Like many girls my age growing up in Japan, Sailor Moon was on the tv all the time whenever I would watch. At the time, I was young and still didn't know a lot of Japanese, and I ended up gravitating to other magical girl shows as I learned. As such, my interest in Sailor moon didn't really come around until much later, when I was 17 and had already been back in the US for a few years.

I was a young trans girl grappling with her gender, relationships, and family, and I spent a lot of time very lonely and depressed. Someone mentioned Sailor Moon to me in reference to the characters, and I remembered it as something from my childhood that might have been fun. I didn't really want to watch the anime because I had school and didn't have time to get through all the episodes, so I made the decision to pick up the manga in my spare time.

Within the first volume, I was hooked. I loved the characters, I loved Naoko Takeuchi's beautiful art style - but more than anything, I had never read something that celebrated girlhood being beautiful while also celebrating queerness. There were girls who openly loved other girls, girls who identified as neither a man or a woman, girls who could transform into both men and women. There was even a disabled girl who would become very important to me in my later years when I got sick. These were things I had never really gotten to see in something that was also so beautiful and heartfelt, and I became incredibly attached.

Sailor Moon became my rock, something I held onto to give me strength during a very hard time in my life. It gave me so much confidence in myself and my identity, and I wore my Sailor Moon items out like armor to remind myself that I was not alone. I made the decision that my first ever tattoo was going to be a Sailor Moon tattoo, and soon as I turnedd 18 I made it happen! It was designed for me by a friend, and years later I still cherish it.

Sailor Moon is dear to me to this day, and it is a reminder to me that girlhood and queerness can go hand in hand. It inspires me to always be kind and loving, and to practice being magical in my everyday life. My tattoo says "purity, love, and justice" because these are things Sailor Moon always inspires me to honor in my everyday life. I hope that many years into the future that tattoo will still remind me to be loving, strive for justice, and cherish the purity of girlhood and friendship.