Code Name Sailor V


Aino Minako is an ordinary schoolgirl. She plays volleyball, struggles with her exams, squees over the latest teen idols, hangs out with her best friend, Hikaru, and falls in love at least once a week. Well, okay, maybe she's not that ordinary. And her life took a turn for the weirder when a white cat starts stalking her and eventually talks to her.

The stalking and talking cat is named Artemis, and he reveals to Minako that she has supernatural powers of strength, might, and beauty as the superhero Sailor V. He then hands her a magic pen that allows her to take on Sailor V's form--which is essentially a schoolgirl costume morphed to be more superhero-like. Sounds familiar?

With Artemis serving as Minako's voice of reason/conscience, she proceeds to take on evil powers. These evil powers primarily came from a supervillain Danburite. He sends out minions to launch talent agencies and promote villainous teen idols to the public. In turn, these teen idols attempt to enslave the human race (starting with Japan). They become well-known using various roles: school idols, singing idols, flight attendants, and actresses, among others. Fortunately, Sailor V and Artemis are there to save the day. One of Minako's favorite strategies to infiltrate enemy territories would be to use her magic compact and assume any look, from a young boy to a secretary to an inspector.

Gradually, Sailor V becomes well-known. The police start taking notice. After all, it's not everyday that a teenager in a sailor costume beats the bad guys all the time. The police superintendent general, Sakurada Natsuna, orders one of her officers, Wakagi Toshio, to catch Sailor V. Wakagi has a personal reason for wanting to catch Sailor V. He felt she was giving police officers a bad name. He has no idea that his boss, Sakurada, is a big fan of Sailor V's. Sakurada wants Sailor V caught so she could get her to join the police department.

In-between fighting crime, Minako encounters schoolgirls whom she's not familiar yet, but would influence her life later on. Essentially, the other sailor senshi make cameos in Code Name wa Sailor V. And so Minako continues to battle evil and scrape by in school and argue with Artemis and fall in love with a guy at the drop of the hat. Eventually, she encounters a masked character named Kaitou Ace. He first appears after Minako defeated an enemy, and since then, she couldn't get him out of her mind. Then he helps her defeat her enemies. However, Minako still has no idea who he is.

Code Name wa Sailor V ends with a showdown between Kaitou Ace and Sailor V. In the last chapter, Kaitou Ace's alter ego, Saijou Ace, gains worldwide popularity and Minako uses the morphing powers of her magic compact to end up in a movie with him. During their final battle, Minako discovers that Kaitou Ace is really Danburite, the supervillain who had been masterminding all the supernatural crimes that she had to suppress. She also remembers her previous life as Sailor V, protector of Princess Serenity. Kaitou Ace then reveals that in that past life, he was Adonis. He was destined to be Venus' lover, but he was just a soldier in a remote region of their planet.

When war erupted between the moon kingdom and Beryl's army, the planet Venus joined to help the moon kingdom. Adonis was recruited by Prince Endymion's army to fight Beryl's army. However, as the Sailor Moon series reveals, that war was ill-fated and everybody died. Adonis was reborn as Kaitou Ace. He swore to find the reborn Venus so they could finally be together. However, he realizes that even though he could reach the same status that she has, fate decreed it so that they would never end up together. He would always be destined to die without being with Venus.

Before he dies, Adonis/Kaitou Ace reveals a prophecy to Minako. He told her that her love will always be futile. Consequently, she will never be torn between love or duty.

Minako emerges from the battle as a full-fledged senshi. She then realizes that her role as Sailor V was temporary, and she was destined for a bigger and more important duty, that is, as Sailor Venus.

Minako is first introduced in the Codename: Sailor V manga, of which she is the lead character. She is awakened as a Senshi by the white cat Artemis when she is thirteen years old and instructed that she has a duty to become the beautiful warrior, Sailor V. Artemis explains that Venus and Earth are "twin planets" of about the same size and weight, that Venus is her "mother star", and that she must protect Earth from its enemies. He shows her Magellan Castle orbiting around Venus and says that it is hers, although the existence of these castles is not revealed to the other Senshi characters until late in the Sailor Moon series. She first dons her red hair bow during the first chapter of the story, on the recommendation of a handsome villain character that she defeats, and is almost never seen without it again.

Minako is depicted as athletic, cheerful, romantic, resilient, and clever. She is very versatile acting very elegant, intelligent, and refined at times[citation needed] and irrational, boy-crazy, and over-ambitious at others. When Sailor V was enough of a hit to earn its own anime adaptation, Takeuchi was asked to expand the concept to include more girls, and when she did, she placed Usagi Tsukino as the protagonist, with Minako as a part of the team. Minako is a Buddhist by her teaching when she was in Codename: Sailor V.