Sailor Moon draws heavily from Greek and Roman mythology, but the series' mangaka has many different influences which she threads through her amazing work. Naoko Takeuchi incorporated various fairy tale themes, tropes, and archetypes into the magical girl classic. Fairy tales come from an oral tradition, but writers like Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm wrote them down and compiled them into the most popular versions.
Naoko Takeuchi also included Japanese fairy tales, like "The Moon Rabbit," along with European tales, like "Cinderella." All these influences create a lush fantasy story that takes place in the modern world. It makes the series' romance and the magic feel timeless, humorous, and ethereal.
10 Usagi Wants a Pair of Glass Slippers for Her Birthday
Fairy Tale: Cinderella
Usagi is a romantic at heart. She has an epic romance with Mamoru in this current life and past life. As her birthday approaches, she's charmed by a pair of fancy glass slippers in a store window, and imagines Mamoru buying them and presenting them to her. Glass slippers are an integral gift in nearly all versions of the "Cinderella" fairy tale.
The slippers are a gift from Cinderella's fairy godmother, and they're what later identify her to the prince she's fallen in love with at a masquerade ball. Usagi's sweet dreams deflate when Mamoru seems to forget her birthday. Forgetting her birthday isn't exactly princely behavior. But in true heroic fashion, Mamoru makes up for upsetting Usagi, like a real Prince Charming would.
9 Tuxedo Mask Will Always Come to Sailor Moon When She Needs Help
Fairy Tale: The Knight in Shining Armor Trope
The Moonlight Knight arc doesn't come from the Sailor Moon manga; it's purely a product of anime filler. The Moonlight Knight is a very romantic character concept, and draws from a couple of different inspirations. He's based on the Japanese comic book hero, Moonlight Mask. The Moonlight Knight is Mamoru's alter ago.
He's the part of Tuxedo Mask who will always watch out for Sailor Moon, and come to her aid, just like a knight in shining armor. He wears white robes and a mask rather than armor, but the "Knight" moniker is a nod to his former life as Prince Endymion. He wore armor and bore a sword in his former life as a warrior prince. Every version of Mamoru, but especially the Moonlight Knight, evokes Knight in Shining Armor imagery.
8 Usagi Tsukino Has a Very Celestial Name
Fairy Tale: The Rabbit of the Moon
Usagi has many different names, like Princess Serenity, Sailor Moon, Bunhead, and her civilian name, Usagi Tsukino. After Princess Serenity of the Moon Kingdom died, she was reborn to human parents who have no idea that she was a celestial princess in her past life. However, the name her human parents chose for her certainly reflects that destiny.
Usagi means "rabbit," and her last name "Tsukino" means "moon" or "moon child." Zodiac mythology states that Cancer zodiacs are aligned with the moon, and they're also called "moon children." Adding "rabbit"/Usagi is a nod to the Japanese folk figure, the Rabbit of the Moon. In some versions of the folklore, the Rabbit of the Moon is the moon goddess Chang'e's companion.
7 The Sailor Senshi Put On a Fairy Tale-Inspired School Play
Fairy Tale: Snow White & the Seven Dwarves
The Sailor Senshi draw straws for who gets to play Snow White in a play with Mamoru's college friends. An, the Season Two villain who harvests energy for the Makai Tree, gets to be Snow White, and Usagi's relegated to the Evil Witch role. Usagi's beside herself, of course, because Mamoru plays Prince Charming, and he has to kiss An.
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" is about a beautiful princess who is cursed to a death-like sleep until the kiss of true love wakes her up. An's cohort, Ail, reads the play script and imagines kissing Usagi as the prince and Snow White, because he has a huge crush on Usagi. Usagi may be the witch in the play, but she ends up saving the day like a prince when the Cardian, Bipierrot.
6 Kiriko Dances Out a Forlorn Fairy Tale
Fairy Tale: Giselle
Kiriko is an accomplished ballerina in a filler episode all about classical ballet and the theater, "Become a Prima: Usagi's Ballet". Ballet storytelling and choreography draws from several different sources and crafts their own fairy tales, like the ballet, Giselle. Giselle is about a young village girl who falls in love with a prince in disguise, and then dies of a broken heart when he ends up engaged to someone else.
Giselle awakens from her death as a ghost in the woods and saves the prince, who comes to mourn her from other vengeful ghosts. Not only does Kiriko dance Giselle's role, she embodies the ballet protagonist's personality. She is altruistic, sensitive, and well-meaning. Like Giselle, Kiriko is in love with someone who she thinks may never be available to her -- her dance partner, Yamagishi.
5 Usagi Attends a Ball with a Magical Princess Transformation
Fairy Tale: Cinderella
It makes sense that the fairy tale "Cinderella" would appear more than once in the Sailor Moon canon. Both Usagi and Cinderella have a lot in common, like an iconic magical girl transformation, an otherworldly mentor, and falling in love with a prince. The moon cat, Luna, acts as Sailor Moon's pragmatic fairy godmother. Instead of waving a magic fairy wand, though, she gives Sailor Moon a Transformation Pen.
When Usagi has a mission where she needs to attend a princess's masquerade ball, she leaps at the opportunity to transform into a pretty princess with her Transformation Pen. She wears a pretty pink ballgown festooned with frills and fabric roses. She even has a romantic dance with her prince, Tuxedo Mask, at the ball.
4 Poupelin Plays an Enchanted Lute & Steals Away the City's Children
Fairy Tale: The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Not all fairy tale figures are heroes in Sailor Moon. Some are villains and evil henchmen. Poupelin is the first villain henchman in the third Sailor Moon movie, Black Dream Hole. He looks and acts exactly like the "Pied Piper of Hamelin," and Naoko Takeuchi specifically designed him after the creepy fairy tale character.
"The Pied Piper of Hamelin" is about a mysterious lute player who draws the children of a village into a marching and dancing line, stealing them away from their homes forever. Like his literary predecessor, Poupelin steals away Chibiusa in the middle of the night, along with a crowd of other children. He enchants them and has them board his sky ship, bringing them to a land of nightmares.
3 Princess Snow Kaguya Wants to Cover the World in an Eternal Winter
Fairy Tale: The Snow Queen
Princess Snow Kaguya is the central antagonist in the second Sailor Moon movie, Hearts In Ice. She's a regal being made of snow and ice, with elegant Snow Dancer henchmen and winter-inspired powers. She wants to cover the earth in an eternal winter -- a second Ice Age that would reshape the planet in her image.
Princess Snow Kaguya is inspired by the villain in a Danish fairy tale, "The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Anderson. That villain is just as brutal, and she steals away the protagonist's best friend. Anderson's Snow Queen also has evil guards made of snowflakes, like Princess Snow Kaguya's Snow Dancers.
2 Queen Nehelenia Is a Fierce and Gorgeous Evil Queen, Armed with a Mirror
Fairy Tale: Snow White & the Seven Dwarves
Queen Nehelenia is a dark regent obsessed with her magic mirror and maintaining her youth. She's also Sailor Moon (the eventual Neo-Queen Serenity)'s queenly dark double. Nehelenia's insecurity and obsession with beauty and control is her undoing; it strips her of her sense of self, splinters her, and turns her into a villain.
Queen Nehelenia's arc isn't directly inspired by "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," but there's no doubt that the fairy tale's villain inspired Nehelenia. She's just as obsessed with beauty and her magic mirror as the Evil Queen in "Snow White," except her mirror's magic is a little different. Nehelenia uses it to trap people rather than consult it for prophetic knowledge. The Evil Queen turns herself into a hag to tempt Snow White with an apple, and similarly, Queen Nehelenia loses sight of her true self so much that part of her splinters off into the hag character, Zirconia.
1 Tuxedo Mask Rescues Sailor Moon With True Love's Kiss
Fairy Tale: Sleeping Beauty
Usagi reads a bedtime story to Chibiusa about a sleeping princess who is awakened from her curse by her prince's kiss. True Love's Kiss breaking the worst curses is a popular fairy tale trope. Usagi's bedtime story foreshadows what happens later in "Awaken the Sleeping Beauty: Mamoru's Distress" when Petz and Calaveras put Sailor Moon into an enchanted sleep.
Mamoru tries to stay away from Usagi, thinking it would keep her safe, but he's the only one who can rescue her from her sleep. He rides to her side as Tuxedo Mask, and breaks her sleeping enchantment with a kiss. The episode is a close retelling of the "Sleeping Beauty" fairy tale, where an evil fairy curses the princess, Briar Rose, into an eternal sleep. A prince cuts through a thorn-covered castle to revive her with True Love's Kiss.
