That's Hino Rei, not to be confused with Ayanami Rei or any of the other Reis of anime. She is, of course, also the Bishoujo Senshi of Fire, Sailormars. (Don't tell Yuuichirou. *^.^* Besides, if I tried to write about Sailormars as well as Rei, we'd be here all day instead of just until lunchtime. I'd rather write about the girl he knows than the girl he's always been too, well, unconscious to meet.) When Yuuichirou first met Rei, she was fourteen years old, and unlike most fourteen-year-olds, already very beautiful. Rei is probably the sexiest of the Inner Senshi. I don't mean that she is tarty, merely that she is quite aware of how attractive she is, and makes the most of her looks. Sometimes she's even a little vain. Compared with Usagi's kittenish charm, Minako's sunny flirtiness, Ami's old-world demureness and Makoto's athletic grace, she definitely has the most sophisticated personal style. (Catch any of the others wearing a leather minidress? I thought not.) Shinto chic. A deeply spiritual girl, Rei is a miko or young priestess at Hikawa Jinja, the Shinto shrine run by her maternal grandfather, who she calls Ojii-chan (Grandpa). She lives with him, according to the manga, because her mother is dead and her politician father has very little time for her. This background is not really discussed in the anime, where her parents are just not in the picture. Rei seems to be surrounded on all sides by mystical religion: she attends T*A Academy, an elite Catholic school for girls, where she is taught by nuns. Very bossy nuns, judging by the manga. Perhaps that's where she gets it from. The choice of school is just for the sake of prestige; Rei is not at all Catholic, but Shinto is a very flexible and inclusive religion. One of her goals in life is to be head priestess of Hikawa Jinja. She is quite psychic, and a good fortune-teller. Some people consider her a little spooky while others are impressed by her gifts. Rei is notoriously short-tempered and critical, to the extent that she sometimes gives the impression of disliking someone of whom she is actually fond. Her constantly bickering but deeply loyal friendship with Tsukino Usagi is the classic example of this. In fact, Rei didn't like Usagi when first she met her, but in later seasons I think it would be fair to call Usagi her best friend. (See Rei and Usagi's Friendship Page for an excellent analysis of this dynamic.) The problem is that Rei has very high standards for the people she loves, but doesn't know how to give constructive criticism. For her, yelling is a way of showing she cares. Rei is ferociously organised and self-disciplined, and does not suffer fools gladly. She's scary when she's mad! When she sets her mind to something, such as organising her school's autumn festival, heaven help anyone who stands in her way. Fortunately everyone else at T*A has a crush on Rei so she has any number of willing helpers. She is a person who makes things happen, a natural leader who is accustomed to admiration. She has questioned Sailormoon's fitness to lead the Senshi, with the implication that she could do better herself, but eventually gave up on this. Rei is not really insubordinate or power-crazed; she was just afraid that Sailormoon wasn't up to the job. She has a powerful sense of duty, and didn't want everything to go wrong because of Usagi's immaturity. Rei loves music, and writes, plays and sings her own songs. This is connected to another of her ambitions, to be a singer or a seiyuu (anime voice actor). Rei has more ambitions than you can shake a stick at, including being happily married. In the manga, Rei is something of an ice princess who says she simply doesn't trust men, and appears completely uninterested in romance. She's even vowed never to marry. The anime version of Rei possesses something of this quality of alienation from her deeper emotions, but is overall much more passionate and less self-composed, making her, for me, a much funnier and more endearing character. She definitely does not have any objections to men. (That's lucky.) She also likes manga, and one supposes, by extension, anime, although she says she does not like TV. Rei's tastes are generally rather classical and old-fashioned, like her home. Her favourite flowers are a kind of white lily called casablancas, and there is a hint in the manga that she likes the film Casablanca too. Ooh! Movie date! Astonishingly, this is the regulation length for T*A school skirts. Rei's unwillingness to give away her true feelings is interestingly highlighted in how she uses name suffixes (yes, this sounds weird, but bear with me). In Japanese, it is normal for young girls who are friends to address each other with the suffix -chan, as in Ami-chan, Mako-chan, etcetera. -chan can also be used simply to show affection, as in Ojii-chan, or Usagi's petname for Mamoru, Mamo-chan. There are several other suffixes ranging from the polite (-san) to the worshipful (-sama). Affixing nothing to a person's name can indicate that you are being deliberately brusque (a bit rude), that you do not want to reveal what is your relationship to them, or that you feel very close to them. Rei always calls Usagi just plain Usagi, and to the best of my knowledge, she does not attach anything to Yuuichirou's name either. Hmmm... don'tcha love ambiguity? Rei's unwillingness to accept or confirm Yuuichirou in boyfriend status is a bit of a vexed question. There are probably more factors at play than her simple recoiling from his clumsiness and heart-on-sleeve personality, and besides the very practical metatextual reason that it could be awkward for the anime staff to give Rei a steady significant other that she doesn't have in the manga. We've seen already that she does not much like to be pinned down on the subject of her feelings. However, there's one particular block to her forming a serious relationship that none of the other Senshi have to deal with: she's a miko. I didn't know about this aspect of miko-hood when I began this shrine, but I've learned some more about Shinto culture since then, and this bit kind of popped out at me. It's also discussed somewhat at KitagawaKeiko.com, Dr Xadium's shrine for the actress who plays Rei in the live-action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon TV series. (Twenty-plus episodes into PGSM, it doesn't look like the writers plan to include Yuuichirou - although I would argue that sweet but dorky PGSM Motoki is channelling Yuuichirou a lot of the time. At least Yuuichirou never dressed up as a turtle.) To get to my point, a miko must be celibate. She is symbolically married to the kami, spirits with whom she communes - a little like the idea of a nun being a 'bride of Christ.' This kind of personal consecration or dedication can't co-exist with a marriage or serious love-affair. Unlike nunhood, it does not mean that the woman in question must stick with this spiritual marriage for the whole of her life, but if she wants to marry she can't be a miko any more. The options are either leaving the Shinto clergy, or promotion/graduation to head priestess of a shrine (a less common position than a male head priest, but they do exist). So, as Xadium puts it, 'basically, all you Rei fanboys, Hino Ojii-san must die. (or quit, but I like the drama implied by the former scenario better). ' Rei has said that one of her ambitions is to become head priestess of the shrine and it seems possible that she doesn't want to take on a serious relationship until she has this greater freedom to pursue it. One wonders if there's some kind of family plan for the future, with her grandfather intending to retire once she finishes school? But when we start talking about plans for the future, we run up against a factor that is not yet a consideration in the first season of Sailormoon but must become a major one after the events of Sailormoon R. Rei gets a glimpse of her future as Sailormars in Crystal Tokyo. While these visions of destiny confirm Usagi and Mamoru's relationship and establish that they'll spawn, they tell us nothing about the families or relationships of the other Senshi. Do people who are not involved in the Sailor Team world, but are still important to the Senshi themselves, survive the dark age that precedes NeoQueen Serenity's reign - or for that matter the Black Moon invasion? Ikuko-mama, Kenji-papa, Shingo, Minako's shrewish mother and her non-entity dad, Dr Mizuno, Ojii-chan and Yuuichirou; there is no guarantee that they will still be around. While most of the time, the girls continue to live their lives as if the world they know now will always exist, and things like whether you passed your high school entrance exam will still be important, I wonder if a little voice in Rei's heart is saying, 'I can't let myself love him when I don't know if he'll make it, and do know the odds against his survival are high.' She may be trying to protect herself from pain and loss, sublimating her personal feelings into her duty and destiny as a Senshi (in the manga, it is clear that all four Inners choose to do this). She may just be trying to be a good miko. The crucial barrier in both cases, with this theory, would be the fact that her relationship with Yuuichirou could not simply be a date-and-have-fun lightweight romance from which she could walk away without serious regrets. Gee, I wonder if her feelings are really that intense... No reason; I just like this pink-dungarees outfit. Rei wears many different guises: popular Catholic schoolgirl, graceful Shinto priestess, sophisticated shopaholic, dreamy-eyed romantic, mildly insane and therefore perfectly normal teenager. She can be impressively bitchy or touchingly kind, and in almost every situation displays the kind of confidence you could break rocks over. Like Shakespeare's Cleopatra, she is a bundle of fascinating contradictions, 'infinite variety,' and the longer you know her the more you can find to interest you. A very three-dimensional character. In the first season of Sailormoon Rei is romantically linked with Chiba Mamoru, but this is largely wishful thinking on Rei's part. She has to do all the chasing, and although disappointed, she is able to let go of him gracefully when it becomes clear he is meant to be with Usagi. On this, as on many other occasions, Rei shows that whatever flaws she may have, a lack of class is not one of them. She is honourable, loyal, brave and loves very deeply. Although she may be misunderstood, those who really know her love her too. Information Entertainment Galleries Site Stuff Contact Home