And, of course, when paired with Willow, we see shades of Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune; not so much the individual characters, but in the presence of a strong, committed, and frankly adorable lesbian couple who work in concert to fight evil and are counted among the heroine’s most powerful, most devoted, and most cherished allies.

The Primitive (The First Slayer) = Queen Serenity

I know. I know. One is the wise and elegant ruler of an advanced civilization who can whup an entire army’s ass and effectively end a war by waving a scepter; the other is a girl from the dawn of mankind who was force-fed the soul of a demon to turn her into a superhumanly strong and subhumanly social killing machine that smears mud on her face.

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On the surface, these two could not be more different, but hear me out. Both are a spiritual ancestor of the protagonist who, in times of crisis, is sought out to bestow wisdom and illuminate the nature of their powers and purpose, possibly even gifting her with some kind of power-up.

See? I told you.

Dawn = Chibiusa

Dawn may not be from the future nor is she Buffy’s literal daughter, but she was “made” from Buffy, constructed from her essence, sharing her blood, and thus she is, in a sense, Buffy’s offspring.

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Both girls are initially ignorant of their connection to the heroine. Both are made a member of her household by brainwashing the family into believing she was one of them the whole time. Both develop an antagonistic but loving, sisterly relationship with the heroine. Both are pursued by the villains, thus coming under the heroine’s protection in the first place, because they hold some sort of mystical McGuffin that the baddies want.

Chibiusa has a magical dimensional key that can open the gates of time and space. Dawn is a magical dimensional key that can open the gates of time and space.

Chibiusa means “Small Usagi.” Spike eventually takes to calling Dawn “Bitty Buffy.”

While originally pivotal characters whose main role was to be protected, both girls eventually come into their own as part of the heroine’s inner circle, though Dawn was foolishly never made into a potential Slayer (the brief moment of subversion gained from that narrative choice doesn’t come close to making up for all the story lost because of it) while Chibiusa became Sailor Chibi Moon, in training to take over for her mother as the Sailor Moon upon her return to the future, once her training is complete.

I have to admit, this one is really the motherlode (no pun intended). It’s all downhill from here.

Glory/Ben = The Sailor Starlights

Yes, Glory was a straight-up villain while the Sailor Starlights were merely heroes whose mission brought them into conflict with Sailor Moon and her team, but it’s hard not to draw a parallel.

A hot, new guy shows up in the heroine’s life in the wake of her boyfriend’s mysterious disappearance. He’s easy on the eyes and has his own kind of charm. There is the whole part where, due to mystical forces beyond our understanding, he becomes a woman when he powers up, but… need I say more?

The Trio = The Amazon Trio

Three dudes who work together, one of whom is a lot more fey than the others. They serve evil, but not very effectively, all while creeping on women. Except for the one who is obviously into men.

The Potentials = The Amazoness Quartet / The Asteroid Senshi

A set of younger girls who are equally cute and annoying, and tend to cause trouble for our heroes. In Buffy, the potential Slayers ended up gathering at Buffy’s house and were all about Dawn’s age (with the exception of the nigh universally reviled Kennedy).

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Similarly, the Amazoness Quartet, while antagonists in league with the villains, do eventually turn to the side of good and become the Sailors assigned to guard Chibi Moon in the same way the Inner Senshi guard her mother. They’re promoted to proper Sailor Senshi in much the same way the potentials are, in Buffy’s finale, promoted to full-fledged Slayers.

The First Evil = Chaos

At last we come to the single greatest bit of ret-con in both series. The First Evil was briefly introduced in Buffy in the middle of the third season, only to become the central antagonist four seasons later. While Chaos wasn’t mentioned until nearly the very end of Sailor Moon, both serve the exact same function. They are the great and ancient enemy, the primal evil from which all evil—and thus, all the former villains—sprang. It was kind of a cheat, and it cheapened to the other villains to some extent, but it’s hard to think up a more daunting antagonist than the source of all evil ever, so there you are.

In addition to the obvious similarities in characters and interpersonal dynamics, even the structures of the shows were alike. While Sailor Moon was indisputably more fertile ground for filler episodes and long stretches of them at that (of the first season’s forty-six episodes, roughly half are actually vital to the narrative), both series had long-running arcs that spanned the length of a given season, no more, no less. There was some flexibility when it came to character arcs, such as Buffy/Usagi’s journey from shallow girl to heroic young woman, but in terms of the villains, there was one major antagonist faction per season, the notable exception being Sailor Moon R, which began with the short Makaiju arc before jumping into the Black Moon arc that would dominate the season.

In both series, there is a notable hierarchy within the villains’ camp, the main difference being that Buffy’s monsters of the week often had nothing to do with the main plot, whereas every Sailor Moon baddie is sent by the Big Bad through the chain of command. Despite this difference, however, a season of either show is basically an ascent through villains’ hierarchy.

Monsters of the week lead to their direct superiors, a first wave of recurring villains who are usually vanquished or otherwise defeated mid-season, only to reveal or give rise to a superior set of henchmen. Once this crew is disposed of, all that remains is the Big Bad, who might even be the herald of an even Bigger Bad that usually comes in the form of some disembodied Eldritch abomination that will merge with the villain we’ve been following all season, providing us with an emotional connection to the enemy our heroine faces in the final fight, while sufficiently raising the stakes for the sake of precious Nielson ratings.

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Look at Queen Beryl. She’s the one we’ve seen all season. She’s the demon bitch queen we’ve grown to love to hate. And yes, she does get her moment in the sun. She and Sailor Moon do meet, but they never really throw down. It’s Metalia who’s been the real threat this whole time, manipulating Beryl like a freakin’ puppet. But fuck it! We don’t want to see Sailor Moon do battle with a huge, blobby cloud of evil. We want to see her kick Beryl’s ass! So… Metalia possesses the dying Beryl to form a kind of titanic super-Beryl. It’s Beryl’s form but the coloring is different.

Meanwhile, over in the Buffyverse, you have Buffy squaring off with Angelus, the demon who wears her boyfriend’s face, but he’s just a vampire. He’s an exceedingly smart, vicious, and powerful vampire who has an emotional effect on Buffy, but just a vampire in the end. That’s why we have Acathla, the eleventh hour demon whose eleventh hour awakening (on the heels of his eleventh hour introduction) will suck the world into hell. And what’s the only thing that can close said hell portal? Angelus’s blood. So, Buffy has to drive a sword through her ex-boyfriend and into Acathla; personal connection, epic stakes. Hee-hee… stakes.

More can be said on this topic—I suspect a lot more—but this is the heart and soul of it. It’s no surprise that as both series progressed, developing their own identities, the parallels grew fewer and thinner, but it is impossible to ignore the glaring similarities between them.

Did one copy the other? Obviously not. But it is certainly remarkable how similarly two completely different cultures can interpret the same idea, though the details do vary. Which show is better? That’s entirely subject to personal opinion, and in my personal opinion, it really depends on which day you ask me. For a definitive answer, all I can say is…

In the name of the moon, she is the Slayer.

* It is generally accepted that all Japanese characters in anime actually have black hair unless specifically noted in-universe, and that the Crayola explosion that is anime coloring is simply an artistic convention for the purposes of character distinction, as having a cast full of brown eyed people with straight, black hair could potentially get very confusing with the limits of art style. Thus, while Usagi is not canonically blonde, for the purpose of aesthetic comparison, she is.