I’ll be honest: the thought of a Sailor Moon adaptation that heavily decentralizes / depowers Mamoru kind of makes me sad. 

Admittedly, this is mostly true in a meta-level Cultural Trends kind of way rather than an object-level What the Story Needs to Work kind of way, so maybe it doesn’t or shouldn’t matter very much.  And, well, I’m definitely not enough of a fan of the series that my reactions should be very relevant to anyone.

But, like…

One of the best things about SM is the extent to which it wears its heart on its sleeve, and isn’t too-cool-for-school in any way. 

One of the defining features of the contemporary media climate is that straight romance, and especially traditional-coded straight romance where the heroine wants to play Feminine to a dashing protective guy playing Masculine, is very uncool indeed.  You can find it, of course, there’s a huge demand and that demand gets met, but you see less and less of it in big works that expect to get mainstream elite approval. 

So there’s already something weirdly square, in a charming and even moving sort of way, about the extent to which SM features Usagi and Mamoru spiraling around a very traditional model of romance.  And that something becomes a whole lot better when you realize exactly how much work the narrative does to walk the incredibly fine line between “Tuxedo Mask is the Hero to Sailor Moon’s Heroine” and “Sailor Moon is definitely in every sense the protagonist, the one with real active power, and the one who is capable of taking on the real threats.”  Mamoru isn’t a putz, he’s a genuine traditional-style hero who serves as a genuine savior and protector, but he also doesn’t upstage Usagi or even take up very much room in the overall narrative.  That balancing act is virtuosic, and something real would be lost if it were abandoned.