Nephrite

His look mirrors the manga: a blue-grey uniform with yellow trim and shoulder epaulets, worn with a black belt, tall black boots, white gloves, and small yellow stud earrings. When he slips into his Masato Sanjouin identity, he trades all of that for ordinary streetwear.

Where his predecessor struck at crowds, Nephrite prefers to single out one person brimming with energy, convinced that the stars chart human fate and leaning on astrology from his mansion hideout to time his strikes. His fierce pride makes him both defiant toward Queen Beryl and an easy target for the jealous Zoisite, who works to wreck his standing. That same pride eventually gives way to genuine feeling for Naru, marking Nephrite as the first villain in the franchise to reveal a redeemable heart, though he does not live to begin anew.

After Jadeite is condemned to Eternal Sleep, Beryl elevates Nephrite to take his place. Operating as the entrepreneur Masato Sanjouin, he would seek out a target, brand an object tied to their talent with an evil crest, and plant a youma inside it; the victim's passion swelled into obsession until their energy peaked and the monster emerged to drain them, though Sailor Moon's victories always returned that energy afterward. His early marks included the tennis prodigy Rui Saionji, a friend of Naru's, followed by a park gardener named Mr. Kunitachi and several others, each youma undone by the Guardians and Tuxedo Mask.

As his monsters kept failing, Beryl's confidence in him eroded and she threatened him with the same Eternal Sleep handed to Jadeite. Reading the stars, Nephrite concluded that Tuxedo Mask was Sailor Moon's weak point and won permission to impersonate him, mailing fake love letters to schoolgirls to bait her out. Naru, drawn to his Sanjouin persona, saw through the ploy, and when he drained her love energy in the Tuxedo Mask disguise he conjured an illusion of the star Regulus that became a lion; only Tuxedo Mask's intervention spared Sailor Moon, and the Guardians escaped his rigged elevator trap.

Though he failed to kill Sailor Moon, the sheer volume of love energy taken from Naru impressed Beryl enough to spare him, and it revealed that Naru adored his alter ego. His fixation soon narrowed to the Silver Crystal, an obsession that would doom him. When his celestial map delivered the Black Crystal instead, it locked onto Naru, and his rivalry with Zoisite sharpened as the jealous general spied on him and coveted his search. Growing protective of the girl, Nephrite offered to fight beside the Guardians, but Zoisite's Plant Sisters abducted Naru; rushing to save her, Nephrite cut the monsters down with his sword before being run through with poisonous thorns, dropped the Black Crystal to Zoisite, and dissolved into dust as Naru wept over the bandage she had tied around his wound.