Sailor Moon was and still is a popular anime series, but even the most hardened fan can admit there are times the anime doesn't make much sense.
Sure, there are the questions casual viewers of the show might have that fans will know the answers to by heart. Why don't the villains attack during those transformation scenes? The Scouts usually transform out of sight. Why isn't there a Sailor Earth? There is. He's called Tuxedo Mask. Is Ami's hair blue or green? According to Reddit, it's complicated.
But, finally, there are problems that don't seem to have any explanation. At least one in-universe. Today, we're looking at the things that don't make much sense about the Sailor Moon anime. And remember, spoilers abound.
10 Innocent Bystanders
One thing the anime is a little inconsistent about it is what happens when normal humans get hit by a Scout attack. On one hand, there are times when the Scout's powers are shown to be deadly. In the final battle with the Dark Kingdom, Sailor Mars, Venus, and Jupiter all die in kamikaze attacks.
But other times, it's implied some magical failsafe protects innocent people from getting hurt by the Scouts: in the SuperS special when Sailor Moon attacked a vampire with "Moon Gorgeous Meditation," it merely changed her back into a human. In the same special, Sailor Neptune attacked a possessed puppeteer with "Deep Submerge," and the attack merely destroyed the evil puppet, sparing the manipulated human. Likewise, in episode 106, the same attack also cured another boy-turned-monster.
9 Usagi's Transformation Pen
Early on, Luna gives Usagi a magical pen that lets her disguise herself into anything she wants. It mostly comes in handy when Usagi needs access to a place she normally wouldn't get it. It's also implied the pen gives the user new abilities, like knowing how to drive a boat.
As useful as something like a disguise pen could be, it stops appearing mostly after the first season in the anime. The last mention of it is when Minako had to disguise herself as Sailor Moon and said she asked Luna for a special pen.
8 Saturn And Pluto's Powers
A lot of the Scouts seem to get their powers from the Roman gods their planets are named after, like Venus' love powers and Jupiter's thunderbolts. But Pluto and Saturn mix things up a bit. Pluto was the god of the underworld and Saturn was the god of time, conflated with the Greek god Cronus. Despite this, Sailor Pluto is the Guardian of Time and Sailor Saturn is the Scout of Death and Destruction.
To make things even more confusing, Sailor Pluto is even said to be the daughter of Cronus and even has a "Chronos Typhoon" attack. And Sailor Saturn is literally called the "Goddess of Death" and her glaive is referred to as the "scythe of the god of death," making her look more like the Grim Reaper than Father Time.
Fans have offered various explanations to this over the years, such as on Angelfire and Tuxedo Unmasked.
7 Independent Minors
Usagi seems to be the only Scout in the anime with parents. Rei lives with her grandfather and Ami's father once sent her a postcard. Then things get weird. In the anime, Minako, a middle-schooler, was able to move to London with a talking cat without any issue!
This was less an issue in the manga, where the girls' backstories are usually elaborated on, like Makoto being an orphan. But there are still unresolved issues: in both the anime and manga, Makoto lives by herself without any explanation as to where she gets money for food.
6 Minako's Personality
Of all the Scouts, Minako's personality seems to change at the drop of a hat. When she's first introduced, she is mature and self-sacrificing. But as the show went on, she seems to become less mature.
She becomes a real study in contrast. Look at episode 52, where she willingly helps out at a kindergarten and actually seems good with kids. Then look at episode 154, where she has no patience with children at a preschool that all the Scouts are volunteering at.
Even her dream of becoming an idol came out of nowhere in the anime. Originally, she wanted to be a nurse. There were even toys based around her wanting to be a nurse!
5 Dr. Tomoe
This is one of those "anime trying to keep up with the manga" deals. In the original manga, Dr. Tomoe wanted to become a Daimon, even sacrificing his daughter Hotaru in the process. When the story was adapted into anime, however, Dr. Tomoe was rewritten to be a loving father who was simply possessed, and both he and his daughter were given a second chance at a happy life.
Then the anime adapted Sailor Stars...which now had Hotaru as part of the Outer Scouts. In order to rectify this, the anime has a scene with Sailor Pluto taking baby Hotaru from her loving father. And he is never heard from again...
4 The Talismans
In the third season, the evil Witches 5 are stealing people's heart crystals. During this time, Sailor Uranus and Neptune are also searching for the Talismans, hidden in three of these crystals, and are willing to even take lives to get them. Halfway through the season, during a fight with the witch Eudial, it's revealed that Uranus and Neptune had the Talismans all along...now that they've been taken from their lifeless bodies.
At this point, Sailor Pluto appears, reveals she knew about the Talismans all along and that she had the third and final one. While it's nice of her to save the day and all, wouldn't it have made sense to share this information with the other Scouts before people got hurt?
3 Raising The Dead
One of the most horrifying twists about Queen Nehelenia was that the Lemures weren't mindless puppets...they were actually her subjects that she transformed into the "living corpses" that the Sailor Scouts fought and killed. Fortunately, after Sailor Moon grants Nehelenia a second chance at life, she was able to restore her planet and people back to life.
Sailor Moon being able to literally raise the dead brings up a lot of questions. Can the more tragic villains, like Nephrite or Blue Saphir, be saved? And why is anything treated like a serious threat if death itself is reversible? The closest explanation is that Usagi's powers are sometimes shown to require some sort of sacrifice, but this doesn't hold much weight when Usagi can resurrect the population of an entire planet without consequence. And Usagi isn't alone is this: in one of the few times Usagi was the one who lost her life, Mamoru brought her back with just a kiss.
2 Usagi and Mamoru's Break Up
In the second season, Mamoru starts getting nightmares telling him that Usagi will die. Instead of anything rational, he decides the best course of action is to break her heart to save her. However, it turns out that his future self, King Endymion, actually sent his past-self these visions in the hopes that it will motivate Mamoru to protect Usagi.
Nothing about the plan makes sense. Even if we assume there was some reason King Endymion couldn't be more direct, there's the plot hole that, since he's Mamoru's future self, he should know the plan failed horribly. And Mamoru was already protecting her. He's Tuxedo Mask! It's amazing Chibiusa still exists.
1 The Upgrades
During the second season, while planning a farewell party for Ami, the cats, Luna and Artemis, decide to give the girls new transformation items that promise to enhance their powers. There's no explanation as to why the cats waited until now to give these upgrades, especially since Ami almost left for Germany.
Wouldn't these trinkets have been handier before? Like when the Scouts traveled to the Arctic Circle to fight the Dark Kingdom? And they all died, one-by-one? And were only brought back to life on a fluke? Wouldn't a power boost have been a good idea? And do the cats not like Ami?