Character · Sailor Moon
Mamoru Chiba
He arrives in evening dress, throws one rose, says something cryptic, and leaves before anybody can ask a question.
In Otakana the clue reads: College student in a tuxedo and a domino mask
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Sailor Moon
- Letters
- 6 · Normal
Mamoru Chiba is an older student who meets Usagi when she throws a failed test paper at his head, which sets the tone for the entire relationship. In public the two of them bicker. Separately, he puts on a mask and a top hat as Tuxedo Mask and turns up whenever she is losing, usually with a rose thrown at the one spot that solves the problem.
Underneath the theatrics he is a lonely person. Both parents died in a car crash when he was six and his memory went with them, which is why he spends the first arc searching for something he cannot name. The dreams pushing him into the costume are not entirely his own, and the series takes its time explaining whose they are.
The rose is the most quoted image in the franchise, and the rescue inverts the usual arrangement on purpose. The girl does the fighting and the boy buys her a few seconds. Takeuchi built the pairing on a past life the characters have to rediscover, which the manga plays with a straight face and the anime plays as melodrama.
Spelling MAMORU
MAMORU is a verb before it is a name. Mamoru means to protect, which for a character whose entire job is arriving at the last second is not subtle. Six letters, three of them vowels, with the M appearing twice. That final U is fully pronounced in Japanese, so do not let English instincts trim it off the row.