Sailor Pluto downgraded?

On Thursday August 24th 2006 Pluto’s status was downgraded from “planet” to “dwarf planet” taking it out of the ranks of such greats as Earth, Mars and Uranus to name a few! While this decision is being disputed by those with a political interest in having Pluto remain a planet, as Robin Catchpole says “My own personal opinion was to leave things as they were”, for the time being there are only 8 known planets in our fine solar system. But what does this really imply?

Sailor Pluto, one of the 8 Sailor Soldiers sworn to protect the Princess of the Moon and future Queen of Earth, is no longer representative of a planet like her 7 fellow guardians. While she’s always been an outcast of types forced to spend most of her time in solitude protecting the door of time she was still technically ranked equally with the rest. Is Sailor Pluto dead? Does she lose her powers now that she doesn’t have a planet? Will her true star seed which gives her that power be downgraded to a normal one like the rest of the 6 billion people on this planet have? Well… no.

Many are shown to have star seeds who represent celestial bodies which aren’t classified as planets. The most obvious example of this being Sailor Moon herself who, being the most powerfull of soldiers and with a star seed that shines brighter than any other, is only the Sailor of the moon of a planet. Then there’s Phobos and Dymos, Sailor Mars’s crows, who represent the moons of Mars. Luna and Artemis are … a whole other story.

But who else is named after a dwarf planet? Sailor Ceres represents Ceres, a large asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter which is also classified as a dwarf planet. Her and the rest of the former Amazon Quartet protect Chibi Usa as she is destined to succeed Sailor Moon and needs a posse of her own.

What does this mean for Pluto then? Well probably nothing. But hey maybe she’ll change camps and go protect Chibi Usa. Fitting though that of all the planets this should happen to it would be Pluto considering she is the one who in 30th century Crystal Tokyo is shown to have a close personal relationship with Chibi Usa while the other girls are still taking care of the Queen. Pluto who’s mentioned to be both the same and different from the other girls as she has that different duty of protecting the Door of Time really is the odd planet out.