Introduction to the Sailor Moon Series

Sailor Moon is about an ordinary, cutesy, high strung, 14 year old junior high school girl who is told by a talking cat of all things called Luna that she has to fight great evil and find someone called the "Moon Princess". She accomplishes all this by transforming into the sailor suited "Sailor Moon". Over time, she discovers other Sailor Scouts and another cat Artemis who join her team. She also runs into a guy named Darien and a caped crusader called Tuxedo Mask. As luck may have it, they are one and the same(how she never figures out who he is, is beyond me!). Tuxedo Mask reappears constantly to save the Sailor Scouts from the generals of the Negaverse who, at first, begin stealing life energy from the people of Earth, when this fails they attempt to acquire the Imperium Silver Crystal. Serena then learns about the Moon Kingdom and its troubled past. The Moon Kingdom had existed a thousand years ago when the universe was at peace. It was ruled by Queen Serenity until the evil forces from the Negaverse tried to take it over. Queen Serenity was able to repel the invasion, but only by sacrificing herself and sending all of her court and the Imperium Silver Crystal to the future on Earth. How all this ties into the plot is that Sailor Moon a.k.a. Serena is the reincarnation of the Moon Princess, Princess Serena. It also turns out that the Scouts are reincarnations of the guardians of the Moon Kingdom, and that Darien is a reincarnation of Prince Darien, who was to marry Princess Serena. This adds a bit of romance to the series, but in the end, the Sailor Scouts and Tuxedo Mask are able to use the Imperium Silver Crystal to destroy the Negaverse, but at the cost of their own lives.

Note: In the DIC translation, no one dies. Everyone just has their memories erased. Reportedly, the original makers of the series weren't sure if they were going to do a second season, and so they wanted to potentially end off the series with a bang. The way this works in the original is that the Sailor Scouts die, but their alter-ego secret identities live on to have a chance at a normal life.

Introduction to the Sailor Moon R series

Anyhow, the next season of the show starts, and everyone gets their memories back, except for Darien (to the annoyance of Serena). Two aliens, Alan and Ann arrive on Earth and start stealing people's life energy for to save the "Doom Tree." At the end of the story we find out Moonlight Knight (Darien) is the split personality of Darien because he didn't get his memory back. Moonlight Knight was sent to help Sailor Moon. Serena revives the Doom Tree by using her crystal and all is well. Just when things start to get comfortable, all of a sudden a strange pink haired kid who looks an awful lot like Serena falls out of the sky with a quest to find her mother and the Imperium Silver Crystal. She is Chibi Usa, and she is from the future, but she didn't come alone. Some agents of the Negaverse, namely Rubeus and the four weird sisters Catsy, Berti, Avery, and Prisma, follow her. In a change from the usual, the Sailor Scouts were able to heal the sisters of their evil rather than just kill them as usual.