Dead Moon Circus
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 An eyeball symbol seen throughout the Circus |
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| Dead Moon Circus | |
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| Story arc: | Sailor Moon SuperS |
| Dub name: | Dark Moon Circus |
| Leader: | Zirconia |
| Chaos form: | Queen Nehellenia |
| Key figures: | Amazon Trio, Amazoness Quartet, Xenotime, Zeolite, Zircon |
| MOTD: | Lemures |
| Tools: | Circus resources, Black Mirror, Golden Crystal (briefly) |
The Dead Moon Circus (デッドムーンサーカス Deddo Mūn Sākasu?) are a group of fictional antagonists from the Sailor Moon metaseries. They are the primary villains of the series' fourth season, called Dream in the manga and SuperS in the anime. In the English anime, they are called the Dark Moon Circus.
The Dead Moon Circus is led by Queen Nehellenia, who is trapped within a mirror, and her second-in-command, the twisted Zirconia. They are searching for the legendary Golden Crystal, which will allow Nehellenia to break free of her entrapment and take over the Earth. They are the only group of villains with two subordinate groups: the Amazon Trio and the Amazoness Quartet.
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[edit] Story
During an eclipse of the sun, a strange circus floats into Jūban, Tokyo, but no one seems to take notice. The Dead Moon Circus has discovered that the Golden Crystal is possessed by one Pegasus, who is hiding in the beautiful dream of an unknown human. It is the job of the Amazon Trio to find this person and capture Pegasus. Pegasus is hiding in someone's dreams. To find Pegasus, the Dead Moon Circus remove innocent people's dream mirrors. Dream Mirrors, when removed from their hosts, make it possible to literally look inside someone's dreams. After many failed attempts, Zirconia allows the Amazoness Quartet to exterminate the Trio and take over. They eventually learn that they can discern Pegasus's presence at once just by looking at the mirror's color—a golden mirror will be the one with Pegasus inside.
They are ultimately thwarted by the Sailor Senshi, and Queen Nehellenia is returned to her banishment inside the mirror. Here, though trapped and in solitude, she can retain her false dream and remain beautiful and young forever.
In the anime, Nehellenia returns for the first arc of Sailor Stars when her seal is broken by an unknown female. This person is later revealed to be Sailor Galaxia, who knew that her jealousy towards Sailor Moon and her sorrow in her solitary life would ensure the premature awakening of Sailor Saturn. Nehellenia tries to steal Mamoru Chiba away from the Moon Princess, but Usagi uses the power of her forgiveness to give Nehellenia a second chance at life.
[edit] Queen Nehellenia
Queen Nehellenia (女王ネヘレニア Joō Neherenia?), leader of the Dead Moon Circus, is named after the mineral nepheline and the Teutonic goddess Nehalennia. In the English version her name is spelled Nehelenia. She first appears in Episode 148 of the anime.
In the manga, she is the dark mirror image of Queen Serenity; the self-styled Queen of the dark center of the moon who first made herself known during the Silver Millennium. Queen Nehellenia arrived at the celebration of Princess Serenity's birth. Swirling with dark energy, she confronted the Queen, who used her crescent moon wand to seal Nehellenia inside a dark mirror world forever. As retaliation, Nehellenia cast a curse that the Moon Kingdom would fall and the princess would never inherit her throne. Her dark magic ultimately brought about the end of the Silver Millennium, but she lived on.
However, over one thousand years later, a solar eclipse allowed her to spread her curse to the earth by way of infectious nightmares aided by her minions, the Dead Moon Circus. Nehellenia still believed that she was the rightful owner and heir of the illusory Golden Crystal; and set out to steal it. After capturing Helios, her mirror was shattered and she fled to Elysion. There she confronted the Sailor Soldiers one last time, but the combination of the Golden Crystal of the Earth together with the Mystical Silver Crystal, bound by the love of Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask for one another, was too strong. Nehellenia shrivelled into a wizened old woman, and, after being sealed inside her mirror once more, vanished completely. In the manga its revealed that she is an incarnation of the final arch-villain, Chaos.
In the anime, Nehellenia is the dark mirror of the moon who had the dream to stay young and beautiful forever. She was not able to attain her dream, much like the witch in fairy tale Snow White, when she looked into an enchanted mirror she saw herself aged and ugly. In order to retain her beauty, she consumed the dreams of the people of her kingdom. Those subjects became Lemures, the main monsters of the day in the series, and formed the Dead Moon Circus.
By the end of SuperS, Queen Nehellenia was sealed away. In Sailor Stars, she was released from the seal by Sailor Galaxia, who encouraged her to take her revenge by unleashing a nightmare upon the "people of the White Moon". After dragging Mamoru into her nightmare dimension, she captures all the Sailor Soldiers, and after being confronted by a powerless Usagi, her tragic past is revealed. As a child, she felt completely alone due to her status as young queen, and never felt that she had any real friends or loved ones. As a result, she learned to love herself, leading to her incredible vanity as she grew up. It is for this reason that she wanted to stay beautiful forever, so that others would at least admire her even if they would never love her. However, Nehellenia is ultimately redeemed by the Senshi's forgiveness, and reborn as a small child around Chibiusa's physical age. She is referred to as "Queen" even at this age, and she only remembers everything as a bad dream. However, signs point to her having learned her lesson, as she is seen making an effort to become close to her subjects as true friends.
In the anime, Nehellenia has two different voice actresses: the adult, evil version voiced by Yoshiko Sakakibara; and the good, reborn child version voiced by Wakana Yamazaki. In the dub version, the adult Queen Nehellenia was voiced by Linda Ballantyne who was the third dub voice for Usagi/Serena.[citation needed] The child Nehellenia has no dub voice, as she was only shown as a child during the undubbed Sailor Stars.
[edit] Zirconia
Zirconia (ジルコニア Jirukonia?) appears as an ugly, insectlike old woman with lavender skin. Secondary to Queen Nehellenia, she controls the Amazoness Quartet and the Amazon Trio. Her name is derived from the mineral Zirconium dioxide, which is often called Zirconia. She first appears in Episode 128 of the anime and Act 34 of the manga. In the English-language adaptation of the anime, Zirconia is male.
In the anime, Zirconia looks the way Nehellenia would look if she were old, and thus she haunts the queen's dreams. Zirconia is the personification of Queen Nehellenia's nightmares, given form to lead the Dead Moon Circus to find Pegasus and carry out the Queen's revenge. She commands the Amazon Trio to go to earth and seek out those with beautiful dreams, who might have the Dream Mirror in which Pegasus is hiding. She uses Zircon, a flying eyeball that usually sits atop her staff, to gather images of those with beautiful dreams, which she gives to the Amazon Trio as their targets. She soon becomes impatient with the Amazon Trio, and allows the Amazoness Quartet to send a lemures to kill them. She then sends the Amazones Quartetto to do what the Trio failed to accomplish. They too, failed to find Pegasus, and Zirconia kidnaps ChibiUsa, sending the young girl into Queen Nehellenia's dimension. She goes into battle with the Senshi, who almost defeat her. She asks the Amazones Quartet for their help, but betrays them in order to use their energy to revive herself. When Nehellenia is released from her mirror, Zirconia disappears.
In the manga, the Amazon Quartet calls her bāsan, meaning "grandmother" or "old woman," and she acts as a mediator between them and Nehellenia. Like the other members of the Dead Moon Circus, she doesn't like light, and feels comfortable only in darkness. She speaks to Nehellenia through the mirror, complimenting her often. Little is known about her motivations, but the most important thing to her is to figure out how to make Nehellenia's plans work. Her first mission for the Quartet is to make sure that the circus is a success on Earth, and then taking over everything for the Dead Moon circus, little by little. She tells them to proceed cautiously when dealing with the Senshi, and lets them know that she will not tolerate a failure. In order to conquer the Earth, she says, they must first destroy the Senshi by filling them with nightmares. Sailor Saturn eventually manages to free the Quartet from Zirconia's influence, but the old woman traps them in their Amazon Stones. She then traps Sailor Saturn and Sailor ChibiMoon inside two broken shards of mirror. She then sends the shards and the stones to the other side of the mirror to Nehellenia. Later, after Helios has used the last bit of his strength, Zirconia traps Sailor Moon and the Senshi in nightmares. She makes the Senshi believe that Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Kamen have been killed, while she makes Sailor Moon believe that all of the other Senshi are dead and she is dying as well. Tuxedo Kamen manages to awaken the Senshi, who do a group attack on Zirconia, injuring her and forcing her to flee. She runs into the mirror, followed by Sailor Moon... but Sailor Moon only finds Nehellenia on the other side. Zirconia's last appearance is made after Nehellenia seems to be defeated, only to tell them that the evil Queen is not dead yet.
Zirconia is voiced by seiyuu Hisako Kyōda in the original anime. [1]
[edit] Zircon
Zircon (ジルコン Jirukon?) is Zirconia's companion and tool, a flaming eyeball with wings. In the beginning, it simply floats around her staff, but later can fly anywhere, and Zirconia uses it to gather images of those with beautiful dreams. She also uses it as a weapon, or to spy on her underlings. When Zircon is hit hard, any images it has gathered but not yet presented become distorted. It can also be used as a weapon with which to remove a human's Dream Mirror, similar to the Amazon Stones of the Quartet.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Hitoshi Doi's Seiyuu Database. Retrieved on 2006-11-10.
- Biggs, Gina. Bunny's Tour of the Silver Millennium - Dead Moon Circus. Retrieved January 5, 2006.
- Carroll, Elizabeth. The Oracle - Queen Nehellenia. Retrieved September 3, 2006.
[edit] External links
- In Defense of SuperS Information on the SuperS season
- Nethermoon - A detailed Nehellenia site
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