Considering how much I love Kitagawa Keiko, it was only a matter of time before I got around to watching the TV series that started it all for her, the 2003 action sentai show PRETTY GUARDIAN SAILOR MOON featuring Keiko’s acting debut as the cool Rei Hino/Sailor Mars, and with anxiety building up waiting for Keiko’s TSUKI NO KOIBITO series to get uploaded, I needed something Keiko-ish to quell my hunger, and the Super-Heroine show looked like just the ticket!!
Funny, just a few days ago, I was talking to a friend about PGSM and how it was Keiko’s very first role, and, knowing how much I liked Keiko, he mused, “And you downloaded the series on general principle?” Well…No. Though I loved Kitagawa Keiko to death, watching her dressed up in a comic convention outfit battling computer generated monsters just didn’t pique my interest…at the time. But the more I thought about it that night, the more I realized that I DID in fact, want to see the show, if not for anything else than to see a young and inexperienced Keiko when she was just starting out…
The final push came when watching ZETTAI REIDO that night. There was an actress playing one of the accused criminals in that episode, and she looked so familiar, I just HAD to go on to Dramawiki and see what else she’d been in. Well, ya coulda knocked me over with a feather when I found that this girl, Komatsu Ayaka, was none other than, PGSM’s very own Sailor Venus!
Well, that did it, and I knew I had to find out more about this show! Going online later that night, I saw my very first look at the Sailor Moon show, and in an INCREDIBLE coincidence, the episode I came upon just HAPPENED to be the one where Keiko’s character Rei Hino had just been introduced!
I watched just a little bit of that episode, and the girls were so fun (especially Sawai Miyuu as the titular Sailor Moon) that I decided right then and there I had to download the show, or at least the first few when they are “setting up” the story, and I was lucky enough to come across some kind souls who had INDEED uploaded various episodes to DL and enjoy, and by the end of watching those episodes, I found myself REALLY liking the show, and making a commitment to check out ALL the episodes!
The thing that really amazed me while watching the show was how much Keiko seemed like…Keiko! I dunno, I guess I was imagining her to be portraying a peppy, girly girl with a highly strung anime voice and incurably spastic demeanor, but what I got was the same morose, serious, tomboyish and oh-so KAKKOI personality I’ve already come to know and expect from her!
Besides boasting a whole cast of cutie-type gals and, of course, the pre-goddess Keiko Kitagawa, another thing the show has to proffer is a catchy Opening Segment as well! With a theme song that harkens back to the good old Pony Canyon RANMA days playing against a montage of the five girls in their “hashire” attack poses, this is as infectious as anything this side of WENDY WU: HOMECOMING WARRIOR! AHAHAHAHA!
K, back to more Keiko…
