Usagi Tsukino

**Usagi Tsukino** (月野 うさぎ, *Tsukino Usagi*) is the warrior of love and justice, **Sailor Moon**(セーラームーン, *Sērāmūn*). Originally from a prosperous civilization on the Moon known as the Moon Kingdom, she was reborn on Earth and re-awoke as the leader of the Sailor Senshi.

## Nomenclature & Etymology

### Etymology

**Usagi** is written in the hiragana spelling of the Japanese word for "rabbit" (うさぎ, usagi)

**Tsukino**, The kanji of *Tsuki* (月) translates to "moon" while the kanji for *no* (野) translates to "field" or "civilian". The syllable *no* (の) also indicates possession, so while the literal translation of her family name could be "moon field" or "moon civilian", others may translate it as "of the moon."

Her full name, when said in the Japanese naming-order, *Tsukino Usagi*, gives two additional puns: *No-Usagi* (野うさぎ), meaning "wild rabbit"; and *Tsuki no Usagi* (月のうさぎ), meaning "Rabbit of the Moon". The latter derives from an Asian folktale about a rabbit that is said to reside on the Moon.

### Nomenclature

Naoko Takeuchi included many occultist arts to finely detail each character. For Usagi, these things include:

* **Birthstone(s):**
	+ Pearl - Purity, humility and innocence.
	+ Alexandrite - Believed to strengthen intuition, aid creativity and inspire imagination.
	+ Moonstone - Love, passion, fertility and great luck.
* **Zodiac Sign:** Cancer - Tenacious, highly imaginative, loyal, emotional, sympathetic, persuasive; Moody, pessimistic, suspicious, manipulative, insecure.

## Appearance

### Civilian

Usagi has blue eyes and long blonde hair that she wears in odango.

The outfit that Usagi usually wears is a light blue middle school uniform (which later became her iconic everyday outfit), which has a blue sailor collar with two white stripes. She has a red ribbon on the front of her uniform, which she ties her magical locket to. She has a white school top with blue sleeves which have white stripes on, like the collar. In the summer, she wears a white top with short puffy sleeves. She has a blue pleated skirt with a blue ribbon on the back.

### Senshi

* Sailor Moon
* Super Sailor Moon
* Eternal Sailor Moon
* Princess Serenity
* Neo-Queen Serenity

Sailor Moon’s original fuku consists of a white leotard with a blue collar that has three stripes on it, white gloves, light yellow shoulder pads, and a blue skirt, along with a red bow on the chest and at the back. She also wore a pair of red knee-high boots with a white border at the triangular top and crescent moons, gold earrings consisting of a stars with a crescent moon beneath, white-bordered red circular hairpieces (one on each odango), feather barrettes in her hair, and a choker with a golden crescent moon on it with a clip that is similar to her transformation brooch attached to it. Her brooch is worn on the middle of her chest bow, along with a mask that disappeared in Act 16.

Her tiara has changed a few times in the manga; at first it was a golden tiara with a red gem in its center. It later disappeared after she threw it at Jadeite in Act 3. A new one appeared in Act 4 which looked like the old one, but the gem in the center was bigger. After she met Sailor Venus in Act 8 the tiara changed into a crescent moon with a gem in the middle.
As Super Sailor Moon, her fuku almost completely changed; she has two wing-like barrettes in her hair, her earrings are no longer dangling moons, but simply crescent moons affixed to her ears. Her choker is yellow with a red heart in the center. The stripes on her collar change from white to yellow and her shoulder pads are translucent and more wing-like in shape. The back waist bow becomes long, white and billowy with a yellow belt around her waist. However, the most obvious change is her skirt; it is now white with a yellow and blue border at the bottom. In the manga, there were more noticeable changes; her collar is blue in front and yellow in the back, the colors blended into each other over her shoulders. Instead of two different-colored stripes at the bottom of her skirt, the colors seem to blend into each other, creating a subtle transition from yellow to blue.

In this form, her fuku underwent the most radical changes; she no longer wears a tiara and instead has a gold crescent moon on her forehead, her earrings have a star at the bottom of each crescent moon. The choker is red with a dark yellowish orange heart and a gold crescent moon under it while wearing the same white wing barrettes in her hair. The collar itself is like her old one, but is dark blue with two gold stripes and in place of her shoulder pads are short solid pink bubble-like sleeves with a red band at the end. In the place of her front bow is a gold heart with a crescent moon at the bottom, with what appears to be four angel wings coming out of it. Her gloves are the same as before, but with a red v-shape border along with a golden star. Her skirt is attached to her top in a red v-shape with a crescent in the center of the v along with three layers on it; the top layer is yellow, the middle layer is red and the bottom layer is blue. Her back bow is replaced with a huge set of angel wings and two very long, thin red ribbons trailing down from them. Her boots are now knee length with v-shape borders with a crescent moon on them.

Main Page: Princess Serenity

Princess Serenity was the previous life of Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon. While Usagi is shown to have abundant powers as Sailor Moon and her future self, Neo-Queen Serenity, Princess Serenity did not have any significant powers.

Main Page: Neo-Queen Serenity

Neo-Queen Serenity is Usagi Tsukino’s future self; she is the Queen of Crystal Tokyo and of the Earth, she has been shown to have strong powers. Eternal Sailor Moon is closest to this form.
## Personality

Usagi's is a bit selfish, and very much a crybaby. She is also considered lazy, clumsy, as well as an academic-underachiever. She was also a terrible cook, as shown several times during the series. She was also shown to be easily made jealous and possessive of Mamoru.

However, it was shown that she cared very deeply for her friends and family. She is very trusting, and believes that everyone has a better nature. This could be seen as both a character strength and a character flaw at times. She did not believe in killing innocent humans, even when they had been transformed into vicious monsters, and always sought ways to heal them instead.

Over the course of the series, Usagi matured a great deal although she was still prone to some childish behavior and bouts of silliness; she became a capable young woman.

## Background

Usagi was the oldest of two siblings and lived with her parents, Kenji and Ikuko Tsukino, and her younger brother, Shingo Tsukino. She lived an average life with her friends, Naru, Umino, Yumiko, and Kuri.

## Sailor Moon Classics

After rushing to school because she over slept, she spots some kids tormenting a black cat; putting band-aids on the cat's forehead. After Usagi chases the boys away, she removes the band-aids to reveal a crescent moon on the cat's forehead.

Later, Usagi received a poor grade on her exam and trys to toss it away. The crumpled up paper hit a man on the head, named Mamoru Chiba, who then began taunting her throughout the first half of the season.

It was later that night that the cat, named Luna, spoke to Usagi about the new enemy attacking Earth; the Dark Kingdom. To prove that it was not a dream, Luna gave her a magic brooch that allowed Usagi to become Sailor Moon. It was on her first mission where she met the mysterious Tuxedo Mask, and crushes on him from then on.

For a while, Usagi struggled on with school, as well as fight against the Dark Kingdom on her own -with the help of Tuxedo Mask. Eventually she was joined by school genius Ami Mizuno; a classmate of Usagi's who Luna suspected might be a youma. Ami was later revealed to be Sailor Mercury.

Usagi and Ami then continue to fight the Dark Kingdom's minions. Then Usagi meets Rei Hino, a teenage shrine priestess who went to a private school. She, like Ami, was a Sailor Senshi. The soldier of fire, Sailor Mars. They began hanging out together and Rei join Ami and Usagi as they continued to fight against the Dark Kingdom.

Sometimes Usagi would argue with Rei. The arguments would center around Usagi's laid-back attitude towards responsibilities or the rivalry of Tuxedo Mask's affection.

One day, Usagi was running late for school when she accidentally ran into a group of guys who began to pick on her. She was rescued by a new transfer student, Makoto Kino. While other students avoided Makoto, due to her history of violence in her previous school, Usagi kindly introduced herself, and Makoto shared her food with her. Makoto was revealed to be the Sailor Senshi of Lightening: Sailor Jupiter; and joined the three of the other Sailor Senshi.

Shortly after being introduced to Sailor Venus, Usagi is once again confronted by Mamoru. He apologizes to her for all the times he made fun of her. Seeing that he was injured, Usagi becomes concerned and follows him into a Dark Kingdom trap. Usagi was forced to transform into Sailor Moon to save her and Mamoru's life; who then revealed himself to be Tuxedo Mask. After he was seriously injured in a sneak-attack by Zoisite, Sailor Moon gained the Legendary Silver Crystal and was revealed to be Princess Serenity.

Tuxedo Mask was then kidnapped by the Dark Kingdom and Usagi fell into a depressed state; worrying about him. Once he was revealed to be alive but under the control of the Dark Kingdom, Usagi gained back her determination to save him. After thwarting many of the Dark Kingdom's attempts to capture the Silver Crystal, Usagi and the Sailor Senshi travelled to the North Pole. They aimed for a place known as D-Point, to defeat the Queen Beryl and save Tuxedo Mask. On their way across the tundra, one by one Usagi's friends are forced to sacrificed themselves to help her reach the base. After finally arriving at the Dark Kingdom headquarters, she had to fight against Mamoru, who was still under the enemies control. Eventually Usagi was able to break the hold over him, only to have him die in her arms when he was protecting her.

In the final battle, she faced off against the leader of the Dark Kingdom; using up all her strength and destroying it. She collapsed and the blast spread throughout the entire area, consuming everyone.

The next morning, Usagi woke up in bed, rushing to school with no memory of her time as Sailor Moon. The other Sailor Senshi and Mamoru are alive as well and have no memories of being Sailor Senshi as well.

## Senshi info

Usagi can transform into a "Sailor Soldier" by wearing a special device (usually a brooch) and shouting a special command that activates the device. Her original transformation command is "Moon Prism Power, Make Up!" (ムーンプリズムパワー、メイクアップ! Mūn Purizumu Pawā, Meiku Appu!). She gains a new basic transformation sequence for each of the five major story arcs.

In the fifth arc of the manga, she becomes Eternal Sailor Moon with "Silver Moon Crystal Power, Make Up!" instead of "Moon Eternal, Make Up!".

As the protagonist and leader, Usagi has special and stronger powers than any of the other characters in the series. Her physical attacks, usually one-offs and not always successful, include Sailor Moon Kick.

One of her techniques is the "Ultrasonic Wave" (超音波, chō onpa), which involves her red hair pieces acting as an amplifier for her whaling.

Some attacks are were changed, added or made exclusive to certain version of the *Sailor Moon* series. The list below shows the changes as well as the inclusion or exclusion of certain ones.

## Development

Usagi's signature hairstyle derives from a "good luck charm" of the artist's. In college, Naoko Takeuchi would put her own hair up in odango before difficult class exams.[1] By the intermediate stages of development, Takeuchi planned to have the character's hair be blonde in civilian form and change to silver when she transformed, but she was told by her editor that silver hair would be too plain for cover art. Stylistic use of differently-colored hair does sometimes appear in later artwork. Out of all the Sailor Senshi, Usagi's personality is closest to Takeuchi's own personality at the time that the series was created.[2]

Certain background details of Usagi's character were chosen symbolically. For instance, her Western astrological sign is given as Cancer, which in astrology corresponds to the moon. In reference to a popular Japanese belief, Usagi's blood type O, supposedly indicates friendliness, optimism, and carelessness.

## Trivia

* In the original DiC English dub, Usagi is named "Serena" as "Serena" is very close in spelling and pronunciation to "Serenity".
* In early promotional videos, DiC used the name "Victoria"; and on Kodansha's English website, she was at first referred to as "Celeste".
* Usagi was the only one out of the Inner Senshi who was not part of the Three Lights fan club in the anime.
* Kotono Mitsuishi, the actress who played Usagi in the anime, was sick during the production of episodes 44 through 50; during that time the character was instead voiced by Kae Araki who later voiced Chibiusa/Chibiusa Tsukino / Sailor Chibi Moon (manga).
* Usagi has mistaken alcohol for punch and has gotten accidentally drunk on two occasions: the first was in Episode 22 and the second in Episode 108.
* Usagi is the only character to appear in all 200 episodes and in all 3 movies.
* According to a translation of an anime fanbook, Usagi hopes to one day go to the Palace of Versailles.[3]
* In episode 4, it was noted that she wasn't very good at swimming.
* Miyuu Sawai, the actress who plays Usagi, auditioned for the role cause her friends insisted on it.[4]
* Her lunar symbol is the crescent moon (☽) and is seen on various brooches, wands, rods, clothing etc. represented by Luna, the Roman goddess/Selene, the Greek goddess.
	+ In alchemy, silver is represented by ☽.

* She made a cameo appearance in Sailor Momo.

## References

1. ↑ From *Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon Shinsouban Volume 3.*
2. ↑ Sailor Games - Interview of Naoko Takeuchi at the San Diego Comic-con
3. ↑ Translation of Usagi's anime profile from Dies Gaudii
4. ↑ It is mentioned during the behind the scenes video before the series aired on television.