Usagi Tsukino / Sailor Moon

Her signature look centers on twin buns worn high with long streamers of blonde hair falling from each, a style fans call odango, set above a pair of blue eyes. Out of costume she is usually in a Juban school uniform, a sailor-collared top with a bold front bow that doubles as the anchor for her transformation locket, paired with a pleated skirt and cross-strap Mary Janes. Her casual clothes shift with the seasons and the story arcs, and once she reaches high school in the final season the collar and ribbon deepen to navy.

As Sailor Moon her base uniform is a white bodysuit with a blue collar, a blue skirt, red boots, elbow-length gloves, and a tiara set with a red jewel, the brooch riding at the center of her chest bow. Each power-up reworks the design: the Super form adds feather-like barrettes, translucent shoulder pieces, and a gradient skirt, while the Eternal form is the most elaborate of all, trading the tiara for a golden crescent on her brow and sprouting a large pair of angel wings where the back bow once sat. At times she also slips into the flowing white gown of her former self, Princess Serenity, marked by a crescent above her forehead.

Warm, upbeat, and quick to cry, Usagi runs on sweets, naps, and daydreams, and early on she is boy-crazy, forever picturing herself swept into romance or married before she settles her heart firmly on Mamoru. School is a constant struggle for her, her test scores rarely clearing thirty, and fiddly work like cooking or sewing defeats her, though she happily chases anything that flatters her looks.

Beneath the silliness sits a stubbornly generous nature. She trusts freely, assumes the best in almost anyone, and refuses to take a human life even when a person has been twisted into a monster, choosing to heal enemies rather than destroy them. That devotion pushes her to throw herself in front of danger for a single stranger, and her faith in love steadies the whole team. The series gradually files down her childish edges until the crybaby has become a genuinely capable young woman.

Usagi is the elder of the Tsukino children, sharing an ordinary Tokyo household with her parents Kenji and Ikuko and her little brother Shingo, and drifting through school beside friends like Naru and Umino. Her real story starts when she rescues a black cat from cruel children and uncovers a crescent mark under its bandage. That cat, Luna, later hands her a brooch and the phrase that turns her into Sailor Moon, drafting her into a war against the Dark Kingdom. She soon gains allies in Ami, Rei, and Makoto, each awakening as a guardian, and keeps crossing paths with the aloof Mamoru Chiba and the masked Tuxedo Mask, unaware at first that they are the same man.

As the first season climbs to its finish she is revealed to be the reborn Princess Serenity and the keeper of the Legendary Silver Crystal. Mamoru is seized and turned against her, and the guardians march to the frozen D-Point, where her friends fall one by one so she can reach Queen Beryl. She frees Mamoru only to watch him die shielding her, then spends her last strength to destroy the enemy; the group wakes the next morning restored, their memories of the ordeal erased.

The R season revives her twice over: first against two plant-fed aliens tied to the Makai Tree, a chapter that rebuilds her broken brooch and grants new attacks, and then against the Black Moon Clan, who pursue a mysterious pink-haired girl named Chibiusa. Usagi vows to protect the child, endures Mamoru breaking up with her over grim visions of the future, and travels to Crystal Tokyo, where she learns Chibiusa is her own future daughter. The arc ends with Chibiusa brainwashed into Black Lady and Usagi rising as Neo Queen Serenity to reach her, undoing Wiseman and sending the girl home.

In the S season she confronts the Death Busters and Professor Tomoe's Daimons, losing and reforging her brooch again to gain the Spiral Heart Moon Rod and a fresh attack. Across the later SuperS and Sailor Stars seasons she climbs into her Super and Eternal forms, the only character to appear in every one of the anime's two hundred episodes and its films. Her transformations evolve with each arc, beginning from the call of Moon Prism Power, Makeup, and her role as leader gives her the strongest powers on the team, anchored by the Silver Crystal.