Osaka Naru Osaka Naru is Tsukino Usagi's best school friend. A little more mature than Usagi, she often affectionately scolds her, but Naru is not immune to getting caught up in a crazy Usagi scheme. She's a rather sweet-looking girl, with turquoise eyes and ripply red hair. In the SuperS season we get a hint that her ambition is to be a nurse - I can well imagine her in a job that involves looking after people who are sick or hurt. Naru's role, most of the time, is to act as Usagi's and the story's anchor to the real world. She lives with her mother, a jeweller, in an apartment above their shop, called Osa-P. Naru does well at school - in the first Act of the manga, when the class get back their test papers (Usagi got 30%!) Naru's mark is 85. (She's a little annoyed to have come in second to Umino, who scored 95.) On the same page, Usagi describes Naru as 'pretty, smart, and on top of that, she's a princess.' Naru's other notable feature is that she is incredibly popular as a target for whatever villain is presently in town. The Dark Kingdom, Ail and Ann, the Black Moon Family, you name it, they all appear to want a piece of the Naru action. It could just be that she's always in the wrong place at the wrong time, but many people speculate that her personal energy has some special quality that attracts the creeps. (It's also good motivation for the sometimes cowardly Sailormoon to have to fight to save a friend.) Gregory Lam of the Target Naru List estimates that 'Naru is accosted in 22% of all episodes. Should she be spotted in an episode, the odds of her being assaulted in it are 81%. Be brave, Naru!' Disturbing figures, indeed. (I sometimes wonder what insurance is like in anime-land. If you could take out a policy against Ryoga damage to your walls, or if anyone would be willing to cover Naru...) Naru could quite happily have chugged along as an unremarkable (if cute) secondary character - and that's just what happened to her in the manga. In the anime, however, she becomes the heroine of a tragic romance on a par with that between Selenity and Endymion. Or Romeo and Juliet, even. Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon is, at bottom, a story about love, and its transforming effect. What's truly special about Naru is her capacity to love - unconditionally, forgivingly, protectively. Naru falls in love with Nephrite. Okay, it's not the smartest thing to do, and at first could be written off as the kind of crush fourteen-year-old girls often have on older guys, who seem more interesting and intelligent than boys of their own age. When put to the test, however, Naru's love becomes a genuinely magic power. Nephrite, too, is deeply affected by Naru's love for and belief in him. Naru's name means 'to become, to make grow, to result in, to turn into.' Born on January 1, New Year's Day, Naru is a person of endings and beginnings, of transformation and transition. To learn the story of her relationship with Nephrite, visit the History section of this shrine. Home