Sailor Moon's team of senshi consists of four inner scouts that are with her through the battle against her first major enemy, and four outer scouts that they aren't even aware of until the second and third story arcs. The outer senshi are mysterious, serious, and intensely powerful soldiers that help protect Earth from evil invaders.
The first of the outer senshi to make her debut is Sailor Pluto. She's an unusual scout due to her role as the keeper of the Space-Time Door and her unique ability to influence time. Sailor Pluto is a sailor scout that is often overlooked but who is fascinating for the unique character details that make her stand out from the rest of the sailor team.
10 The Meaning Behind her Name
All of the sailor senshi's original Japanese names are related to their individual planets and their roles as soldiers. Sailor Pluto's Japanese name is Setsuna Meioh. The word "setsuna" translates to "moment" or "instant" which directly ties into her role as the guardian of time.
Her last name, Meioh, is borrowed from the Japanese name for Pluto, Meiosei, and is spelled used the same first two kanji from the planet name. Those kanji mean "dark" and "king", linking back to the Roman god Pluto who acted as ruler of the underworld.
9 She Was The Oldest Of The Scouts (Kind Of)
At the beginning of the series, Sailor Moon and the rest of the inner senshi are all 14 years old. Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune are the same age as them--even though they seem much more mature--and Sailor Saturn is somewhere around 12 years old.
When Sailor Pluto shows up on Earth as Setsuna Meioh, she is a university student and is expected to be around 19 or 20 years old, making her the oldest of the senshi team. However, she's only the oldest if you overlook the fact that the youngest looking scout, Sailor Chibi Moon, is actually over 900 years old.
8 She Whispers Her Attack Name
In all iterations of Sailor Moon, the senshi call out their attack names as they're conjuring up the power to blast the enemy. In the anime versions, most of the girls use a high volume with a lot of vocal force to reflect the intensity of the action, but Sailor Pluto has a bit of a different procedure.
To perform Dead Scream, Sailor Pluto maintains a peaceful facial expression and calmly whispers the attack name as her Garnet Rod collects energy. It's the only attack, of Pluto's or otherwise, that is so quietly announced and it gives it a very eerie effect.
7 Her Garnet Rod Is Inspired By Keys
Sailor Pluto's key item is the Garnet Rod, the staff that she keeps by her side and uses to perform her attacks and to influence the flow of time. It is a long silver rod with angular projections and her talisman, the Garnet Orb, on top.
The shape of the projections and the Garnet Orb create the look of an antique key, and this was intentional: Sailor Pluto is responsible for the Space-Time Door and is the only one who is supposed to be authorized to open it so it's only fitting that she would be given a key-like item to help her accomplish her assignment. In some versions of the character, she's wearing a belt with dangling keys around her waist as well.
6 She Has A Different Skin Tone
Many of the characters--main, secondary, and background--share the same skin colour. It's a basic, pale, peachy shade that is apparently the standard for the majority of citizens in the fictonal version of Tokyo seen in Sailor Moon. The only main character with a different skin tone is Sailor Pluto, who has a darker, more tanned look.
Fans have speculated as to why she might be more tanned than the other girls but creator Naoko Takeuchi has explained that she chose to give her a darker complexion simply because she felt it matched the darker nature of the character though admitted it was tricky to execute in the manga.
5 She's A Princess, Too
It's commonly known that Sailor Moon is the reincarnated Moon Princess since it's a major plot point for the entire series. But she isn't the only one; people often forget that each of the sailor senshi are princesses of their respective planets.
Sailor Pluto is also Princess Pluto and has a castle on her planet (okay, dwarf planet) called Charon Castle, named after the largest of Pluto's moons. In illustrations of Princess Pluto, she's wearing a beautifully designed long, black gown with four straps and an unusual neckline paired with opera-length black gloves.
4 She Had Multiple Careers
Because Sailor Pluto was older than the other girls on the sailor team, she didn't attend middle school or high school with the rest of them. When she was first shown living a civilian life in the third arc of the story, Setsuna was a university student majoring in physics.
Then in the fourth arc, she is seen working at an observatory where she observes the eclipse that accompanied the arrival of the Dead Moon Circus. She changes careers again in the fifth arc and gets a job as a school nurse at Chibi-Usa's school despite not having any apparent medical training. Sailor Pluto was a busy woman, even when she wasn't fighting evil enemies.
3 She Wasn't Great At Her Job
Sailor Pluto is often associated with her responsibility to guard the Space-Time Door since that's where she is when she's first introduced to the story. What often goes unmentioned is just how poorly she did that job.
Sure, leaving her post and altering the flow of time to stop the two Silver Crystals from touching was a necessary breach to save the world, but it was not her only infraction: she also gave Chibi-Usa a key so that she could travel through time and must have screwed up somewhere along the line if the Black Moon Clan also managed to move back and forth through time without being stopped. There were three taboos she was instructed to keep and she broke all of them.
2 And She Died As A Result
Queen Serenity told Sailor Pluto that she would die if she were to ever stop time. And, sure enough, Pluto did die after she stopped time and successfully prevented Prince Demand from destroying everything.
Her death didn't mean the end of her character though; Sailor Pluto would reappear in the third story arc as Setsuna Meioh, apparently reincarnated on Earth just like the rest of the girls. It's uncertain when she awoke as a senshi during her earthly life, but it was clear that she returned just as powerful as she had ever been, ready to help defeat evil.
1 She Is The Daughter Of Chronos
Her Roman namesake isn't the only mythological figure that this sailor senshi is linked to. In many iterations of the Sailor Moon story, Sailor Pluto is referred to as the daughter of Chronos, the personification of time in Greek mythology.
Chronos was said to be a serpent with the heads of a man, a lion, and a bull, who spawned several other deities including a daughter, Ananke, the personification of fate. Pluto certainly doesn't physically resemble Chronos, but her ability to affect the flow of time does create a clear connection between the two.