By Jade Ann Byrne
I’m sitting here in Southern California—purple streaks in my hair, Slurpee on my desk, life forms around me asleep, stream lights humming behind me—and I hit play on Sailor Moon Season 1 for the first time since I was a little girl. And within sixty seconds, as Usagi barrels down the stairs and her mother looks up with that unmistakable lavender-purple hair…
…I was a child again again.
Not in a city.
Not on the internet.
Not in this neon eGirl multiverse I built with my bare, ring-clicking hands.
But back home:
in the back woods, along the cold river where the real wild things grow. Where white pines stand tall on top of sandy shores.
Back with my Irish grandmother who smelled like warm bread and Shout detergent, and my German grandfather, the quiet old druid in flannel who knew every bird, every tree, and every secret path through those 100-acre woods that raised me just as much as they did.
🌙 Sailor Moon wasn’t just a cartoon to me.
It was the first magic I ever saw.
It was color and softness and destiny and girlhood and cosmic power wrapped into one beam of light hitting the TV in a house full of Lutheran restraint and dairy-farmer practicality.
It was the first time I saw a person with purple hair
—soft, gentle, beautiful, whimsical—
and realized maybe women didn’t have to grow up into grey.
Maybe we could grow up into lavender.
Ikuko Tsukino wasn’t “old.”
She was iconic.
She was the prototype of the magical-girl mother:
tender but fierce tired but glowing able to hold a whole home together with quiet divinity a woman whose softness was not weakness but armor
Watching her now, as a mother myself, with little ones in my life who think I hung the moon (which is hysterical and a little true), I suddenly understand her in a way I couldn’t back then.
🌲 Growing up on that river shaped me as much as the show did.
We lived in a place where nature didn’t ask permission—it simply was.
The woods weren’t manicured or polite; they were chaotic, ancient, and full of stories.
The river carved its way through generations, slow and powerful, just like my ancestors.
Irish grandmothers tell tales that sound like prophecies.
German grandfathers teach you to listen to the wind.
The woods teach you to be brave.
And Sailor Moon taught me to be kind while I was doing it.
I didn’t know then that the purple-haired mom would become a mirror years later.
I didn’t know I’d carry those colors in my hair.
I didn’t know I’d spend my life being a paladin to all; resurrecting the broken, feeding the hungry, protecting the small, fighting invisible wars with a smile that looks effortless only because the armor underneath is heavy.
🌙 Watching Episode 1 again was like opening a time capsule.
Usagi is dramatic and sensitive and late for school. So am i; still.
Ikuko is patient and beautiful and soft.
The world is watercolor-bright.
And the music, those tiny synth bells, hit something deep in my bones.
As an adult, as a mother, as a creator, as someone who’s seen far too much and survived all of it… watching this show again feels like honoring the little girl who believed in magic because she had to.
Because the woods were dark.
Because the world was big.
Because the river whispered things adults couldn’t hear.
Because my grandmother said “kill them with kindess”
and my grandfather said, “fold your hands and bow your head; your faith is inside you.”
Because Sailor Moon said,
“You are allowed to be both strong and soft.”
💜 I’m old enough now to be Usagi’s mom and that doesn’t hurt. It fits.
I’ve lived enough lives for ten anime arcs.
I’ve raised others’ kids through storms.
I’ve protected strangers like they were my own blood.
I’ve walked through fire, rivers, woods, grief, rebirth.
Of course I’m old enough to be Ikuko.
I earned that title the proud way.
And maybe I’ve always been more Queen Serenity than Usagi anyway.
A little cosmic.
A little ancient.
A little purple.
A little wild.
🌙 Rewatching Sailor Moon now, I realize something I never saw as a child:
The magic was never just in the transformation sequences.
It was in the mothers, the grandmothers, the lineages, the women who held the world together while raising the girls who would one day save it.
And now I get to be one of them.
A moon mom.
A river daughter.
A German-Irish forest child with a California glow.
A paladin eGirl teaching the next generation how to shine.
And watching that first episode again—after all these years—felt like the moon remembering me.