Osaka Naru: baddie magnet?

[Wyrd]

Idiot ball,

Plot Induced Stupidity

Um, no. Hotaru didn't touch anybody and she had a tendency to creep out the rest of her class. They avoided her or teased her from a distance. Unless her limbs made audible noises when they moved, and were relatively close to the size of a normal limb, they would have no reason to suspect she had cybernetic parts at all. If you saw someone who always wore long sleeved shirts and long gloves who had been in an explosion, which are you more likely to think: Cybernetic limbs or burn damage?

We are never shown any life on anything save the Moon that I'm aware of.

It looks more like slavery as practiced in the Roman empire.

I see no suggestion of slavery at any point.

I've seen enough of PGSM to know it was very poorly done, and has very little in common with the anime or manga.

It is poorly done in the same sense that the shows the various Power Rangers are based on are poorly done. They are very well done, but are built around cultural elements such as kabuki theater that we don't share. PGSM is the only one to specifically address life on the other planets beyond the Senshi.

I would expect Pharaoh 90 to by flying there under it's own power since we have no reason to think it could not.

And no reason to think it could. We never see it moving itself under its own power. We see it manipulating itself to send out tendrils and such, and we see that it is able to reverse the portal it is moving through, but it could be the energies of that portal that is moving it.

So, you think Pharaoh 90 had more then enough time to get to another planet if it wanted to.

Again, no. It might have been able to make a last ditch attempt at conquering a place where it had already invested substantial resources, but that does not mean that it had time to locate a new target and start from scratch. There is also the fact that StarS suggests that Earth's tech level is on the low end of the galactic average.

And it never crosses their minds to go somewhere other then Earth?

Unlike youma, which can feed off of the life energy of animals as well as humans(making Beryl once again a poor leader by not having her send youma into the woods to drain animals and plants, even if it was less efficient), pure heart crystals apparently only occur in sapient beings. As a result, any planet that they invaded which had the resources necessary to open their portal would have an indigenous population.

But the Senshi didn't know who he was in the vaguest way.

In the manga, as I recall, Ami comments on his recently becoming famous but that little was known about him because he was also quite reclusive, like any number of scientists.

[Pale Wolf]

There is also the fact that StarS suggests that Earth's tech level is on the low end of the galactic average.

And that 80-90% of it is under Galaxia's control...

Certainly safer to go after Earth, all things considered.

[Pusakuronu]

Unlike youma, which can feed off of the life energy of animals as well as humans(making Beryl once again a poor leader by not having her send youma into the woods to drain animals and plants, even if it was less efficient), pure heart crystals apparently only occur in sapient beings. As a result, any planet that they invaded which had the resources necessary to open their portal would have an indigenous population.

I find it highly unlikely that youma feed off life energy. The setting just doesn't work if they do. Assuming that they *do* feed on life energy would lead to either of the following:
1) there is no life energy in the Dark Kingdom. The youma starve during their exile.
2) there is life energy in the Dark Kingdom. Metallia is revived without anyone having to venture forth to Earth.

Since neither happened, I'd say it's safe to assume that youma do not feed on life energy like the Doom Tree aliens do. Sure, youma drain energy all the time, but they collect it for later use. We have never seen one consume it.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

As I recall, the Youma themselves are corrupted humans from the old Earth Kingdom.
They can eat food like anyone else, but they're so far corrupted they can just as easily sustain themselves by sucking people dry.

Metallia, being a child of Chaos, can't feed on food like humans, and has been stuck in a near state of starvation and needs life energy to revive. Part of why the Youma are so monstrously corrupted is probably because in the original attack, Metallia probably fed off them, and gave them youma-ness in exchange for their offerings of soul/life force.

[Wyrd]

I find it highly unlikely that youma feed off life energy. The setting just doesn't work if they do. Assuming that they *do* feed on life energy would lead to either of the following:
1) there is no life energy in the Dark Kingdom. The youma starve during their exile.
2) there is life energy in the Dark Kingdom. Metallia is revived without anyone having to venture forth to Earth.

Since neither happened, I'd say it's safe to assume that youma do not feed on life energy like the Doom Tree aliens do. Sure, youma drain energy all the time, but they collect it for later use. We have never seen one consume it.

There are other options.

1)The sealed dimension of the Dark Kingdom may have had a different rate of time before the seal cracked an it became linked once more with the Earth, such that mere months passed inside.

2)The youma and Metallia, or just the youma, were put into stasis for all of that time.

3)Metallia had vast reserves of energy from draining the life of 8 of the 13(or more) inhabited worlds of the Silver Millenium, which it used to keep the youma just barely alive until the seal weakened enough to be breached, leaving Metallia in the exhausted state we see in the series.

4)Youma weren't the only things sealed away, some of the people fighting them and some of the people fighting beside them getting sealed as well. This created a source of life energy that was carefully hoarded but was not enough to keep their forces at anywhere near full power.

5) The youma turned to feeding off of each other, reducing an army that had been capable of wiping out an interplanetary empire to a few hundred survivors.

Remember that in both the manga and PGSM, it is clearly stated that Beryl and her generals were reincarnated just as the Senshi and Endymion were. The manga specifically states that beryl found the prison/its link to the physical world and opened the way to the Dark Kingdom from the outside. Once she had been fully reawakened by Metallia, she hunted down the reincarnations of the Shittenou and put them back under Metallia's control in much the same way that she temporarily put Mamoru under her control in the Anime. She couldn't completely override their purpose, that of protecting their prince, but could convince them that serving her was the way to save him from that evil Moon trollop who had used her powers to brainwash their prince.

[Pusakuronu]

There are other options.

*snip*

Oh, sure, these justifications all work (aside from 3. and 4, since they'd use the energy to restore Metallia instead). The thing is, they are all justifying something that doesn't need to be justified. As far as I know, youma feeding on life energy is 100% fanon. They give no indication in the show that they want to feed on life energy. They aren't even draining or handling the energy themselves for the most part, but instead use gadgets that the generals provided. I can't remember a single youma who drained life energy without the help of some intermediary, now that I think about it. Then again, I might have forgotten some. In any case, it's clear that they are collecting the energy, not consuming it.

[Wyrd]

3 and 4 both have Metallia surviving, though only barely, until the seal could be broken from the outside. This is why Metallia is in such a drained state at that point and needs so much energy to be revived. They don't provide enough energy to revive Metallia without leaving the Dark Kingdom because what resources they had had been almost entirely spent.

I can recall multiple instances of a youma draining an individual without the use of an outside device. When Nephrite, in the anime, was harvesting energy, the youma were actually created from the spell on an item associated with the person and the energy they absorbed from them. I will admit that this is my interpretation of those scenes, but Youma may not need much energy to sustain themselves unless they are trying to reproduce. Asexual reproduction through harvesting energy would explain why all youma appear to be of the same gender.

[Pusakuronu]

3 and 4 both have Metallia surviving, though only barely, until the seal could be broken from the outside. This is why Metallia is in such a drained state at that point and needs so much energy to be revived. They don't provide enough energy to revive Metallia without leaving the Dark Kingdom because what resources they had had been almost entirely spent.

I can recall multiple instances of a youma draining an individual without the use of an outside device. When Nephrite, in the anime, was harvesting energy, the youma were actually created from the spell on an item associated with the person and the energy they absorbed from them. I will admit that this is my interpretation of those scenes, but Youma may not need much energy to sustain themselves unless they are trying to reproduce. Asexual reproduction through harvesting energy would explain why all youma appear to be of the same gender.

Being blasted with the silver crystal sounds like a good enough reason to me for Metallia to be in a sorry state.

Ah. I interpret that more as Nephrite implanting the youma into some objects (doesn't he even say that's what he does?), where they influence the objects' owners into reaching their maximum energy. He's summoning them from various constellations, isn't he? Also, there were male youma in the show. Most of them were transformed humans, but Sailor V also defeated a normal one in the flashback.

[Wyrd]

I don't recall any male youma. Male Daimons, yes, and possessed men, but no male youma.

As for Sailor V, the only male I recall her fighting was basically a lesser general like Nephrite, and not an actual youma.

[Crescent Pulsar R]

Being blasted with the silver crystal sounds like a good enough reason to me for Metallia to be in a sorry state.

I don't know about the anime, but in the manga Metallia got stronger when the silver crystal was used on her. It ultimately required a direct hit to Metallia's weak spot to do her in. Queen Serenity didn't know about her weak spot (considering how Metallia was still alive), so she must have encountered the same problem with Metallia feeding on her attacks, until she decided to seal her. So Metallia probably lost energy during her imprisonment, which would have lasted for thousands of years.

As for this discussion about energy absorption/transference, it probably depends on whether it's the anime or the manga, and if a distinction is drawn between youma, cardians, daimons, lemures/remless, and animates. My impression of the youma, in the manga, is that they don't exist prior to being summoned/magicked up for a task, and would have been dismissed into nothing if they hadn't been destroyed by the senshi. In that way, they're probably transferring energy to or for Metallia.

[Pusakuronu]

I don't recall any male youma. Male Daimons, yes, and possessed men, but no male youma.

As for Sailor V, the only male I recall her fighting was basically a lesser general like Nephrite, and not an actual youma.

This guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udDopwXfgkQ#t=2m33s

Note how he crumbles into dust. Regular youma, not possessed human.

I don't know about the anime, but in the manga Metallia got stronger when the silver crystal was used on her. It ultimately required a direct hit to Metallia's weak spot to do her in. Queen Serenity didn't know about her weak spot (considering how Metallia was still alive), so she must have encountered the same problem with Metallia feeding on her attacks, until she decided to seal her. So Metallia probably lost energy during her imprisonment, which would have lasted for thousands of years.

Sailor Moon didn't know anything about Metallia's weak spot in the anime either, and the blast worked just fine. There's really no reason to mix continuities just to complicate things.

Also, in the anime, the youma do exist before being summoned, since we see them fill Beryl's throne room.

[Wyrd]

Also, in the anime, the youma do exist before being summoned, since we see them fill Beryl's throne room.

Unless she summoned all of those youma either for practice or because she felt that as a queen she deserved a royal court. The lady was crazy enough to waste valuable energy on her own ego that should have gone to strengthening Metallia, or so I think.

In PGSM, which is jumping continuities again, Metallia isn't the spawn of Chaos, it is the other half of the ginzuishou. the more powerful the ginzuishou got, and the more worlds it made habitable, the stronger Metallia grew until they could no longer keep it imprisoned. Kind of like a sentient magical equivalent to toxic waste.

[Zwzn]

Also, in the anime, the youma do exist before being summoned, since we see them fill Beryl's throne room.

Unless she summoned all of those youma either for practice or because she felt that as a queen she deserved a royal court. The lady was crazy enough to waste valuable energy on her own ego that should have gone to strengthening Metallia, or so I think.

In PGSM, which is jumping continuities again, Metallia isn't the spawn of Chaos, it is the other half of the ginzuishou. the more powerful the ginzuishou got, and the more worlds it made habitable, the stronger Metallia grew until they could no longer keep it imprisoned. Kind of like a sentient magical equivalent to toxic waste.

Check episode 44. It appears that in the anime at least that all of Beryl's army faced the same fate she and Metallia faced.

You might want to keep in mind that everything in Sailor Moon has some basis in myth and legend.

The only monsters I recall taking energy directly are cardians

[Wyrd]

If they were summons or energy constructs they could have died when their summoner died. It is also possible that the youma are extensions of Metallia much like Metallia is an extension of Chaos(according to StarS, which retconned its origin).

As for everything being based in myth and legend, tales of monsters that feed on the various energies of humans are prevalent around the world. The ginzuishou being the counterpart of Metallia was an expression of the Asian belief in balance. In order to create that much good/order in the process of making five worlds habitable, it had to create an equal amount of evil/chaos. Instead of dealing with that chaos, they tried to lock it away, where the imbalance eventually became enough to free it, leading to a mutual destruction of its energy and everything that the ginzuishou had created. The only way to ultimately destroy Metallia in that continuity was to destroy the ginzuishou. Both had to go to restore the balance.

[Cheb]

Note that many an anime/manga have something called "youma". In most cases these are weaker servitor monsters working under more serious monsters. Sazan Aizu (3x3 eyes) is one example.
The form of the "youma" varies, though. In many series these are nothing like humans.

In one of the SM anime episodes there was a youkai whom Beryl described as being "similar to, but a bit different from our youma" (AFAIR).
So, the youma could be hatred, envy and other bad things given life. As long as they hate, envy and resent each other, there's no need for any additional sustenance