List of Sailor Moon Characters - Luna, Artemis, and Diana

Luna, Artemis, and Diana

The series includes three different cat characters who act as advisors to their respective owners. Each has the power of speech, and bears a crescent moon symbol on his or her forehead. The two older cats, Luna and Artemis, lived millennia before the main plot in the Moon Kingdom and acted as advisors to Queen Serenity —the third, Diana, is much younger and was born on Earth. Because of this close association with the moon, they are each named after Greek and Roman moon goddesses (even though the cat representing Artemis is male).

Throughout the series, the cats serve as mentors and confidantes, as well as a source of information and new tools. They are able to advise the Sailor Senshi on their duties, on the history of the Moon Kingdom, and on ancient legends which illuminate the best course of action. In addition, they are able to produce special items that allow the Senshi to awaken, or that strengthen their powers. The feline characters are featured less prominently as the series progresses, but increased emphasis is placed on them as more than counselors. They are shown to have additional physical forms, a deeper backstory, and even an unrequited love or two.

In the anime, it is never suggested that the cats are anything but cats, and only Luna ever transforms into a human. In Act 41 of the manga, however, Sailor Moon's power causes her companions to revert to their true forms. The Sailor Senshi become princesses, and the three cats are teleported to Sailor Moon's location, where they take on human forms. Luna's shape is the same as she had acquired previously, Artemis gets reverted to the form he had taken earlier in the arc to save Minako, while Diana is shown this way for the first time. (Both Luna and Diana have odango incorporated into their hairstyles, probably modelled after Usagi.)

The reason for their transformation is not discussed until Act 46 of the manga, in which the three are attacked by Sailor Tin Nyanko. She calls them traitors, using her power to change them once again into humans, and then chasing them and trying to kill them. When she introduces herself to Sailor Moon, Luna realizes who she really is—a false Senshi from their original planet, Mau (named after the real cat species the Egyptian Mau), which had once been protected by Sailor Mau. Artemis terms it a peace-loving world, but Tin Nyanko informs him that after he and Luna "abandoned" it, its people were wiped out by Sailor Galaxia. At this point, Diana, also in human form, arrives from the future and tries to intervene, but Tin Nyanko hits all three of them with blasts from her bracelets, and they shift to ordinary cats, unable to speak. Later, as they care for the badly injured cats, Princess Kakyuu tells Usagi that the three of them have powerful starseeds, as brilliant as Sailor Crystals. In Act 47, it is revealed that their inability to speak is a result of injuries to the crescent moon symbols on the cats' foreheads, and before leaving to fight Galaxia, Usagi leaves them in the care of her mother. In the next Act, they are brought to the River Lethe and killed by Sailor Lethe. They are reincarnated at the end of the series with everyone else.

Although Luna takes the largest role of the three, technically Artemis was the first; he figures prominently in Codename: Sailor V, the manga series which preceded Sailor Moon.

Grigsby considers the cat characters to blend pre-modern ideas about feminine mystery and modern ideas such as the lucky cat.