Everyone Dreams When They're Little of Being Something More
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Everyone dreams when they’re little of being something more. Firemen, police officers, superheroes, princesses. When we’re younger, we always think that adults can do amazing things, and we always wish we had some kind of power to change things. For many children since the late 90s, they grew up wanting to be Starlight Guardians, first a comic book series created by Kagome Yuzuki, a young Japanese woman living in LA, and then later as a Saturday morning cartoon. It was standard fare, well received. A story about young girls who fought against nightmares and a vaguely defined “Darkness”. The themes all centered on friendship and companions and it was praised for the fact that the girls struggled with protecting the world and going to school, as opposed to most other shows where classes are never missed and family is never worried. It was considered a deconstruction of the magical girl genre, showing what the fallout might be, but it remained hopeful and upbeat, and managed to find an audience across many age groups and demographics. Yuzuki has never really given an interview, despite her creation being so popular, licensed, translated, and dubbed in several languages. Starlight Guardian cosplay is common at anime and comic book conventions, and there have even been six video games and two stage musicals in Japan. All that’s known about her is that she moved to LA when she was 16, and that she’d been disabled when she was 19. Some fans speculate that she was shot, but there’s nothing but rumour to support that, certainly not medical records. The truth is that Yuzuki didn’t come up with the Starlight Guardians and their secret world of magic and fairy creatures. They’re a Conspiracy of Hunters, mostly young women, dedicated to fighting evil and stopping the creatures that live in the Dark Forest, that cause nightmares and steal away children. She belonged to them once, and they’re very real. They really do fight against darkness, creating citadels and fortresses in the magical realm known as the Dark Forest. They gain their powers by making deals with the creatures that live there that don’t want to devour the living, or cause nightmares. Everything written about in the comics is based on the experiences of Yuzuki and her cell, and later on stories she heard from other magical girls. Originally it was a way of coping with her injuries, which left her unable to fight. As time went on, the Starlight Guardians have used Yuzuki’s rather sizable media empire, rivaling that of Sanrio (of Hello Kitty fame) to act as a sort of propaganda. Young women take to the idea more easily when they can point to something. For many of them, their secret becomes a shared experience. Some turn away from the show, hating it. Others love the comics and cartoons, and hope that Yuzuki will immortalize their exploits so that they can encourage other young girls to be heroes. Kagome herself is now in her twilight years, an unassuming Asian woman in her mid eighties. She works with the Guardians still, though rarely as anything other than a figurehead. She doesn’t lead, and she sleeps with a gun underneath her pillow. The girls who join the Conspiracy are often young. Younger than most other Conspiracies by a long shot. Some are barely out of middle school. While most are high schoolers, there are some who make it to college before they’ve been brought into the fold. Almost every Starlight Guardian has had an interaction with the Unseelie, evil faeries from beyond the Dark Forest who feed on mortal children and pervert dreams. Some lost friends and loved ones, while others were taken themselves, and still bear the scars as their skin was torn at by the thorns before their rescue. The Dark Forest The magical girls make their sanctuary in the Dark Forest, a dreamscape wilderness with all manner of strange entities. Much of it isn’t actual forest, but all throughout even the strange towns and markets are vines and branches, and the ever present thorns. All manner of faerie beastie lives in the Forest, some strange animals that almost but not quite look like mundane animals. Some of the stranger creatures can even talk. And in sometimes in little temples or caves, or even in the markets, the Starlight Guardians can find something even more powerful. They call them the Seelie. They claim to have been banished from their homes by the Unseelie, and they bargain with the Guardians, granting them powers to fight the Unseelie that manage to get to earth, stopping them from grabbing up children. Many of the Guardians have personal grudges against the Unseelie as well, for replacing siblings with doppelgangers, or trying to grab them through the Thorns. Many of the magical girls can sculpt the Dark Forest, creating new pathways that are safe, and even creating little bastions of hope against the darkness. The Enemy The Unseelie are everywhere because the Dark Forest is everywhere. They poison dreams and steal away the innocent. Many a Starlight Guardian was born when a young woman was dragged out of bed at night and found herself pulled through the thorns of the Dark Forest, only to be rescued from whatever horrid fate awaited her in some far away faerie castle by an upperclasswoman who always seemed so distant and aloof. The Guardians make their Safe Houses far away from mortal eyes in the Dark Forest, and they do fight the nightmare beings there sometimes, but more often than not they chase down the monsters that creep out of the Dark Forest and threaten the innocent. Monsters of all stripes have their origins in the Dark Forest, from creepy crawly spidery things that hide in attics and wait to capture anyone exploring that old abandoned house, to strange batlike things that glide through the night sky. While faeries that steal away children are the primary enemy, more often than not the magical girls face inhuman creatures, animals that escaped the Forest and try to sate their hungers. There are also many doppelgangers, people left behind when the Unseelie take someone away. They often don’t even know what they are, and the Guardians are torn on how to deal with them. Some feel that as creatures of the Dark Forest they should either be destroyed–often resulting in the doppelganger turning into a pile of sticks and stones and snails and puppy dog tails–or sent back into the Dark Forest by force. Others feel that they’re as much victims as those who are stolen away, and that killing them just tears a family apart. At least with a doppelganger they think their son or mother or relative is alright. Sometimes, the Seelie beings that the Starlight Guardians make pacts with will have certain tasks for them. Sometimes finding rare ingredients, or dealing with the Hobgoblins in the Dark Forest itself, before they can even leave it. Most of them have no problem carrying out these ‘missions’. Even beyond the Unseelie and the monsters that crawl out of the Dark Forest, there are many other things that feed on the innocent. No magical girl worth her salt would ever refuse to fight an enemy because it’s “not my problem”. Hunters College was a big change. You’d just gotten out of a bad relationship, you were away from home for the first time. You were on your own. At first you were okay with it, but as the weeks went on, your dreams became nightmares, all the horrors of loneliness magnified. They all came to a head when you were dragged out of your bed by a woman on horseback, her hair–her head–all on fire. She dragged you by the ankles and your flannel nightgown was torn to ribbons and your skin was bleeding, but before she could steal you away for good you were rescued. Now you work to keep others from experiencing what you did. You absolutely adored Starlight Guardians. It was your favourite show as a kid, you had all the toys, and even now you have a plushy of Hitomi, but as you got older you grew out of it, and called it kids stuff. That was before you were attacked in the park one night by a creature that looked like something out of a nightmare–or a TV show. Then a little white creature asked “Do you want to be a Starlight Guardian?” Now you’re living your dream, and you know twelve year old you would cream herself, but you just wish you could sleep soundly ever again. You’re a guy. Not a macho guy, but you always thought there was something wrong with the guys who obsessed over a cartoon for girls. Then you accidentally wandered into the Dark Forest somehow, and you were drafted. Now you obsess over the cartoon yourself, hoping that it will give you some idea of how to keep from dying now that you know there are monsters out there. And you really wish you’d listen to your mom when she said to cut your hair. Circles The Starlight Guardians aren’t a unanimous group. There are several smaller groups that make up the Conspiracy, each with a different way of approaching the Vigil. Within the Conspiracy, they’re known as “circles”, after the group of doujinshi artists. Big Sisters, Little Sisters is a group of magical girls who focus not so much on the Dark Forest or fighting monsters, but on helping those less fortunate.