Sailor Moon/Anime-Only Tropes: Difference between revisions

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* [[Adaptation Expansion]]: Being pretty much four times as long as the manga, the anime has plenty of time to detail the characters outside of the main ones (supporting cast and villains) more.

* [[Agony Beam]]: Various baddies have them, a notable use (though without an actual beam) is during R when Rubeus increases his ship's artificial gravity to 10 and more G's to torture Sailor Moon. [[Determinator|She stands up.]]

* [[Alternate Continuity]]: The anime bares only a passing resemblance to the manga, which progresses as the series moves on. While most of the manga's cast appears, they frequently have completely different motivations, personalities, and backstories. This leads to each plot arc playing out completely differently in the anime compared to the manga, only occasionally sharing a story beat or two.

* [[And Knowing Is Half the Battle]]: "Sailor Says", from the English dub of the first two seasons only.

* [[Attack Its Weak Point]]: The monster Iguara in episode 5 has a huge white blinking spot at the base of its tail that is its only vulnerability.

* [[Battle Royale With Cheese]]: In the first and last season

** Queen Nehellenia's berserk button is [[Don't You Dare Pity Me!|people giving her pity]] for her miserable, ugly life.

* [[Bicep-Polishing Gesture]]

* [[Cats Are Snarkers]]: Luna and Artemis constantly rip on the antics of their charges throughout the series.

* [[Chained Heat]]: Sailors Moon and Uranus in episode 98 of ''Sailor Moon S''. This also starts to clue Usagi in to Uranus' identity as Uranus holds her the same way Haruka does earlier in the episode.

* [[Circle of Friendship]]: The Sailor Planet Attack.

* [[Color Coded for Your Convenience]]

* [[The Doll Episode]]: An early Series 1 episode featured Shingo's friend Mika, a doll maker, getting selected by Nephrite as his victim of the day and possessing her with a doll that later turned into a doll-themed Monster of the Week. Para Para also uses dolls for some of her schemes and attacks.

* [[Do Not Adjust Your Set]]: Galaxia does this right before the final battle against her in ''Sailor Stars''. This is fitting because her base is the Ginga TV station, which her minions claim they work for when they use their disguises.

** In Sailor Moon S, Mimete teleports herself into cyberspace, makes a big intro, and announces that being in the computer increases her power tenfold. Just as you're expecting an epic battle, Tellu walks in and pulls the plug, effectively 'deleting' Mimete.

*** The final three members of the Witches 5 all go out like this - Tellu gets killed fighting with her own plant the very next episode, Viluy gets essentially eaten alive by her own nano-machines in her ONLY episode, and Cyprine and Ptilol kill themselves in their only fight with the Senshi by being tricked into shooting each other. In comparison, Eudial and Mimete had several episode arcs to themselves before meeting their untimely deaths.

** The original name of that trope was "My Name is Prince Darien" for one of the most notorious flubs.

** A ''ridiculous'' amount of plot inconsistencies spring up in the final episodes of the Dark Kingdom arc because of both the dropping of episode 42 and the hack and slash job that combined episodes 45 and 46 into a single episode to cover up all the characters who died.

* [[Evil Costume Switch]]: Endymion, Galaxia, and especially Black Lady (who even gets [[Evil Is Sexy|a new body out of the deal]]).

* [[Evil Plan]]: Galaxia awakening Nehellenia to ensure that Sailor Saturn appeared again.

* [[Evolving Music]]: The first four series all use "Moonlight Densetsu" ("Moonlight Legend") as the opening theme, but ''Classic'' and ''R'' use a version by DALI, while ''S'' and ''SuperS'' use a cover by Moon Lips. ''Stars'' used a different song entirely, "Sailor Star Song".

* [[Executive Meddling]]: The sudden 180 in tone after the second season is believed to be the result of this trope - there were concerns that the original audience for the show was growing out of Sailor Moon. Hence [[Super S]] jettisoned even mentions of the Outer Senshi and the darker and more complex storylines, and refocused the show to spend more time on Chibiusa, a younger character who could theoretically appeal to kids better. Aside from [[The Scrappy|creating]] [[Hatedom|a lot of fan animosity towards the character]] and being precieved a poor adaptation of the original story, it led to a ratings slump the series never completely recovered from. It also led to Kunihiko Ikuhara's departure due to frustration over the lack of creative control (which also led to his formation of Be-Papas and ''[[Revolutionary Girl Utena]]'').

* [[Family-Unfriendly Death]]: Nephrite. Even the original version used green blood to tone down the violence a bit, but being impaled by thorns and hurt by burn marks was pretty gruesome.

** Viluy was devoured alive by her own nanites, ''screaming in agony the whole time.''

* [[Flight of Romance]]: when Chibiusa goes flying in the dream world with Helios.

* [[From Dress to Dressing]]: When taking a rest whilst fleeing from Zoisite in a park, Naru patches up Nephrite's arm with a strip of cloth she rips from her pajamas. After {{spoiler|Nephrite's death}} she keeps the cloth {{spoiler|which was all that was left [[Everything Fades|when he faded away]]}} eventually she gives it to Umino {{spoiler|to show she's moved on, and is now interested in Umino.}}

* [[Genre Savvy]]: Poor Naru gets attacked so many times, by season two she's actually wary when she gets invited to an audition. And rightfully so, because she got attacked AGAIN. The very first episode of R even had the cats [[Lampshade Hanging|wondering why she was always a victim.]]

* [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]]: The [[Monster of the Week]] in season four's [[Beach Episode]] attacks with various colored balls, [[Calling Your Attacks|announcing the color in advance]]. When she gets to "gold", her face goes red and says she can't say it out loud; that's because ''kintama'' literally means "golden ball", but it also means, ahem, "family jewels".

** While the English dub was heavily censored, whoever was in charge of making the "Sailor Says" segments must have had a sense of humor about it because they frequently included scenes that had been cut out of the episode for content.

** An episode in ''Sailor Moon R'' featured a gust of wind blowing Berthier's skirt up over her head, making a [[Panty Shot]]. Whoever censored this out for the dub left a few of the incriminating frames in anyway, which were spotted by viewers who taped the episode and paused quickly enough.

** Fish Eye was also a man in the manga and Japanese version, and changed to a woman in the dub for the same reasons as Zoisite/Zoycite.

* [[Hide Your Lesbians]]: Haruka and Michiru in the English dub. They are changed into cousins, Amara and Michelle. Notable in that such characters being in a magical series where the relationship was simply part of the characterization was novel, to the point most newer magical teams have at least one [[Situational Sexuality]] pairing in fanon.

** While technically it was Sailor Mars that altered the course of the planes that ran over Jadeite (though that didn't kill him), it was his ''own'' magic that caused them to start moving on their own. She simply made HIM the new target.

* [[Holding Your Shoulder Means Injury]]: Sailor Venus does this in one episode, even though there was no hint of her being hit in the shoulder.

* [[Luminescent Blush]]: Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask, upon learning Chbi-Usa is their [[Kid From the Future]].

* [[Memetic Hand Gesture]]: The winking-with-a-[["V" Sign]] one, along with her thumb-index finger-pinky gesture that has been come to be known as the "tsukini kawatte oshiokyio" pose.

** And Sailor Moon did not even seem to be aiming for her with her finishing move. She was aiming for Eudial, but Eudial reflected it away and it hit Doorknobder and destroyed her.

** Togetoge too. As she pointed out, she never even got a chance to do anything before Sailor Moon destroyed her, with CereCere trying to force her target's dream mirror down her throat. Sailor Moon seemed to be aiming for CereCere (or both) in this scene as well.

** Of special mention is Professor Tomoe, who engineered his Aesop-monsters ''on purpose'' after awhile.

* [[Monster of the Week]]: Roughly three-quarters of the episodes feature one. Most of the episodes that didn't were plot episodes.

** [[Averted Trope|Averted]] nicely in the dub of the 2nd movie, [[Non-Serial Movie|"Hearts On Ice".]] Sailor Moon says "death" while confronting the [[Big Bad]]. Later on she plans to beat the [[Big Bad]] with the Silver Crystal, the power of which will invariably cause her death. Sailor Venus calls her out on this, and Uranus resolves to prevent it. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXx_41T9F0o Skip to 5:50 and 6:17 respectively if you're interested.] It should be noted however, the movie listed above was dubbed from by a different company than the original dub.

** Though it was stated twice that Queen Beryl was "blasted back to the Negaverse" (which, by the way, was destroyed along with her when she was ''reduced to skin and bone and completely disintegrated''), Artemis does say in Episode 3 of Sailor Moon R that Beryl was "completely destroyed".

* [[No Sell]]: The fight against Sailor Galaxia in Season 5 of the anime is full of this.

* [[Not a Date]]: Rei with a one-shot female character, Maya Touno.

** Actually, the single letters were in place for a word pertaining to the theme of that season. Sailor Moon ''Romance'' (focus on romance between Usagi and Mamoru), Sailor Moon ''Super'' (for Super Sailor Moon's premier), Sailor Moon ''SuperS''(as in "supers," or the plural form of "super" because the entire team ganied Super forms), and Sailor Stars was named for the introduction of the Sailor Starlights.

* [[The One True Sequence]]: The Rainbow Crystals

* [[The Other Darrin]]: [[Up to Eleven|Almost the entire main cast]] was replaced in the English dub (most recasting was during the transfer from DiC for the first two seasons to Cloverway for the next two) and the European Spanish dub (the last season was dubbed by a new company quite a few years after the earlier ones, and the previous actors became hard to contact); notable exceptions were Jupiter (always voiced by [[Susan Roman]]) in North America and Mars (by Pepa Agudo) in Spain. The original Japanese only had a minor example with Usagi, who was voiced by [[Kae Araki]] for a few episodes while [[Kotono Mitsuishi]] was sick.

* [[Overtook the Manga]]: The Makaiju/Doom Tree arc is a product of this, mainly because they didn't expect either to go beyond a single series.

** Also, several characters who were killed off like the mooks they were in the manga are instead redeemed in the anime. This made for a bit of a problem in the Stars anime when Hotaru was reintroduced to the plot - in the manga, Tomoe was dead and Hotaru had been adopted by the Haruka, Michiru, and Setsuna. In the anime, he was given a new lease on life and chance to raise her himself. This led to a very awkward scene where Setsuna simply comes and picks up Hotaru from her father and he's never shown in the series again.

* [[Sculpted Physique]]: The monsters' aesthetics

* [[Shojo]]: One of the most famous examples.

* [[Shout-Out]]: Amy's first dub actress sounds almost exactly like how Patty Duke played Cathy on the Patty Duke Show. The character also has a very similar personality.

** It gets ''WEIRD'' to think about when one realizes its the middle of '''''SUMMER''''' when the movie takes place— the villains' snow-based powers notwithstanding, and one has to wonder where the hell Mamoru managed to get the stuff from in the middle of summer break.

* [[Taken for Granite]]: Jadeite's [[Fate Worse Than Death|encased in crystal]] in the first season. A similar fate almost happens to Rei as well when she was bitten by a snake that promptly turned to stone afterwards, but it might have just [[Shattering the Illusion|been an illusion]]. Another monster encased women in wax, trapping Ami and Makoto.

** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] once by [[Sailor Moon Abridged]] when one of the monster victims didn't immediately pass out from being hit by a monster, leading Sailor Mars to angrily scream at him to just stay unconscious already so she could transform.

* [[Technicolor Death]]: In the third movie (the ''SuperS'' one), the main villain dies in this manner, where it shows her already blob-like face melting and swirling (she's merged with a "black hole" at this point so she looks like a glowing ball with a face on it) and then the whole thing explodes.