitter^[6] user @heart_puff posted a version that received over 6,100 retweets and 27,700 likes in eight months (shown below, left). On October 3rd, @GurepyonArt^[7] posted a redraw that received over 19,700 likes and 4,300 retweets in seven months (shown below, center).

May 2020 Popularity

The trend saw a massive spike in popularity in mid-May 2020 after it became viral among Japanese artists on Twitter. On May 6, 2020, Twitter^[8] artist norikoi_noriko shared their redraw under the #sailormoonredraw hashtag, with the tweet gaining over 130 retweets and 540 likes prior to being deleted (shown below, left). The trend did not see further spread until May 14th, when artist @mmc_cmm^[9] posted a version that received over 250 retweets and 980 likes (shown below, center). On the same day, @sekirei_tessar^[10] posted a version that received over 280 retweets and 1,700 likes (shown below, left).

Starting on May 15th, the redraw format saw a massive surge in popularity on Twitter with multiple viral posts. For example, a version by @hamusuko2^[11] received over 1,000 retweets and 11,300 likes in four days. A May 16th redraw by @quzilaxxx gained over 3,100 retweets and 12,200 likes, while a same-day redraw by @Souryu_STD^[12] accumulated over 22,700 retweets and 90,500 likes in the same period. On May 18th, a redraw by Taiwan artist Eddie Han achieved almost 24,000 retweets and over 111,100 likes.^[13]

As of May 20th, 2020, the most popular known version of the redraw on Twitter was the one made by the Pop Team Epic creator Bkub Okawa, posted on May 17th. The artwork gained nearly 40,000 retweets and over 167,100 likes in three days.^[14]

Whitewashing Controversy

On May 19th, 2020, Twitter^[15] artist Silverjow posted two submissions in which Sailor Moon was drawn to have more apparent East Asian features compared to her appearance in the original anime series, with one of the artwork also replacing her blonde hair color with black (shown below, left and right). The tweets were followed with comments in which a number of Twitter users opined that many other artworks had been whitewashing the character.

On May 21st, an unlogged Imgur^[16] user posted a collection of translated Japanese tweets that criticized the "whitewashing" argument (shown below). On May 23rd, 2020, Bounding Into Comics^[17] posted an article about the controversy.