A Word on Rei Hino's Anime Characterization
Okay so this is a take I have seen a LOT of Sailor Moon fans make, and it is really, really aggravating. There's a tendency within the fandom to take the manga as being holy writ that reflects author Naoko Takeuchi's "true" and "pure" vision, that the anime subsequently ruined through various means. This has popped up in, for example, baseless rumors that series director and Revolutionary Girl Utena co-creator Kunihiko Ikuhara hated Takeuchi's work (of which has already been debunked previously) or spinning a narrative of Takeuchi versus the animation team.
Now, the notorious take I'm referring to is the character of Rei Hino being mistreated by the anime and "ruined" compared to her manga portrayal. This is partly because, while the rest of the five main girls carry largely the same portrayal from anime to manga (some tweaks here and there because of the format), Rei is very different.
In the manga, she's cold but firm, old-fashioned and upper class, the embodiment of a traditional noblewoman. She cares very little for pop culture, she's very focused on her duties as a miko, and she's a bit of a stick in the mud with a gothic streak. She also does not like men and has no romantic interest in them.
In the anime, she's a fiery hothead who's loud, sarcastic, and easily frustrated with Usagi's antics. She's kind of pathetic, her moments of grandeur easily undermined with slapstick, and while she is focused on her duties as a miko, she's also in-tune with pop culture and regularly reads manga. She also does like men and does show some romantic interest in them.
Yes, these are both different characterizations. But the assumption that malice had anything to do with the reason for Rei being so different is bizarre because it relies on assuming some kind of conspiratorial effort to undermine Takeuchi's vision. The fact of the matter is...the reason for Rei's different characterization was down to a simple error in communication within a very haphazard production.
One has to keep in mind that Sailor Moon's entire existence wasn't some quest by Takeuchi to make an amazing work of shoujo manga. Her editor, Osano, had a meeting with Toei sometime after the original Codename: Sailor V one-shot was published, and pitched them the idea of a full series based on it. Takeuchi didn't know anything about it. She was basically brought into a production that, yes, she made her own, but it also involved a lot of companies wanting a franchise to make merch and money. This would evolve into the start of Sailor Moon.
What's more, keep in mind that the Sailor Moon manga began publishing at the end of December 1991. The first episode of the anime aired in early March of 1992. Keeping in mind the amount of time that would've been involved in producing the first few episodes, things were going at a tight pace. The whole idea was a mixed-media production where the anime and manga would be tied together with merchandise for the girls watching the series. It would've been impossible to make the anime a one-to-one adaptation of the manga. Even Takeuchi was making things up as she went along, it's very well-known that she had no idea where to take things after the first arc.
How does this tie into Rei?
A Brazilian fan documentary that personally interviewed series director Junichi Sato answered this question back in 2018, and it's so simple that I'm baffled none of the "Anime!Rei sucks" brigade know about this. But this is right from the mouth of Sato, the man who was the series director for the first season and a half of Sailor Moon. To paraphrase it simply: the animation team often had to meet with representatives like Osano and others, who were acting as middlemen between the anime team and Takeuchi. Takeuchi was busy with the manga, she wasn't always able to meet with the anime team. But by the time Rei had finally appeared in the manga, the anime team had several episodes in development where Rei was depicted differently than Takeuchi's vision. The lack of communication was what ultimately led to this divergence in portrayal. At the very least, when Takeuchi informed them, they tried meeting with her again to compromise.
That being said, there's a couple things here. While the format of the manga was monthly and introduced characters relatively quickly, the anime was weekly and allowed for more stories and episodic adventures. The anime also took a more comedic tone, so you had funny slapstick and hijinks. The first several episodes are Usagi by herself, with Luna as the straight man playing off her antics. Then you get Ami, who's more straightlaced, but has a calm and reserved personality.
And then you get Rei. Rei, who's loud, fiery, combative, regularly snarks at and belittles Usagi's antics, and engages in a dynamic with a lot of back-and-forth pushing.
That's entertaining. It changes the series up from just Usagi being silly and only having Luna to reprimand her, to having an actual teammate who she has to fight beside and who reprimands her. Regardless of any personal feelings regarding Rei's characterization, it works. This is memorable. Rei's more reserved and calm personality in the manga just wouldn't work the same for the tone the anime was going for.
There's one rumor that blames the change solely on Kunihiko Ikuhara, even though he wasn't even the head director by that point. Now, Ikuhara does like Rei as a character. And he did play a part in how Rei was characterized in the anime, insofar as he directed several of the episodes she appeared in. You can definitely see some similar DNA in Rei's haughty but easily-humiliated presentation and compare it to Nanami Kiryuu from RGU. Two completely different characters, granted, but there's some similarities there. But this also ignores that animation is a collaborative effort and Ikuhara wouldn't have been the one making the scripts or directing every episode where Rei is characterized the same way, never mind how it ignores Sato's previous comments about the tight production. At most, while Ikuhara likely played a part, he wasn't the only one in the room, and there were more genuine reasons than anything conspiratorial afoot.
Did Takeuchi hate this change? Honestly, I don't know, but I don't think she ever openly disliked it. We know for a fact that she had friendly relations with the voice actors, including Michie Tomizawa, Rei's VA. We also know that she cried during the final episode of the anime. At most, she admitted to having some frustrations with the Sailor Moon R movie (ironic, considering it's held as the best of the three movies), but she didn't seem to hold any ill will towards the anime crew. I've heard more about her having issues with the higher ups at Kodansha and Toei than anything to do with the actual animation crew.
One last quibble is the accusation that, with Rei's manga portrayal being against dating guys and her anime portrayal being boy crazy like the other girls, that it amounts to straightwashing. But uh...y'all know Takeuchi wrote Rei crushing on a guy too, right?
This is from a story Takeuchi wrote called Casablanca Memories. It does one thing that the anime never did, which was explore Rei's background. Her dad is a sleazy politician who doesn't care about her, her mom died when Rei was a little girl...and there's this guy named Kaidou who's her dad's assistant. Rei has known him since she was a little girl. Rei is actually in love with him.
Yeah, she's in love with a grown-ass man, I'm not about to get into all the weird stuff in Takeuchi's work.
But the idea that Rei was "straightwashed" in the anime is complete nonsense. Sure, I don't really like that she's made to be boy crazy, but it's pretty clear that Takeuchi's intent with Rei was more of a "Had one love and her heart was broken" thing than making Rei a lesbian. Rei being a lesbian is a very popular headcanon, but it's not what Takeuchi intended. Straightwashing is taking a character who's queer in the source material and making them straight in an adaptation, which...isn't what happened here.
So, to give a tl;dr, the way the anime depicted Rei wasn't "ruining" Takeuchi's vision, the production of the anime was a mess and miscommunication largely caused the change in characterization, and Rei wasn't straightwashed. I'm not going to argue that the anime adapted things perfectly, there's a lot of issues with how other characters are handled (Mamoru and Setsuna are done far better in the manga and lord I would take the Dream arc in the manga over most of SuperS), but I think it says a lot that in my experience, every time I've gotten someone into the Sailor Moon anime, it's been that characterization of Rei that's stuck with them.
Something was done right.
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