Sailor Moon Villains Ranked From Worst To Best

In theory, Queen Badiane of Sailor Moon SuperS: The Movie is everything a Sailor Moon villain should be. Possessed with a dramatically dire ambition, she lures children to her Marzipan Castle to prey upon their dreams. That's the sort of bizarro fairy tale Sailor Moon does best, right? She locks kids in "dream coffins!" She dresses like the ruler of a country of malevolent pastry chefs! She sends sinister fairies, armed with magical, mind-controlling flutes, off to do her dirty work! She's every inch the ideal Sailor Moon baddie, from her aesthetic to her mission. Why doesn't she make more of an impression?

Ultimately, it's because she conforms so completely to the formula. True, Sailor Moon villains tend to combine the elements of girlhood fantasy — circuses, fairy tales, witches — with sinister intent to tremendous effect. But they always bring a little something extra to the table, whether that's a surprising backstory, complicated loyalties, or eventual redemption. Queen Badiane, in contrast, is just an evil queen. She has no family to play off of, no strange element to her ambition, no love interest. Moreover, everything attention-grabbing about her — her pastry-themed look, the eerie field of dream coffins, the fairies who serve her — is apparent from the first act of the film. It's all cool, but it's all familiar within fifteen minutes. If you're an evil queen in Sailor Moon, you need to have a killer schtick — but you need something else as well, if you're going to make a lasting impression.

The Death Busters encompass evil spirits, crazed scientists, actual demons, and a gang of squabbling witches. An elite private school, Mugen Academy, acts as a front for their dastardly deeds, and at the core of it all lies Hotaru Tomoe, the girl not yet awakened as Sailor Saturn. Host to their dark forces, called their "Messiah of Silence" in the anime, they hold her captive — yet not even the sailor senshi, fearful of her apocalyptic powers, want to wake her up.

It's juicy stuff. And indeed, the arc they feature in is one of the best Sailor Moon ever did. But for all that success, the Death Busters still end up a disappointment when the power behind their flashy machinations is... boring. Pharaoh 90, the shadowy being backing the Busters from the very beginning, is a bodiless dark spirit from the far reaches of space, who wants to take over the world for the sake of taking over the world. The final battle with him is over remarkably quickly, yet even that cannot distract from the fact that it is the least spectacular of all Sailor Moon finales. He lacks any pizzazz, visual or thematic, a sin that stands out especially starkly against the characters who served him. Were the Death Busters revamped today, one hopes the creators would do away with Pharaoh 90 entirely, and let the real villains take center stage from the beginning to the end.

The Sailor Animamates are Sailor Galaxia's forces, literally shackled to her by the magical bracelets she uses to keep them in line. They aren't exactly true sailor senshi, yet neither do they stand entirely apart from that role. In the anime, they are implied to be senshi corrupted by Galaxia's power, while in the manga, they are normal girls offered a senshi's power by Galaxia in exchange for their service. That latter interpretation paints a particularly brutal portrait of the Animamates when it is revealed that they killed the true senshi of their home worlds and usurped their role as planetary protectors.

Despite this, the Animamates are genuinely nuanced characters. Though the manga depicts them as truly cruel, their frustration at being powerless in the face of the senshis' might and Galaxia's expanding empire rings true and provides a unique view onto the Sailor Moon world — that of a bystander. Moreover, the anime makes them into actual, episode-spanning characters, especially Sailors Aluminum Siren and Lead Crow. A ditz and a taskmaster respectively, their friendship develops into something truly moving, making their deaths all the more tragic. The Animamates never get to reach the peaks of power they were promised, no matter who they killed, betrayed, or sacrificed. In that, they end up being some of Sailor Moon's most truly heart-rending villains.

For all her plots to remain beautiful forever and rule the moon as its rightful queen, Nehelenia was never a solo act. The Dead Moon Circus, her fearsome troupe of thralls, devotees, and advisers, were the real power behind her dark throne, and they were every bit as entertaining as their mistress.

What makes the Dead Moon Circus so compelling is its diversity. The Amazoness Quartet, perhaps Nehelenia's most capable cadets, are actually Sailor Chibi Moon's future senshi team, awakened prematurely and pressed into service by Nehelenia. The Amazon Trio are enchanted animals, who are entertainingly petty until they undergo a change of heart and sacrifice themselves for Sailor Moon. Zirconia, wizened ringleader of the circus, is a projection of Nehelenia's fears about aging, beauty, and madness. The Circus is a potent blend of melodrama, worldbuilding, sheer goofiness, and folklore of every stripe. They're the type of villainous group that travels under cover of solar eclipses in enormous floating circus tents, sets up fake modeling auditions to lure unsuspecting prey into their clutches, and curse noble princes with illnesses that manifest as dark roses in their chests — and darn it if they don't make you take them seriously. The Dead Moon Circus is all smoke and mirrors, until it's very suddenly something more — a reveal as thrilling as any high-wire act.

The Black Moon Clan are a complex group. Anarchists from the 30th century, they terrorize Crystal Tokyo with the powers they've gained from the planet Nemesis, a world of poisonous black crystal just beyond the bounds of the solar system.  A dark being known as Wiseman ultimately twists their distrust of Neo-Queen Serenity's globe-spanning rule towards his own wicked ends, but still, they had a political goal before they became a demonically-empowered gang of villains. 

And what a gang it is. The Black Moon Clan are among Sailor Moon's most vibrant characters, encompassing dynamics of family, allies, lovers, and bitter enemies. At the top of the hierarchy is Prince Demande, whose beliefs have been tainted by Wiseman's evil and his simmering obsession with Neo-Queen Serenity. For all his cruelty, his love for his brother Saphir is real — but Saphir's growing discontent with Wiseman forces a wedge between them. Then there are the Spectre Sisters, the sort of villainess gang Sailor Moon excels at, fraught with unrequited love, sisterly anger, and a genuine desire to do good. Even Chibi-Usa, Usagi's daughter from the 30th century, joins their gang briefly when Wiseman's power transforms her into Black Lady, a femme fatale nightmare born of her worst impulses. There's something for everyone in the Black Moon Clan, from family politics to searing romance, making them one of Sailor Moon's best bad guy organizations.

Compared to other Sailor Moon villains, Fiore is fairly low-key. A lonely alien, he spent some of his youth on Earth, befriending a young, orphanage-bound Mamoru. Years later, Fiore returns, having finally found a flower beautiful enough to present to Mamoru: the Xenian flower. He doesn't know it has poisoned him with rage, nor that it will use him to seed the earth with its fell blooms, only that a silly girl with blonde pigtails stands between him and Mamoru. She must be destroyed, and the Xenian flower promises to help him do just that.

Fiore's story is the subject of Sailor Moon R: The Movie, and thus had to begin and end within 60 minutes — but this brevity only strengthens his story. Fiore is a damaged dreamer, the winnowed-down heart of every Sailor Moon character, heroic or otherwise. It's no coincidence that his defeat is preceded by flashbacks of every senshi, recalling a moment at which they felt too quiet, too angry, too strange, or too stupid to ever find friends: he is the future they feared was their own. His defeat isn't violent — he is freed from the Xenian flower's control by Mamoru, revives Sailor Moon with the last of his life, and fades away. Perhaps he is reborn, or perhaps he is simply gone. But his story lingers — one of love without limit, shared with all, only grown stronger for having been tested by a lonely boy from beyond the stars.