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The plotholes & questions/problems mentioned in the above posts all point to that Takeuchi, or the power that be subconsciously influencing her on how to write the story, hasn't told us the whole truth, but those fragments of truth allowed to be shown in the story still seems to allude to that QS, w/e her origin, might actually be a villainess who attempted to control & rule the entire universe, when we try to connect those fragments w/ the missing jigsaw puzzle pieces we hypothesize to enable the various stuff in the story to add up &, hence, make sense of the whole picture. 
Yet another case of #Naoko forgot.
In Dream, we see all of the Inners, as toddlers, swearing loyalty to new-born Serenity and saying 'We've been tiredlessly waiting for this day to come. We swear to protect the princess with our very lives till the day she is able to ascend to the throne.'
Venus could have only spent 3-4 years at her castle before moving to the Moon to witness Serenity's birth.
Moreover, considering Venus is the leader of the Inners and supposed to be the close bodyguard of Serenity and act as her double, it would make zero sense for her to be going back to her castle.
As for Saturn and the other planets being inhabited, it could have had potential instead of just being cringe IF Takeuchi had developed the politics of the different kingdoms.
Like for example, Takeuchi could have made Saturn a 'planet of death', it's inhabitants worshipping a cult to some deity and engaging into human sacrifices (taking inspiration from Inca/Maya/Amazons traditions) and sacrificing young maidens for the sake of their warriors or something like that.
Their neighbors - Uranus, Neptune & Pluto would have bore a great disdain towards them.
All hell could have broken loose when perhaps one day, a maiden of the Silver Millennium would have been kidnapped and sacrificed to their deity.
A great war would have broken out, with the 3 neighbor planets leading the war.
In the end, all that could have been left was Saturn, a sole nameless young maiden left alive that had already become part of an incomplete ritual and bore a great power of death, always coming to life each time she was slain.
Queen Serenity, taking pity on her, instead of condemning her to an eternal torment despite the protests of the other kingdoms, decides to seal her within the vestiges of her lost heritage and creates the Talisman lock.
She ends up distributing the Talismans among the people of Uranus, Neptune & Pluto as a peace treaty and as an attempt to strengthen the bonds of those 3 kingdoms with one another.
The 3 Talismans would become the sacred treasures of their respective kingdoms, passed from generation to generation to the heiress of the throne.
This could have been used as a tool to explain how suddenly out of the blue, in Infinity, Saturn dismisses her role of arbiter of death and feels a great love towards Usagi.
Honestly, rather than the boring characterless Animamates and Chaos, it would have been more interesting for the last arc to delve into the past of the Silver Millennium and it's rise to power but Takeuchi wouldn't have been that good of a writer to handle that anyway.
As for Saturn and the other planets being inhabited, it could have had potential instead of just being cringe IF Takeuchi had developed the politics of the different kingdoms.
Like for example, Takeuchi could have made Saturn a 'planet of death', it's inhabitants worshipping a cult to some deity and engaging into human sacrifices (taking inspiration from Inca/Maya/Amazons traditions) and sacrificing young maidens for the sake of their warriors or something like that.
Their neighbors - Uranus, Neptune & Pluto would have bore a great disdain towards them.
All hell could have broken loose when perhaps one day, a maiden of the Silver Millennium would have been kidnapped and sacrificed to their deity.
A great war would have broken out, with the 3 neighbor planets leading the war.
In the end, all that could have been left was Saturn, a sole nameless young maiden left alive that had already become part of an incomplete ritual and bore a great power of death, always coming to life each time she was slain.
Queen Serenity, taking pity on her, instead of condemning her to an eternal torment despite the protests of the other kingdoms, decides to seal her within the vestiges of her lost heritage and creates the Talisman lock.
She ends up distributing the Talismans among the people of Uranus, Neptune & Pluto as a peace treaty and as an attempt to strengthen the bonds of those 3 kingdoms with one another.
The 3 Talismans would become the sacred treasures of their respective kingdoms, passed from generation to generation to the heiress of the throne.
This could have been used as a tool to explain how suddenly out of the blue, in Infinity, Saturn dismisses her role of arbiter of death and feels a great love towards Usagi.
Honestly, rather than the boring characterless Animamates and Chaos, it would have been more interesting for the last arc to delve into the past of the Silver Millennium and it's rise to power but Takeuchi wouldn't have been that good of a writer to handle that anyway.
Like for example, Takeuchi could have made Saturn a 'planet of death', it's inhabitants worshipping a cult to some deity and engaging into human sacrifices (taking inspiration from Inca/Maya/Amazons traditions) and sacrificing young maidens for the sake of their warriors or something like that.
Their neighbors - Uranus, Neptune & Pluto would have bore a great disdain towards them.
All hell could have broken loose when perhaps one day, a maiden of the Silver Millennium would have been kidnapped and sacrificed to their deity.
A great war would have broken out, with the 3 neighbor planets leading the war.
In the end, all that could have been left was Saturn, a sole nameless young maiden left alive that had already become part of an incomplete ritual and bore a great power of death, always coming to life each time she was slain.
Queen Serenity, taking pity on her, instead of condemning her to an eternal torment despite the protests of the other kingdoms, decides to seal her within the vestiges of her lost heritage and creates the Talisman lock.
She ends up distributing the Talismans among the people of Uranus, Neptune & Pluto as a peace treaty and as an attempt to strengthen the bonds of those 3 kingdoms with one another.
The 3 Talismans would become the sacred treasures of their respective kingdoms, passed from generation to generation to the heiress of the throne.
This could have been used as a tool to explain how suddenly out of the blue, in Infinity, Saturn dismisses her role of arbiter of death and feels a great love towards Usagi.
Honestly, rather than the boring characterless Animamates and Chaos, it would have been more interesting for the last arc to delve into the past of the Silver Millennium and it's rise to power but Takeuchi wouldn't have been that good of a writer to handle that anyway.
Likes:
Late to the Game
Hence the shipping of Cosmos × Chaos. 
That would ruin my shipping , Sailor cosmos x Sailor Chaos
.
.
.Now related to the actual thread,
Yesterday i started to think that
and the sailor quartet are like pokemons 
.In the dream arc , after the sailor quartet introduce themselves they automatically entererd into their (poke) balls until their (trainer) would need them.
so the same could be said to saturn , her planet is like a huge pokeball , that was only opened up when the 3 talismans activate their power at the same time.
That story should be Canon NOW.
Likes:
Talentless Fool
Chaos was not speaking literally, though. While light and darkness are born in the same place and attract each other, they are also opposing forces.
Human beings can be both good and bad, and, therefore, originate both light and darkness. After Sailor Galaxia is freed in the 90’s anime, Chaos goes back to the place it came from: the heart of all living beings. That’s how the 90’s anime handled Chaos.
Naoko uses the Galaxy Cauldron as a literary device to convey the same meaning as the 90’s anime and, admittedly, make the story more complicated, which is an aspect that I prefer, personally.
The hearts of living beings emanate both light and darkness (90’s anime) … and so does the Cauldron, the place where all things, including Chaos’s alter egos, are born (manga).
The 90’s anime merely simplified the author’s message.
Human beings can be both good and bad, and, therefore, originate both light and darkness. After Sailor Galaxia is freed in the 90’s anime, Chaos goes back to the place it came from: the heart of all living beings. That’s how the 90’s anime handled Chaos.
Naoko uses the Galaxy Cauldron as a literary device to convey the same meaning as the 90’s anime and, admittedly, make the story more complicated, which is an aspect that I prefer, personally.
The hearts of living beings emanate both light and darkness (90’s anime) … and so does the Cauldron, the place where all things, including Chaos’s alter egos, are born (manga).
The 90’s anime merely simplified the author’s message.
If there were no light, how could darkness be manifested? If there were no darkness, how could light be manifested? Hence the two obviously depend on one another & can't possibly exist w/o the other. 
Now that's a really, really huge Pokeball (w/ a beautiful ring)! 
Yesterday i started to think that and the sailor quartet are like pokemons .
In the dream arc , after the sailor quartet introduce themselves they automatically entererd into their (poke) balls until their (trainer) would need them.
so the same could be said to saturn , her planet is like a huge pokeball , that was only opened up when the 3 talismans activate their power at the same time.
and the sailor quartet are like pokemons .In the dream arc , after the sailor quartet introduce themselves they automatically entererd into their (poke) balls until their (trainer) would need them.
so the same could be said to saturn , her planet is like a huge pokeball , that was only opened up when the 3 talismans activate their power at the same time.
"Fall. You are alone, America. There is only oblivion for you, and only obeisance for your people. The Earth is just the beginning. I will command a great and terrible army, and we will sail to a billion worlds. We will sail until every darkness has been vanquished. You are strong, America, but I am beyond strength. I am the end, and I have come for you."
Please, can we stop talking about that light & darkness concepts Takeuchi wrote so superficially about? If anyone want to know more about that, deeply, there're good Asian philosophy books about yin and yang. A little girls manga will never be a good representation of that concept. I'd say that the anime even did it better by expanding the microcosm of some characters (especially villains).
Just iconography and a lot of speech bubbles repeating the same words over and over along 40 pages are not gonna make that concept deeper.
Just iconography and a lot of speech bubbles repeating the same words over and over along 40 pages are not gonna make that concept deeper.
I think the idea of focibly attempting to make Sailor Moon more marketable is spot on, but I disagree with your take on ignoring Takeuchi. People complain about the Outer Senshi not being present but they're also absent during the first half of the arc in the manga. Also, the plot barely advances during this first half, there aren't any "landmark events", so to say, to guide the anime staff, so no wonder they had to wing it. SuperS wasn't successful, but I do think a good deal of it has to do with the story Naoko was writing at the time.
You're spot on. The 90s anime made up for its pedestrian story with comedy and slice of life, while the manga didn't have anything to offset the lacklustre action. But when I point this out how the manga simply won't quench my occasional desire for a good story and epic battles, I'll be shot with "you're blind by nostalgia" and "but that's the original story"...
You're spot on. The 90s anime made up for its pedestrian story with comedy and slice of life, while the manga didn't have anything to offset the lacklustre action. But when I point this out how the manga simply won't quench my occasional desire for a good story and epic battles, I'll be shot with "you're blind by nostalgia" and "but that's the original story"...
Likes:
Lady Pen and sailor Yaoi 81
- Let's not forget that it was Takeuchi who decided to remove the 3 Outers of the story at the end of Infinity despite HaruMichi being popular.
Now, why do the 3 Outers take baby Hotaru and go away from the girls at the end of Infinity? I don't know.
During their chapter in Dreams, Haruka mopes that she can't see Usagi's smile (barf!) as if there's a law prohibiting them from frequenting the girls, then somehow they just realize they want to be together with their princess and teleport to Tokyo I guess.
All for the sake of drama and no logic.
- Let's not forget that it was Takeuchi who was selling that Dreams was going to be about Chibi-Usa and Helios and the dreams of the girls.
I've said it before but Dreams feels like a soft reboot, Chibi-Usa finding her first love, the Inners having their own mascot familiars giving them their individual transformation items...
The first half of Dreams is mainly about Chibi-Usa and supposedly Helios/Pegasus (even though this goes no where) and then once the Outers appear, it's again all about UsaMe.
The girls don't even meet Helios in the manga, let alone knowing about his existence except Jupiter!
Helios doesn't play a role in the overall story and there's not even a reason why he takes the form of a Pegasus.
The 90s anime handles it a thousand miles better with the Golden Mirror, the mystery of Helios' origins, the girls being wary of Pegasus, Nehenelia and Helios' dynamic etc.
It's always Toei's fault, it's always Toei who screwed up, it's always Toei who made the ridiculous decisions, it's always Toei who is the villain while Takeuchi is the eternal victim.
And like you said, the first half of Dreams is filler, the plot doesn't go forward and sets the base of a set of concepts (Dreams, Lemures, Mirrors...) to forget all about that.
What are Lemures? Why were the Dead Moon feeding off of dreams of people? What is Zirconia's role and what happens to her considering she disappears from the story altogether? Why - Shaddup.
The same thing happens in Infinity.
How was the anime staff supposed to come up with a story when the manga was going no where?
Make their own thing like in Classic or S for Takeuchi only to complain in the tankobons how her vision was distorted and how relieved she was that the denatured aspect of her story by the anime wasn't disliked?
For the longest time, the manga has been absolved of any criticism because 'it's the original story' and only the manga counts, the anime is made for kids
Now, why do the 3 Outers take baby Hotaru and go away from the girls at the end of Infinity? I don't know.
During their chapter in Dreams, Haruka mopes that she can't see Usagi's smile (barf!) as if there's a law prohibiting them from frequenting the girls, then somehow they just realize they want to be together with their princess and teleport to Tokyo I guess.
All for the sake of drama and no logic.
- Let's not forget that it was Takeuchi who was selling that Dreams was going to be about Chibi-Usa and Helios and the dreams of the girls.
I've said it before but Dreams feels like a soft reboot, Chibi-Usa finding her first love, the Inners having their own mascot familiars giving them their individual transformation items...
The first half of Dreams is mainly about Chibi-Usa and supposedly Helios/Pegasus (even though this goes no where) and then once the Outers appear, it's again all about UsaMe.
The girls don't even meet Helios in the manga, let alone knowing about his existence except Jupiter!
Helios doesn't play a role in the overall story and there's not even a reason why he takes the form of a Pegasus.
The 90s anime handles it a thousand miles better with the Golden Mirror, the mystery of Helios' origins, the girls being wary of Pegasus, Nehenelia and Helios' dynamic etc.
It's always Toei's fault, it's always Toei who screwed up, it's always Toei who made the ridiculous decisions, it's always Toei who is the villain while Takeuchi is the eternal victim.
And like you said, the first half of Dreams is filler, the plot doesn't go forward and sets the base of a set of concepts (Dreams, Lemures, Mirrors...) to forget all about that.
What are Lemures? Why were the Dead Moon feeding off of dreams of people? What is Zirconia's role and what happens to her considering she disappears from the story altogether? Why - Shaddup.
The same thing happens in Infinity.
How was the anime staff supposed to come up with a story when the manga was going no where?
Make their own thing like in Classic or S for Takeuchi only to complain in the tankobons how her vision was distorted and how relieved she was that the denatured aspect of her story by the anime wasn't disliked?
You're spot on. The 90s anime made up for its pedestrian story with comedy and slice of life, while the manga didn't have anything to offset the lacklustre action. But when I point this out how the manga simply won't quench my occasional desire for a good story and epic battles, I'll be shot with "you're blind by nostalgia" and "but that's the original story"...
- Let's not forget that it was Takeuchi who decided to remove the 3 Outers of the story at the end of Infinity despite HaruMichi being popular.
Now, why do the 3 Outers take baby Hotaru and go away from the girls at the end of Infinity? I don't know.
During their chapter in Dreams, Haruka mopes that she can't see Usagi's smile (barf!) as if there's a law prohibiting them from frequenting the girls, then somehow they just realize they want to be together with their princess and teleport to Tokyo I guess.
All for the sake of drama and no logic.
- Let's not forget that it was Takeuchi who was selling that Dreams was going to be about Chibi-Usa and Helios and the dreams of the girls.
I've said it before but Dreams feels like a soft reboot, Chibi-Usa finding her first love, the Inners having their own mascot familiars giving them their individual transformation items...
The first half of Dreams is mainly about Chibi-Usa and supposedly Helios/Pegasus (even though this goes no where) and then once the Outers appear, it's again all about UsaMe.
The girls don't even meet Helios in the manga, let alone knowing about his existence except Jupiter!
Helios doesn't play a role in the overall story and there's not even a reason why he takes the form of a Pegasus.
The 90s anime handles it a thousand miles better with the Golden Mirror, the mystery of Helios' origins, the girls being wary of Pegasus, Nehenelia and Helios' dynamic etc.
It's always Toei's fault, it's always Toei who screwed up, it's always Toei who made the ridiculous decisions, it's always Toei who is the villain while Takeuchi is the eternal victim.
And like you said, the first half of Dreams is filler, the plot doesn't go forward and sets the base of a set of concepts (Dreams, Lemures, Mirrors...) to forget all about that.
What are Lemures? Why were the Dead Moon feeding off of dreams of people? What is Zirconia's role and what happens to her considering she disappears from the story altogether? Why - Shaddup.
The same thing happens in Infinity.
How was the anime staff supposed to come up with a story when the manga was going no where?
Make their own thing like in Classic or S for Takeuchi only to complain in the tankobons how her vision was distorted and how relieved she was that the denatured aspect of her story by the anime wasn't disliked?
For the longest time, the manga has been absolved of any criticism because 'it's the original story' and only the manga counts, the anime is made for kids
Now, why do the 3 Outers take baby Hotaru and go away from the girls at the end of Infinity? I don't know.
During their chapter in Dreams, Haruka mopes that she can't see Usagi's smile (barf!) as if there's a law prohibiting them from frequenting the girls, then somehow they just realize they want to be together with their princess and teleport to Tokyo I guess.
All for the sake of drama and no logic.
- Let's not forget that it was Takeuchi who was selling that Dreams was going to be about Chibi-Usa and Helios and the dreams of the girls.
I've said it before but Dreams feels like a soft reboot, Chibi-Usa finding her first love, the Inners having their own mascot familiars giving them their individual transformation items...
The first half of Dreams is mainly about Chibi-Usa and supposedly Helios/Pegasus (even though this goes no where) and then once the Outers appear, it's again all about UsaMe.
The girls don't even meet Helios in the manga, let alone knowing about his existence except Jupiter!
Helios doesn't play a role in the overall story and there's not even a reason why he takes the form of a Pegasus.
The 90s anime handles it a thousand miles better with the Golden Mirror, the mystery of Helios' origins, the girls being wary of Pegasus, Nehenelia and Helios' dynamic etc.
It's always Toei's fault, it's always Toei who screwed up, it's always Toei who made the ridiculous decisions, it's always Toei who is the villain while Takeuchi is the eternal victim.
And like you said, the first half of Dreams is filler, the plot doesn't go forward and sets the base of a set of concepts (Dreams, Lemures, Mirrors...) to forget all about that.
What are Lemures? Why were the Dead Moon feeding off of dreams of people? What is Zirconia's role and what happens to her considering she disappears from the story altogether? Why - Shaddup.
The same thing happens in Infinity.
How was the anime staff supposed to come up with a story when the manga was going no where?
Make their own thing like in Classic or S for Takeuchi only to complain in the tankobons how her vision was distorted and how relieved she was that the denatured aspect of her story by the anime wasn't disliked?
For the longest time, the manga has been absolved of any criticism because 'it's the original story' and only the manga counts, the anime is made for kids
I wonder if, to some extent, the manga (and, by extent, Takeuchi) being excused and absolved has to do with some fetish for authorship and "authenticity" we seem to have inherited from Romanticism. I suspect the fixation on the idea of it being "what the author wanted" and "the true story" makes people biased and makes them see it through rose-coloured lens.
Yea as as a outer senshi fan, the lack of them in the later arc disappointed me a lot. In fact, I preferred SM when it was more concentrated on the SoL than the epic battle.
So I just had a stupid thought. What if Sailor Saturn never meet the Inner Senshi and the princess cause she was asleep for the whole SM and then got super confused during Infinity. Wait we have a princess???? Wait there is now inner senshi?????
Edit: Assuming that she was born before the inner and the princess.
So I just had a stupid thought. What if Sailor Saturn never meet the Inner Senshi and the princess cause she was asleep for the whole SM and then got super confused during Infinity. Wait we have a princess???? Wait there is now inner senshi?????
Edit: Assuming that she was born before the inner and the princess.
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Likes:
sailor Yaoi 81
That doesn't matter & is precisely why we, as fans, have got the fun in creating our own headcanons/fanons to elaborate it & make it deep, not unlike the fun of kids in connecting the dots to see the whole picture, except that we connect the dots w/o any guidance to follow & is totally up to our own reasoning & imagination (hence the even greater fun!) - Takeuchi has provided us w/ the dots, & we can then connect them ourselves; Takeuchi has left the blanks, & we can then fill in them ourselves. 
Likes:
Lady Pen
The more you read her comments, the more you come to understand that she has no clue of what makes a good story nor that she has any idea of how the manga and anime industry work, especially during the 90s when mangakas had a very minimalist voice on the anime adaptation.
She was always being given favoritism based on how much she was allowed to contribute on the anime (despite not being up to keep up to the workload to only complain later that it was too hard) or how much she was allowed to go free style with the manga (you only have to read how much restrictions are put on other mangakas once their series takes off).
And considering her business manners dealing with international licensors and dubbing companies, she has no idea either how to maintain relationships with the international licensors and how that business works.
In the end, true to her name, she comes off as a pampered princess who wants everyone to agree with her.
About the Starlights, I think it's more of how they are not Usagi idolaters and instead clash severely with her that she didn't like.
While in the 90s anime, yes, the antagonistic nature of the Starlights is prolonged for waaaay too much (perhaps if once Kakyuu appeared, we had flashbacks about how they escaped and survived to better relativize their pessimism about teamwork, it would have explained things better), the final pay off with their scene acknowledging Usagi and the others in ep.198 is so worth it!
And that battle scene of Ep.199 (which nobody talks about because it's animated by Sugimoto so it's poo-poo garbage) is 100X better than whatever that stock footage fest of Cosmos tried to be.
Sailor Moon turning into a pure nekketsu shounen anime of a clash of words and fists with the Senshi continuing to stand up again and again thanks to the power of friendship - sign me up!
Takeuchi had similar complaints about HaruMichi and why they were so antagonistic towards UsaMe while in the manga, Haruka is in love with Usagi and Michiru is just her token companion.
The reason of the anime for changing the Starlights into men is quite simple to me - it's a breath of fresh air and not a rehash of the Haruka situation (especially when in the anime, Haruka always dresses as a male and is very often confused as such). The Starlights being men in civilian form allowed for more spice into the show and for more varied character dynamics.
You'll also notice that Stars is a giant melting pot of everything Takeuchi has written beforehand:-
1) Search for your Princess (Dark Kingdom)
2) Ambiguous new Senshi who are stars in the entertainment industry and the leader of that group falls head over heals with UsaMe (Infinity)
3) Each of the Senshi are targeted and in the end they are booted out of the story (Dreams & Black Moon)
4) There's some time travel BS involved with the time traveler looking as a younger version of Usagi and is revealed to be directly tied to her (Black Moon).
In the end, despite a lot of people talking about how mature the manga is, the majority of the Sailor Moon fanbase seems to haven't even read it.
Before the completion of Crystermos, you'd see several people claiming they were fans of the manga yet didn't know of the arcs that hadn't been animated at the time and 'were waiting for the anime version'.
Likewise, on this very forum, you'll see that a lot of Sailor Moon fans haven't read much other manga series.
Which I think is where this claim of the manga being supposedly 'mature' comes from. Back in the 90s, manga wasn't mainstream and was a very small niche, smaller than anime.
Sailor Moon became widely popular but I suppose a lot of people didn't read or even knew of the existence of the manga version.
The people who actually read it (being at the time mostly teens and in their early 20s) loved the edginess of the manga with all the deaths and fast-paced nature of the story giving the illusion of being a 'no-nonsense' story compared to the more light-hearted slice of life components of the anime.
Moreover, in between the art itself and the very bad translations, I can see a lot of people not eager to read the manga so when people would say the manga is more 'serious' and mature, it was believed so by just looking at the several pages of characters being reduced to dust.
She was always being given favoritism based on how much she was allowed to contribute on the anime (despite not being up to keep up to the workload to only complain later that it was too hard) or how much she was allowed to go free style with the manga (you only have to read how much restrictions are put on other mangakas once their series takes off).
And considering her business manners dealing with international licensors and dubbing companies, she has no idea either how to maintain relationships with the international licensors and how that business works.
In the end, true to her name, she comes off as a pampered princess who wants everyone to agree with her.
About the Starlights, I think it's more of how they are not Usagi idolaters and instead clash severely with her that she didn't like.
While in the 90s anime, yes, the antagonistic nature of the Starlights is prolonged for waaaay too much (perhaps if once Kakyuu appeared, we had flashbacks about how they escaped and survived to better relativize their pessimism about teamwork, it would have explained things better), the final pay off with their scene acknowledging Usagi and the others in ep.198 is so worth it!
And that battle scene of Ep.199 (which nobody talks about because it's animated by Sugimoto so it's poo-poo garbage) is 100X better than whatever that stock footage fest of Cosmos tried to be.
Sailor Moon turning into a pure nekketsu shounen anime of a clash of words and fists with the Senshi continuing to stand up again and again thanks to the power of friendship - sign me up!
Takeuchi had similar complaints about HaruMichi and why they were so antagonistic towards UsaMe while in the manga, Haruka is in love with Usagi and Michiru is just her token companion.
The reason of the anime for changing the Starlights into men is quite simple to me - it's a breath of fresh air and not a rehash of the Haruka situation (especially when in the anime, Haruka always dresses as a male and is very often confused as such). The Starlights being men in civilian form allowed for more spice into the show and for more varied character dynamics.
You'll also notice that Stars is a giant melting pot of everything Takeuchi has written beforehand:-
1) Search for your Princess (Dark Kingdom)
2) Ambiguous new Senshi who are stars in the entertainment industry and the leader of that group falls head over heals with UsaMe (Infinity)
3) Each of the Senshi are targeted and in the end they are booted out of the story (Dreams & Black Moon)
4) There's some time travel BS involved with the time traveler looking as a younger version of Usagi and is revealed to be directly tied to her (Black Moon).
In the end, despite a lot of people talking about how mature the manga is, the majority of the Sailor Moon fanbase seems to haven't even read it.
Before the completion of Crystermos, you'd see several people claiming they were fans of the manga yet didn't know of the arcs that hadn't been animated at the time and 'were waiting for the anime version'.
Likewise, on this very forum, you'll see that a lot of Sailor Moon fans haven't read much other manga series.
Which I think is where this claim of the manga being supposedly 'mature' comes from. Back in the 90s, manga wasn't mainstream and was a very small niche, smaller than anime.
Sailor Moon became widely popular but I suppose a lot of people didn't read or even knew of the existence of the manga version.
The people who actually read it (being at the time mostly teens and in their early 20s) loved the edginess of the manga with all the deaths and fast-paced nature of the story giving the illusion of being a 'no-nonsense' story compared to the more light-hearted slice of life components of the anime.
Moreover, in between the art itself and the very bad translations, I can see a lot of people not eager to read the manga so when people would say the manga is more 'serious' and mature, it was believed so by just looking at the several pages of characters being reduced to dust.