Kousagi's True ColorS

Back in late 2004, I received in an e-mail attachment a tiny picture of Kousagi. It was a colorized block, which depicted her holding a bunny plush. I soon found pics of Ami jr, Rei jr, Mako with the cat and Mina, all of which you have seen all over Moon Sisters. I lost contact with the person who sent me the pics, and have never heard back from him.

On February 18th, 2005 I posted the 5, pale little pictures, brightened as best as I could, hoping that someday, someone would find the whole picture.

For three years, I received hundreds of e-mails from Sailormoon fans around the world, trying to offer me clues to the whereabouts of the WHOLE picture. I heard everything from "It's a hoax" to "it's an ad" to "It's part of the original manga" but nobody had the full picture.

Then finally, on Monday, April 27th, 2009, My answer came.

A friend of mine who goes by the pen name Sailor Gold Rabbit sent me an e-mail. She sent me a link to the original picture:

Also attached was the source of the picture's whereabouts. To my astonishment, the picture had been on , right under my nose!

When asked about the picture's origins, the owner of Hollow Moon had this to say:

As to it's

origins, it was originally a notebook sold at Japanese conventions by

Naoko & her husband, it might have come out at the same time as the now

legendary Infinity artbook but I'm not 100% sure.

Interestingly enough, two and a half years prior to the mystery image's discovery, I had made a pic for my Gallery of Kousagi WITH the lost coloring. And I didn't even realize it!

Who would have thought??

Now, in the fall of 2008 (just after my birthday) I discovered another colorized picture of Kousagi:


The picture came from a Spanish blog. When I tried to translate the page though, the site crashed, and four days later, the blog had vanished. Gone forever in a heap of pixels.

I posted an enlarged version on Moon Sisters, hoping to find an answer. An anonymous tip from a fan who spotted one of my Kousagi cursors as a picture on the Prose n' Poetry site, lead me to an undercover account with said site for 30 days. More than long enough to find a bigger version of the above graphic:

I was baffled, unable to trace the photo to any artbook or manga. I thought that this was the full picture, that was... until July 22, 2009.

A kind soul named IttyFox6, who goes by the screen name of jaguar317@aol.com emailed me at my Yahoo account with links to a site called Shining Moon:

Eager as Usagi, I clicked on the links, finding something greater than I imagined:

Apperantly, Naoko Takeuchi drew the tiny picture for the Transylvania no Mori Sera-Myu play! The winter reprise lacks Kousagi's picture, but I thought this was so cool! This is the first time Kousagi appears in color OFFICIALLY with Usagi, Chibiusa and Chibi Chibi, bringing us all the Tsukino Senshi together. J

This: ♥ is the picture at FULL size, and this:☻is the site that has it first.

An interesting note, the Ankokuno Princess Black Lady play also featured this picture of Chibiusa with half of her sister's hair:

♥

So now comes the most important part of this page, the moment I have been waiting for for three years.

THANK YOU!!

Thank you Sailor Gold Rabbit and DOUBLE thank you Arashi for solving the mystery for me. Your contributions will now be celebrated amongst Sailormoon fans worldwide for eons to come! And a special thanks to IttyFox6 for spotting the second missing picture, and to the owner of http://www.shiningmoon.com.pl/ for supplying the image!