Dorky media, huh? I guess for us in Japan it's normal. Most teenagers spend their entire childhood in school, so they don't have time to be a kid until they're adults. By then, it's not considered "acceptable" to read and watch cartoons, so it helps to make manga and anime so popular within Japan.
I do have a few manga that I brought with me, and if you'd really like the original Japanese version, I can get more from home easily enough. My dad will have to travel on occasion back and forth between Tokyo and here for his work. Some of the translations aren't bad in the manga. It's the anime that's dumbed down quite a bit.
What do you call it in English...Sailor Senshi...Sailor Moon, I think, is the series. A friend that I had back home read the Sailor Moon series and out of curiosity we watched it in English. It was a bit ridiculous how much they changed the language.
If you like Death Note, have you tried Fullmetal Alchemist? Or Kuroshitsuji? Both are good series to read. They are also both dubbed in English by now, I believe.