Sailor Moon meets FF7, pt 1

[ladykf]

There was some discussion over on Tumblr (largely between vorpalgirl and myself) about mixing Sailor Moon with other fandoms. This was the first post regarding Sailor Moon/FF7. [Tumblr post]

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Here’s an overview of what I’m reviewing based on the analysis of what I know of SM (I watched most of the original English dubs during it’s Toonami run) and also what I knew from fanfics (then went and researched to make sure) so here’s one major thing I guess.

In Sailor Moon, you have the setup that there were once civilizations across our galaxy, focusing on our particular solar system. Each planet had a princess, except for Earth - and then there was the Moon Kingdom, who ruled over the whole solar system except for Earth. They were still in negotiations, presumably because Earth was more “primitive” and not yet ready to play with the big guns or something. Personally, I think it’s prejudice because they didn’t have a Princess to send to court but what do I know?

So you have the following players:

Moon Kingdom: Queen Serenity, Princess Serenity, and the sentient feline advisers Artemis and Luna

Inner Senshi: Princesses Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Mars are all Serenity’s private guard, and Venus is the leader

Outer Senshi: Princesses Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto - Pluto and Saturn are a bit to themselves, however, as Pluto is charged with guarding the time gate and Saturn (the Sailor of Death and Rebirth) exists as a failsafe to destroy everything and allow for controlled reincarnation instead of them all just being slaughtered

Earth Kingdom: the unnamed king and queen, Prince Endymion, the four Heavenly Kings (aka the Shitennou: Kunzite, Zoisite, Nephrite, and Jadeite) as well as the High Priest Helios, and Beryl who is some sort of well regarded sage/sorceress.

Stand out addition: Queen Metallia, a sentient being with no real solid form, noted for maliciousness, who takes hosts/possesses people and also brainwashes people to do her bidding. (Questionable on the gender here, but it’s the pronoun used.)

More under the cut. Also spoilers for Sailor Moon lore, I suppose?

 

Things break down further from there, taking a look at Sailor Moon’s history:

The Earth is in some sort of talks about allying with the Moon Kingdom, and somewhere along the way, Prince Endymion meets Princess Serenity and they start seeing each other.

The Shitennou are his guards the same way the Inner Senshi are Serenity’s, so you have the eight of them trying to manage these two as they sneak across space to see each other. There are also implied relationships going on between the two sets of guards (I think only Kunzite/Venus and Jadeite/Mars are canon, but Jupiter/Nephrite and Mercury/Zoisite are heavily implied.)

Despite all that, the Shitennou don’t really trust the Moon Kingdom as a whole, and they go to Beryl, who ends up taking advantage of their trust to brainwash them. They turn against even their prince (though they believe they’re acting to his benefit) and lead a war against the Moon. Which ends up killing just about everyone, even though Endymion did do his very best to save Serenity.

So with her dying breath, Queen Serenity uses her incredibly powerful Silver Crystal and captures the souls of some people and sends them to the future to be reborn on earth - the moon is just done after all that, nothing more than ruins and bodies.

Fast forward to the ‘present’ and that’s where you get Usagi/Serena - the reincarnated Princess Serenity, though she doesn’t know it. Even Luna and Artemis don’t remember much more beyond the fact that they need to find the princess, and gather scouts along the way. And Endymion, now Mamoru/Darien, doesn’t even remember anything; all he has are dreams of his princess, and knows he needs to find a crystal to wake her up.

I could continue along all that (especially some of the fun dynamics of the present’s future in there) but I think it’s interesting to draw lines between FF7 and Sailor Moon.

The biggest things will be:

• Moon Kingdom vs Cetra
• Princess Serenity / Sailor Moon vs Aerith Gainsborough
• Queen Serenity vs Ifalna
• Queen Metallia vs Jenova
• Crystals vs Materia

And since this got long, I’ll take that to a part two.