Character · Sailor Moon
Luna
A talking black cat hands a crying fourteen-year-old a magic brooch and then nags her about homework for years.
In Otakana the clue reads: Black cat with a crescent moon on her forehead
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Sailor Moon
- Letters
- 4 · Normal
Luna introduces herself by pulling a sticking plaster off her own forehead, revealing a crescent moon, and announcing that the schoolgirl in front of her is a guardian. She hands over a transformation brooch and a job description. Usagi would rather eat. From that point Luna is adviser, tactician, conscience and the only member of the team who reliably reads a situation correctly.
She is also, functionally, a parent. She checks Usagi's marks, confiscates her games, and worries in the manner of somebody who has done all this before, which she has: Luna served the Moon Kingdom and remembers a good deal more than she admits early on. Her counterpart Artemis performs the same role for Minako, with markedly less success.
Naoko Takeuchi began Sailor Moon in Nakayoshi in 1991, and Toei animated it from 1992. The formula it fixed, an ordinary girl plus a magical item plus a talking animal adviser plus a team, ran through a decade of magical girl television afterwards. Luna is the reason the animal adviser became standard equipment in the genre.
Spelling LUNA
LUNA is four letters and Latin rather than Japanese, which is the trap on a board like this one. Japanese writes it as Runa, since the language has one sound where English hears R and L. Takeuchi picked moon words deliberately across the whole cast. Four letters, two vowels, nothing doubled, no long vowel to lose.