30 Day Sailor Moon meme...Day 26
Mar. 26th, 2011 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
azuriteSailor Failures is not Zoisite posing as a Sailor Senshi, nor is it a Senshi from beyond the Gates of Time. Sailor Failures is not a Senshi of the Outer Solar System, nor a brainwashed future Sailor Senshi...and especially not a member of the Sailor Animamates! Sailor Failures is where I got this fun Sailor Moon meme from. Just so you know. :D
This should be pretty obvious from my icon, but BLACK MOON CLAN, BABY. But first, a break down, excluding my favorite until the last:
Dark Kingdom = led by Queen Beryl. Former humans fueled by various kinds of jealousy and, once "sealed away" by Queen Serenity at the end of the Silver Millennium, stuck living in some sort of dank dimension where they gradually lose almost all sense of humanity, reverting to complete dunderheads. Some of the energy-stealing plots they have are hilarious, although I suppose you can blame it on the fact that they haven't seen society progress in the past thousand years. While they are the reason why the series even got started, they're not exactly the most threatening villains as a group. Yes, Sailor Moon and the other Senshi had to DIE to defeat them all (or rather, their leader, the form of Chaos, Metallia), but that was because they were at their lowest powers/hadn't fully "awakened" to being Senshi, even by then! Don't you think Sailor Uranus and Neptune, or Super Sailor Venus, easily could have blasted most of the Dark Kingdom? That's why they were the first villains...they're something of a joke, as far as bad guys go.
Death Busters = An odd assortment of people including a strangely psychotic professor, a crazy lady with magic-grow hair, girls who call themselves "witches" and more or less seem to hate each other, some of the ugliest monsters you've ever seen (especially in the manga version of this arc, Infinity), and a main villain that we never really see because it's in the nebula of another galaxy! WHAT?!
Dead Moon Circus = I mentioned in my previous post that I thought SuperS was probably the funniest arc of the whole series. With a circus serving as the front for this arc's villain, how can it not be? The Dead Moon Circus takes the royal hierarchy of the Dark Kingdom (led by Queen Nehellenia) and the crazy psycho (Zirconia), add some colorful, gender-confusing (as in, "confusing to the audience," or more specifically, me) enemies, some "redeemables," and you get the Dead Moon Circus. They can get pretty damn deadly though, and their arc is especially scary in the manga, I feel, but it's not the "darkest" arc, nor are they the "coolest" villains. I think Super's the darkest arc, and, while the next villains (Shadow Galactica) are pretty damn badass, I still think the Black Moon Clan's got them beat. Nehellenia as a villain is different from the manga to the anime, and it's my understanding that it's another "jealous of the White Moon Kingdom"-fueled rage that led her to becoming so evil. And since we've "been there, done that," she and the rest of the Dead Moon Circus don't strike me as all that cool.
Shadow Galactica = led by a Sailor Senshi. That alone should scare the crap out of you, because this is the first and last time that a true Sailor Senshi goes head-to-head with ALL of the other Sailor Senshi and repeatedly comes out on top. See, the Dark Kingdom had Zoisite dressing up as Sailor Moon (once, in the anime), and a shadowy youma that somewhat LOOKED like a Sailor Senshi, but that was it. And none of the other enemies repeated it, not even the Dead Moon Circus, which actually HAD true Sailor Senshi (brainwashed and "awoken" early, but only in the manga--the Sailor/Amazon Quartet). Here we have a Senshi, leading other (albeit "fake") Senshi, ruthlessly stealing other Senshi's source of power, their Star Seeds/Sailor Crystals. Almost until the very end, Galaxia and her cohorts are the scariest, baddest villains yet. But when it's revealed that Galaxia is a host for Chaos, the true enemy of every single arc of Sailor Moon, you sympathize with her, start leaning toward the "Sailor Moon is in the right, let's not fight...heal her!" attitude, and the fight loses some of its coolness. I think the best battles in Sailor Moon are the ones where the Senshi MUST fight, because they have no choice. Sailor Moon herself always likes to think there IS another choice, but she's also the most hopelessly naive (and optimistic) Senshi, and that attitude has gotten in her trouble more than once. Which leads me to my favorite group of villains....
Black Moon Clan! From the future, Crystal Tokyo of the 30th century! They've also got something of a hierarchy going on, like the Dark Kingdom and a bit like the Dead Moon Circus, what with their leader, Prince Diamond (Demand, Diamando, whatever), his brother Sapphire, the crazy-jealous-pretty-damn-evil Emerald, and the four sisters, Kooan (Catzi), Beruche (Birdie), Petz (Prisma), and Calaveras (Avery). Oh, and then the secret-baddie of this entire arc whom we actually see repeatedly, and even gets "personally" involved in some of the angstier, more dramatic moments of the Sailor Moon R/Black Moon arc, the Wise Man.
The whole reason why they're evil isn't because of jealousy, like the Dark Kingdom or the Dead Moon Circus, or because they just want power, like the Death Busters and Shadow Galactica. No, they want to...fight for their rights? In canon, the Black Moon Clan was a splinter group of villains that refused Neo-Queen Serenity's "cleansing" at the start of the 30th century, after the great "sleep" that was caused by some unmentionable disaster that rendered Earth uninhabitable for 1000 years. We're never told just what the cleansing involved, or why the sleep happened, or whether or not this is even the whole story, but if we assume it is, then it's pretty cool. These people just want to continue being themselves--not being subjects of Neo-Queen Serenity and King Endymion in THEIR version of a utopia on Earth.
So they launch attacks, and NQS retaliates, but, ever the kind-hearted soul she is, she gives them an new option: exile themselves to a planet beyond the reaches of their Solar System, accept the cleansing and stay on Earth, or...get blasted by the Silver Crystal. And they choose exile. The planet they end up on is Nemesis.
Actually, the planet was already pretty bad to begin with--another enemy had previously challenged NQS, and that was the Death Phantom. Fancy name, but he was human to, so NQS didn't want to kill him, so she banished him. The planet was already pretty barren and desolate, and when you send a bad guy to perish on a freezing asteroid-like planet, any negative energy there is sure to grow. And it did--lots. So when the future Black Moon Clan ended up there, after the Death Phantom died and his will became one with the planet, the negative energy corrupted them even further, resulting in the deliciously psycho "court" we see. By the way, the Death Phantom may have "died" in his human form, but he was far from gone--he was the first example of a 30th century avatar for Chaos, the ultimate villain that Sailor Moon sort of defeats (by sending back into the hearts of all humanity throughout the galaxy) in her battle with Shadow Galactica. And of course, he returned: as the "Wise Man," the same mysterious guy that, in the manga, told Galaxia about Earth....
The Black Moon Clan also appears to have been the inspiration behind my second favorite villains, those of the Sailor Moon: Another Story RPG. In it, five teenagers in 30th century Crystal Tokyo (Sin, Nergal, Marduk, Ishtar, and Nabu) all start to question the supposedly utopian way of life in their home, and why the Silver Crystal has the power it does. A mysterious outside entity, Apsu, promises to answer their questions and let them live the life they were meant to--and gives them great powers, turning them into the Opposito Senshi. They're also very, very close parallels to the Sailor Senshi, in ways that any other "group of four" (the Shitennou, the Four Sisters of the Black Moon Clan, the Witches 5, the Amazon Quartet, and certain Animamates of Shadow Galactica) never were. Like the Black Moon Clan, they also travel through time, hoping to change the past, but they do that AND instead of being all full of themselves, like they could defeat the Silver Crystal themselves, resurrect all of Sailor Moon's old enemies--and since in modern times, this took place immediately after Sailor Moon S/Infinity, this means bringing back Queen Beryl and all her youma (the Shitennou were ghostly good guys in this game), the entire Black Moon Clan, including Chibiusa's "evil" form, the sexy Black Lady pictured in my icon, AND all of the Death Busters! WOWZA.
As far as villains go, they're my top choice, because they've just got it all--lust for power, a clear motivation that's fairly apparent from the top of the hierarchy on down, powers equal to the Senshi's, if not occasionally greater than, and of course, the inspiration for other future rebels searching for meaning in a utopian environment created by a power that's almost impossible for regular humans to understand.
Yup yup, Black Moon. *shudder* So deliciously evil!
This should be pretty obvious from my icon, but BLACK MOON CLAN, BABY. But first, a break down, excluding my favorite until the last:
Dark Kingdom = led by Queen Beryl. Former humans fueled by various kinds of jealousy and, once "sealed away" by Queen Serenity at the end of the Silver Millennium, stuck living in some sort of dank dimension where they gradually lose almost all sense of humanity, reverting to complete dunderheads. Some of the energy-stealing plots they have are hilarious, although I suppose you can blame it on the fact that they haven't seen society progress in the past thousand years. While they are the reason why the series even got started, they're not exactly the most threatening villains as a group. Yes, Sailor Moon and the other Senshi had to DIE to defeat them all (or rather, their leader, the form of Chaos, Metallia), but that was because they were at their lowest powers/hadn't fully "awakened" to being Senshi, even by then! Don't you think Sailor Uranus and Neptune, or Super Sailor Venus, easily could have blasted most of the Dark Kingdom? That's why they were the first villains...they're something of a joke, as far as bad guys go.
Death Busters = An odd assortment of people including a strangely psychotic professor, a crazy lady with magic-grow hair, girls who call themselves "witches" and more or less seem to hate each other, some of the ugliest monsters you've ever seen (especially in the manga version of this arc, Infinity), and a main villain that we never really see because it's in the nebula of another galaxy! WHAT?!
Dead Moon Circus = I mentioned in my previous post that I thought SuperS was probably the funniest arc of the whole series. With a circus serving as the front for this arc's villain, how can it not be? The Dead Moon Circus takes the royal hierarchy of the Dark Kingdom (led by Queen Nehellenia) and the crazy psycho (Zirconia), add some colorful, gender-confusing (as in, "confusing to the audience," or more specifically, me) enemies, some "redeemables," and you get the Dead Moon Circus. They can get pretty damn deadly though, and their arc is especially scary in the manga, I feel, but it's not the "darkest" arc, nor are they the "coolest" villains. I think Super's the darkest arc, and, while the next villains (Shadow Galactica) are pretty damn badass, I still think the Black Moon Clan's got them beat. Nehellenia as a villain is different from the manga to the anime, and it's my understanding that it's another "jealous of the White Moon Kingdom"-fueled rage that led her to becoming so evil. And since we've "been there, done that," she and the rest of the Dead Moon Circus don't strike me as all that cool.
Shadow Galactica = led by a Sailor Senshi. That alone should scare the crap out of you, because this is the first and last time that a true Sailor Senshi goes head-to-head with ALL of the other Sailor Senshi and repeatedly comes out on top. See, the Dark Kingdom had Zoisite dressing up as Sailor Moon (once, in the anime), and a shadowy youma that somewhat LOOKED like a Sailor Senshi, but that was it. And none of the other enemies repeated it, not even the Dead Moon Circus, which actually HAD true Sailor Senshi (brainwashed and "awoken" early, but only in the manga--the Sailor/Amazon Quartet). Here we have a Senshi, leading other (albeit "fake") Senshi, ruthlessly stealing other Senshi's source of power, their Star Seeds/Sailor Crystals. Almost until the very end, Galaxia and her cohorts are the scariest, baddest villains yet. But when it's revealed that Galaxia is a host for Chaos, the true enemy of every single arc of Sailor Moon, you sympathize with her, start leaning toward the "Sailor Moon is in the right, let's not fight...heal her!" attitude, and the fight loses some of its coolness. I think the best battles in Sailor Moon are the ones where the Senshi MUST fight, because they have no choice. Sailor Moon herself always likes to think there IS another choice, but she's also the most hopelessly naive (and optimistic) Senshi, and that attitude has gotten in her trouble more than once. Which leads me to my favorite group of villains....
Black Moon Clan! From the future, Crystal Tokyo of the 30th century! They've also got something of a hierarchy going on, like the Dark Kingdom and a bit like the Dead Moon Circus, what with their leader, Prince Diamond (Demand, Diamando, whatever), his brother Sapphire, the crazy-jealous-pretty-damn-evil Emerald, and the four sisters, Kooan (Catzi), Beruche (Birdie), Petz (Prisma), and Calaveras (Avery). Oh, and then the secret-baddie of this entire arc whom we actually see repeatedly, and even gets "personally" involved in some of the angstier, more dramatic moments of the Sailor Moon R/Black Moon arc, the Wise Man.
The whole reason why they're evil isn't because of jealousy, like the Dark Kingdom or the Dead Moon Circus, or because they just want power, like the Death Busters and Shadow Galactica. No, they want to...fight for their rights? In canon, the Black Moon Clan was a splinter group of villains that refused Neo-Queen Serenity's "cleansing" at the start of the 30th century, after the great "sleep" that was caused by some unmentionable disaster that rendered Earth uninhabitable for 1000 years. We're never told just what the cleansing involved, or why the sleep happened, or whether or not this is even the whole story, but if we assume it is, then it's pretty cool. These people just want to continue being themselves--not being subjects of Neo-Queen Serenity and King Endymion in THEIR version of a utopia on Earth.
So they launch attacks, and NQS retaliates, but, ever the kind-hearted soul she is, she gives them an new option: exile themselves to a planet beyond the reaches of their Solar System, accept the cleansing and stay on Earth, or...get blasted by the Silver Crystal. And they choose exile. The planet they end up on is Nemesis.
Actually, the planet was already pretty bad to begin with--another enemy had previously challenged NQS, and that was the Death Phantom. Fancy name, but he was human to, so NQS didn't want to kill him, so she banished him. The planet was already pretty barren and desolate, and when you send a bad guy to perish on a freezing asteroid-like planet, any negative energy there is sure to grow. And it did--lots. So when the future Black Moon Clan ended up there, after the Death Phantom died and his will became one with the planet, the negative energy corrupted them even further, resulting in the deliciously psycho "court" we see. By the way, the Death Phantom may have "died" in his human form, but he was far from gone--he was the first example of a 30th century avatar for Chaos, the ultimate villain that Sailor Moon sort of defeats (by sending back into the hearts of all humanity throughout the galaxy) in her battle with Shadow Galactica. And of course, he returned: as the "Wise Man," the same mysterious guy that, in the manga, told Galaxia about Earth....
The Black Moon Clan also appears to have been the inspiration behind my second favorite villains, those of the Sailor Moon: Another Story RPG. In it, five teenagers in 30th century Crystal Tokyo (Sin, Nergal, Marduk, Ishtar, and Nabu) all start to question the supposedly utopian way of life in their home, and why the Silver Crystal has the power it does. A mysterious outside entity, Apsu, promises to answer their questions and let them live the life they were meant to--and gives them great powers, turning them into the Opposito Senshi. They're also very, very close parallels to the Sailor Senshi, in ways that any other "group of four" (the Shitennou, the Four Sisters of the Black Moon Clan, the Witches 5, the Amazon Quartet, and certain Animamates of Shadow Galactica) never were. Like the Black Moon Clan, they also travel through time, hoping to change the past, but they do that AND instead of being all full of themselves, like they could defeat the Silver Crystal themselves, resurrect all of Sailor Moon's old enemies--and since in modern times, this took place immediately after Sailor Moon S/Infinity, this means bringing back Queen Beryl and all her youma (the Shitennou were ghostly good guys in this game), the entire Black Moon Clan, including Chibiusa's "evil" form, the sexy Black Lady pictured in my icon, AND all of the Death Busters! WOWZA.
As far as villains go, they're my top choice, because they've just got it all--lust for power, a clear motivation that's fairly apparent from the top of the hierarchy on down, powers equal to the Senshi's, if not occasionally greater than, and of course, the inspiration for other future rebels searching for meaning in a utopian environment created by a power that's almost impossible for regular humans to understand.
Yup yup, Black Moon. *shudder* So deliciously evil!
