Eh…I honestly pretty vehemently disagree with most of the things you wrote here. Please don’t take anything I write as a personal insult or attack, because that is definitely not my intent. I would also love if you could articulate some of the points in more detail because I’m not sure what you’re trying to say and I don’t want to misunderstand. As you don’t actually touch on why Haruka/Usagi should be a thing, I guess this is the first of several meta posts, but I feel compelled to reply anyway. This isn’t as clear and as articulate as I’d like it, but I just can’t seem to get it to be.
I love HaruMichi for the same reason that many young bi girls love HaruMichi: they provided lesbian representation in a cultural environment that otherwise didn’t allow it, and their relationship provided a model for equality and communication that other relationships just… didn’t have.
Yes, Haruka and Michiru display really problematic behavior, particularly Michiru. To put it bluntly, the two of them are assholes, and they don’t change that much after S ends… but even so, it’s not that hard to see where they’re coming from.
I’m really interested in what you mean by “particularly Michiru” because I’ve actually seen people point more fingers at Haruka’s behaviour in S than hers (to be fair, people don’t generally pay as much attention to Michiru as they do Haruka and that probably has something to do with it, but we discussed that topic to death the other day, so I won’t go there). I’d also recommend reading this giant post of Michiru meta.
The Outers were never meant to awaken in the first place. The fact that they did meant that shit was about to go down in ways no one knew how to handle. They didn’t have their memories, they didn’t know why they were supposed to find the Talismans or what they even were, and they had a mission that was completely separate from the mission the Inners pursued.
Haruka and Michiru are the types of people who would murder a six-year-old girl because they were meant to be the types of people who would murder a six year old girl. In a word, they’re assassins. They’re the people who do the dirty jobs when the ones in power either can’t or won’t.
They are also a couple of troubled 16-year-old girls who spend the entire season angsting, first over the fact that they seemingly have no other choice but to let three people die, then over the fact that they will probably need to kill this one (innocent, sickly, being used) girl. All that assholish blustery talk (mostly Haruka there) is pretty much 95% talking themselves into doing this, because the only alternative presented to them is the end of the entire world. And they both hate it, and both explicitly do not want to be senshi and see it as nothing but a burden. One could make an argument that becoming senshi improved - in a way even saved - the Inners’ lives, and seemingly ruined the Outers’ (although in various ways their lives were crappy before they became senshi, and they were just as estranged and lost as pre-Usagi Inners and I believe, even with all the bad, and the deaths, and the monsters, that the best things in their lives happened to them because they awoke as senshi – “I’m glad I was able to meet you” - and in no small part because Usagi came to turn everything on its head).
Black Ops Outers is a headcanon I very much do dig, however, especially if you’re going for a darker read on things.
They don’t defend the weak. They don’t “fight evil by moonlight.” They go in, kill the Big Bad, and let everything else run its course. And that is totally appropriate.
That’s… not what they really do, though? If we’re talking about their SilMil roles as described, they are a perimeter guard and a border patrol, fighting off the big threats coming in from outside before they can get to the heart of the kingdom. In the manga this is emphasised by their castles/space stations, their ability to raise a shield around the Solar System when they detect intruders, etc. They are said to have stronger powers than the Inners because while the Inners were bodyguards protecting the Princess, the Outers were protecting the entire kingdom, and doing it mostly solo (if we’re going by that whole “the Talisman bearers must never meet” thing), so each of them had to have the power and ability to fight off an invading force all on her own.
By the Stars arc they’re much better integrated with the Inners, they do fight evil by moonlight, and the people they’re being assholes to/antagonising are aliens from outside the Solar System, i.e. the folks it’s literally the Outers’ job description to repel.
Because of this, Haruka and Michiru have lived life after life alone and utterly without companionship. They likely didn’t enjoy the same lifespan as the Inners enjoyed. We don’t see them in any of the presentations of Crystal Tokyo, and I for one don’t think that absence was an accident: they don’t belong there. They are outsiders who should remain that way for the sake of everyone else.
What do you mean by “life after life”?
Crystal Tokyo always feels like an iffy thing to bring into Outers discussions simply because a lot of it is the way it is due to “out of universe” reasons (when the time travel plot was going on the characters in question hadn’t even been designed yet), and explaining them away tends to seem contrived or very headcanony (since the actual canon doesn’t even try, it literally is up to headcanon). Why don’t we ever see Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn in CT/the future? Are they away on a mission somewhere (or in their castles maybe), on a vacation, or are they dead? Pretty much any of these is plausible.
Much of Sailor Moon revolves around Usagi’s power to bring everyone together… but she never brings the Outers into the fold. By the time the Outers even show up on the scene, Haruka and Michiru are so wrapped up in one another they can barely see anyone else, and Setsuna knows that the role she will have to play will never allow her to love anyone period.
Except Setsuna does love, very much and very unselfishly (you could argue this is part of her tragedy)? And while it is arguable if the Outers are ever completely brought into the fold (and a lot of it highly dependent on personal preferences and canon version), to say they are not at all brought in is, I feel, very wrong. Inners/Outers friendships and teamups are a thing in all the SM canons. In the manga and the Myus they get to go to school with and enjoy cute civilian shenanigans with all the Inners, as close to equals as possible. They get their lives brightened by Usagi just as much as anyone else – and Usagi refusing to back down, and “breaking the rules” gives them a second chance as well – by the end of it all, they even learn to believe in her.
Haruka and Michiru wound up together over and over and over again, life after life, because they literally could not wind up with anyone else. It’s likely that the current timeline is the only timeline in which they ever encountered any of the Senshi (since Pluto hangs out at the Time Gate and Saturn only reincarnates when she needs to kill a planet).
I honestly don’t understand what you mean with the “life after life” bit. There is no indication whatsoever of any Uranus and any Neptune being together in any way (in fact, going by the manga, as Talisman-bearers they weren’t supposed to ever meet). Do you mean some potential pre-Silver Millennium incarnations? Again, we have zero information about anything of the sort, and I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at. Additionally I would argue that there is very much a difference between “Uranus and Neptune” and “Haruka and Michiru” and that the distinction is an important one.
Sailor Moon stresses the importance of friendship and connections to other people. It’s understandable that this doesn’t happen with Setsuna or Hotaru (particularly since Hotaru could technically be considered one of Chibiusa’s protectors), but the fact that it also doesn’t happen with Haruka and Michiru seems like a grievous oversight.
It seems dissonant. It seems lonely. It seems like Haruka and Michiru aren’t growing in their new lives because they keep making the same mistakes with one another.
Yes, they’re compatible. They had to be. But are they really happy? Have we ever seen Haruka and Michiru be happy together? We don’t see them when there isn’t some kind of crisis. What happens when the crises stop? What happens when Usagi finally builds Crystal Tokyo and ends the wars all of them have to fight?
Except… I feel you are completely missing the point, because they DO get friendship and companionship with other people? That’s literally the point, first Hotaru drives Mistress 9 away thanks to her friendship with Chibiusa and because “there are people who love her and who need her” and Usagi, a giant force of warmth, acceptance, and love, makes sure that the mistakes of the past are NOT repeated, and, again, she BREAKS THE RULES and makes new ones – because, for example, why should Hotaru have to die? She stakes the fate of the entire world on her belief that this one girl deserves to live just as much as anyone else, she defies all probability, and she wins. She does this time and again. And what do we have, in the end? We have the eternally lonely guardian of time being allowed to live a happy life on Earth, surrounded by a loving family; we get a Sailor Saturn who is for the first time in her life not a doomsday weapon, but a person, who gets another chance at the childhood she was denied the first time even as Hotaru Tomoe; and we get Haruka and Michiru, finally content, and at peace, and loving each other very much, who are at their happiest and who “have nothing to wish for”. “We carve our own destiny now” and “things are different, we don’t have to be alone anymore” are points made word for word by Pluto and Saturn in the manga and I urge you to re-read the fourth arc (especially the Outer Senshi chapters) because this is exactly what it deals with.
What mistakes are they making and what are they repeating?
Apparently when a crisis ends they travel the world and have lots of sex.
Ah, I’m sorry, I just… don’t see why you believe they shouldn’t be together and where you even argue this. The circumstances of them getting together and the reasons behind their lives becoming intertwined may be negative and wrought with peril and problems and The Mission and whatnot, but I don’t see how that invalidates their entire relationship – a “beautiful love in the face of adversity” is just as likely a reading, imo.
Haruka and Michiru start off with a very unhealthy, codependent relationship that is problematic in several ways, they end up together as a couple both because and in spite of who they are as senshi (jumping between them being the only ones who could ever truly understand one another, and them seemingly doing everything in their power to not acknowledge their feelings because of potentially interference with their duty and mission), but they also have a very rich arc of character development and we get to see their relationship evolve and grow. They have flaws and problems, sure, plenty, but wouldn’t they be very, very boring otherwise? I would continue this with a long dissertation on why they are good (in fact, the best) for each other, but more eloquent people than me have made most of the points already. I’d recommend reading Jet Wolf’s liveblog of the mini arc at the beginning of Stars (ep 167 in particular has some nice posts on how their relationship has evolved), taking a look at FT’s analysis tag, and pretty much all the meta docholligay ever wrote (for a more Michiru-centric look at the relationship, check here) to see why and how Haruka and Michiru belong and make the most sense together.
I am very interested in hearing who you had in mind as a match for Michiru, however.
