A parody of the opening of Card Captor Sakura, Catch you Catch me. **not made by me**
Have you seen this? A true classic, tbh
I’d never seen this! I kind of love that the shaky camera and the VHS-quality footage make it look like some kind of apocryphal film found in the aftermath of some great disastrous ecological event.
I love Pluto so very much, but she makes no sense. Even if she died and a past (or alternate future) version of herself is traveling through time… wasn’t she supposed to be guarding the gates of space-time for all eternity? Fate of endless solitude and all that jazz?
[EDIT: a better and more concise version of what I theorize below actually turns out to have already been written here: http://guardress.tumblr.com/post/113799671016, but I’ll leave this here anyway because it was fun to write. :P]
My theory is that we’re seeing two Plutos in both versions. The first Pluto in both the manga and the anime was the one recruited/assigned in the Silver Millennium by Queen Serenity to guard the Door of Time, and she did this faithfully: she didn’t die with everyone else in the Silver Millennium, so she’s still the exact same person born during Queen Serenity’s reign. For all we know she actually pretty much did spend an eternity at the Door of Time right up until the Death Phantom and the Black Moon Family started futzing around with the time stream.
In the manga, when she stops time to stop Black Lady, this first Pluto dies, and her starseed/Sailor Crystal/soul is reincarnated on Earth in the 20th century a little before the inner senshi are born: she’s shown as a college student at KO University who has to have her powers reawakened. This is Pluto #2: an actual contemporary of Usagi (AKA Princess Serenity #2) and her friends. This Pluto is no longer bound by her oath to Queen Serenity, having already dedicated her previous life to that assignment. In this new life, her (likely self-determined) task is to protect the timeline by taking a more active part in it — she knows/remembers how it’s supposed to turn out and she sees it as her mission to make sure it ends up as close to perfect as possible. Due to the fact that the Black Moon Clan did make some pretty definite changes to the timeline, there will be some things that are unavoidably different, and she’ll probably have to stop in at the Doors of Time to check in every now and again because there will be places in this new, branch-off timeline where her previous incarnation isn’t still standing guard, but for the most part she has a lot more freedom and can forge a new future for herself. Frankly I doubt Usagi/Neo-Queen Serenity would hold her to the same oath that Queen Serenity did anyway, unless it was determined to be absolutely necessary: in which case, I see Pluto as being the type to take up the duty again on her own, without Neo-Queen Serenity even having to ask her in the first place (perhaps even with NQS insisting she doesn’t have to).
So, basically, even though she dies “in the future” in the manga, it’s her past (Silver Millennium) self who died after a really, really long life: NewFuture!Pluto is Meiou Setsuna, who was born in Tokyo with the rest of the senshi in 20th Century Earth and is still a relatively young woman. She may well even get to hang out with everybody in Crystal Tokyo in the future.
It’s even possible that all of what happened with the Black Moon Clan was actually destined/predetermined, and her past self secretly knew that she would die and get to be reincarnated and, thus, be freed (she may have seen herself through the doors at one point or another, for example). In this case, it’s likely that there are points in time in which Sailor Pluto is literally in two different places at once. Handy!
In the anime it’s a little more dicey, but still kind of works. Pluto leaves her post against the rules in this version without much of an explanation (if I recall correctly) and without even apparently leaving someone else in charge: I mean, at least in the manga Diana volunteered to hold her spot for what she thought would be a quick rescue mission! But I guess we can assume that the damage caused by the Black Moon Clan has already caused ripples throughout time by this point and this, compounded by the threat of Pharaoh 90/Mistress 9/Sailor Saturn, causes her to say, “Oh, screw everything, I’m going down there before this mess gets any worse and there’s no longer any timeline left worth protecting.” In any case, when she stops time to save Haruka and Michiru, it is again her Silver Millennium self who dies, which allows for her Sailor Crystal to again re-emerge as Meiou Setsuna, born in the 20th century a few years before Usagi and co. Seeing as Sailor Pluto is the Guardian of Time, I don’t see it being all that complicated for her Sailor Crystal to reincarnate itself a couple of decades before her past-self’s death. Once Setsuna reawakens as Sailor Pluto and regains her memories (it’s possible that her previous incarnation already knew she would be reborn/knew her future incarnation was already walking around Tokyo, given that both of these incarnations share the same civilian name), she pops right back into the lives of the other senshi somewhere a little after the events of Sailor Moon S. Without offering any solid explanation whatsoever. Because ain’t nobody got time for that. And everyone just kind of rolls with it, because it’s not like they haven’t all had their fair share of seemingly impossible resurrections, so … meh.
And, again, it’s likely that this newly reborn Pluto will get to live a full, active life with the other girls, straight through to Crystal Tokyo and whatever lies beyond, and we can assume that there’s likely some overlap in which some version of her past self is still minding the door of time outside the time stream while her present self kicks all the butts on Earth. One could make the argument that the very fact that she leaves the doors of time at all means that there’s a gap in time somewhere where the door is left unattended, but we can handwave that by, again, assuming that either her present self checks in and stands guard for a bit … or we can just say “Wibbly wobbly timey wimey mumble mumble … .” and call it a day. Time may well operate differently in her realm.
I like this headcanon because it’s optimistic: she’s this kind of tragically lonely figure who, through death and rebirth, finally gets the same chance at freedom and living her dreams that all the other girls got, while still staying true to her profound sense of duty. :3
(Pluto is my favourite: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this stuff!)
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As a completely unnecessary, purely speculative addendum (just for fun): Maybe Queen Serenity never even really intended Pluto to spend all of eternity at the Door anyway, but rather just wanted to keep a player off the board and observing the events of the timestream long enough to step in
and offer up the right Deus Ex Machina at the right time. Maybe
Queen Serenity herself had spent some time at the Door of Time, or perhaps
she simply had prophetic powers — meaning she would have some idea of how things might play out in the distant future (maybe not all of the specifics leading up to that point: she certainly didn’t seem to have seen the destruction of her own kingdom coming, or at least not the method of its destruction), and planned around it by telling the very dutiful Pluto that she needed her to stay there for all eternity, while knowing that she would eventually break that rule only because she felt she had a higher duty to the world and the Royal Family. From a fanfic-y perspective, I kind of like the idea of Mama
Serenity as chessmaster. :3
Happy Time Travel Tuesday, everyone!
What a perfect day to consider Baby Pluto at the gate of time, unaware that she is ultimately doomed to one day forsake her duty, only to be granted a second chance in the form of a human life.
sailormoonsub 