Still Not Over Season Two

Season two, episode fifteen. Mamoru ends it without telling her why—no real explanation, just the door closing and Usagi’s face, and this specific wound that apparently never fully heals. I’ve rewatched Sailor Moon enough times that I should have made peace with it by now, but the particular cruelty of that scene—him knowing exactly why and choosing silence anyway, letting her believe it was simply over—still catches me somewhere unguarded at unreasonable hours.

I love every character in this series, which makes ranking them feel like a small betrayal. Villains, side characters, monsters-of-the-week who materialize for twenty minutes before dissolving in a flash of sailor justice—all of them, without condition. Usagi is my number one, has always been, will always be. Everyone else sits in a permanent tie for second place and I refuse to move any of them further down.

Which is why WatchMojo’s top ten Sailor Moon characters video exists in a complicated space for me. Philosophically I reject any ranking that treats these characters as separable by degrees of worth. In practice I watched it twice. The number one pick is at least defensible. Everything below it is an argument I’d happily have for several hours, which is ultimately the point—any excuse to spend twelve minutes in the company of this show, even via someone else’s debatable list, is twelve minutes I don’t regret. Everything else is a discussion I’ll be having for the rest of my life.