Sailor Star Healer

The fixed stars lie beyond the seven wandering planets. The ancients believed they hung unchanging on the outermost sphere, and they signified brilliance, fame and fate, a singular brightness that owed nothing to the sun’s warmth. Sailor Star Healer does things on her own terms, and she keeps everyone else at a measured distance.

Yaten is the smallest and sharpest of the three Sailor Starlights. She is silver-haired and cat-like, more than a little vain, and her temper frays at the first sign of fuss. Of the three, she cares least for Earth and its people. She finds the noise of fandom tiresome and the sentiment of strangers baffling. Fame irritates her, and she puts up with it only because it serves a purpose.

The Starlights are looking for Princess Kakyuu. When Galaxia razed the planet Kinmoku, they fled to Earth and hid in plain sight as the idol group the Three Lights. They put their songs out on the airwaves in the hope that their lord would hear them and answer. Each concert sends the signal out again, and the screaming crowds are only the cost of keeping it going. Yaten puts up with the spotlight and does not care who is looking at her.

The two tellings differ on one point, and this site keeps both in view. In the manga, which we treat as primary, the Three Lights are women throughout, and they disguise themselves as men so an idol group can move freely through the human world. In the anime they are men as civilians, and they transform into women when they become the Sailor Starlights. In either version, Star Healer is guarded in the same way.

Yaten does warm a little. She comes to feel a grudging fondness for Minako, the one devoted fan whose enthusiasm she cannot wave away, and slowly she becomes less aloof. She never surrenders. She only lets one person come a little nearer than the rest.

When Kakyuu is found and the last stand against Galaxia is over, Yaten does not stay. The Starlights go home to raise Kinmoku from its ashes, and the farewell is brief. She was always going to keep her distance, and she stayed near Earth only for a while.