Explaining one of Sailor Moon's biggest mysteries

 

Whenever you see a list of "top x Sailor Moon plot holes" or "things in Sailor Moon that don't make sense", you very often get a list from someone who doesn't know the series at all listing "differences between manga and anime", "subjective opinions", "magical girl tropes", or genuinely "things that don't happen in Sailor Moon." However, there is one overarching mystery about Sailor Moon that causes genuine confusion even for the fandom and today I'd like to give my best answer to it.

The crux of the problem is about the non-powered-up form of the Base Senshi in the future. When we see Crystal Tokyo in the Black Moon Clan Arc, we see that the Guardian Senshi are still in their base form:

And over the next three arcs, the Senshi gain super and eternal forms, which raises the obvious question: Why are the Senshi in Base form in the future? Sailor Moon isn't like many Battle Shonen where higher forms seem to require more power or a cost. Transforming into a Super Sailor or an Eternal Sailor seems no more strenous than transforming into their Base Form, so what gives?

So the default response is "Naoko hadn't thought of it yet." And while that doesn't answer the question in-universe, it would be a fairly compelling answer except for the fact that when we see the Future Senshi again in the Stars Arc they are still in their base form

Notice how this includes Sailor Pluto, but what makes this even more confusing is that this is in Act 56 when three acts ago in Act 53 we saw Sailor Pluto in the future who was in her SUPER form

This is perhaps the single most confusing form it could be. Eternal Form would be inconsistent with the Black Moon Clan Arc, but would be the intuitive one. Base Form would be counterintuitive but consistent with the Black Moon Clan Arc. To me Naoko's choice here is almost begging to be interpreted, as though she is saying "Yes, this was a conscious choice. Figure it out."

From this point, the most arguments I've seen from the fandom is that it's something to do with either time travel or changes to the timeline. That the Black Moon Clan and Chibiusa returning to the past either created an alternate timeline or changed the timeline. However, neither feels very likely to me because while it might address why the Sailor Senshi are in Base in the Black Moon Clan arc, it doesn't explain why they remain so in the Stars Arc or the strange single instance of Super Sailor Pluto. So I'm going to give what I think happened.

In order to explain this, we need to first explain what the super and eternal forms ARE, of which there's not a huge amount of info as Naoko isn't super interested in the hows of the mechanics of her world. When it comes strictly to the manga, I believe there are two variants of the Super Form. In the Infinity Arc, Act 30 this is the first description we are ever given about the Super Form

"When a Crisis Arrived, mysterious power would burst out of the grail. It granted its power to Neo-Queen Serenity and she saved the people, they say."

So what this tells us about the Super Form is that it's a power given by the Holy Grail during a crisis. At the end of Act 32 we see Sailor Moon's first henshin into Super Sailor Moon. This is during an encounter where the witch Cyprine has brainwashed the Outer Senshi and Guardian Senshi into fighting each other. She claims to Sailor Moon that this she has only brought out the Senshi's natural hatred for each other while Sailor Moon protests that she knows their hearts are unified. 

Sailor Moon calls for the Senshis' hearts to be united. Tuxedo Kamen and Sailor Chibi-Moon place their hands on hers which begins to glow and manifests the Holy Grail that itself glows. 

at the beginning of the next Act, Act 33, we see this theme continued for several pages, with the Holy Grail continuing to glow, Sailor Moon calling for the power of others. Everyone's hearts are pulled towards Sailor Moon, their powers entering the Holy Grail before Sailor Moon applies this power and transforms, causing the brooch on the other Sailors outfits to change into a heart

There's a serious emphasis on the unity of the Senshi with this henshin, to the point that later in Act 35 when the Guardian Senshis' souls are temporarily stolen, the transformation is lost

Now of the slight information we received in Act 30 this roughly matches the image we were given... but it also feels ever so slightly different. While Diana's description in Act 30 says that a mysterious power comes FROM the Holy Grail, this power is very clearly from the Senshi. While it goes into the Holy Grail, and then is applied through it to Sailor Moon, the power is consistently suggested to be formed of the Senshis' unity, not from the Holy Grail, to the extent that it relies on the other Senshi's continual connection to maintain. If it was the power of the Holy Grail, it would seem odd that the deaths of the Senshi would cause Sailor Moon to lose that power. Similarly, while the confrontation with Cyprine is very emotionally significant to Usagi, it's arguable whether it should be classified as a "crisis" in the same way that something like the cataclysmic destruction at the end of an arc. 

Still, the difference isn't massive or anything. This could be chalked up to a difference in emphasis or artistic license or Diana just being vague in her first description or any number of other factors.

At the end of the next Act, Act 35, when Pharaoh 90 is invading the Earth directly, after Sailor Moon transforms into Super Sailor Moon in a similar way, Chibi-Moon mysteriously duplicates the Holy Grail  

The mechanism isn't explained but it doesn't seem like Chibi-Moon has the same unity of hearts moment that Sailor Moon does. 

A few acts later in the Dream Arc, Act 39, Usagi and Chibi-usa can't transform due to the darkness barrier around the Earth made by Nehelenia. The Holy Grails from the Infinity Arc appear and they comment that they can't use them because the nine Sailor Senshi aren't gathered

However they express that they still have a need to fight and a new power courses within them allowing them to transform into Super Sailor Moon and Super Sailor Chibi-Moon with the henshin phrase "Moon Crisis Make Up" as opposed to the "Crisis Make Up" phrase used in the Infinity Arc (though this may be because they are going from civilian form to Super form directly as opposed to from Base to Super.)

The conclusion I would draw from this is that there seems to be two forms of Super Sailor transform, the Unity Henshin formed from the the unity between the Sailor Senshis' hearts and the Grail Henshin which is a power given by the Holy Grail in times of crisis. 

In Act 48, a Grail Henshin Super Sailor Moon is given power from the Senshi in the same way as the Super Unity Henshin after also channeling down the power of their planetary castles and their Power Guardians. This causes her to transform for the first time to transform into Eternal Sailor Moon

What this leads me to conclude is that Eternal Sailor Moon fundamentally is Super Super Sailor Moon, or in other words it's Sailor Moon using both forms of Super Henshin at the same time, both Unity and Grail Henshin.

There is one conflicting point about this and I admit it's the weakest part of my theory. Eternal Sailor Moon never reverts throughout the Stars Arc like Unity Henshin Super Sailor Moon does, even after the others have died. My only recourse is to say that the Eternal Henshin stabilizes the form, possibly because their powers were stabilized through their planetary castles which were never destroyed.

So if that's how the super and eternal forms work, why are the future Senshi in base form? Well first of all the world is not in crisis during the 900 years of almost entirely peace of Neo-Queen Serenity's reign and Neo-Queen Serenity keeps the Holy Grail in her room as a memento. As such Grail Henshin wouldn't occur. But what about Unity Henshin?

When Usagi took the throne of Crystal Tokyo, she lost much of hers powers to fight "as a soldier"

Personally I believe this to be because in the climax of the series, her Sailor Crystal changed to be the Cosmos Crystal and passed down the Silver Crystal to her daughter, though that's not important to this theory. The important part is that it seems like she's saying she could no longer transform into a Sailor Senshi. With Chibi-Moon not yet awoken in this time, the Silver Crystal couldn't be accessed and thus the unity of the Senshi's hearts could not be formed.

So that potentially explains why the Senshi were in base form during the Black Moon Clan arc, but what about Super Sailor Pluto in the Stars Arc?

In this scene, Chibiusa goes to her mother's room, and listens on to a conversation between Sailor Pluto and Neo-Queen Serenity about a great maelstrom warping spacetime reaching as far as their time.

Given the impending crisis, the Sailor Senshi were granted power by the Holy Grail. This conversation even takes place in the Queen's chambers where the Grail was kept. 

Later the Sailor Senshi lie dying so the reason they're in their base forms is the Holy Grail is no longer giving them the power to fight

Immediately following this, Chibiusa and her quartet transform into their eternal forms, showing that Senshi can still gain the power from the Grail so longer as they're still capable of fighting.

tying back to what Chibiusa said back in the fourth arc when she first used Grail Henshin that she felt the need to fight still within her.

The only unresolved question was if Eternal Henshin doesn't require the unity of hearts as seen with Eternal Sailor Moon's henshin not breaking and Chibi-Moon and the Quartet being able to transform, why was Pluto in super form, not eternal form in Act 53?

So my understanding is that because the times of crisis were over the Grail stopped giving the Senshi power which reverted them to Unity Henshin, except without the unity of their hearts since Usagi was no longer a soldier, they reverted to their base forms. In other words, the Eternal Form can maintain the unity of their powers, possibly through the usage of things like the Planetary Castles, but can't maintain without the Grail's powers, and without that, the Unity Henshin wasn't maintained. 

So that's my explanation for why the Sailor Senshi weren't in their eternal forms in the future.