“In the name of the moon, I’ll punish you!” is the tagline we all know and love. One of the big anime of the 90’s that was the gateway anime for a lot of people, Sailor Moon has been ingrained into our childhood memories. Naoko Takeuchi gave birth to the manga in 1992 and it became an anime not long after. It has spawned innumerable manga volumes, anime seasons, musicals, soundtracks, movies, live actions and most recently, a new remake based solely off the manga.
Obviously with such a long series, there is a large amount of characters; main, supporting, one timers and villains of different arcs. One of the biggest fascinations with Sailor Moon is the ideals they hold and the weak-yet-strong characters. Of course, everyone loves the main sailor senshi/scouts but today we’ll focus on the most memorable characters that have left us pondering deeply and/or squealing!
10. Fisheye
One big reason this series lasted so long was how every character was different and unique. The villains were no exception with Fisheye himself being a popular character. Fisheye is an effeminate male that often cross dresses to lure in his male targets. His brothers are Tiger’s Eye and Hawk’s Eye, which they called themselves the Amazon Trio in the Dead Moon Circus arc. In the English dub, Fish Eye was made female.
He chooses his victims by who he finds the most attractive and often will have some sort of affection for them, including Mamoru Chiba (Darien) who all end up brushing him off and causing Fish Eye to continue his attack. Because it’s the Dead Moon Circus arc, he pulls out their dream mirror looking for Pegasus. He’s also the first of the three to question the morality of it which ends him almost getting killed by their master. *SPOILER* Pegasus grants them the freedom of rebirth as real humans.
9. Sailor Uranus/Amara Tenou/Haruka Tenou
Sailor Uranus is an outer senshi who is loved dearly by all. As shown earlier with Fish Eye, the Sailor Moon series has done wonders early on about gender fluidity and sexual orientation. Uranus is a girl and is often seen with Sailor Neptune, her lover and partner in battle. However in the original English dub, they made them “cousins” confusing many people because, well, they surely didn’t act like cousins.
Uranus is just a year older than the inner senshi and somehow is also a race car driver, making her the coolest character around. She’s stubborn and strong willed, protecting Neptune at all costs and shown as an anti-hero in the beginning.
8. Queen Nehellenia
Queen Nehellenia is the main villain of the Dream arc as well as the leader of the Dead Moon Circus and Queen of the Dead Moon. Nehellenia has one of the most in depth villain backgrounds of the series with her being centuries old and a history with the Moon Kingdom. She was once a beautiful princess on the Dark Moon but became so obsessed with beauty that it consumed her into darkness, causing Queen Serenity to eventually seal her inside a dark mirror forever.
She awakened the Sailor Quartet prematurely and brainwashed them to become her evil minions, the Amazoness Quartet, to steal the Golden Crystal. *SPOILER* Mamoru has the Golden Crystal while Sailor Moon has the Silver Crystal. Together, they formed a bond that created Eternal Sailor Moon and she defeated Nehellenia who shriveled up into an old woman. She was sealed into her mirror and vanished forever. It was revealed in the manga that she was another incarnation of Chaos.
7. PallaPalla
PallaPalla is one of the Sailor Quartet that was brainwashed by Nehellenia and turned into the Amazoness Quartet. The Sailor Quartet, or Asteroid Senshi, originally are Sailor Chibi Moon’s body guards but never appear as such in the anime, only the manga. PallaPalla is the second oldest of the four and her name is derived from Pallas, one of the four main asteroids in the Asteroid Belt of our solar system.
The four of them have a similar theme to the original four senshi, and PallaPalla is Mercury’s counterpart for Chibi Moon. She is known as the “ball rider” at the Dead Moon Circus, like her powers. She’s all sorts of blue, adorable, and we could totally see her protecting Chibi Moon!
6. Sailor Pluto/Setsuna Meiou
Sailor Pluto was truly remarkable. She was that lady that everyone wanted as their older sister and she had the killer attacks that seemed more powerful than Sailor Moon’s at times. Her main attack in the anime was Pluto Deadly Scream and always wiped out all of her opponents and made some of us wonder why she wasn’t the main character! She is one of the four outer senshi/scouts, as well as the guardian of the Space-Time Door which was only in the manga and, of course, now Sailor Moon Crystal which was a more manga perfect remake.
*SPOILER* Although loved dearly by all in the anime, her role in the manga is much more sad and tragic. Her duty to protect space and time makes her alone and Luna states she is to never let anyone know of her existence and only the royal family may enter the door. Chibi Moon enters against her mother’s warnings and befriends the sad and lonely Pluto. During the Black Moon arc, Pluto breaks taboo and stops time, knowing it would cost her life, to save Chibi Moon and the rest.
5. Chibi Chibi
Chibi Chibi is definitely the cutest little thing on this list and also the most mysterious. Partly because the English dub never dubbed the final season and also because her character is explained differently in the anime and the manga. She comes to Sailor Moon in a similar fashion as Chibi Moon once did and they took her in.
*SPOILER* In the anime, she is the adorably childish star seed of Galaxia and in the manga, she is actually Sailor Cosmos’ disguised self, sent from the future. Sailor Cosmos is from a future where Sailor Moon did not defeat Chaos and everything was lost. She sends herself in Chibi Chibi form to get Sailor Moon to defeat Chaos and prevent that future. Naoko Takeuchi stated in an interview that Chibi Chibi is the future Sailor Moon, which more or less means that Sailor Cosmos is the future Sailor Moon, although most people have guessed that.
4. Sailor Saturn/Hotaru Tomoe
Sailor Saturn is an intricate character that was even a villain at one point, under mind control, called Mistress 9. As a regular human, she’s a sweet, soft spoken girl that is often very sickly. She befriends Chibi-Usa (Chibi Moon) and her father is under mind control of Pharaoh 90. Her powers are of silence, death, destruction and rebirth. In the manga, the outer senshi feared her awakening because she previously annihilated everything during the Silver Millennium.
Her powers as a senshi are unparalleled but because of the strength of danger, and quite possibly OP, she gets reborn as a baby and pushed off to the sidelines until later. She has a speedy growing up process, however, and is needed again in the Dream and Stars arcs. Who wouldn’t love such a powerful character?
3. Pegasus/Helios
Pegasus is the flying unicorn friend of Chibi Moon, who bares a golden horn that is actually the Golden Crystal sought after in the Dream arc. He appears in Chibi Moon’s dreams and she can call him by the Stallion Reve. They share a bond of love that is just as beautiful and deep as Mamoru and Usagi’s. Pegasus’s human form is Helios who is the priest of Elysion, friend and guardian of King Endymion. He protects the golden crystal and the dreams of people.
He was captured by Queen Nehellenia and was stuck in Pegasus’s form. He was able to contact Chibi Moon, and also to help her and Sailor Moon in their Super forms even without the Holy Grail.
2. Sailor Galaxia
Sailor Galaxia one of the main villains in the final arc of the anime and manga. She goes from galaxy to galaxy, destroying and stealing on her quest for the strongest Senshi Crystal. She is extremely strong and is the soldier of Solitude and Destruction. She had a rough start to life before finding power and met an incarnation of Chaos who pointed her to the birthplace of stars, called the Galaxy Cauldron. She wanted to defeat Chaos and take all the power for herself, so she set out to become the most powerful by use of the Sailor Crystals.
*SPOILER* She killed all of the senshi, inner and outer, and Prince Endymion. His death caused the disappearance of Chibi Moon, which spiraled Sailor Moon into a pit of despair. If she continued to succumb to the darkness, Chaos would control her and they would both die. Chaos attacked Galaxia instead but Sailor Moon intervened with her bright light, saving Galaxia and giving her salvation. The Sailor Star Seeds were freed from the Cauldron and everyone was brought back to life.
1. Neo Queen Serenity
Neo Queen Serenity, essentially where it all started and all ends. Usagi/Serena will become Neo Queen Serenity in the future, when she turns 22 and in the same year she will give birth to Chibi-Usa. She will be queen of Crystal Tokyo, which will already exist in the 30th century. The power of the Silver Crystal causes her and the other senshi to live many, many centuries without aging.
Although she can’t transform, as stated by Diana she is actually the most powerful in this state. She can’t fight per se but her powers rid the world of evil, sickness and death, making the inhabitants of the world almost immortal. She revived the whole population of Crystal Tokyo in one fell swoop without breaking a sweat. She is the mother of Chibi-Usa and the wife of Mamoru, or King Endymion, and new ruler of the world. So, yeah, that’s pretty cool.
One of the best things about Sailor Moon is the mass amounts of extremely cool characters in every arc. This list is a small handful of those and quite possibly the ones that left the most awe-inspiring good feelings in our bellies.
So tell us, who’s YOUR favorite character?
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