Sailor Saturn

Sailor Saturn landing the final pose of her transformation, the Saturn glyph burning behind her.

“Saturn Crystal Power, Make Up!”

japanese name: Tomoe Hotaru (土萠ほたる)
90’s english dub: Hotaru Tomoe
name meaning: firefly
likes: reading, quiet lamplight
dislikes: physical education, the sight of blood
birthday: january 6
zodiac sun sign: Capricorn
blood type: AB

Hotaru Tomoe is pale, gentle and often ill, and she carries scars from the accident that killed her mother and remade her body. Her family name, 土萠 (Tomoe), begins with 土, earth, the same 土 that begins 土星 (Dosei), the earth star, Saturn’s Japanese name. Her given name, ほたる (Hotaru), means “firefly”, a small, cold light that flickers for one short season and is easy to miss. She likes lamps and reading, and she’s drawn to Chibiusa, the one classmate who doesn’t flinch from her.

Saturn is the greater malefic, the planet of limits, endings and time, and the outermost of the ancient seven, the last wall of the knowable world. Three grown guardians spend an arc dreading her. She isn’t wicked. She is the ending, and the ending is her office. Hotaru takes up the Silence Glaive, ends what has to end, spends her own life doing it and is reborn as an infant. Saturn destroys, and it also clears the ground.

read the Saturn page →

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in hellenistic astrology

dignity

domicile: Capricornresources and slow authorityAquariusrules and orderIts own house, and Saturn has two. Capricorn is a feminine, movable earth sign that begins at the winter solstice. Aquarius is a masculine, fixed air sign. Saturn is the slowest and most distant visible planet, and it was given the two signs furthest from the lights, in the coldest part of the year. At home, a planet uses its own resources and doesn’t rely on a host.In Capricorn, Saturn’s time, limits and structure are practical and material, and show up as managing resources, building for the long term, farming and the land, and authority earned slowly. In Aquarius they’re about systems and groups, and show up as rules, order, and running groups and other people’s property. Saturn also signifies solitude, austerity and restraint.
exaltation: Libralaw and fair judgmentRaised up in Libra, a masculine, movable air sign ruled by Venus. It begins at the autumn equinox, when the days start getting shorter. Exaltation is a place of honour, where a planet’s significations are raised in standing. Libra is in trine to Aquarius, one of Saturn’s homes, and each day-team planet is exalted in a sign trine to one of its homes. Libra is the Sun’s fall, and the Sun’s light and heat sit opposite Saturn’s darkness and cold.Saturn in Libra mixes its structure and restraint with Venus’s fairness and interest in relationships. It shows up as fair judgment, law and contracts, balanced rules, commitments kept over time, authority used through agreement, and endings and limits that are weighed first and applied by rule.
detriment: Cancerwant and burdenLeocoldness and obscurityOpposite its houses. Cancer and Leo are the houses of the Moon and the Sun, the two signs of the brightest, warmest part of the year. The light of the luminaries sits opposite Saturn’s darkness. Later texts treat a planet opposite its own house as hindered or in exile.Saturn in the signs of the lights mixes its limits and cold with their concerns. In Cancer the restrictions fall on the home, the body, food and the mother, and in Leo on visibility, vitality, leadership and the father. It shows up as a spare household, family burdens, and trouble getting recognition or warmth.
fall: Ariesimpatience and harshnessOpposite the exaltation, in Mars’s house. Aries is a masculine, movable fire sign that begins at the spring equinox, when the days start getting longer. Fall is the sign opposite a planet’s exaltation, and there its significations lose standing. Aries is the Sun’s exaltation.Saturn in Aries mixes its patience and structure with Mars’s speed and force. It shows up as impatience with limits, discipline imposed suddenly or harshly, long delays that end in sudden action, and plans started quickly and not kept up.

condition

sect: diurnalSaturn is on the day team, led by the Sun. Sect changes how the benefics and malefics behave, and a malefic does less harm in its own sect and more harm outside it. In a day chart Saturn is in sect.In a day chart Saturn’s better significations come forward, such as discipline, endurance, farming, guardianship, administration and a reputation built slowly. In a night chart it’s out of sect, usually the most difficult planet in the chart, and its losses, restraints and sorrows are worse.
joy: the twelfth placeA planet’s joy is the place where it’s gladdest to be, whatever sign it’s in. Saturn’s is the twelfth place, Bad Spirit, the sign that rises just before the Hour-Marker. It signifies enemies, loss, suffering and illness, confinement and necessity, servants, and hard travel or banishment. It’s the place between worlds, and it holds everything before the birth.Saturn in the twelfth can show up as isolation, hidden matters and secrets, confinement, long illness, and hardship through enemies or necessity. Bad Spirit is paired with Saturn the way Bad Fortune is paired with Mars. A planet in its joy still needs a good sign and a good sect before it counts as well placed.

powers and transformations

The Silence Glaive, lying level. — Saturn Planet Power, Make UpHer transformation. Saying “Saturn Planet Power, Make Up” turns Hotaru, a sickly child, into Sailor Saturn in her deep purple and black fuku. In the manga her planetary symbol glows brightly on her forehead as the real Hotaru takes her body back from the thing that had taken it, and the gentle girl stands up as the senshi of destruction.watch it (an old game, not canon) →

Sailor Saturn standing with the Silence Glaive held upright. — Saturn Planet Power, Make UpHer transformation. Saying “Saturn Planet Power, Make Up” turns Hotaru, a sickly child, into Sailor Saturn in her deep purple and black fuku. In the manga her planetary symbol glows brightly on her forehead as the real Hotaru takes her body back from the thing that had taken it, and the gentle girl stands up as the senshi of destruction.watch it (an old game, not canon) →

what she can do

Sailor Moon1992

Sailor Moon R1993

Sailor Moon S1994

Sailor Moon SuperS1995

Sailor Stars1996

She isn’t in this arc. Hotaru’s first appearance in the classic anime is in Sailor Moon S.

healingpower
Besides destruction, her power can close a wound and take away pain. She does this for Chibiusa’s hurt leg the first time the two of them meet properly.
Death Reborn Revolutionattack
Her ultimate act, named for death and rebirth in one motion, which is what Saturn signifies. She brings the Silence Glaive down, unleashing ruin on a world-ending threat and clearing the ground for a new beginning, and it costs her life. In the anime she uses it against Pharaoh 90; in the manga she uses it as the senshi of destruction before she is reborn as an infant.

No new moves this arc. She is back as a child and doesn’t appear as Sailor Saturn.

Silence Wallattack
Her defensive art, a barrier of force she raises to shield her allies from blows that would otherwise be fatal. The same power can annihilate, and this is its protective side. With it the guardian of the final boundary chooses, for a moment, to hold the line and not to end it.
Silence Glaive Surpriseattack
The Glaive’s own attack. In the manga it raises a thick fog that blinds whatever she is fighting. In Cosmos it comes off the blade as a ring of dark force.

✦

Hotaru and her father, Professor Tomoe

thread

1/7

An explosion in her father’s laboratory kills her mother and leaves Hotaru destroyed, and everything he does afterwards is done to keep her. In the manga he rebuilds her limbs with machinery, and during that surgery he connects with Pharaoh 90, who implants Mistress 9 in her. In the anime the blast kills her outright, and Germatoid offers to restore her if the professor agrees to his terms. He agrees at once. Either way, both of them pay for it.

At the end of S, Hotaru brings the glaive down on Pharaoh 90, ends it, and pays with her own life. She comes back out of it as an infant. What either story does with her father is decided by who is standing there to take her.

In the manga he never comes back. He fuses with a Daimon, raises Mugen Academy and the Death Busters, and dies as Germatoid at Sailor Moon’s hands. There is no cure and no last look, and there is no scene where he comes back to himself long enough to know what he did. He wrecked his whole life to keep his daughter, and he doesn’t get to keep her. She is raised by Haruka, Michiru and Setsuna, the same three who spent the arc deciding whether to kill her.

The anime gives him the redemption the manga withholds. Germatoid is driven out of him, and what is left is the man who took the bargain in the first place, for the only reason he ever had. Uranus and Neptune put his daughter back into his arms, and he raises her a second time. He is still there two seasons later in Stars, with Hotaru small again and living with him, and when Setsuna comes for her he gives her up, knowing this time what she is for.

✦

Hotaru and the Outer Senshi

shared thread

1/31

After the Talismans appear, the villains turn to awakening Mistress 9, whose host is the sick girl Hotaru. Chibiusa has befriended her, and Hotaru is happy to finally have a friend of her own. Once everyone realizes that Hotaru is the unawakened Sailor Saturn, the senshi the Outers fear so much, the Outers have no sympathy for her, and Usagi will not step aside and let them kill her. That tension runs through the rest of the season. Sailor Pluto is the only one who tries to explain the Outers’ side.

Chibiusa’s heart crystal is taken from the possessed Hotaru. What awakens is not Sailor Saturn but an entity called Mistress 9, and the Outers are shocked. Her awakening opens the way for Pharaoh 90. Hotaru fades from existence, banished from her own body by a parasite.

Only Uranus, Neptune and Sailor Moon reach the final battle. Sailor Moon hands over the Holy Grail in the hope of healing Hotaru, while Uranus and Neptune beg her not to. Mistress 9 is powered up completely and opens the portal for her leader. But Hotaru, who has known friendship through Chibiusa and Usagi and the love of her father, takes back her body and dissolves Mistress 9 from the inside out.

By then the portal is open, and the world will be destroyed. Uranus and Neptune berate Sailor Moon with their dying breaths. Then Sailor Saturn appears. She is no longer Hotaru. She will enter the portal and kill Pharaoh 90, knowing it will kill her. Usagi will not accept that and dives in after her with no plan for coming back. She returns from the void with a reincarnated baby Hotaru. Uranus and Neptune promptly take the baby away, and they also swear their allegiance to the Moon Princess.

also carried by Sailor Uranus · Sailor Neptune · Sailor Pluto

✦

Hotaru and Chibiusa

shared thread

Hotaru is twelve, ill nearly all the time and bullied at Mugen Academy for it, and the illness is Mistress 9. She had never had a friend before. In the manga she meets Chibiusa in the middle of a Daimon fight; in the anime it is a hat lost across a park, with Chibiusa chasing it. Either way Chibiusa is the first person who comes back a second time. When Chibiusa is hurt in the fighting, Hotaru heals her with the same power that ends worlds. It is a small power in a series full of loud ones, and healing weakens her.

Then Hotaru’s body is used against Chibiusa. In the anime Kaolinite takes Chibiusa to Mistress 9, who is in Hotaru’s body, and feeds Chibiusa’s Pure Heart Crystal to it, because it needs that to wake all the way up. In the manga there is no one in between: Mistress 9 wakes and takes Chibiusa’s soul and the Silver Crystal straight out of her, and Chibiusa falls into a coma. Either way the girl who healed her is now the reason she is dying.

In both versions Hotaru is still in there. In the manga she spends what she has left pulling the souls and the crystal back out of her own body and handing them to the people they belong to. In the anime Chibiusa is the one who tries to stop Uranus, Neptune and Pluto from killing Hotaru to end it, and what finally overpowers Mistress 9 is Hotaru’s memories of her. Saturn throws Mistress 9 out and hands Chibiusa her heart back.

Saturn goes into Pharaoh 90 knowing what it costs, having asked Pluto to open the Gate of Time for her return, and Sailor Moon brings her back as an infant. The manga gives the baby to Haruka, Michiru and Setsuna, who raise her between them. The anime gives her back to her father, Souichi Tomoe, with the thing that had been possessing him gone.

She grows fast, and she is ten by the Dream arc. The manga puts them side by side again, as Saturn and Chibi Moon through the Dream arc, and by Stars the two of them are at Juban Public Elementary together, walking to school holding hands while Usagi complains about it. Hotaru is openly put out when Chibiusa goes home to her own century for a visit. In the anime it goes the other way. Facing Nehelenia, Saturn raises the Silence Glaive to spend her life a second time, and Chibi Moon stops her with a slap. Saturn tells her it is her mission, and Nehelenia takes the opening and disarms her.

also carried by Sailor Chibi Moon

✦

Mistress 9

the Messiah of Silence

▢Mistress 9

Mistress 9 is the one the Death Busters are waiting for, their Messiah of Silence, and the body she’s waiting in is Hotaru’s. In the manga Pharaoh 90 puts her there during the surgery after the laboratory explosion. She’s the illness. In the manga it shows as seizures; in the anime as blackouts, in which Hotaru does violent things she can’t remember afterwards.

In the manga she wakes by taking the Silver Crystal out of Chibi Moon’s brooch and swallowing it, and Chibiusa’s soul goes with it. Mamoru keeps Chibiusa’s body alive with his own energy. Mistress 9 tries to use the crystal to call Pharaoh 90 down, but Hotaru is still awake inside her, and she holds on to the crystal and Chibiusa’s soul and won’t let them be used. When Mistress 9 leaves her body, Hotaru gives Chibiusa back her soul.

In the anime Kaolinite feeds her Chibiusa’s Pure Heart Crystal and she wakes all the way, Hotaru’s body growing into a woman with long black hair. She lets Sailor Moon believe Hotaru has come back and asks for the Holy Grail, and Sailor Moon gives it to her, hoping to heal her. Mistress 9 uses it to open the way for Pharaoh 90, and the Grail is destroyed. What ends her is Hotaru, who remembers Chibiusa and her father, takes her body back and wakes as Sailor Saturn.

variations

Labelled by source. The manga is the primary text here. The anime, Crystal and the live-action series are separate continuities that sometimes disagree, and where they do, this site argues from the manga.

manga
Sailor Saturn
Act 33
manga
Super Sailor Saturn
Dream arc
manga
Eternal Sailor Saturn
Stars arc
manga
Princess Saturn
Silver Millennium
manga
Mistress 9
Infinity arc
anime
Sailor Saturn
Sailor Moon S
anime
Super Sailor Saturn
Sailor Stars
crystal
Sailor Saturn
season 3
pgsm
does not appear

elsewhere

Crystal

Season 3 follows the manga's Infinity arc, so Saturn's awakening, her one act and her rebirth all happen close together, as they do in print. The 90s anime spread the same material over most of a season and gave her much more screen time as Hotaru.

the English dub

Hotaru keeps her name. The Cloverway dub of Sailor Moon S softens the outer guardians' plan for her from killing a child to something vaguer, and that removes the argument the arc is about.

Sera Myu

The musicals stage the Infinity arc repeatedly, and Saturn's awakening is one of the set pieces that recurs.

her powers, in full

Besides the attacks she has healing, which she uses on Chibiusa in Act 28. She has age shifting, which is how a reborn infant reaches ten years old inside the Dream arc and jumps to twelve when her power returns. She also has illusion, and in Act 44 she uses it to show Chibi Moon the history of the solar system's creation.