They actually did have an imitation Silence Glaive even if it was smaller and looked more like a nagnita than her scythe-like weapon.
It was all a bit too much for Hotaru and she had to hold onto a table edge as black spots started to appear before her eyes.
"Are you Ok?" a girl's voice enquired from next to her.
Hoatru tried to nod and push herself off the table and away from the crowd.
"Come on give the poor girl some room," the same voice commanded to her companions who promptly cleared a few steps away from her.
"I am okay," Hotaru tried to reassure her, "just a bit overwhelmed."
Hotaru hated being the center of everyone's attention or for people to think of her as fraile.
"It can be a bit overwhelming the girl agreed, what with all the people crowding around such a small place. I tell them they should make a larger table for our Saturn-chan but they don't want to take any more space away from any those other Magical Girls." The girl told her while gently guiding her around the table to a slightly less crowded place.
"You are a fan of Sailor Saturn?" Hotaru could not help herself asking.
"Yes I am Yuko Minaguchi, president of the official Sailor Saturn fan-club." the girl introduced herself.
"I am Hotaru Tomoe." Hotaru returned and then because she was still too confused to be her normal shy self she asked, "Official?"
"Yuko believes we have her tacit approval," a smirking boy next to her clarified.
"She hasn't told us to stop or endorsed any other fan-club that should count for something," Yuko defended her position.
The whole concept appeared too surreal for Hotaru. Until a few moments ago Sailor Saturn had not even known that she had any fans.
"I am Kae Araki and the idiot over there is called Shinji we are members of the Sailor Saturn fan-club, too," another girl stand by them introduced herself, "Are you a fan of Saturn-chan, too?"
How could she possibly respond to that? They were obviously people who thought quite highly of Sailor Saturn. Telling them what Hotaru really thought about the Senshi of Silence and her horrible duty would likely not go over well.
"I have been following her career closely," Hotaru decided to answer diplomatically, "and I wondered if I might find some stuff on her here when I heard there was shop devoted to Magical Girls, but I never expected something like this. I thought that they would have maybe some items related to her in connection with merchandise for the other Sailor Senshi, you know group pictures or stuff for people wanting to have a complete set of Senshi dolls or something like that, but she seems very popular in her own right."
"Sure she is," the boy, Shinji, enthused, "She is different from the rest; dark and dangerous, but still cute without going all sugary like some of the other girls."
Dangerous was something that Hotaru could see, but cute?
"People don't really see her like this?" She asked pointing at the poster hanging over the Sailor Saturn table.
"It takes some liberties with how she looks, but I think it captures the spirit quite well." Kae told her.
"You know what that poster needs?," Shinji began only to be interrupted by Yuko.
"Don't say it," she warned.
"It needs more cowbell!" Shinji revealed ignoring her.
His companions groaned at what appeared to be an inside joke. Judging by the way they cuffed him on the head in concert it had to be an overused inside joke that had not been very funny the first time around.
"But seriously," Yuko tried to bring the discussion back on track," that is not a very good likeness of her. It is just popular because it is new and done by a famous artist. There are far better drawings of her."
Kae got out an art-book titled Chthonic Impressions. And opened it to show her some other pictures of Sailor Saturn. It took a moment for Hotaru to realize that the book was entirely dedicated to collect drawings of herself.
"The Senshi can't be photographed, so all we have are artist's renditions of her. Most of the artists of course have never seen her and have drawn her entirely based on witness accounts," Yuko explained, "I actually prefer the few pictures drawn by amateurs who have actually seen them. They might not be quite as good quality, but at least it is not all made up."
"I like the sketches of the police artists. They are drawn from second hand information, too and they are not as talented as the big name professional artists, but they have experience in doing that sort of stuff." Kae informed her.
The black and white drawings of eye-witnesses and the sketches of police artist did indeed come disturbingly close to what Sailor Saturn really looked like, but they also unsettled Hotaru.
Did she really look that calm an confident in battle? Because of her physical weakness and the range and nature of her attacks she tended to stay somewhat apart from the others, but in the pictures it looked like she stood out and above the others.
One of the pictures had her shrugging of an attack with contempt not even bothering to try to dodge it. Another had her slice an enemy in two that had dared to get to close to her.
They must have misunderstood her. Sailor Saturn was not the steadfast rock in the tides of battle that these pictures made her appear to be. She was scared even if she did not show it and if she did not move around as much as her fellow Senshi it was not because she thought she did not need to dodge. She simply was not as athletic as the others and her Silence Wall for example worked best if she stood still while keeping it up. Striking an enemy with her glaive directly was always an act of desperation. It meant that something had broken through their defenses and was now threatening to strike the senshi pummeling their foes with ranged attacks. That was why you traditionally put someone with a pike or a naginata among your archers.
"Then there is the other end of the spectrum," Kae's comment brought Hotaru back to the present, "The publishers have also hired some well-known international artist who proably have never heard from her before and only had a few paragraphs of description to work with."
"I liked the Boris Vallejo one." Shinji put in half-seriously which earned him another round of cuffs to the head.
"Seriously, it is cool in a kitschy, campy sort of way and it shows of her talents," he defended himself.
Hotaru did not know how to respond. The person in the picture was young and female and carried a bladed pole-arm, but that is where most of the resemblance ended as far as she could tell. The chain-mail sailor-fuku did not even look like it would offer much protection against anyone not directly aiming for the few square-centimeters it actually covered.
"Leaving the taste's of easily impressed males aside." Kae told her, "If you are looking for a good poster of Sailor Saturn I suggest you look through the rack over there. It has some really good stuff in it from talented artist who don't take to much of an artistic license.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Thu, 23 Dec 2004 22:25)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.