Happy Valentine's Day (My Favorite Ship)

 

Happy Valentine's day to my favorite ship of all time: Usagi Tsukino x Mamoru Chiba, or more commonly known as MamoUsa. 

Once there lived a race of immortal beings residing on the moon, an eternal paradise under the wise rule of Queen Serenity the first, who were sent with the divine mission to watch over the evolution of man.

The princess of moon was entranced by the Earth however, that blue orb shining with infinite hope and possibility. She longed to feel the natural breeze and plants of the Earth, longed to see the real and temporal instead of the eternal immortal lives of the moon people, and so she snuck down to that world, there upon she saw the prince of the world

Love between the people of the Earth and the people of the Moon was forbidden, but Princess Serenity loved Prince Endymion anyway, sneaking down to see him

The two worlds can get mere glimpses of each others, so ethereal and mutually otherworldy to each other, this is the way of woman and man, the way of moon and earth, the way of the eternal and the temporal. 

In his eyes she saw the same blue as the Earth, saw that orb of infinite hope and possibities, saw if you will all the little mundane joys that the eternal soul rejoices in bodily form. Entrancing and swalloning up Princess Serenity:

Tragedy befell however. God's law was not made arbitrary, the goddess-queen Serenity had forbade it for she knew that the mixing of the Earth and Moon would end in tragedy and so the Witch Beryl in envy released the demon Metaria who ended the love in star crossed tragedy

The Queen's last magic caused those that were there to be reincarnated on Earth. In their new lives Usagi and Mamoru, found each other again, and before they attained their memories again, they had already started to fall in love again

the theme of identity is the major theme of the first arc, along with the theme of tragedy and the repetition of time, as Usagi feel like she slowly loses who she is becoming the princess Serenity.

Feeling she is doomed to just repeat the past again, even attempting to kill herself again so she and Mamoru can be reincarnated together again

I don't know how universal an experience this but I completely understood Usagi's feelings, the feelings of being trapped into always being what you were, of feeling locked into one state of being. At the climax of that arc, Sailor Moon states that she is "not good enough" to beat Metaria but Mamoru assures her that her friends have faith in her from afar, and that he will stand by her in their place

His constant presence and his words fill Usagi with a new strength, growing ever stronger; her love breaking her free of the tragic cycle she was locked in, the epitome of her character arc as the crybaby cowardly girl who nonethless went to fight a scary monster because her friend was in danger.

In Mamoru, Usagi sees the beauty of the temporal world and change, she sees hope and possibility, the ability for things to transcend what they were even as her naturally sentimental soul clings to the past and the known. It allows her to triumphantly say she is Princess Serenity AND Sailor Moon

the tragic princess and the champion of justice exist in one person, the transformation brought out by love. 

If Usagi's love for Mamoru is the love for the material and the temporary, the potential to be uncovered in the future, then Mamoru's love for Usagi is the love of the ideal and the illusory, the transcedent eternal world beyond.

Mamoru begins the series amnesiac and alone, compelled to find the Silver Crystal by mysterious dreams of a woman that spoke to him

He was entranced by Usagi's ability to transform literally

but soon comes to be more by her change in personality, the way she can show a different side of her, wanting to know who she really is.

The Silver Crystal that Tuxedo Kamen spends so much time pursueing in the first arc, the Silver Crystal that represents Usagi, as the way to fill his missing memories, to make him feel whole symbolically, has a name that is hard to translate properly into English. Maboroshi no Ginzhuisho can translate to "Legendary Silver Crystal" "Illusory Silver Crystal" "Dream Silver Crystal" "Vision Silver Crystal", something that indicates an ethereal transcendent existence that exists in one's perception, the ideal one chases and more then any other character does that describe Mamoru's relation with it in the first arc.

Similarly in the first arc when Mamoru is blinded temporarily by Metaria, a physical representation of her earlier brainwashing of him how is it cured? He sees the white moon shining brightly, Usagi's power, the otherworldly ideal he's been chasing 

It's noted that back in the Silver Millennium, the people of Earth envied the people of the moon for their eternal lifespans, their most notable trait being their eternal nature. 

Similarly the manga ends at Usagi and Mamoru's wedding at the end of the fifth arc (an arc all about eternal and temporary existence) with Mamoru inner feelings towards Usagi stating that even though they will all someday, Usagi will forever shine as the universe's most beautiful heavenly body.

Mamoru's love for Usagi is the love for the eternal, the ideal, the illusory transcedent thing that will make us whole and inspires us. On a meta sense it is the love that a Sailor Moon fan has for the series itself, this non-reality that somehow draws the best from us. 

The engulfing and the enchanting. The Earth's strong pull of gravity on the Moon and the Moon's subtle pull on the Earth. The union nigh-literally of Earth and Heaven...that is what Usagi and Mamoru's union is to me. MamoUsa is a union that encompasses every possible dynamic that I like. They can be sweet and wholesome

playful and goofy

passionate and intense

soldiers in arms bonded by a shared desire to protect the world

tragic lovers from different worlds, an elegant princess and her chivalric knight

and so much more. Their love so conceptually potent from so many angles but yet it's so contradictory within the world that it's also triumphant. The 90s anime loved to play up this angle, the "miracle romance", that across the cosmically large distances of space and time, they managed to find each other. And it's not hard to see why; space and time, the law of gods and the curses of demons could not keep them apart, and when they finally are truly reunited at the end of the first arc, flashing between their identities, it carries such a feeling of wonder and fufillment 

This ship is also special to me in a personal way. I can recall the exact moment I first felt romantic feelings and it was watching these two, specificially it was during episode 44 of the 90s Sailor Moon Anime during the fall of the Silver Millennium. Specifically, it was right here:

I certainly didn't understand fully then but I knew I wanted what they had. I wanted that level of emotional intimacy, the feeling of completely trusting someone with my being, to share my everything with them, to be a part of a pair.

Back then I thought it would make me feel safe, I wouldn't feel anxious or afraid of anymore. And while love makes me feel safer sure, it can also have the opposite effect, something I could never have imagined. It makes me, a coward and a crybaby, want to face the future, think maybe I can be better then what I have been for my loved one. If I know anything is love, then that's what love is.

Happy Valentine's Day!