Clever superfan shows how you too can easily replicate the most famous scene from the most famous magical girl anime.


One of the things that sets anime magical girls apart from ordinary superheroes is their transformation sequences (it’s even one of SoraNews24’s Laws of Magical Girl Anime), and no sequence is more famous than that of Sailor Moon. No matter how dire the situation or how dangerous the adversaries, the genre’s most famous heroine always has time for a luxuriously long, dazzling display of her combat costume forming around her sparkling silhouette.

As a fan of the series, Japanese Twitter user @unXXXhm no doubt has a pretty detailed mental image of Sailor Moon’s transformation in her head. She doesn’t have to rely on memories to relive the iconic scene, though, since she’s created a smartphone case that recreates ordinary schoolgirl Usagi Tuskino’s magical shift to lunar guardian Sailor Moon, as demonstrated in this jaw-dropping video.

It should be noted that the flashes of light and background music were added digitally, but the sparkles moving over Sailor Moon’s mid-transformation body are an entirely practical effect.

So how did @unXXXhm pull this off? She started by recreating an illustration of the character, drawing the outlines of her body countours, hairstyling, and eyelashes while leaving everything else unshaded. Next, she ordered a glitter-filled smartphone case from Canvath, a Japanese company that does custom printing with customer-submitted images.

Since the character’s body and hair were the only parts of @unXXXhm’s illustration left unshaded, they remain transparent when printed, and so when she turns the case over, the glitter moves over her silhouette, replicating the look of the anime.

Magical girl fans were quickly enchanted, leaving comments such as:

“God-like.”
“This is all I could ever want in life.”
“So cute. So stylish. I want this so badly!”
“Awesome…! If you’re selling these, I will totally buy one.”

Unfortunately, despite several other Twitter users saying they’re ready to purchase the case, @unXXXhm has clarified that it’s not for sale. While the illustration isn’t traced, it is an eyeballed copy of an existing piece of official Sailor Moon artwork, so she’s not sure she’d be in the clear selling it, and even if rights holders sometimes turn a blind eye to derivative merchandise sold in-person at fan events like the twice-a-year Comiket, they’re not nearly as lenient when it comes to online sales.

So for now, it looks like the only way to get your hands on a Sailor Moon transformation sequence smartphone case is to make your own, but luckily @unXXXhm was kind enough to tell us all how to do just that.

Related: Canvath
Source: Twitter/@unXXXhm via IT Media

Follow Casey on Twitter, where all this talk of anime and smartphones has him wishing he still had the Slayers’ opening theme as his ring tone.