3.0.
Questions About Individual Sailor Soldiers
3.01. Do the Sailor
Soldiers speak any foreign languages?
3.02. Do the Sailor
Soldiers play any musical instruments?
3.03. What do we
know about the Sailor Soldiers' families?
3.04. What is Ami
Mizuno's (Sailor Mercury's) I.Q.?
3.05. What martial
arts style does Makoto Kino (Sailor Jupiter) use?
3.06. How does Makoto
Kino (Sailor Jupiter) get away with living alone?
3.07. What is Chibi
Usa's (Sailor Chibi Moon's) real name?
3.08. Is Haruka
Ten'ou (Sailor Uranus) a hermaphrodite or really male?
3.0.
Questions About Individual Sailor Soldiers
3.01.
Do the Sailor Soldiers speak any foreign languages?
While
English is taught in all Japanese schools, it's apparently one of
the worst foreign language programs in the world, with the emphasis being
on grammar rather than learning to speak properly. 
Even so, everyone in the series does seem to speak it to a certain extent.
Surprisingly enough, the best English speaker of the bunch is none other
than Minako Aino, who spent several months in England being taught
by Katarina and is fluent in that language (as seen in Episode 42). Based
on evidence seen in Episode 108, the least adept are Usagi Tsukino
and Makoto Kino, the former of whom can barely formulate a proper
sentence. Rei Hino appears to be average and Ami Mizuno above
average, though it's hard to say for certain. Given their social status,
it may be safely assumed that Haruka Ten'ou and Michiru Kaiou
are above average speakers, as is Mamoru Chiba, given the circle
of friends he's seen with at Edwards' mansion. We lack sufficient evidence
to draw any conclusions on Setsuna Meiou and Hotaru Tomoe,
though the Three Lights Kou Seiya, Kou Taiki, and Kou
Yaten, presumably know English quite well given their pop star status.
It
should be mentioned that Ami Mizuno is fluent in German,
which comes as no real surprise considering that she intended to study
abroad at one point (in Episode 62) and her Sailor Mercury visor, as per
the Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon R Movie, apparently has a special
German language setting. 
3.02.
Do the Sailor Soldiers play any musical instruments? 
Michiru
Kaiou plays a Stradivarius violin named (at least in the manga) Marine
Cathedral and is frequently accompanied by Haruka Ten'ou on
the piano. Rei Hino may likewise be able to play the piano as she
was seen composing music on a synthesizer in Episode 54, though this is
far from certain. Ami Mizuno appears to be a competant lyricist,
and, judging from her Mercury Aqua Rhapsody, may have a talent for
playing the harp, but the evidence is one again amibiguous. In the
manga, Hotaru Tomoe was able to play the violin as well after she
began to grow up after being deaged to a newborn, but there's no proof
that this is also true in the anime. According to their manga profiles,
all of the Three Lights are conversant with the keyboard to
a certain extent, with Kou Yaten being specifically responsible
for arrangement. Kou Seiya is the lead vocal and Kou Taiki plays
the guitar, with both being responsible for writing lyrics and the
former for composing music. Not much else is known about the other girls
or Mamoru Chiba.
3.03.
What do we know about the Sailor Soldiers' families?
Surprisingly,
not a whole lot in general, though we do get slightly more information
from the manga compared to the anime. One strange thing worth noting is
the inordinate number of personal tragedies and deaths in the lives of
the Sailor Soldiers and Tuxedo Mask. Of the eleven of them, two were orphaned
at an early age (three in the manga), another has divorced parents, and
one has a dead mother and an alienated father (two in the anime). Only
three are known with absolute certaintly to have both parents still alive,
though one lives apart from hers...sort of. What follows is an exact breakdown
of the known relatives in each case, with most of the information coming
from the manga rather than the anime.
1. Usagi Tsukino
(Sailor Moon)
Usagi Tsukino's father Kenji
is a journalist, specfically an editor for an unnamed magazine based in Tokyo,
while her mother, Ikuko, is a full-time housewife and mother of
two (three if you count Chibi Usa). We don't know exactly how old Kenji Tsukino is, but Ikuko Tsukino
said that she was 36 years old in the installment of Chibi Usa's Picture
Diary in Volume 15 of the manga, which, since it takes place when her
daughter was in Grade 10, would mean that she was 34 years old at the beginning
of the series. Usagi also has a younger brother named Shingo, who
was born when she was two (the same year that Mamoru Chiba was injured
and his parents killed in an automobile accident) and was therefore around 12
years old when we first met him. Though she has no other known relatives,
Usagi usually passes off her daughter-to-be with Mamoru, Chibi Usa,
as her younger cousin. See 10. Chibi Usa Tsukino
(Sailor Chibi Moon) for additional details.
It's common knowledge among
Sailor Moon fans that Naoko Takeuchi, in a move reminiscent of one
made by Matt Groening when he created The Simpsons, named
Usagi's fictional family members after her own real-life parents and kid
brother. Just a fun fact for all you newbies out there or anyone else who
didn't already know that. 
In
one (seriously screwed-up) alternate future, Usagi and Mamoru will have
a second child named Kousagi Tsukino, who will follow in her mother
and older sister's footsteps and become Parallel Sailor Moon.
2. Ami Mizuno
(Sailor Mercury)
It
may be hard to believe that the most levelheaded and intelligent of the
Sailor Soldiers actually comes from a broken home. Her father is a famous
Japanese painter who was responsible for nurturing her artistic side by
having taught her how to play chess and swim. I personally have little
respect for the man, considering that he apparently simply abandoned his
daughter as well as his wife by retreating to his atelier in the forest
one day and sending the divorce papers by mail some time later. While he
doesn't seem to care much for his ex-wife, he hasn't completely forgotten
about Ami Mizuno, though I, for one, would hardly call sending sketches
to her from his travels every now and again (in the anime) or an annual
postcard for her birthday (in the manga) as being all that big a step up
from complete neglect. 
Ami's mother, by all
accounts a pretty woman, is a doctor by profession. She is often mentioned
in the anime but only seen once there (from behind in a flashback at the
beginning of the Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon Super S Movie) but makes
a physical appearance in the manga in Act 35 - Dream 2: Mercury Dream.
She feels like she's a poor mother considering that Ami essentially grew
up as a latchkey kid because she spent more time with her patients than
her own family, though her anime incarnation did take the time to cheer
her daughter up when she was feeling blue by making cookies with her. It's
conceivable that Ami's father left her because his lie-back-and-relax,
nature-loving lifestyle was incompatible with her hectic physician's schedule
and because their daughter was turning into a younger version of her, though
this is strictly conjecture on my part.
Ami Mizuno has one additional
relative mentioned briefly in the anime: a grandfather who used to play
chess with the elderly owner of the Chess Tower from Episode 71.
There is general confusion
among fans of the English dub version of the show as to what exactly Amy's
last name is. For the better part of five years, a comment made by her
in North American Episode 41 suggested that it was Anderson, though
the sloppy CWI translators would have us believe it's Mizuno. The
only logical explanation (within the context of the series) is that Amy's
mother's maiden name was Anderson and that she took it back after divorcing
her husband while Amy kept his family name. This is most definitely not
the case in the original, where Ami's mom is referred to as Dr. Mizuno
throughout the series.
In
one (seriously screwed-up) alternate future, Ami will marry a fellow doctor
and have a daughter named Ami Mizuno, who will one day follow in
her mother's footsteps and become a Sailor Soldier.
3. Rei Hino
(Sailor Mars)
Rei
Hino's father is a politician, specifically a senator, in Japan's Democratic
Liberal Party or DLP (which is based on the actual Liberal
Democratic Party or LDP) and his obsession with politics has
had some rather tragic consequences for his family. We don't know too much
about her mother, save that she was a beautiful, slender woman who was
frail of health and apparently withered away and died during his absence.
The fact that her father was never there for either her or her mother,
even during the latter's death, is the main reason that Rei despises him
and has chosen to live with her grandfather (presumably her maternal one,
though we're never told for certain) at the Hikawa Shrine rather than with
him. Much of Rei's past was revealed in the story Memories of Casablanca
in Volume 11 of the Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon manga.
There
are a few major differences between the anime and manga versions of Rei.
For one, her grandfather is a bald, dwarfish, old lecher in the former
version and a rather normal, kindly-looking mustachioed man with a full
head of hair in the latter, though he's a Shinto priest in both incarnations.
Also, in the anime, Rei has an older male cousin named Kengo Ibuki,
who was seen in Episode 183.
In
one (seriously screwed-up) alternate future, Rei will marry a Shinto priest(-in-training)
and teacher and have a daughter named Rei Hino, who will one day
follow in her mother's footsteps and become a Sailor Soldier.
4. Makoto Kino
(Sailor Jupiter)
Other
than the fact that they died a long time ago in a plane crash and that
they were probably rather wealthy (since their daughter has apparently
been living off her inheritance for years now), we know absolutely nothing
about Makoto Kino's parents. While the exact circumstances surrounding
their deaths remain a mystery, it's possible that she may have witnessed
their fatal crash judging by her intense aviatophobia (fear of airplanes)
in Exam Battle 1 - Mako-chan's Depression in Volume 13 of the manga,
something which her anime counterpart seems to have dealt with better considering
that she boarded an aircraft in Episode 189 without incident.
Thanks
to a dub rewrite of questionable usefulness, Lita stated in North American
Episode 84 that her mother is alive and allergic to cats, which is why
she couldn't help with Serena's kitten adoption program.
In
one (really messed-up) alternate future, Makoto will get married and
have a daughter named Mako Kino, who will one day follow in her
mother's footsteps and become a Sailor Soldier.
5. Minako Aino
(Sailor Venus)
Another
complete mystery. While we do see Minako Aino's parents rather frequently
in the early Codename: Sailor V stories, we never find out all that
much about them except that they bear an extremely disturbing physical
resemblance to Usagi Tsukino's parents 
in much the same way that all of Minako's friends look like Usagi's friends
(who, in turn, both look like Chibi Usa's friends), but I digress. 
In any case, Minako's mother is your stereotypical ornery housewife and
her father...well...he seems to be rather incompetant and a failure
judging by his wife's stern warning to their daughter in Volume 3 -
Sailor V Appears! Channel 44: Pandora's Plot that "if (she) doesn't
study, (she'll) be just like (her) dad, without success in life".
Still, he can afford a house and keep his family fed, so he can't be all
bad, now can he? 
In
one (seriously screwed-up) alternate future, Minako will marry the assistant
director for a Japanese comedy series and have a daughter named Mina
Aino, who will one day follow in her mother's footsteps and become
a Sailor Soldier.
6. Chibi Usa
Tsukino (Sailor Chibi Moon)
Chibi
Usa's parents are, of course, King Endymion and Neo Queen Serenity,
the future selves of Mamoru Chiba and Usagi Tsukino and rulers of the 30th
century utopian city of Crystal Tokyo at the heart of the New Silver Millennium.
She lives with the Tsukino family when visiting the 20th century and has
come to see Kenji and Ikuko (her maternal grandfather and grandmother)
as her second parents, Usagi as her older sister, and Shingo (her uncle)
as her older brother, though the official cover story for outsiders is
that she's their cousin. 
Her paternal grandparents, Mamoru's mother and father, are deceased and
she has never met them. 
While
don't know whether or not she has any living relatives other than her parents
in the future (we never find out what destiny has in store for either Usagi's
parents or her brother  ),
the anime version of Chibi Usa is, based on Setsuna Meiou's knowledge of
the future from Episode 182, an only child. Her status in the manga is
apparently the same, though the various comments made by the Sailor Quartet
in Act 49 - Stars 7 remain ever so slightly ambiguous and could
be interpreted as meaning that Chibi Usa is (and will always be) Neo Queen
Serenity's only natural female child and that she could therefore
have adopted siblings, though this is highly unlikely. It's possible that
she has cousins (provided that Shingo survived long enough to get married
and father children), but there's absolutely no evidence that this is the
case.
In
one (seriously screwed-up) alternate future, Chibi Usa has a younger sister
named Kousagi Tsukino, who will one day follow in her mother and
older sister's footsteps and become Parallel Sailor Moon.
7. Setsuna Meiou (Sailor Pluto),
8. Haruka Ten'ou (Sailor Uranus), and 9. Michiru
Kaiou (Sailor Neptune)
I've lumped these three together
for no other reason than the fact that we know absolutely nothing about
any of their families. Their parents are never seen, discussed, or even
mentioned. Ever. All we really do know is that they're apparently filthy rich - probably
beyond human comprehension - since they not only own major real estate
in Tokyo, but even have apartment buildings and the small sections of the
city that they're built on named after their families. To say nothing of
the fact that Haruka Ten'ou and Michiru Kaiou had an apartment with a hefty
monthly rent of ¥1000000, which comes to around $7500.00
U.S.  Each. 
We also never get told exactly who exactly pays for all their crap (Hey, even
young prodigy race car drivers and classical violinists can't possibly
be making that much dough! ),
only that "since (they) have a patron, the price isn't a concern",
according to Haruka's cryptic comment in Act 30 - Infinity 7: Transformation/Super
Sailor Moon.
10. Hotaru
Tomoe (Sailor Saturn)
This
one's also a no-brainer.
As anyone who's even remotely familiar with any version of the series knows,
Hotaru Tomoe's father is non other than Professor Souichi Tomoe,
a genetic engineer. In the anime, as part of a bargain he made with an
evil alien intelligence in order to save his daughter's life following
an explosion at the laboratory where he worked that killed everyone present
except him and left her fatally injured, he allowed the Daimon Master
Germatoid to take possession of his body while the evil extraterrestrial
entity known as Mistress 9 assumed control over Hotaru's physical
form. Using a special pair of glasses with one obscured lens to mask the
Daimon's point of entry, he used his considerable wealth to purchase Mugensu
(a district in the city of Tokyo) and founded the prestigious private school known as the Infinity
Academy there, which he not only owned but where he also served as
principal, as a front for his evil organization, the Death Busters,
who wanted to take over the world by summoning the alien being Master
Pharaoh 90 to Earth, thus bringing about the apocalyptic event known
as the Silence.
While
he did all this under Germatoid's influence in the anime, he was just an
immoral psycho with delusions of godhood in the manga ,
who, in his quest to create a superhuman being, performed a variety of
unethical genetic engineering experiments on animals that resulted in him
being outcast from the mainstream scientific community. Since money makes
the world go 'round ,
he put his know-how up for sale and earned enough money to essentially
do the exact same thing as his anime counterpart. Two years later, when
extraterrestrial beings descended during his experiment and caused a fire
that killed his wife and critically injured Hotaru, he did what any practical garden-variety
mad scientist would do: he rebuilt his daughter and turned her into a cyborg
and took the evil alien eggs and integrated them into his research. 
Waste not, want not.
Professor
Souichi Tomoe's ultimate fate is very different depending on which version of the
series you follow. The anime version has him being freed from the Daimon
Germatoid's control after the monster emerges from his body to battle Sailor
Uranus and Sailor Neptune and ends up being destroyed by them. The lucky bastard even ends up surviving
an encounter with Mistress 9 and the destruction of the Infinity Academy,
though not without sustaining considerable physical injuries, being afflicted with permanent partial amnesia,
and suffering a nervous breakdown for good measure.
After recovering from his injuries, he moved to the countryside with his
reborn baby daughter Hotaru in order to raise her in peace. In the manga,
he realized his life's work by combining his genetic material with the
extraterrestrial one from the Daimon Eggs and himself mutated into the
Daimon Germatoid...a superhuman life form that proved to be superior for
all of five minutes before Super Sailor Moon wasted it with her "Rainbow
Moon Heart Ache".
Unfortunately, this resulted in Hotaru becoming an orphan. 
According to Naoko Takeuchi's
character profile for him in the Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon Materials
Collection, Souichi Tomoe is around 35 years old. And while no explanation
is offered for his bizarre choice of glasses in the manga, she emphasizes
the fact there isn't necessarily something wrong with his covered eye. 
We don't know anything Hotaru's mother, Keiko
Tomoe, other than the fact that she died when her daughter was still
very young.
In the manga, she was 32 years old when she was killed in the same fire
in which the then 8-year-old Hotaru was fatally wounded but died under
unrevealed circumstances in the anime. Judging by Hotaru's memories, however,
her death probably predates her possession by Mistress 9.
Strangely enough, of all
the Sailor Soldiers with the sole exceptions of Usagi and Chiba Usa, Hotaru is the only
one whose parents' full names are ever revealed to the followers of the series.
11. Mamoru
Chiba (Tuxedo Mask)
As most people reading this
already know, Mamoru Chiba's parents died when he was six years old in the
same car crash that he himself barely to survive and which left him with
amnesia and dreams about his past life. Like Makoto, the exact details of
his childhood as an orphan remain a complete mystery. In Episode 15, however,
Motoki Furuhata's makes an off-handed comment that's been alternatively interpreted
as either "he's the eldest son, after all" or "he's a rich man's heir, after
all". Now, depending on which translation you choose, it could mean that
he was either taken in by a rich foster family (possibly relatives of his)
and may actually have some adoptive parents or even younger stepsiblings
that we've neither seen nor heard about or that his father was simply a wealthy
individual. If Mamoru does indeed have a foster family, he doesn't
appear to have been particularily close to them as he told Usagi at some
point before the Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon R Movie that he lived
by himself without his family, was sad until she came along, and that she's
part of his family now. This is one case where I choose to agree with the
popular interpretation of continuity and leave it at that. As of the end of the series,
Usagi and Mamoru were engaged and will one day get married and become the
parents of Chibi Usa. See 10. Chibi Usa Tsukino (Sailor Chibi Moon)
for additional details.
In
one (really messed-up) alternate future, Mamoru and Usagi have a second
child named Kousagi Tsukino, who will follow in her mother and older
sister's footsteps and become Parallel Sailor Moon.
3.04.
What is Ami Mizuno's (Sailor Mercury's) I.Q.?
According
to comments made by Gurio Umino in Episode 8 of the anime and a student
at Juuban Junior High School in Act 2 - Ami/Sailor Mercury of the
manga, Ami Mizuno is rumored to have an insanely high I.Q.
of 300. Assuming that this fact wasn't accidentally misremembered somehow,
this means that she not only has an intelligence quotient which is three
times the Japanese national average but also that a word has yet to be
invented to describe how smart she really is. Calling her a genius is almost
an insult to her intelligence when you consider that you already qualify
as one with a comparatively pathetic I.Q. of 140 to 145 or above.
Just
for comparison's sake, Napoleon Bonaparte had an I.Q. of 145,
Albert Einstein of 160, Benjamin Franklin of 165,
and Sir Isaac Newton of 190. She's playing in the big leagues here,
people. 
Incidentally,
this would also means that Ami Mizuno is the smartest human being
who's ever lived by a wide margin given that her intelligence quotient
practically dwarfs that of Marilyn vos Savant, who's listed in the
Guinness Book of World Records with a measly I.Q. of 228.
Even when you consider the fact that scores that high tend to give inaccurate
overall values, it's still pretty damn impressive. 
3.05.
What martial arts style does Makoto Kino (Sailor Jupiter) use?
Despite Lita being touted as the "karate maniac"
by Melvin in Episode 21 of the North American dub, Makoto, based on the events
of Act 25 - Infinity 2: Ripples in Volume 8 of the manga, would appear
to practice judo. In Episode 30 of the anime, however, she makes a
comment about "going to practice kung-fu", so either this is one of those
differences between the two versions of the series or she's familiar with
more than one style of martial arts, take your pick.
3.06.
How does Makoto Kino (Sailor Jupiter) get away with living alone?
Good
question.
Undoubtedly one of the biggest unresolved mysteries in the whole damn series
is how the hell Makoto gets away with living the dream of all teenagers:
having a spacious apartment all to herself with all expenses paid and no
adult supervision whatsoever. Unfortunately, this issue is mentioned but never directly
addressed in the series, and, short of asking Naoko Takeuchi herself, we
have no way of knowing what the real answer is (if she even has one), though
we can speculate on what it might be. What follow are three possible explanations
that vary greatly in their overall plausibility and logic, so pick whichever
one you want and live with it. Heh heh...you get a choice. 
1.
Makoto has some unseen guardian. The most reasonable explanation for
her situation is that she does have someone looking after her but
that we just never have the privilege of either seeing or hearing anything
about them in either the anime or the manga. Assuming that this is true,
it should be mentioned that whoever her guardian or guardians are, they
don't actually appear to live with her since the apartment she lives in
(as seen at the beginning of the Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon Super S
Movie) is registered in her name. A comment made by Ittou Asanuma in
Act 16 - Black Moon Petz/Sailor Jupiter in Volume 4 of the manga
would seem to confirm this. So whoever Makoto's unseen guardian(s) may
be, they probably live in an adjacent apartment or somewhere nearby and
check in on her daily or from time to time in person or by phone.
2.
Makoto lives alone. In stark contrast to the previous suggestion, this
is (next to third and final possibility presented here, of course) the
least plausible explanation for her situation. While we have no indication
of how long Makoto has been an orphan, in the opening credits of the Pretty
Soldier Sailor Moon Super S Movie, we see an adorable sequence of her
chasing a butterfly with a net in an attempt to catch it, with someone
taking a picture of the outcome. 
Assuming that the unknown off-camera photographer was one of her parents
and since Makoto appears to be around six or seven years old when the picture
was taken, her mother and father must have died some undisclosed amount
of time after that, say a year or two later, if not sooner. This would
mean that the poor girl has, assuming the worst, been living on her own since she was around eight
or nine years old and somehow managed to learn how to cook, clean,
take care of herself, and manage her finances on the fly and at an age
where some of us are still learning how to ride a bicycle properly. Moreover,
unless she's getting paid a small fortune under the table, it's unlikely that she has
a part-time job since the Japanese Labor Standards Law is highly restrictive
about such things, as the following excerpt demonstrates:
With
respect to persons under 18 full years of age, provisions of the Labor
Standards Law restrict working hours and work on rest days, prohibit late-night
work in principle and regulate dangerous and hazardous work. The Labor
Standards Law also prohibits the employment of children under 15 full years
of age. As an exception, however, with permission of the administrative
office, children attaining 12 full years of age may be employed in occupations
in non-manufacturing enterprises involving light labor which is not injurious
to the health and welfare of children, and children under 12 full years
of age may be employed in enterprises for motion picture production and
theatrical performance. Provisions of the Labor Standards Law are also
applicable to the employment of part-time workers.
Whew. 
And I also seriously doubt that Makoto has somehow managed to escape
the attention of child welfare or whatever the corresponding organization
may be in Japan for almost six or seven years. 
Just
about the only logical explanation that I can come up with to explain
this extremely dubious scenario is that Makoto's unusual living situation was
set up in advance by her parents in their last will and testament and, to this effect, that a
great many people in high places have been convinced or bribed to look
the other way. In either case, this whole theoretical arrangement doesn't
seem too legal to me. Of course, if you're as rich as her mother and father
evidently were - consider the fact that she's been living in a modest apartment
in relative comfort and luxury for several years now without any apparent
additional source of income, indicating that all these myriad expenses
must somehow be covered by her inheritance alone - you probably make your
own rules.
Incidentally,
I'm certain that at least a few gutter-minded individuals and hentai fanfic
authors have speculated about whether or not Makoto's finances are attributable
to enjokousai, which translates as "compensated dating"
and is really nothing more than a sugar-coated term for a disturbing trend
among Japanese schoolgirls to accept money and expensive gifts from older
men in exchange for dates...or worse. And, if all this sounds suspiciously
like a thinly-veiled form of teenage prostitution to you, don't be surprised:
that's pretty much what it amounts to. It's also a problem that no one
in Japan wants to talk about, except for a few brave souls such as Mihona
Fuji, the writer and artist of the manga GALS! (which has since
been turned into an anime series known as Super GALS! Ran Kotobuki),
who somehow manages to touch on the subject with one of her main characters,
Aya Hoshino, without sacrificing the otherwise psychidelic optimism
and cuteness that saturates her work. My compliments go out to you, Ms. Fuji, I
applaud your efforts. 
As
for whether or not Makoto engages in this kind of questionable activity
in her free time...let's just say that I won't even bother dignifying the
suggestion with a response and leave it at that. 
3.
Makoto is married. Okay, I know that most people will probably think
I'm insane for even considering this possibility, but this suggestion -
originally made by my onetime friend Lynn Hamilton - may carry a
bit more weight that the previous two because it is the closest that Naoko
Takeuchi herself has ever come to offering a legitimate explanation for
all of this...even if it's made very indirectly and probably wasn't meant
to be taken seriously at all. Nevertheless, I shall attempt to explain
her idea here because it remains a possibility, albeit a ridiculous and
extremely far-fetched one.
As
mentioned in Question 2.09, while Parallel Sailor Moon isn't
generally considered part of official continuity and instead occurs in
some weird alternate universe, it should be safe to assume that there are
nevertheless a few basic things that line up between the two realities (unless things occured extremely differently there), like the ages of the Sailor Soldiers in relationship to one another, for example.
Hotaru Tomoe appears briefly in the story and she's said to be in Grade
9, which would make her around 14 to 15 years old. Now, since Hotaru was
about 12 to 13 years old (I won't bother discussing her aging and deaging
here in order to keep things simple) when the manga ended, this would mean
that only two to three years have passed since then, and, as Usagi and
her friends were all 17 to 18 years old at that time, they would now be
19 to 20 years old. At one point early on in Parallel Sailor Moon,
Makoto says that she and her husband "have been married for seven
years (and living together for two)", as seen in the panels below:
 
Excerpts from the original
and translated versions of Parallel Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi
Makoto's
statement is rather ambiguous and could be intepreted in one of two radically
different ways: either she married her current husband after living in
sin with
him for two years or she's been married to him for seven years but they've
only lived together for the last two of their union, having spent the previous five living apart for some unknown reason. Now, here's the really funky
part: if we take the latter version to be true, this would mean that she
got married to him when she was 12 to 13 years old but has only been living
with him since she was 17 to 18 years old. Holy coincidence in timing! 
Yeah,
you read right. This would mean that Makoto got married to some unknown
guy a year or two before the beginning of the series, they lived
apart during it, and they finally moved in together right after
it ended, so we all just barely missed figuring it out ourselves because
the series started too late and ended too early for us to notice what the
hell was really going on.
Is this notion completely whacked? You bet your sweet bippy it is! On the other hand, though, it might explain a few things. Makoto might be able to legally live
alone because her marriage grants her adult status despite her age.
Ian
Miller has correctly pointed out that, according to the Japanese Civil
Code, it's essentially impossible for Makoto to have gotten married at
as young as I'm proposing due to legal restrictions on such things:
Under
the provisions of the Civil Code, a man may not marry until reaching 18
years of age, nor a woman until reaching 16 years of age. A person under
20 years of age must obtain the consent both of his/her father and mother
in order to marry. After marriage, any person may independently become
a party to legal action even if he/she is under 20 years of age.
However,
the letter of the law may be different in the Japan of Sailor Moon Earth
such that a marriage of this kind would be allowed there, there's really
no way to tell. And as for why Makoto would say that her dream is "to
marry early and make a happy home" in Act 37 - Dream 4: Jupiter
Dream or daydreaming about domestic wedded bliss in Exam Battle
1 - Mako-chan's Depression if she were already theoretically married
when those stories took place, she might not have regarded the union as
real in her heart due to the circumstances under which it was arranged,
though some unknown factor caused a shift in her mentality later on when
she started seeing it as merely a convenient arrangement and decided to
preserve it instead of divorcing her husband. 
Now,
if this were the official explanation...well...I'd think Naoko Takeuchi
had been snorting too much Moon Dust.
But assuming for a moment that she is a candidate for drug rehab,
I'd wager that this theoretical marriage of Makoto's would have been one
of convenience rather than love, designed to take advantage of a legal
loophole and allow her to live alone rather than being put in a foster
home. Maybe her then guardian was no longer able to take care of her, would
be indisposed for an indefinite period of time, or had an occupation that
required him to travel frequently and wouldn't allow him to properly care
for her, so he made this rather unusual arrangement. Hell, maybe her husband
was her guardian. Whatever the reason, their marriage was probably
supposed to only last until she turned 18, at which time they would get
divorced and she could live on her own without any legal crutches, but
perhaps they genuinely fell in love by the time she came of age and decided
to let it stand. Aww. 
Good lord, it almost sounds sappy enough to be true now.
Woo hoo! Can I go out on
a limb with crazy theories or what, people? 
3.07.
What is Chibi Usa's (Sailor Chibi Moon's) real name?
Her
civilian name is Usagi Tsukino, just like her mother. Chibi Usa
was a nickname originally given to her by Usagi herself, and translates
into English as Little Rabbit, approximately, though the Japanese
word chibi appears to have a (slightly) negative connotation,
as it is associated not only with neutral meanings of little in the sense
of tiny, small, or wee but also with more derogatory
ones like runt or dwarf.
Chibi Usa didn't like being called that at first, but changed her mind
after Mamoru said it was cute and decided to keep it.
In
the 30th century, Chibi Usa's official title as a member of the royal family
is Usagi Small Lady Serenity, which just goes to show that King
Endymion and Neo Queen Serenity are extremely cruel parents. 
Incidentally,
Chibi Usa's dub name Rini is a shortened version of Serena.
3.08.
Is Haruka Ten'ou (Sailor Uranus) a hermaphrodite or really male?
No
she isn't, she's female.
The reason that this crazy rumor got started in the first place - to say
nothing of the ghastly Prince Uranus offshoot that's been floating
around the Internet for the last couple of years - is due to the misinterpretation
of an admittedly bizarre line in Act 29 - Infinity 6: Three Soldiers
in Volume 9 of the Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon manga, where Sailor
Neptune says something like (according to Alex Glover):
"Uranus
is both a man and a woman. A soldier of both genders, with the strengths
of each." - Sailor Neptune (Michiru Kaiou)
Look
people, I know how that sounds, but she wasn't speaking literally!
Since I speak English, French, and German, I've checked out a few alternate
language versions of that particular passage and all my findings indicate
that's what's actually being referred to is Haruka's personality and
not her physical body, which is the exact same conclusion that Ken
Arromdee and just about everyone else has reached. According to the
official French translation, for example, the infamous line goes something
like this:
"Il
faut que vous sachiez qu'Uranus est une guerrière qui possede à
la fois la force et le courage d'un homme et la sensibilité d'une
femme." - Sailor Neptune (Mylène Kaiou)
The
approximate English translation of this would be:
"You
should know that Uranus is a soldier who, at times, possesses the strength
and courage of a man and the sensibility of a woman." - Sailor Neptune
(Mylène Kaiou)
As
you can see, this version is a lot less contextually ambiguous and what
Sailor Neptune is clearly referring to is Sailor Uranus' character and
not her anatomy.
Still, for the skeptics among you who believe that the not insignificant
deviation between the two aforementioned translations is due to artistic
license, it just might interest you to know that Naoko Takeuchi
herself has, in fact, addressed this issue on a number of different occasions
over the years, one such instance being in an exclusive interview with
AnimaniA, a German anime and manga magazine, which appeared in their
March/April 1999 issue, where she even provided some insight on Haruka
Ten'ou's origins and the reason she decided to include her in the manga
in the first place.
"Characters
like Haruka, these tough masculine women, a little like the actresses who
portray men in takarazuka theater, are fundamentally and extremely
popular in Japan, especially with the female public. They embody the best
female friend and the fairy tale prince in one, so to speak. I've long
wanted to incorporate such a character into one of my works." - Naoko
Takeuchi
And
when told that several readers had written in wondering what would happen
if Haruka and Michiru ever got married, she merely laughed and had the
following to say:
"Maybe
you should carefully explain to (your readers) that all Sailor Soldiers
are women. Shall we say, for genetic reasons. Even if the two did get married,
there would definitely be no 'second generation' Sailor Soldiers..."
- Naoko Takeuchi
Oh,
and for the particularily stubborn individuals who still think that the
matter is open to interpretation, she was even asked this very question
point blank at the 1998 San Diego Comic Convention in front of a
few hundred fans and not just some lone interviewer and a translator. And
I should know: I was seated in the front row, no less that ten feet away
from her, when she gave the following response:
"Haruka
is a girl. Always has been, always will be." - Naoko Takeuchi
Honestly,
it's beyond my meager comprehension why this rumor refuses to die since
it can't possibly be put more clearly than that, and by the ultimate
authority on Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon, no less. And don't anyone
even think of saying that the above translation can't be relied upon just
because the interpreter was Stu Levy, the head honcho of MixxZine.
I don't think even he's capable of pulling anything like that "motionless
picture entertainment" crap with such a simple and straightforward
sentence. Just accept the fact that Sailor Neptune really sucks with metaphors
and move on already.
This page first appeared on: April 18, 2003
This page was last modified on: April 18, 2003
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