Category Archives: In-Universe Lore

What Does the Full Sailor Moon Timeline Look Like?

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Pretty much none of the timeline makes sense... but we'll try anyway!

Pretty much none of the timeline makes sense… but we’ll try anyway!

It’s a very rare occasion that I can make any definitive statements about Sailor Moon that doesn’t require a bunch of asterisks, footnotes, or hedge words just to cover all my bases. But I can say with absolute conviction that the Sailor Moon timeline is… well, screwy.

This is only to be expected, of course, when you consider that more and more story elements were added to both the past and the future as the series continued, requiring all sorts of course corrections to answer some questions, all the while leaving more in their place.

Today we’re going to take a bird’s-eye view of the Sailor Moon timeline and see if we can make some sense out of this tangled ball of yarn, and figure out where some of the (as of yet) unanswerable questions lie. I hope you’ve had your morning coffee, because you’ll want to pay attention for this one!

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How Did the Sailor Senshi Get Their Planetary Names?

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How did you get the name "Moon," exactly?

How did you get the name “Moon,” exactly?

It’s a question that I imagine haunts many of us late into the night as the sweet call of sleep continues to stay just out of grasp: are the planets named after the Sailor Senshi… or are the Sailor Senshi named after their planets?

Or, put another way, is the planet Mars named for the Sailor Soldier of fire and burniness,1 or does Rei Hino go by the moniker “Sailor Mars” because that is the name that her planet is known as?

Like all things in the Sailor Moon universe, this question is slightly more complicated that it seems at first blush, so it looks like we’re going to have to get our hands dirty and just dive right on in. Break out your manga volumes and astronomy textbooks, because there’s a lot of background reading we’ll need to do!

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5 Things You Didn’t Know About Sailor Moon (I Promise!)

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Five Senshi, Five Facts... it all works out!

Five Senshi, Five Facts… it all works out!

Nearly without exception, the “X facts you didn’t know about Y” style of article is pretty much doomed to certain failure. After all, you must have gotten your information from somewhere, and invariably other devoted fans have probably scoured the same resources you have.

And don’t get me started on how the articles are riddled with inaccuracies, or that most of these writers aren’t even fans of the series to begin with…

After seeing yet another of these articles pop up into my news feed this morning, it got me wondering: if I were to come up with some of the most obscure Sailor Moon trivia I could think of, what would I write about? And — more importantly — do I actually think I could come up with anything that would surprise even the most diehard Sailor Moon fans who read this blog?

You know what? I think I can… but I’ll leave you to be the final judge of that!

Read on as I pull out all stops and discuss some of the most obscure bits of Sailor Moon trivia I know!

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5 of the Greatest Unsolved Sailor Moon Mysteries

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Perhaps you may be able to help solve a (Sailor Moon) mystery

Perhaps you may be able to help solve a (Sailor Moon) mystery

In case you haven’t noticed yet, I’m a firm believer that you can answer — or at least come up with a sufficient explanation — almost any question as long as you have the right data to work with. Be it information provided in the anime/manga, from official interviews, or even offhand comments made by characters, there are a lot of Sailor Moon mysteries that you can put to bed if you can just find the right angle to approach them from.

Alas, much like the hunt for the great Loch Ness monster, there are still some that simply defy all explanation. Whether you want to call them plot holes, oversights, or mere story omissions, the series hasn’t really left us with anything to work with to bring us any closer to solving these annoying questions.

Join me, dear readers, on a look at some of Sailor Moon‘s greatest unsolved mysteries. As the great, late Robert Stack would put it, “perhaps you may be able to help solve a mystery.”

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What Is Considered Canon In the Sailor Moon Universe?

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Filed under Anime, Articles, In-Universe Lore, Making Of, Manga
Did they every really wear these princess dresses? Well...

Did they every really wear these princess dresses? Well…

When you spend a lot of time analyzing the ins and outs of a given series — and especially one as expansive as Sailor Moon — you’re going to eventually find yourself confronted with the question of what is and is not canon, and what sources you can actually derive meaningful information from.

Over the past 25+ years, we’ve seen the story of Sailor Moon presented to us in the form of a manga, anime, musicals, video games, a live action TV show, more musicals, a completely different anime, and countless book adaptations spread throughout. While I personally like to believe that there’s a general thread of an overarching “one Sailor Moon universe” running between all most of them, the answer is a little more complicated than I’d hope.

So join along, my dear reader, as we take a stroll through the Sailor-verse™ and try to suss out how they all fit together. I hope you like puzzles, because this one’s a level 8!

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Why Are Sailor Saturn and Sailor Pluto’s Roles Reversed?

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Filed under Articles, Hotaru Tomoe, In-Universe Lore, Real World, Setsuna Meioh
Just what's going on here, girls??

Just what’s going on here, girls??

Ms. Takeuchi’s near obsessive attention to detail is just one of the many things that make Sailor Moon such a great series. No matter how many times you watch or read through it, there’s always something new to discover.

And yet, despite her impressive ability to get even the tiniest details right on matters ranging from mythology to astronomy — and in a pre-Wikipedia world, no less!! — even Ms. Takeuchi messed up at some pretty crucial points.

… or did she?

Today we’re going to take a look at the ancient Moonie myth surrounding just what is going on with the Great Pluto and Saturn Mix-up. I hope you like Greco-Roman history, because things are about to get mythical!

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Does ChibiUsa Come From an Alternate Timeline in Sailor Moon?

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There can only be one!

There can only be one!

ChibiUsa has always interested me not only for her character — which is certainly enough to win you over in its own right! — but also for what she represents in the series. Her very existence proves that Usagi and Mamoru’s magical romance works out, the Sailor Soldiers will ultimately win, and if your parents leave you crying in the rain, you’re justified in turning evil.

Except for one small, tiny, little catch:

Her existence may not actually prove any of those things.

How’s that? Well, dear reader, I’m glad you asked! Today we’re going to be exploring the possibility that the ChibiUsa we know and love may not be one, but several different ChibiUsas coming from several different timelines.

I hope you have a pen and paper handy, because things are gonna get a complicated!

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