Sailor Moon/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Tropes from the Anime and Manga

  • Base Breaker: A few of them:
    • Usagi herself, who can be seen as either a naive but kind girl with faults but a strong will to protect her loved ones, or a whiny klutzy Canon Sue or Anti-Sue that gets everything handed to her. Note that the latter two tend to conflict with Usagi's portrayls in actual media and usually come out of other people wanting more screen time for their actual favorite character.
    • Chibiusa for multiple reasons, usually more of an issue in the anime than the manga though. In her initial appearences in R, she's often bratty and demanding, though the English dub played this up much harder and cast a rather obnoxious voice actress for her Sailor Moon R episodes. Not shockingly, she's more of a base breaker in the Western fanbase. There's also the matter of how she suddenly went from supporting character to main character in SuperS thanks to Executive Meddling and the extremely popular Outer Senshi were jettisoned for the course of the series. This also nearly killed the show off in Japan. None of this is the character's fault per say, but she does get blamed for it regardless. She also gets accused of having an Electra Complex due to her attitude towards Mamoru in the anime.
    • Mamoru. For starters, there's a lot of people that find the nature of their relationship as sweet due to their shared past. There are also a lot of people that find said shared past the only reason the two characters are together. There's also the matter of the break-up arc inflicted on him in the Sailor Moon R anime. While many fans pointed out that his reasoning in the arc was to actually protect Usagi, some other fans thought he was being unnecessarily nasty. The cheap resolution to the arc didn't help - they pull a Screw Destiny and get back together anyway...and the "threat" he thought he was protecting Usagi from never really materializes. His alter-ego Tuxedo Mask is also either adored by fangirls or loathed for being rather useless (his powers are throwing roses and...that's about it). In the anime, he doesn't get any of the character growth OR power growth he got in the manga that let him keep up with the main cast, and in fact downgraded after R to being mostly a supporting cast member and occasional Dude in Distress when the stakes needed to be raised. Oh, and all of this is before we even get to the blockback from the shippers who wanted Usagi to hook up with Seiya in the final story arc, or the crazy people who accuse him of being in love with his daughter.
    • Rei/Sailor Mars, and this is almost entirely due to her portrayl in the English dub. While Usagi and Rei are frequently at odds in the Japanese show, it's made abundantly clear by the end of the first series that they are in fact the closest people on the team and Usagi trusts Rei more than anyone else. The dub changed her into a bratty, abusive, hyper-critical nutcase who tries to usurp leadership and kick Sailor Moon off the team, to the point where she even bullies Amy into joining her in refusing to show up for combat. A critical scene in the Japanese version in which Rei revealed Usagi entrusted her with the Moon Stick to prevent Usagi from handing it over to the enemy was changed to Raye stealing the Crescent Moon Wand because she doesn't trust Serena. Not shockingly, this led to a pretty large anti-Mars faction in the English speaking fanbase.
    • Haruka and Michiru's decision in the anime to defect to Galaxia in an attempt to kill her led to a great deal of fans turning on them. Especially because they actually killed Saturn and Pluto in the process, which many feel is just unforgivable.
  • Nightmare Fuel: You'd be surprised how much this show has; cases in point, Death Phantom and Zirconia.
    • Zombie!Usagi in Chapter 52.
    • Luna P, Chibi-Usa's robot companion. JUST LOOK AT IT!
    • Naru's mother becoming a youkai. Her daughter held her then she just started, melting.
  • Angst? What Angst?: Some of the main characters fill this trope: two characters were orphaned at an early age (Jupiter and Tuxedo Mask), two have dead mothers (one of which has a Big Bad for a father and thus becomes orphaned, while the other hates her father, Saturn and Mars respectively), one is the child of divorce (Mercury), and three never have their parents mentioned at all (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto). Only three characters have whole nuclear families (incidentally, these are the happier, more-or-less well-adjusted characters: Moon, Chibi-Moon and Venus. Furthermore, Usagi and the Sailor Senshi really ought to feel at least some angst about having to be mankind's defense against the Dark Kingdom. Thanks to the show being very much leaning on the idealistic side of the scale, this hasn't turned it into Dysfunction Junction. Only Mamoru ever expressed any issues with his lot in life, and that was really only in the first series and very privately. Rei's issues with her father were briefly explored in a one-shot sidestory, Casablanca Memories.
    • Also, pretty much all the victims of the MotWs. You'd think that being attacked and hurt by a horrible monster (repeatedly, in the case of Naru und Unazuki) would scar them for life; instead they're usually cheerful again ten minutes later.
  • Common Knowledge: Many fans often use the art style as an example of the anime art style in the '90s.
    • It's probably to differentiate her from Neptune, but Mercury holds the power of both water and ice, not just ice.
  • Critical Research Failure: It's painfully clear in Lover of Princess Kaguya that Takeuchi didn't know the difference between a comet and a meteor. (And yes, the context makes it impossible to chalk up to translation error.)
  • Die for Our Ship: Mamoru is the biggest victim of this trope, but this show has so many shipping battles that it has its own page dedicated to them.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Many a villain, whether they get redeemed in the end or not.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: The creator was hugely surprised when Ami was the most popular Sailor Senshi, worldwide. Hotaru is also one of these.
  • Evil Is Sexy: The bulk of the villains embody this, unless they're an Eldritch Abomination, and are either attractive woman in fairly revealing clothes or pretty boys.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Seiya/Usagi tends to be the One True Pairing for people who don't like the concept of an "eternal romance", which is a fairly sizeable portion of the Western fandom. Less so in Japan where Usagi/Mamoru was firmly cemented as the definitive couple from the start, to the point the episode featuring Usagi and Seiya going out on a kinda-sorta date (a fan-favorite in the west and the highlight of Stars for many) ended up being the lowest rated for the whole show.
  • Funny Moments: In the short movie, Ami's First Love when she receives a love letter in school.
    • When Rei went to take a bath and saw Mamoru naked in Episode 136.
    • The episode where Makoto claimed she should be Snow White because she has the biggest boobs (or, in the English dub, the most "talent").
    • Episode 78 where Minako tries to nurse her sick friends back to health, Episode 102 where she disguises herself as Sailor Moon to fool the enemy, and episode 141 where she goes on a double date with two men who were actually the enemy.
  • Ho Yay: Has its own page.
  • Hollywood Pudgy: Naoko Takeuchi meant for Usagi to be a bit chubbier than the rest of the Inner Senshi. Sailor Moon Abridged has ruthless fun with this fact at Usagi's expense.
  • Hype Backlash: Some people don't see what the big deal and just see it as a huge fluff fest. Also inverted, others have come back to this anime (mostly thanks to the influx of dark magical girls animes unintentionally curated by Madoka Magica) and love the fact it mixes dark moments with heartwarming moments instead of making it constantly dark all the time.
  • It's Popular, Now It Sucks: There was once a time when males were able to say they liked the series. Now find anything but negativity and Accentuate the Negative about it. Even the manga.
  • It Was His Sled: Usagi is the Princess they are all searching for in the first arc, Chibi-Usa is from the future and is Usagi and Mamoru's daughter, the identities of all 10 primary senshi and Tuxedo Mask. Not only that, most of this should be painfully obvious even to someone who has lived in a cave for the past twenty years and is watching the show for the first time.
    • Also, it was pretty impossible for Black Lady to keep her identity under spoilers.
  • Mary Suetopia: Crystal Tokyo, if the glut of fanfictions that reinterpret it as a Crap Saccharine World are any indication. Likely as a form of backlash, there's been a great number of fanfics that instead portray it as an authoritarian dystopia.
  • Memetic Hair: Usagi, Trope Namer for Odango Hair.
  • Moe: Hotaru; it has been claimed—incorrectly—that the term originates from Tomoe Hotaru.
  • Moment of Awesome: So many, they have their own page.
    • Hotaru may not have gotten a lot of screen time, but she made the best of what she got. Her very first transformation destroys a Big Bad from the inside out (even Moon never killed a bad guy just by transforming), and in the fifth season she stares down and almost kills a second (Nehellenia) in a straight-up fight with no support from the other Senshi.
  • Nightmare Fuel: The scene where Zirconia bursts out of Nehellenia's chest and strangles Sailor Moon in episode 166. Rather, Zirconia is connected to Nehellenia like a giant snake or a worm, and retreats back inside her after Sailor Moon states that she pities Nehellenia. Somehow, the dub makes this even worse with Zirconia's gender change to a man.
    • The manga is full of this in the form of gruesome and horrifying deaths, including children. One notable example is when Kooan burns a little girl to death in Chapter 15.
    • Metalia is pretty scary in the manga, she's basically a creepy Nightmare Face made of an animate shadow. The Daimons are even worse, they're barely describable monsters that are best summed up as masses of flesh with now bones, but some of them still have faces, and these these physically inhabit the bodies of humans. Add to this is some Paranoia Fuel, you have almost no way of knowing if a person you come across is possessed by a Daimon or not.
  • Peripheral Demographic: Both the manga and the anime have a pretty decent male following, of which most came to see pretty girls kick ass. Some of them are also Yuri Fanboys who find either some of the canon relationships (the heavily teased Manga!Seiya/Usagi and, most notably, Haruka/Michiru) or some of the fan-made ships to be hot.
  • Ron the Death Eater: Pluto gets vilified more than any other Senshi in fanfiction, especially in Ranma ½ crossovers. Fanon holds that she's actually a Manipulative Bitch using the time gates to control the future, usually to bring about Crystal Tokyo by any means necessary. It's worth noting that the gates are canonically a portal and only a portal, not a magical scrying machine or anything of the sort, but this tends to fly right over the fanon's heads.
  • The Scrappy: Chibi-Usa. See Americans Hate Tingle below.
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: In its time it was groundbreaking in creating a new sub-genre (Magical Girl Warrior) by fusing the Sentai and Magical Girl genres, and also playing a big role in making anime popular internationally. Today it's usually looked down upon for falling oh so far on the Idealistic side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism and, being from the early 1990s, appearing very cliché by more recent standards.
  • Ships That Pass in the Night: Hotaru/Shingo is surprisingly popular, even though they’re never actually seen together in the anime or the manga.
  • Testosterone Brigade: The series has a surprisingly significant male following, probably due to its action-oriented nature and all of the female characters (99% of the main cast) qualifying as Ms. Fanservice.
  • The Woobie: Minako, Setsuna, Hotaru, Chibi-Usa in R, and Usagi herself sometimes.

Tropes from the Anime

  • Abandon Shipping: If fans could overcome them being a Belligerent Sexual Tension couple, most UsaMamo shippers ditched them during the whole breakup arc.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: The Shittenou, Emerald, Prince Diamond, the Witches 5, the Amazon Trio, and the Sailor Animates.
  • Americans Hate Tingle: Although Japanese audiences were quite fond of Chibi-Usa, in the US she's often seen as The Scrappy, often taking the brunt of criticism for the fourth series because it's basically centered around her. The reaction to her first English voice actress probably didn't help either.
    • Americans love Chibi-Chibi, though. It might help that she doesn't really talk much.
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: Upon hearing the licenses have been picked up again, and having the series being revived and airing in Italy and China, fans of the series are ecstatic. Also, hearing news from Funimation about a possible redub and distribution of the series in the US has gotten everybody excited.
  • Anvilicious: In Episode 13, Jadeite appears to have killed Tuxedo Mask and then, out of nowhere, starts screaming out misogyny at the Sailors and accuses women of being to weak to win against him in a fight. They respond with an equally non-subtle speech about how discrimination against women is wrong, then run him over with his own planes. The lesson's a good one, but the way it's delivered is jarringly anvilicious. Jadeite had been shown to see women as inferior in the occasional mental commentary about his victims, but this episode turns it up to 11. It's also worth noting that he never displayed this traits towards his boss (Queen Beryl), and while he regarded his entirely-female youma rather lowly, it was more because of rank than gender.
  • Artistic License Astronomy: Episode (177) has a "comet" which is supposedly only going to be visible for a few minutes since it's moving by so fast. Meteors move that fast; comets do not.
  • Awesome Music: "Moonlight Densetsu", "Ai no Senshi", "Moon Revenge".
    • Don't count out Yoko Ishida providing vocals for "Ai no Senshi" and "Otome No Policy", the latter being her career debut.
    • "Carry On" and "The Power of Love" are also standouts, despite being from the English dub.
      • "Rainy Day Man" and "My Only Love" are two other well-liked dub songs.
    • The German dub used four entirely original theme songs during the run of the show, all of which have become extremely popular both within the German fanbase and with international fans as well.
  • Badass Decay: Mamoru. Mainly because while the anime never gave him anything more than his roses and the occasional moments with his cane, the manga gave him an attack of his own that was strong enough to kill some of the villains. He still died without a fight in the Sailor Stars manga though. In his defense, so did most of the cast of the manga.
    • Kunzite is a particularly menacing and dangerous presence in the Dark Kingdom arc of the anime, forming shrewd plans to deal with his enemies and providing a more seasoned and experienced source of aid to his younger partner, Zoisite. After Zoisite dies, he attacks the Sailor Senshi and they just barely survive his onslaught. Then directly after this happens, Kunzite suddenly becomes the "main villain" for an arc and all this goes out the window. He comes up with increasingly brainless plans to root out Sailor Moon's identity, all of which target seemingly random traits of women that naturally just cause him to zero in on the wrong girl. He also frequently gets outshone by the evil Endymion/Tuxedo Mask (and that is saying something). Though he does return to being competent for a few episodes once Endymion is put out of commission.
    • While more decayed in demeanor rather than character, the frightening Zirconia in Super S also got a lot more frustrated and pathetic in the last half of the series, whereas in the first half she was chillingly calm and foreboding. Justified in that she had to deal with more rebellious, troublemaking henchpeople and orders from the real Big Bad, Queen Nehelenia.
  • Non Sequitur Episode: Episode 67. This episode features the girls going to an island, Chibiusa making friends with a dinosaur, and Sailor Moon and company saving the dinosaurs from an erupting volcano. This episode has no references to the actual plot or villains, inexplicably adds living dinosaurs to a show which, for the most part, did not stray into this territory, and then gets forgotten for the rest of the show. This episode is generally considered the most pointless episode in the show and was actually removed from the English release by Toei themselves (if ADV is to be believed).
  • Complete Monster: Queen Metalia and even more so Wiseman/Death Phantom. Also, Rubeus from the same arc as the latter was just plain nasty.
    • What's particularly impressive about Metalia is that we only see her a few times, and she's mostly a formless entity who doesn't do anything. Then we get to the last few episodes of the first series and find out that she had destroyed the Moon Kingdom and taken the lives of the Senshi, Princess Serenity, and Prince Endymion in the past. In the finale, when a fatally wounded Beryl comes grovelling to her, it becomes clear that Metalia is holding her leash rather than the other way around as we were led to believe. She then merges her power and consciousness into Beryl and declares that she will destroy the entire universe with darkness. Then she reveals her motives during her fight with Usagi - she believes that nothing in the universe and in life is worth protecting, so every living thing must die. In such a short amount of screen time, she establishes herself as a thoroughly pure evil creature.
    • Wiseman/Death Phantom is the worst of the bunch. While Metalia had resentment towards life, Death Phantom just loved death and a state of empty nothingness, which is why he wants to destroy the entire universe. To work towards this goal, he corrupted the Black Moon clan into doing his bidding, making them create a dark crystal and then capture different points in the past so that the time gate would weakn enough for them to travel to past-Tokyo from the future and bring the dark crystal with them. In this defenseless world, Wiseman would be able to open the dark gate and let out Death Phantom's power so that the universe could be cast into nothingness. Along the way, he Mind Raped and corrupted Chibi Usa into turning against her family and friends, always telling her telepathically that they'd never loved her so that she could kill them. When Esmeraude proved an unreliable pawn, he used the dark crystal's power to turn her into a mindless beast and sent her off to her death. When Safir turned against the clan, Wiseman hunted him down and murdered him right in front of his older brother, whom he later killed too in an attack meant for Sailor Moon! After further Mind Rape on both Usagi and Black Lady, Wiseman is able to completely merge with Death Phantom upon opening the dark gate, and then finally makes his attempt to vaporize the universe. What makes him worst is that he wasn't just a Chaos Spawn. Wiseman was completely evil and self serving before becoming Death Phantom!
    • Before the depths of Wiseman's depravity was revealed, Rubeus held the title of most despicable villain to date. Unlike the other members of the Black Moon clan, he had no redeeming features and was both a misogynist and a sadist. He seemed perfectly on board with going along with anything Wiseman ordered him to do so long as it got him glory and recognition within his family, tried to physically harm Chibi Usa on many occasions, and captured the Sailor Senshi and bound them to crystal crucifixes in order to torture them and make them watch Sailor Moon die. But what really made him bad was that he was the epitome of a Bastard Boyfriend, the type willing to use, abuse, and discard his female minions however he saw fit, no matter how emotionally or physically damaging it was to them. In light of this, Esmeraude discarding him is poetic justice.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Prince Demande, in particular, gets shipped with Usagi due to the fact he's handsome, has a tragic backstory, and also Mamoru is very divisive in this rendition. People typically just sweep the creepy things he did to Usagi under the rug.
  • Ear Worm: The English opening. Say what you want about the dub, but that song is ridiculously catchy - especially the awesome and epic guitar solo.
    • The Outer Senshi transformation theme is pretty kick ass and catchy as well.
  • Fan Dumb: The English dub did NOT change the characters' last names, despite what it says on the Spanish Wikipedia! With the exception of Amy "Anderson," Serena does refer to her last name as Tsukino in the dub, however, and the other girls' names are never brought up. In material associated with the dub, and the translated manga, the girls' last names were unchanged.
    • Also the voice changes from R to S were not because of a company change as the voices were all hired and recorded by the same company through the entire dub series run. Not to mention Dic and Cloverway are given all the blame for the bad dubbing but Optimum Productions is actually to blame for the dubbing includes crappy voices (as well as good voices) and inconsistent scripts.
    • At the same time, a nostalgia group for the DiC produced dub often tries to overlook the rather extensive changes done to their English dub and have tried to demand that further English licenses retain the DiC standards. You'll often see people like this (such as the folks behind the ghastly "Negavision" fandub) actively redo S, Super S, and Stars to remove the Japanese names and storylines and apply further censorship to make it closer to how DiC might have done it. This can only be described as a kind of dubbing Stockholm Syndrome.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: For a portion of the fandom that didn't hate Mamoru but still felt bad for Usagi for the whole breakup arc, they just pretend that arc never happened. If the dreams do occur, they simply talk it out like they did in the manga/Crystal.
    • There's also the aloof way Usagi's friends reacted to the breakup. This is removed and they typically bash Mamoru's face in until he begs on his knees for Usagi to take him back instead.
    • Rei and Mamoru being mean to Usagi is removed or at least toned down.
    • Haruka and Michiru being ready to kill Hotaru to prevent Mistress 9's appearance. Even in fanworks where they still do, it will be made abundantly clear they don't enjoy what they feel like they have to do.
    • Word of God says only girls can become sailor senshi and there can be no Sailor Earth because Mamoru has Earth's Sailor Crystal. That hasn't stopped fanfics writers the opposite for either.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The Al/En episodes are much more popular among American and Canadian fans. This is because these episodes have very faithful translations, and not as many censor cuts and no missing episodes. These episodes were actually held up during the first run of the English dub and aired out of order (and thus creating massive plot holes) due to an attempt by DiC to sell them to Fox as part of a weekend syndication package (the first episode of this arc actually did air on a Fox Kids Saturday morning slot). To the rest of the world, they're just filler episodes.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Certain changes and fanwank caused by the english dub that lots of fans complained about (Makoto's femininity de-emphasized, the suggestion all the baddies are related, the inherent creepiness in the Moon Kingdom) would be adopted and explored in later Japanese adaptations of the series.
    • Complaints that Minako's personality went too far into "wacky" from her original manga self, since the next adaptation did a complete 180 when it came to her.
    • Usagi Tsukino is called Serena in the English dubbing, and one of the Sailors is Venus. Fast forward to the world of tennis in the mid to late 1990s with the Williams sisters. Their names: Venus and Serena.
  • I Am Not Shazam: Naruru and Ruruna aren't actual sailor soldiers, but they're avid Sailor Moon fans and dress in outfits resembling them. Their nicknames come from their favorite clothing brands.
  • Les Yay: Oh so many.
    • Rei with Usagi, and some with Minako, particularly in the manga. Also, the Not a Date with Maya Touno, a one-shot girl.
    • The Sailor Starlights are (somewhat) a subversion when their in their male forms.
  • Macekre: Lots of changes were made to the DiC and Cloverway dubs of Sailor Moon to make it more palatable for American audiences, including:
    • The Sailor Senshi's names are changed or anglicized, though a few throwaway lines suggest family names have stayed mostly intact. In the English manga, Usagi's name (which means "Rabbit") became Bunny, though it was implied that this was a nickname and Serena was her real name.
    • Quirky Miniboss Squad member Zoisite being changed from a flamboyant homosexual male into a full-blown woman. The same happened to a similar character Fish-Eye, though this isn't as much of a stretch as he acts exactly like a girl anyway.
    • Sailors Uranus and Neptune being portrayed as "cousins" instead of "more than just friends" despite no real change in their personalities.
    • The entire ending of the first series being cut down into one episode, to avoid the suggestion of "Kill'Em All".
    • Raye's character was completely rewritten in the first season to create a character arc in which she attempts to usurp control of the team. As the arc didn't exist in the Japanese version, it just peters out, though there's a callback when Raye is shown to have "stolen" Serena's Crescent Moon Wand. In the original, Usagi gave Rei the wand because she was the only one she trusted with it.
      • It comes back into play in the final DIC dubbed episode in which now everyone wants to take over as team leader. In the original version, it was merely a recap episode and they were debating on who should be the new main character.
    • Finally, the characters developed an inability to distinguish rice balls from donuts.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Kunzite, whenever he's not working alongside Prince Endymion, catches the entire team and almost finishes them off (and only fails because of a scout he didn't know about), takes all seven Rainbow Crystals (with Zoisite's help) and thus almost claims the Silver Crystal for the Dark Kingdom, defeats and nearly kills all of the Sailor Senshi in battle, comes up with a nearly successful way to zero in on Sailor Moon and get her to expose her true self, sets clever and efficient traps for the Senshi, tears through Usagi's obvious Out-Gambitted ploy like it was made of wet paper, and finally goes down fighting against Sailor Moon instead of getting the You Have Failed Me... treatment.
    • Professor Tomoe, who is not only a brilliant (and hammy) Mad Scientist but also subverts the Bad Boss trope and actually got very far in his objectives as a result in spite of his underlings' frequent incompetence.
    • Cele Cele of the Amazoness Quartet showed qualities of one in episode 156 when she successfully manipulates her target into betraying his own dream while in the guise of a sympathetic and charismatic Rich Bitch.
    • Sailor Galaxia. Her complex scheming and effective manipulations of all of her soldiers, as well as her sheer power and style, puts her squarely here in this trope.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Alright, she kind of had it coming, but Telulu's death in the English dub is just plain frightening, especially her frantic pleas for the Scouts to save her when her plant monster turns on her. Especially her last words as the plant explodes, vaporizing her: "I'LL BE GOOD, I PROMISE!!!" Somewhat Nightmare Retardant when once considers how flat the voice actress' performance is.
    • At least that was dub-only, as in the Japanese version, she's just yelling at the monster to release her as she is it's creator. Viluy's death, on the other hand, is frightening no matter which version you're watching. She's slowful and painfully disintegrated by her own nanomachines, and while once again deserved and her fault, it's still frightening to see happen.
      • Worst of all is Mimete's fate: she doesn't really die, per se; she ends up trapped in an empty void forever. It's telling that Sailor Moon looked horrified immediately after, even though Mimete had been two seconds from killing her.
  • No Yay: Unless you don't mind the creepy things he did to Usagi or you use Fanon Discontinuity like a lot of the shippers do, Usagi/Demande is seen as this.
    • Due to being used for as a trope a la revenge fic, it just being a obstacle for Usagi/Mamoru, it generally being frowned upon to pair Rei with men outside of Jadeite/Yuuichirou, Rei/Mamoru is this. Heck, newer fans are surprised to hear it's a genuine ship.
    • In a broken base way and at least in this rendition, Usagi/Mamoru. This is due to people not liking the Belligerent Sexual Tension and the age gap.
  • Seasonal Rot: SuperS and Stars are often cited with this trope in play.
  • Straw Man Has a Point: Uranus and Neptune lob several logical accusations at Moon in S. To the show's credit, it's really more of a clash of characters than actual morals and Usagi breaks down and admits she cannot bring herself to kill an innocent. After the crisis of the season is resolved, they actually make her defend her choice.
  • Tear Jerker: Actually, some of the deaths of the Sailor Senshi although they got better.
    • And Nephrite's death!
  • True Art Is Angsty: The reason that Sailor Moon S tends to be the favorite season of many fans, as it is one of the darkest.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Both Zoisite and Fisheye had feelings for Mercury in the manga. Both were made gay in the anime (and made women in many dubs in other countries.)
    • The first opening has a sequence where Queen Beryl clenches her fist, and then is shown standing in front of the Dark Kingdom. The second opening has a similar sequence with Princess Serenity and the Silver Millennium.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: Usagi, she's often teased and ridiculed, even for simple mistakes. While her friends love her, it swings back and forth how much they love her (especially with Rei).
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Mamoru for bullying Usagi for majority of the first season. If that's not bad enough, he breaks up with her and treats her horribly. Even if it was to protect her, it wasn't fleshed out enough and they decide to pull a Screw Destiny anyway, for people to consider it a proper excuse.
  • Villain Decay: The monsters of the day became generally goofier as the show progressed and the Quirky Miniboss Squad of each villain faction became less and less menacing too.
    • Starter Villain Jadeite started off a competent threat. He had powerful minions, curb-stomped Sailor Moon during their first meeting, and actually managed to succeed in getting away with human energy in one scheme, earning Queen Beryl's compliments. But right after that last event, things began to go downhill for Jadeite. Very downhill. Once he got Hoist by His Own Petard for the last time, Queen Beryl "decommissioned" him for good. The rest of the Shittenou avoided the trope, with Nephrite and Kunzite never ceasing to be threats (though Kunzite slips when he gets his own arc), and Zoisite never being much of one to begin with (he always relied on dirty tricks) and even becoming more of a dangerous threat in his last few episodes.
    • The Ayakashi Sisters in the manga are murderous maniacs, while in the anime they were merely misled and are granted a chance to live free in modern day Tokyo. The manga also had them capable of killing the Sailor Senshi with ease, something they struggled with in the anime.
    • Queen Nehellenia was still evil in the anime, but only because she was misled, and she was eventually redeemed and granted a second chance at life in Stars. In the manga, she was evil incarnate (a spawn of Chaos), responsible for the death of the Moon Kingdom and the current calamity, and was destroyed by Usagi and Mamoru.
  • Wall Banger: This trope gets its own page.
  • What Do You Mean It's for Kids?: Just try and tell an American fan that even in Japan, Sailor Moon was targeted at young girls and not teenagers or grown men.
  • Woolseyism: Yes, it is possible for the English dub of Sailor Moon to actually have a line in English that actually manages to one-up the original, and it happened in the final dubbed episode, too. After Nehellenia throws Chibi Moon off her rising debris platform, and Sailor Moon finishes up a brief BSOD, she turns around and says "I won't lose to you!" and jumps off to rescue Chibi Moon. Her final line to her in English? "I still pity you." Directing this at Nehellenia, who was always envious of Sailor Moon and the Silver Millennium and her kingdom, this line is more effective and leaves more of a sting.

Tropes from the Manga

  • Artistic License Astronomy: The Lover of Princess Kaguya is just painful. When the titular comet disappear from astronomers' view, they believe it got too close to the sun and burned up, which is reasonable enough. But then a supposedly-brilliant scientist says that if the comet burned up, there should have been a rain of shooting stars. While shooting stars can come from solid particles left behind by comets, they have to enter the Earth's atmosphere to show up as shooting stars; space is big and breaking up near the sun won't do it. Later on, Kaguya says the Earth is 4.5 million years old, rather than 4.5 billion.
    • A similar error appears in the Dead Moon arc. Hotaru makes a miniature recreation of the universe, which Haruka says "right now, it's at 46 million years; complete simulation of our solar system." This may have been a case of Blind Idiot Translation; Haruka's statement would have been scientifically correct had she said "Right now, it's at 4.6 billion years old; our solar system is complete."
    • For anyone who tries to justify what Haruka said, data currently shows that our solar system is around 4.6 billion years old, and that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Saying that Hotaru's model showed the universe as it was 46 million years ago before present day would be like saying, "I'm running a simulation showing my grandmother growing up and aging. She's at 73 years old now, an adult woman."
    • It is clear, that the Sailor Moon manga universe just doesn't work like our universe at all. Reconciling the fifth arc with anything like our astrophysics on any level is utterly impossible. In the light of this the complaints about such "mistakes" look silly. Although considering that the numbers above have only the number of zeros wrong, Blind Idiot Translation seems to be a likely culprit in this particular case.
  • Complete Monster: While ultimate Big Bad Chaos is arguable due to being Made of Evil, all of it's spawns (Queen Metalia, Death Phantom, Pharaoh 90, and Queen Nehelania) are definite qualifiers.
    • Professor Tomoe in the S arc, who is in some ways even more heinous. being a normal human who willingly turned into a monster. When his wife was killed and daughter Hotaru fatally wounded in a fire, he decided to make the latter into the prototyped "Super Being". When this initially failed, he became ecstatic when the Daimons land. (Their first act, for your information, is to possess his Sexy Secretary Kaolinite.) He embraces their offer, believing himself to be The Chosen One. Unlike the other villains of this arc, he was never possessed; he was just willing to sell humanity down the river, his daughter included, For Science! and godhood. Yes, he really was that much of a dick.
  • Critical Research Failure: Himeko says that "Apollo 12 launched during a snowstorm!"
    • It DID launch during a thunderstorm, though. Bad translation?
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: The very end of the Stars arc reveals that Sailor Moon managed to defeat Chaos, and kept the Galaxy Cauldron in tact, allowing everyone to eventually reborn from there. Her friends all end up being reborn, life does not cease to exist as Sailor Cosmos intended, and she marries Mamoru in the end. It sounds happy enough, right? Not quite. Chaos is only stopped temporarily, having been melted in the Galaxy Cauldron from which all life in the universe comes from. And as long as the Galaxy Cauldron still exists, Chaos will keep rising back up as an all-powerful enemy who will eventually wage a devastating war across the entire galaxy. Sailor Cosmos' final speech helps to soften the impact of this info, but it doesn't change the fact that Chaos will always be present to devastate the Senshi's lives continually in the future.
  • Expy: Queen Nehellania's role in the backstory of the Moon Kingdom with her cursing Princess Serenity on the day of her birth makes her eerily similar to Maleficent.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Sailor Galaxia, full stop.[context?]
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