Who Is Sailor Moon's Tuxedo Mask - And Why Is He So Divisive?

There's nothing like a little mystery to set the heart aflutter, and this is something that fans of the "Sailor Moon" franchise know well. Whether you're a fan of the manga, the '90s cartoon, or the more recent "Sailor Moon Crystal" series, you'll no doubt have taken note of the franchise's resident man of mystery, Tuxedo Mask, a.k.a Mamoru Chiba.

In fact, the popularity of the double romantic interest between alter egos Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask in both their heroic lives and their personal lives is so popular that you can still see its prevalence in more modern anime-inspired shows like "Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir." Still, despite his ubiquitous nature, Tuxedo Mask isn't a character that everyone loves.

As fans of "Super Mario Bros." and "The Legend of Zelda" will know, the trope of the love interest getting kidnapped to motivate the hero is a pretty well-worn one at this point. While "Sailor Moon" has been known to lean on this tradition regularly, the franchise subverts expectations by having Mamoru be the one who is most often kidnapped or imprisoned, swapping the standard gender stereotypes in the process.

Still, there are other reasons why some fans can't stand Tuxedo Mask, and it has a lot to do with how the character was originally written. For instance, while Mamoru is a college student, his love interest, Sailor Moon, a.k.a. Usagi Tsukiyo, is in high school. While anime and manga have long been written and drawn in a way that sexualizes younger females for older men more than might be appropriate, this has thankfully fallen more and more out of favor over the decades since the franchise began.

That's why in "Sailor Moon Crystal," a modern retelling of the manga, the character has been changed to be a high school student, just like Usagi (Kotono Mitsuishi/Stephanie Sheh). Furthermore, Mamoru (Kenji Nojima/Robbie Daymond) is also much more useful in battle in the newer series, making him less of a liability without taking the air out of the room for the series' titular character and her team.

While not everyone has come around to the character with these more appropriate changes in mind, Tuxedo Mask is undeniably setting a better example today than he was in the original "Sailor Moon" series, both as a romantic interest and eventually as a father to he and Usagi's child, Chibiusa (Misato Fukuen/Sandy Fox).