Makoto went through quite a few changes from Naoko's origanal idea of her to today. I'm not sure but, I think she's the character that had the most remodeling done before she was added to the manga.

Origanally Naoko was only going to write five books of SailorMoon, so she wanted to only have five senshi to deal with. Or so she says in her authors note in the book. To Quote:

Here is Sailor Moon's fifth book. When I started writting Sailor Moon I sworer to myself, okay, since there are five Sailor senshi I have to make the series five books long.

She chose the characters to be from the first four planets and the moon. Mercury, Mars, Venus and Jupiter had to be her inner senshi. (The funny thing is...in the middle of Book number five she introduces Sailor Pluto. Looks like someone wanted to continue her series ne?)

Naoko's first idea was to have Mako be a eighteen year old smoker. Now I'm not really sure where the smoker part when, but Naoko did deside to have her be the same age as the rest of the inners.

My guess is she might still liked the idea of her being taller then the others because she didn't change the height of her Sailor Jupiter to be the same size as the rest.

Jupiter may have had to show up last (next to Venus) because she had to go through so many changes. I'm not sure. Or Naoko might have just followed the planets order until she came to Venus. (Since she already had her Minako develop her power Naoko might have wanted to give her a special enterance. Mina was after all her Sailor V.)

Another cool thing that I noticed in the author's notes on the manga was her origanal designs for the inner's anime costumes.

Jupiter had goggles once apon a time, much longer gloves and a tee shirt that showed her tummy off. The anime company must have not liked the idea and stayed with the origanal (more or less) Senshi fukus.

I think that Naoko's changes made Makoto a little more likeable, but at the same time I wish she didn't change her so much. I think it would have been cool for Makoto to be older and have a little more of a repuation. She'd have more dementions which would make things way more intersting. Don't you think?