Witches 5

Across the manga the five bear the Death Busters' mark, a black star, on their foreheads, and they blend into Mugen Academy by masquerading as students, each heading a different department. The anime dresses all of them in glasses and keeps them literally in the shadows at first: only whichever witch is currently in charge stands fully lit, while the rest lurk unseen. Their base sits behind a door labeled for the group, the source of a running visual gag in which the sign is trimmed down to Witches 4 and then Witches 3 as their numbers fall.

In the manga the five are flawless Daimons that Professor Tomoe builds, serving Magus Kaolinite while running the academy's departments of etiquette, performing arts, science, physical education, and witch training. Their task is to gather Hoste, or souls, planting Daimon eggs inside human hosts. Their page time is short: after they die, Kaolinite revives them to capture the inner guardians, and Sailor Neptune, Sailor Uranus, and Sailor Pluto finish them for good.

The Crystal series follows a similar beat. Kaolinite summons the five and dangles the rank of Magus, with access to the Taioron Crystal and an audience with Pharaoh 90, before whoever destroys the guardians. Sent out one at a time to harvest souls, they are each cut down, after which Mistress 9 wakes and has Kaolinite raise them once more. The revived witches snare the inner guardians by exploiting their desires, leaving only Sailor Moon able to resist, until the outer guardians storm the academy, destroy the five, and free the others. On stage, the group debuts in the Mistress Labyrinth musical and its revision, later returning in Un Nouveau Voyage, with human forms for everyone except Ptilol, who is simply part of Cyprine.

Each witch fights in her own style. Eudial, the leader and first to pull pure hearts, favors gadgets over magic, arming herself with a heart-crystal gun, a flamethrower, and summoned Daimon Heart Snatchers; she dies when Mimete cuts her car's brakes and sends it over a cliff. Mimete, who needles Eudial constantly, targets handsome young male celebrities and wields a sonic Charm Buster, only to be sealed forever inside Eudial's Electric Warp Device when Tellu pulls its plug. Tellu turns to killer plants called Telluns whose vines deliver shocks, and she perishes alongside her own overgrown creation, Hyper-Tellun. Viluy drains exam-takers through a master computer and fires a dissolving nano ray from her nanocuff, which turns on her once Sailor Moon damages it. Cyprine, sharing a single mind and body with Ptilol, blasts energy from paired staffs and rebounds absorbed attacks, until Sailor Mars and Sailor Jupiter dupe the pair into striking each other. Notably, unlike most enemy squads the Witches 5 never earn any path to redemption.