A lot of Sailor Moon fans are familiar with this anime-only prototype lovingly called āFukano Moonā, a piece drawn by illustrator Yoichi Fukano when in the development stage for Sailor Stars
The 90s anime and the manga ran very tightly together, which is why it only loosely follows the mangaās plot and has a lot of its own designs, plot development, and further develops the girlsā characters more than the manga was able to. While the anime development team knew there would be one more final power-up for Usagi, Naoko hadnāt finalized the design yet, so Fukano designed this Eternal Sailor Moon that blended more of Sailor Moon and Neo-Queen Serenity as a sort of between stageāsomething I think the live action PGSM took inspiration for with Princess Sailor Moon.
BUT, Yoichi Fukano was an artist for the anime team for most of the series run, and started working on concept art for S, season 3, while R was running. Once again, Naoko didnāt have the Outer Senshi concepts finalized yet, so Fukano gave us these, which looks like theyāve been (re)discovered and passed around online recently:
Haruka almost had black hair! Hotaru wasā¦ā¦not Hotaru! Word is that Haruka and Michiru would have been 14-15 instead of 16-17 in S, while Hotaru would have been Chibiusaās age instead of 12 (Chibiusaās physical appearance age in S and SuperS is debated, though generally agreed that sheās younger than Hotaru until sheās reborn)
Iām particularly interested that Plutoās uniform is a completely different colorāI wonder if these were designed prior to Plutoās animation/color design being finalized during R. And so many of the boots looking the same, without some of the individualization at this point, is so wild
Also all the scepters are so different! I do enjoy the idea that Chibiusa inherited the Cutie Moon Rod, but I also respect the eventual decision to have her gain her own individual weapons as her character arc largely revolves around wanting to be like but also not the exact same as her mother.
I also really wonder what could have been if Naoko had shared her own early design for Sailor Saturn and if we might have seen Fukano put this to the animeās style:












