Who Are Chibiusa’s REAL Parents?

This seems to be one of those rumours that makes absolutely no sense (considering how many times it’s hammered home that Usagi and Mamoru are Chibiusa’s future parents) and yet it still persists. I have to wonder if some fans actually have to see the conception and birth of Chibiusa before they’re satisfied. 😛 It’s actually heavily implied that Usagi is already pregnant with Chibiusa on her wedding day (and we see the “morning after” preceding the wedding) but nope, some fans still start rumours.

Some of these rumours come from the perception that Chibiusa doesn’t “look” like her parents, since she has pink hair and red eyes whereas Usagi is a blue-eyed blonde and Mamoru is a blue-eyed brunette. But when it comes to anime characters, genes have nothing to do with their hair and eye colour. Almost every anime series I’ve watched has characters with “unnatural” hair/eye colours. It’s just how anime is. Anything goes. Also, all you have to do is look at the Tsukino family to see how little genes matter in terms of the characters’ looks. Ikuko has blue hair and brown eyes, Kenji has black hair and brown eyes, and Shingo has light brown hair and dark blue eyes. (Ikuko Tsukino has inconsistent hair colour in the manga, however. It’s sometimes coloured brown, purple, or dark pink.)

I suspect part of this trend comes from the fact that Japanese people are almost all brown-eyed brunettes, so they crave a little variety. Some bonus trivia – Usagi was originally intended to be pink haired (or white/silver haired) but Naoko Takeuchi’s editors made her change it to the more eye-catching yellow. So Usagi’s daughter got the pink hair instead.

Where Chibiusa resembles her parents is in her personality and her powers. Like Usagi, Chibiusa enjoys sweets, gets into arguments easily, craves friendship, loves cats, and also wears odango. Like Mamoru, Chibiusa is hard working, good at academics, ambitious, somewhat socially awkward, and perceptive. As for her powers, they are so obviously similar to Sailor Moon’s powers I can’t really fathom how anyone could think she isn’t Usagi’s daughter. Only a member of the Moon Matriarchy, which is a single unbroken line of women, can use the Silver Crystal. Chibiusa has a similar dress to Princess Serenity’s, has a crescent moon symbol on her head, shares a name, birthday and blood type with Usagi, etc. The only difference between Usagi and Chibiusa’s powers is that Chibiusa needs to mature a bit more before she can match her mother’s abilities. As we see near the end of the manga, she’s almost reached the age that Usagi was at the beginning of the series, and has her own Sailor Team whom she can combine powers with.

Nevertheless, let’s go through the Usual Suspects of Chibiusa’s “true” parentage and explain why they can’t possibly be her mother/father. And yes, these have all been suggested at one point, you can read a huge long list of Sailor Moon rumours here: http://www.eternalsailormoon.org/rumors/

REI

I imagine this one comes from how close she and Chibiusa are, and how Rei’s original eye colour was going to be red. They’re close in the sense that they have similar critical personalities, so Rei understands Chibiusa very well. They have more of a Favourite Aunt/Niece relationship than any relationship that could possibly be parental. This idea might also come from the anime-exclusive subplot of Rei and Mamoru dating. This doesn’t make sense either, since we see throughout the first season (and even briefly in the second) that they don’t belong together. They have trouble connecting to each other, and communicating. Rei wanted to date him simply for the sake of being able to say she had a boyfriend (and because he’s attractive). Mamoru mostly just went along with it, possibly also because Rei is attractive. When Mamoru and Usagi’s past relationship is revealed, Rei’s relationship with Mamoru ends quietly, and it’s never brought up again. Rei loves Usagi dearly, and while she is critical in a “tough love” sense, she would absolutely never deliberately do anything to hurt Usagi.

SETSUNA

Pluto and Chibiusa have a close relationship (as Chibiusa nicknames her “Puu”), therefore they’re mother and daughter, I guess? She and Chibiusa are close because for the longest time, they were each other’s only companion. No one visited Pluto other than Chibiusa, and Chibiusa had no friends of her own age. This one also probably comes from an eye colour perspective, since Setsuna’s eyes are maroon. But, even taking the silly eye colour thing into account, it’s ignoring that Setsuna’s skin colour is much darker than the others’. Chibiusa’s skin tone matches everyone else. Pluto also is heavily implied in the manga (and in Sera-Myu) to have an unrequited love for King Endymion. As far as the unrequited love thing goes, that’s just it. It’s UNREQUITED. There is no one else in the world for Endymion than Serenity, and Pluto knows that. Also, why would the Mistress of Time do something as stupid as having an affair with the consort of the Queen? Her job is to stand by the gates and guard the Timestream, not mess with it. She only leaves the Time Gates when she absolutely has to, and that’s to join the battle. No, this theory fundamentally misunderstands Setsuna’s character.

QUEEN BERYL

Uh, really? Okay, she also has an unrequited love for Prince Endymion, and succeeds in brainwashing him. But she was using him as a means to get to the Silver Crystal, not as a lover. And, well…she’s kinda dead by the time Chibiusa is introduced. She might be a sorceress, but it’s a little hard to give birth to someone after you’re dead.

LUNA

(Another red eyes = Chibiusa’s mother thing?) Well, um, for starters. She’s a cat. She can take a human form, but even then her eye colour is blue. She’s also red-eyed only in the anime version. And she already has a daughter. With Artemis. You know, Diana? Who was born to be Chibiusa’s cat? She’s a thing.

HARUKA

I…what? No. I can only assume anyone pairing off Mamoru/Haruka has never watched a single episode of the series or read a single page of the manga.

CHIBI-CHIBI

…moving on.

SEIYA

Pretty neat trick, “fathering” a child introduced three seasons before Seiya was. Let’s address the elephant in the room here. In the manga, Seiya is female. Uterus + Uterus != Baby. In the anime, Seiya appears physically male, but we don’t exactly find out what his/her downstairs equipment is (for obvious reasons). Whether Seiya is capable of fathering a child is obviously never explored, but I suspect that since the male form is a temporary disguise, I doubt it was complete enough to include sperm production. In terms of characterization, it is repeated over and over again that Usagi does NOT choose Seiya, and Seiya accepts this. At the end of the anime she appears to not even realize how Seiya feels about her. You can prefer Seiya over Mamoru, but that doesn’t make their relationship canonical, nor does it make him Chibiusa’s real daddy.

PRINCE DEMANDO

Ick. I mean, seriously. Ick. *takes a deep breath* I know a lot of people prefer Prince Demando over Mamoru, but this is another impossible pairing that, frankly, has disturbing implications. Demando may have been redeemed at the end of his life in the anime, but it doesn’t change that he attempted to sexually assault Usagi. He clearly doesn’t understand true love, and repeatedly tries to force physical and emotional affection from Sailor Moon as a teenager because he was rejected by Sailor Moon’s adult form. He also changes her clothing while she’s unconscious, and I really don’t want to think about how he did that. Like Seiya, Usagi makes it clear that she chooses Mamoru over Demando, especially since Demando is trying to force her to love him. She never fully succumbs to his seduction attempts, as she loves Mamoru and her friends too much to allow him to do this. She does cry for him when he dies to save her, but it’s in her nature to forgive. Forgiveness doesn’t mean love. And, in the manga, there is no redemption for Demando, he’s evil right to the end, and even tries to destroy the world by combining the Silver Crystals of the Past and Future. Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask combine their powers to destroy him. As for his almost nonexistent relationship with Chibiusa, when she is Black Lady she is an extremely sensual being, and there is some subtext of him almost taking her as a “replacement” for Usagi. Again, ick.

—

What’s the lesson here? Usagi and Mamoru are Chibiusa’s parents. So there.