Sailor Moon may be a magical girl classic with themes around friendship and romance, but that doesn't mean there aren't some truly horrific villains that Usagi Tsukino and her fellow Sailor Guardians have to face. Sailor Moon and her friends upgrade their healing powers, attack sequences, and transformations in nearly every season. But as the Sailor Guardians' powers grow, so does the strength of their villains.
Sailor Moon villains are wonderfully complex. Most of them have staggering powers, but they are often brainwashed or misguided people who were once good. Between their strength and their potential as good people, it makes them quite difficult to defeat — or to heal.
10 The Guardians Face Kunzite Last
Kunzite is the final one of Queen Beryl's generals to face the Sailor Guardians. He is the strongest of Queen Beryl's generals, and she saves him for last, like an ace in her pocket. In his previous life, he was also the noblest and strongest of Prince Endymion's Shittenou, his four knighted Heavenly Kings.
Kunzite is incredibly confident, and he frightens the Sailor Guardians the most. He doesn't craft as many convoluted schemes and doesn't use disguises as the first general, Jadeite, does. The Dark Kingdom harvests human energy, and Kunzite can control dark energy, crafting it into many kinds of weapons and defensive maneuvers. It takes Sailor Moon using the Legendary Silver Crystal on him to finally defeat him.
9 The Kisenian Flower Has a Long Reach
The Kisenian flower is a parasitic sentient flower that cannot do much on her own. But once she finds a host, she is a huge force to be reckoned with. The Kisenian flower's possession powers and manipulation talents are so strong that she controls the compassionate and lovely Fiore with a mere snap of her fingers, making him act entirely unlike himself.
Many Sailor Moon villains are expert manipulators and possess creatures and humanoid beings. But those villains often need to amass a team to work in concert with, whereas the Kisenian flower gets pretty far with just her one host, Fiore. She also can multiply herself like a flower casting off replicating spores. Kisenian's plan to crash a comet into Earth comes so close to being successful that Sailor Moon sacrifices herself to stop it — it's Fiore's kindness and self-sacrifice that revives her.
8 The Doom & Gloom Girls Deplete Sailor Moon's Strength
The Doom and Gloom Girls are the last and strongest youma that Queen Beryl launches at the Sailor Guardians as a last effort before facing them herself. The five color-coded youma are meant to be the dark mirror image of the Sailor Guardians. They are so effective that they wipe out each of the Sailor Guardians, leaving Sailor Moon alone to face Queen Beryl.
The Doom and Gloom Girls are so powerful and their battles are so high stakes that the Sailor Guardians' deaths were edited out in the '90s English dub. They drain Sailor Moon's strength and break her heart by picking off her Sailor Guardian friends one by one. Even though the Sailor Guardians were revived after the Dark Kingdom arc, they were the first taste of mass hero casualties in Sailor Moon.
7 Queen Beryl & Queen Metalia Unite Into One Terrifying Goddess
Queen Beryl was the first big bad in Sailor Moon. Beryl bides her time and prefers to pull puppet strings behind the scenes than to face Sailor Moon head-on. Queen Beryl sets the tone for the rest of the villains to come; she is ruthless and collects an army of strong warriors and monsters to aid her.
Even Queen Beryl's minions fear her because if they displease her too often, she'll destroy them. Queen Beryl taps into her greatest strength when she unites with the entity she serves, Queen Metalia. When united, they become Super Beryl, a leviathan evil that Sailor Moon needs to funnel her full strength (as Princess Serenity) into defeating.
6 Queen Nehelenia Keeps Coming Back
Queen Nehelenia is Neo-Queen Serenity's dark double. She is a regent in her own right, and she was once a formidable force for good. Nehelenia is so strong that just one part of herself, Zirconia, causes great trouble for the Sailor Guardians.
Queen Nehelenia is also one of the few Sailor Moon antagonists who reach across two seasons and arcs to fight the Guardians. Queen Nehelenia has similar dark energy powers to other antagonists, but she also uses artifacts like her mirror to trap, travel and cast illusions. Nehelenia also casts spider threads like an evil game of cat's cradle. Her powers are very symbolic of her character, who is supposed to be a dark goddess sort of archetype who is also trapped inside her own fears and insecurities.
5 Wiseman Brings Out the Worst in Others
Wiseman is the greatest master manipulator throughout the Sailor Moon series. He slinks into the minds of many good people and warps their fears, exploiting them until they are totally wrapped around his finger. Queen Beryl needed several days to brainwash Tuxedo Mask into serving her as Dark Endymion, but even then, her spell was weak, and the real Endymion fought it at every chance.
When Wiseman gets into a good person's mind, though, there's almost never a turnback. Wiseman successfully warps Chibiusa's mind in little time by exploiting her fear and insecurities, turning her into Wicked Lady. It takes more than one attempt from Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask to heal her. He also pulls Prince Demande's and Saphir's strings, killing both of them when they finally start to shake from his hold. Wiseman is also one of the more frightening-looking villains with his creepy-crawly movements and cloaked figure. It took Neo-Queen Serenity, Small Lady Serenity and both the present and future Silver Crystals to take Wiseman down.
4 Mistress 9 Is the Dreaded Messiah of Silence
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It's bad news when one of the most powerful Sailor Guardians is taken over by an evil space entity. It may be easy to underestimate Hotaru, Sailor Saturn, early in the series, as she's rather young and sheltered. Germatoid and Pharaoh 90 know what a boon it would be to turn Hotaru evil, though, and she's marked as the perfect host for Mistress 9.
Mistress 9 doesn't have her own physical form; she needs a host to take shape, which is why she looks like an adult version of Hotaru when she finally succeeds in taking her over. Hotaru tries to fight back, but Mistress 9 is a wily opponent. She forces poor Hotaru to commit many violent crimes, leaving Hotaru trapped and helpless inside. Hotaru needs to summon all her considerable strength to finally shake Mistress 9's hold.
3 Pharaoh 90 Nearly Takes Everyone Down
By the third season, several other Guardians join the Inner Guardians. Sailors Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Saturn reveal themselves as Outer Guardians. But as the Guardians grow in strength and number, so do the villains — like Pharaoh 90, the mastermind behind Germatoid, Professor Tomoe, Mistress 9 and the rest of the Death Busters.
When Mistress 9 summons and steals the Holy Grail, an ancient and powerful artifact, she opens a portal for Pharaoh 90. Going up against Pharaoh 90, a near-shapeless Lovecraftian space horror, is a death sentence. Sailor Saturn and Sailor Moon gave everything they had to bring down Pharaoh 90, and they wouldn't have succeeded if Sailor Saturn hadn't sacrificed herself to enter Pharaoh 90, killing the entity from the inside. Sailor Moon brings Sailor Saturn back as a reborn infant.
2 Sailor Galaxia Is the Strongest Guardian
Sailor Galaxia strikes fear in the hearts of the Sailor Guardians and their allies. She was once Princess Serenity's greatest ally in their previous lives. It was Galaxia's goodness and self-sacrificing nature that made her Sailor Moon's greatest opponent.
Sailor Galaxia found the most dangerous foe in the universe, the evil incarnate, Chaos. Sailor Galaxia's cuffs rip Star Seeds out of people, maiming and killing people in her quest to collect all of them. Galaxia has a cruel and calculative sort of precision, and it takes a strong entity to house all the Star Seeds. It's possible that in hand-to-hand combat, Sailor Moon couldn't actually succeed in killing Sailor Galaxia — she healed her instead, and Galaxia chose to release the Star Seeds.
1 Chaos Is Evil Incarnate
Chaos is the ultimate Sailor Moon villain, the total opposite of all that is good in Sailor Moon, like heroism, compassion and honesty. It's heavily implied that Chaos fueled many genocides throughout the eons. In the manga, Chaos' form is a fiery amorphous shadow, and in the anime, Chaos is shown only momentarily as a shadowed cloud. All the universe's evil comes from Chaos, like a primordial god of destruction. Chaos' only goal is spreading evil throughout every living thing, which is a staggering concept.
Sailor Galaxia sacrificed her own body, trying to imprison Chaos within herself, but not even she was strong enough to contain Chaos entirely. Chaos overcame Galaxia and turned her into a powerful host. Sailor Moon nearly dies just trying to oust Chaos from Sailor Galaxia's body.
