Thank you for this wonderful ask!

I adore the dark aspects of Sailor Moon so so much, but I couldn’t agree with you more that, to me, Sailor Moon is essentially about finding hope even in a seemingly hopeless world. Finding meaning and strength through the connections and experiences you share with the people around you.

That is why the most important aspect to me in sm is the friendship between the girls.

I want them to be silly, to tell each other about the newest pop idol, to joke amongst themselves, to learn how to grow ever so comfortable with each other, to make each other smile through stupid gestures, to tease each other like friends do. To simply share regular memories like watching a movie together or going shopping. And even as adults, I want them visiting each other’s houses just to be together and hang out, I want them to still be silly and joke/tease each other and get into dumb and embarrassing situations and laugh or argue about it.

That’s why them being casual even when in uniform is such a comforting picture to me. These are just girls, despite what their powers and uniforms make you believe. They are still learning and growing from each other and the world around them, they make mistakes, bad judgments and they can be as irritable, rude and petty as anyone else. Sailor Mars complaining to Venus that a burger she paid quite a lot money for sucks, despite both of them being beat to shit and cold and tired in the middle of the night, is important to me despite how meaningless the moment seems.

The dark stuff in sailor moon to me works to elevate the importance and meaning behind even the most meaningless gesture, like one of the girls smiling at each other, a pat on the back or a simple hug or glance. These girls don’t simply just want what’s best for the world, but they want the best for each other because they love each other and they want to see each other happy.

Usagi’s endless hope and positivity is a trait I deeply cherish. That despite all the suffering, all the terrible stuff she has seen and saw her friends and people around her experience, that she still believes in the best from people. That is not just innocence or stupidity, it is pure unbridled hope and love.

Maybe the world will never be a kind place, but I will be a kind person.

That is Usagi right there.

It doesn’t always work, it’s a sentiment that gets challenged over and over, but it never breaks. In fact, it only works to make it stronger.

That is also why I love Makoto so damn much, she shares that same sentiment even if her beliefs around it are different. True positivity is perseverance and strength.

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It’s so incredibly delightful to hear you personal experience with how you believe sailor moon has helped you grow up as a better person. I’m sure so many people, including myself, can very much relate.

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Also you analysis on my pieces is fantastic! thank you so much!! I saw you posted another ask so I’ll talk more about them when I answer that one. Thank you again, this was so wonderful!

Of course you can!

You don’t even need to ask me, I don’t own the idea and the pic isn’t even mine. You absolutely can and you don’t even need to link me unless u rlly want to. You’re tot fine.

Here’s the pic for anyone curious (so you don’t have to go to twt.. stay away from that place)

It’s not mine btw, I jut come across it on Pinterest quite often and it makes me think of Michiru.

You scared me for a second lol. I initially read that very differently.

I don’t like super HATE Crystal. I would not watch it again nor recommend anyone watch it. I watched season 1 and 2 in full. Started watching season 3 normally then absolutely gave up, ended up skipping episodes and watching the last few at 2x speed. I watched the eternal movies at 2x speed while half paying attention and I just have no intent on watching Cosmos. I’m just done with it.

I don’t have super strong feelings about it at this point, just disappointment. But if people enjoy it, genuinely more power to them.

I’m at peace with the idea that sailor moon as an official franchise has run its course, at least for me. There’s never going to be anything original that is made with love and passion about it anymore. I think Crystal and co. was the end of it for anyone involved, especially Toei. The few things we’ll see here and there are rehashes of the same plot in different formats and more casual overpriced merchandise.

The only cute thing I see of it now are the genuinely delightful and passionate actresses for the musicals, they are ALWAYS a gem to see in pictures.

And with that I’ll gladly take your hand to walk into the sunset together, ty <3

I have said most things about her here in and there, and while I do wanna keep some things about her to myself, I’ll go over some stuff I have previously stated.

Mostly, Pluto isn’t like all the others, she’s seemingly ever-present and all knowing. Is she actually? Who knows, but she seems to ALWAYS be there when needed. She has also been shown to be somewhat immortal. Sometimes the senshi have witnessed her sudden death just for Pluto to reappear some time later like nothing ever happened. If confronted about it, she most always stays silent or politely refuses to engage in the conversation.

For people who are able to read through her though, they see that she KNOWS something if not everything. Especially to most Neptunes, Mars and Venuses. And that’s why they always distrust her or even despise her at the worst of times. She COULD do something or worse, she could have done something. She just chooses not to, at times explaining if needed how some things are out of her control. There’s rules she’s not allowed to break, she never specifies any of them, why they matter or where they even came from so most people assume she’s just lying.

She’s always polite, keeps an air of professionalism which often gets translated as detachment, but she can be extremely pleasant to be around. She offers solid, comforting if sometimes nonsensical advice, but it always reads as genuine. Even to Michiru, who hates her to her very core. She can’t tell if Pluto is genuinely remorseful or empathetic, but given her seemingly otherworldly nature she reads it as Pluto simply being patronizing to her and others around her. It disgusts her. Pluto showing signs of genuine emotions behind her actions makes her infinitely more terrifying, vile and ironically, inhuman to Michiru. Are the emotions real or a front, who knows, but they seem genuine to others.

Also it can be seen in a few of my drawings but Pluto is tall, like very tall. Still humanish tall (unlike QS), but tall enough to read as unsettling. She stands out above the crowds, she often needs to bend down to pass through doorways and does not fit naturally in most cars, seats or spaces meant for regular people (at best she always looks extremely awkward and uncomfortable). Just something more subtle to kind of read as “this space is not meant for her”. It’s not her home.

Last thing I mentioned I think once, the same way Sailor Moon is not really Sailor Moon, Sailor Pluto is not really Sailor Pluto. The circumstances are VERY different but Sailor Pluto has perished a very long time ago, before QS even came to the solar system. Pluto merely adopted the title.

I actually had this cute (?) lil awkward scene between her and Usagi in an elevator, which kind of shines a light on her character in some ways:

/

Usagi likes her, but is slightly intimidated by her. She’s not an enemy, she’s on their side and often helps them, usually she mostly focuses on rescuing and guiding bystanders to safety, but she seemingly acts on her own motives. Her unwillingness to participate as a team and seemingly extremely powerful nature causes everyone on the team to keep tabs on her when possible and to keep a level of distance/skepticism towards her and the advice she offers. So it’s just Sailor Moon and Pluto going together on quite a long elevator ride. For a bit they just stand silently side by side, but it starts getting a bit awkward and Moon starts doing some typical fidgeting/looking around. After a bit longer Moon attempts to break the tension by asking Pluto in the typical Usagi way

“Sooooo, you got any hobbies?” without looking at her. Just silent for very painful few seconds and Moon looks up tentatively at Pluto who has been unmoving since getting into the elevator, eyes facing straight forward and her usual deadpan expression. Even more seconds pass and Moon just swallows loudly, mostly from a mix of tension, awkwardness and perhaps a tinge of intimidation, and just returns to looking forward and fidgeting more subtly.

“I enjoy knitting. Although I have not finished anything in a long time.”

Moon looking up to see Pluto still in the same pose, although she got the impression that her expression slightly softened. From a surprised expression, Moon flashes a small smile looking up.

“Well. Next time time you do, I’d love to see what you make. I know showing someone my works in progress always helps motivate me to finish them.”

Pluto now having her features significantly softened, a small sincere smile present as she looks down at Moon.

“I will keep that in mind.”

/

No, I’m still working on them.

For the moment I’m stuck in a liminal space myself, I need to get out before I can finish the next one.

I have a hard time believing she can keep a straight face while flexing. She prob thinks she looks very silly lol.

thank you :)

You’re fine! I don’t mind stating it again every now and then, but my absolute favorite is Makoto. I just love her so much and she means so so much to me.

Apart from her, eeryone else can kind of flip flop to the top depending on the day, altough I do generally tend to think less about (not dislike, just think about them less, I still love them a lot!) Chibiusa, Hotaru and Haruka.

Idk about ranking my AU versions vs the canon ones cause that feels a bit wrong of me to do, but I’ll say I do enjoy Pluto a lot more once I kind of started interpretating her character differently. No offense towards her character, but a lot of my love for her in canon is purely based on her design and demeanor (God she looks so freaking good, I adore her design so much) since not much is given to us in terms of personality and personal motivations in any canon. Aside from her crushing on the King and you can guess what my feelings are on that.

Yeah, there’s def a few!

The major one I prefer tend folds over the anime is the inclusion of more horror and darker imagery. People fucking die, in horrible ways sometimes, while in the anime they most often just dissolve into glitter. Nightmares aren’t only people turned into stones disintegrating (I’m not hating I do love that Rei vision) but actual body horror and people suffering. And I’m not even the biggest body horror fan, I just like these inclusions cause it does make the stakes feel that much heavier. That there is actual potential for physical harm and pain involved and not just the girls playing “smash into the ground from the force attack” where they can just walk it off a minute later.

Ik it’s a kid’s show but I’ll never stop being bitter that the only ONE who ever got stabbed in the anime was Mamoru. They’d rather stab him 3 times than ever stab one of the girls once.. like come on, I’m not even asking for anything big just a lil stabby stab, but wtv (the closest we got was Michiru but even her shooting was implied in the visuals, she was merely scraped after).

I do like that the manga goes a lil more in depth with the world building, and by that I only mean the Earth world of the girls and their families, not the other stuff. Despite how much I HATE and I mean HATE that Mako solo chapter where Makoto’s fear of airplanes gets treated like a fuking joke, it does offer a history into Mako’s family and why she lives by herself. Unlike the anime where it’s just left as “she just lives by herself. Why? Don’t think about.” Like as far as we’re given there, Mako’s parents could be alive and well they just fucking hate her and they left her, nothing is ever given. I adore the small glimpse into Mako’s tragic past (and I work with it A LOT) as well as all the other girls’ crumbs we are given.

You guys know I love Saeko, but she was only shown once in the anime from the back, she’s non existent. And while I don’t like her in the manga, where she basically just shows up for one scene says “yeeeaah, I suck lol” and leaves, we do at least see her and we do see that she regrets the fact that she’s a neglectful absent parent despite how terribly it’s presented. As well as Casablanca memories presenting a history into Rei’s past, her mother and her awful father, it just sucks it’s smeared by a weird het crush that does not matter and is disgusting.

I like the crumbs, the bones we’re given of their pasts and families (most of it at least, sorry but I do not care about Ace or his history with Minako) I just most often do not like where they branch out from there or how they are presented but they are still SOMETHING. Again, the anime just chooses what to show, almost nothing is given about the girls’ families there.

I like that most of the major villains are not redeemed. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the anime Usagi aspect of her always trying to save everyone while in the manga she tends to be more cut throat, but the anime spares and redeems way too many people who DID not deserve it. Looking at you Galaxia. I still don’t like her in the manga but she’s allowed to be evil of her own fucking will alone! YES, go off Queen!!

Another thing I like about the manga which I’m not really trying to compare to the anime (given that the anime is generally geared toward children and younger viewers while the manga is for teens and young adults) is that the manga is generally quite sex positive and treats the girls with a level of respect and maturity in its artworks and SOME of its storylines. I will never understand how some of the most obtuse people in this fandom, the ones who go on to say that “the girls are 14” and are always overly protective about anything sexual to do with them are most always MANGA fans LIKE??? Are we reading the same comic?? The comic where Takeuchi drew the girls in respectful but sexual illustrations, drew Usagi topless and had Mamoru and Usagi having sex twice.. those people?? It’s not about the girls being underage, I totally understand if that is ur point, but it’s the insistence of “protecting” these fictional women by enforcing this idea that they cannot and will NEVER be allowed to age and experience natural and healthy things women experience like sex. (And I’ve stated before but I tot understand if that is not for you, you DO NOT have to like it or engage with it, if you like thinking of the girls strictly as 14 and that’s it, with no other context that is perfectly fine. I’m talking about those people who go out of their way and go attack and condemn others because THEY are unable to envision the women in sailor moon in a grown up setting despite the fact that even the author is perfectly capable of doing it given she has put it in her comic). It’s genuinely not about the sexual aspect itself, I could honestly not give less of a shit given it’s all mostly Usamamo and you guys know just how much I love them in the manga (sarcasm..), but it’s the whole concept of purity and sex being often treated as “something that women must be protected from”. It always goes back to that idea of babying, judging and condemning women when it comes to them being able to make any decisions around the concept of consensual sex, it’s weird and even mysoginistic in many ways. Usagi had sex (it’s implicit but not rlly) and she’s treated fucking normally cause of it, it’s not a big deal and it is not shamed and I really do love that. (Just wish it wasn’t in the midst of a weird af incest plot line thing)

I like some of the fashion better. I know 0 things about fashion or how to dress properly but the anime does give the girls some fits that seem to come out of the 1700s sometimes while the manga does embrace a bit of a modern style oddly enough. Idk I like it.

I think that’s all that comes to mind right now, maybe there’s some really minor aspects I missed but nothing substantial. I think I hit all the main stuff.

LATE EDIT: Thank you Doc for reminding me but I DO love Venus’ more active role and explicit position as leader of the inners. Idk how I forgot about that.

Brainrot and some free time.

No, I’m sorry. I’m a terrible writer.

I still promise to go through my account and at the very least put my au stuff under a tag or something so it’s easier to find.

Thank you though. <3