Sailor Moon/Awesome

• Sailor Moon Episode 45 has several but the quintessential one for fans is when a badly beaten and dying Sailor Mars seemingly lies lifeless after having taken down one of the DD Girls (from inside an ice mound, something in itself pretty awesome). The last remaining DD Girl threatens Sailor Moon, Sailor Mars grabs her enemies vine-like arm, and shoots flame up it incinerating her. A good deal of awesome comes from the delivery:

Sailor Mars: [softly] I'm not done yet.
DD Girl: [look of horror] A-ah!

Sailor Mars: [softly] fire [rageful scream] SOOOOUUULLLL!

• • Same episode: Jupiter, while being attacked with electricity, smirks and says "You dare attack me with lightning?!" before suicidally electrocuting her tormentors with her own giant bolt of lightning.
  • Heck, just take the entire first season finale and call it one big Crowning Moment Of Awesome. There wasn't a single thing done wrong in those two episodes.
  • Have we forgotten Mercury? After a DD Girl has her within, for all intents and purposes, a giant ball of fire, virtually helpless:

Sailor Mercury: [looking at her micro-miniature supercomputer] This may be the last time I use this.
(She then proceeds to smirk, hit the illusion-creating DD Girl with it - destroying her ability to torment her friends via illusions - and die. Epically.)

• • Tsk, tsk, tsk. No Sailor Venus? Granted, her moment may not be as awesome as everyone else's (especially not Mars), but disintegrating one of the DD Girls with one shot of her Crescent Beam was still awesome.
• Episode 191, when Sailor Gamer had defeated Mars, Jupiter and Venus, and was about to kill Sailor Mercury. Mercury repeats to herself over and over that she won't be beaten, then shouts "...this is is not a game!!" She then explodes into battle aura, something that in the manga, only Usagi can do. Just as she's about to die, Star Gentle Uterus comes from left field.
• Episode 166 in season 4 gets a fun one from Usagi when she leaps off of Nehellenia's floating "island" as it rises back up into the new moon's seal, after Nehellenia throws an almost dead Chibiusa off of it about 30,000 feet or so up. Not only does she do that as Super Sailor Moon, she becomes Princess Serenity while she's falling and actually manages to catch Chibiusa in her arms and wake her up so she can summon Pegasus via Golden Crystal and save them both. This almost gets subverted a few moments later, but, being the hero that she is, Usagi manages to save the day. Well, Chibiusa and Pegasus do, anyway.
• Episode 125 when an exhausted, beaten and emotionally wrecked Sailor Moon who has lost access to the Holy Grail which usually powers her up to become Super Sailor Moon draws on the support of the the other Sailor Senshi and transforms anyway, so she can help Sailor Saturn. It just looks gorgeous for a start and then she forces her way inside a giant fireball. It makes you really wish they'd actually animated the final battle. Damn it.
• Let's not forget in the Marine Cathedral episode, where Michiru is first kidnapped, and upon waking to see Eudial threatening Haruka, proceeds to scream Uranus's name and wrench herself out of the vines and crap tying her to this plank thing, and then run forward as a shiteload of freaking arrows get launched at her several times, while screaming in this horribly painful voice, until Eudial runs out of arrows, just to try to save Haruka, who is typically considered the badass of the two anyway, while Haruka looks on in complete horror. And then Michiru gets her heart crystal ripped out of her body anyway. Totally awesome scene.
  • Which becomes still more awesome when Haruka tells Sailor Moon that "well, it's up to you now", then takes Eudial's gun and shoots herself, ripping out her own heart crystal.
  • Haruka and Michiru transforming on the back of a motorcycle. About two seconds of pure win.
  • Tuxedo Mask did it once too, which was incidentally on top of looking cool, also beat the pants of the * actual* transformation sequence he'd been given in the first series.
• In the end of an episode Kaorinite has captured Tuxedo Mask in glass and withstood a combined attack of 5 inner Senshi. She then declares it's over for them and just then Uranus (who was injured in the fight) decides to step in - and defeats Kaorinite with one blast by turning her glass attack around.
• By the last episode of the series, Usagi has witnessed every one of her friends and her lover die by the hand of Sailor Galaxia, who is possessed by Chaos, the source of all evil and of every previous season's Big Bad. However, refusing to fight Sailor Chaos because she refuses to hurt the innocent Galaxia, Usagi instead offers her hand in friendship to her enemy(who is the source of all evil), and essentially defeats the galaxy's most powerful being by believing in the good in her. Then she helps resurrect every Sailor senshi in the galaxy and return them to their planets. And she does this naked.
  • It's made even more awesome with knowledge of nudity being a sign of purity in Japan.
• Sailor Jupiter destroying a daimon on her own, something only Sailor Moon ever does, completely undermining the episode's Aesop about relying on others and not trying to do things on your own. If Aristotle was right, and anyone who works on their own "is either a beast or a god," well, I guess that makes Sailor Jupiter...
  • The Badass of the Inners? (Jupiter Thunder Dragon.)
    • Sailor Jupiter/Kino Makoto (Lita) also had a Crowning Moment of Awesome in her first episode. She beat up three street punks who almost went after Usagi (Serena) for bumping into them while running to school, she decked Zoicite in the face (but not before throwing her rose earring at her) while trying to save the crane game guy (in America, he's known as Game Machine Joe), and when Game Machine Joe turned into the video game-based Youma, Makoto (Lita) picked the demon up and hurled him into the bushes. All of this before it was revealed that she's Sailor Jupiter.
  • The Jovian symbol appears on her forehead during that last part, which makes it even more awesome.
• Episode 68, Sailor Moon R. Moon has taken quite a beating from Rubeus for shielding Chibi-Usa from him. Rubeus tells the injured Moon to just let him kill Chibi-Usa - and her reply?

Moon (gets up, still weak but VERY determined): You... You really think I'm that weak? I will prove to you right now... THAT I CAN PROTECT THIS LITTLE GIRL!

• • Also, in Episode 74, when Rubeus multiplies the gravity around Moon, enough to make her sink into the ground, and she still gets up!
• In the Super S manga, the scene where the Inner Senshi have been captured by the Amazoness Quartet and the Outers - who they haven't seen for quite a while - show up to save them. Complete with Sailor Saturn, who has stopped, well, being a baby.
• Sailor Galaxia is an awesome villain. In the manga, she kills most everyone, resurrects their corpses, and turns them against Usagi. And in the anime, she basically kills everyone on Earth because she can, and laughs about it the whole time.
• At the conclusion of the "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight in episode 125, Hotaru/Sailor Saturn appears by literally burning Mistress Nine away from the inside. The Saturn symbol breaking through the Death Busters' star was very effective.
• We've come this far without mentioning Sailor Saturn vs. Queen Nehellenia (restored by Galaxia) in the last anime season? Countless people - including most of the Sailor Senshi - are trapped in the spell of Nehellenia's mirror shards, a de-transformed and exhausted Usagi is struggling through thorns and vines to reach Nehellenia's lair after awakening from her own magical nightmare, and Chibi Moon is on the verge of ceasing to exist due to Mamoru's condition, yet Saturn does not hesitate to threaten her enemy with the devastating power of her nameless planet-annihilating ultimate attack, which would inevitably kill her in the process. When the shocked (perhaps even horrified) Nehellenia demands to know the reason she's willing to "pointlessly" throw away her own life, Saturn replies with "I believe in the Princess" (i.e. Usagi/Sailor Moon/Princess Serenity). Soon after, she makes good on her word, and directs a final prayer to her princess before dropping the Silence Glaive - and although Chibi Moon manages to prevent Saturn from completing her attack, the room is still left a total wreck from the resultant blast. Do not mess with Sailor Saturn or her True Companions! Period!
  • While we're talking about that episode, what about Jupiter's OUR PRINCESS'S LOVE WILL CONQUER EVERYTHING EVER speech that she yells whilst protecting Usagi and consequently being tortured to death by Nehellenia.
    • Actually, that mini-arc was a Crowning Moment of Awesome for all the Inner Seishi. Aside of Mako-chan, we have Rei/Mars refusing to abandon a captured Michiru/Neptune and killing the captor mook with one absolutely precise shot of her Flame Sniper, Minako/Venus plowing through many mooks to rescue Setsuna/Pluto from them, then using a Venus Love Me Chain to keep them from falling into an abyss, and especially Ami/Mercury taking a beating from the mook but refusing to cry or collapse as she searches for its weak point, leaving Haruka/Uranus speechless when she questions Ami and she replies "This... this is my fighting style!" Yeah, I know all of them get caught by Nehelenia and Usagi/Moon ultimately saves the day, but... WOW.
      • Usagi herself takes the Plucky Girl trope Up to Eleven around that time when she's forced to climb a stairway through a forest of thorns on the way to Nehellenia's castle. The thing was: she was not Sailor Moon at the time.
• In episode 13 the Senshi run Jadeite over with a plane for making sexist comments about them. Ouch.
• Even the local Butt Monkey Yuuichirou (Chad) has his own CMOA in the R season when he shields Rei from Koan's (Catsy's) attacks and shuts her up when she mocks him by saying he's doing it because he wants to, despite knowing that Rei doesn't love him that way.
  • Yuuichirou gets one earlier than that, in the episode (30) he first appears in, where he jumps in the way of a youma, saying "If it's to protect you, Rei, I wouldn't mind dying!"
• In the Stars anime, Minako gains one (that doubles as Crowning Moment of Heartwarming) during her talk with Yaten in the backstage of the Idol Singer contest. Yaten tries to reprehend Minako for getting herself in when she should be only fighting for the universe, but Minako turns the tables on him and says that not only she has Usagi's blessing, but that even when she wants to save the world, she doesn't want to forget her own dreams in the process. Way to go, Mina-P!
• One from the backstory: Queen Serenity from the Silver Millenium defeats the Dark Kingdom single-handedly. Made doubly awesome (and sad) by the Xanatos Gambit she also set: she's dying pretty much alone, but she arranges for Princess Serenity, Prince Endymion and all the Sailor Senshi to be reincarnated when it's time, sending Luna and Artemis into a Convenient Coma so they can be their guides. She was awesome, no doubt about it.
• One could argue that Prince Dimande's final act could be considered one. As Sailor Moon is trying to convince him Wiseman is evil, Wiseman shows up and gives Dimande a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness speech and attacks him. To which Dimande replies

Dimande: So you have shown your True Colors. I am Prince Dimande, leader of the Black Moon! Take me down if you can!

• • But wait, there's more! The two engage in a Beam-O-War. Wiseman turns to Sailor Moon and sends a HUGE blast at her, when Dimande jumps in the way and continues his fight, saying "Do not underestimate me!" Wiseman disappears, supposedly dead. Dimande collapses in Sailor Moon's arms, and delivers a Final Speech, possibly counting as both a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming and a Tear Jerker ending with:

Dimande: Sailor Moon...I love you.

• In one episode a daimon shows a tinge of mercy when she stops to see if a fallen Hotaru was all right. Hotaru—-who up to this moment had been nothing more than a sickly little girl-—looks up and her eyes glint. Next thing we see is the Daimon crashing to the ground fifty feet away. The trench her feet dug was also a nice touch.
• Sailor Moon basically telling Sailor Chi to take a long walk off a short pier before blasting her in the manga was awesome. Oh, and tanking a Planet Attack from all the bracletted evil-Senshi and repairing her broken staff and blasting them all to dust with a single attack while still kneeling on the floor.
• One moment wasn't even for a Sailor Senshi. So a little girl, Sakiko has psychic powers and can take a form as a ghost. She does it and the ghost goes out of control and starts wreaking havoc. Her father and her are just waiting to be killed by it but by that minute you think, Tuxedo Mask should appear right? Wrong. Instead she gets out of her father's hold and releases a bunch of energy to beat the ghost-thing. Wow.
• Sailor Mars' Weapon Upgrade comes when Koan injures her grandfather. As you can tell, Rei is pissed, and pushes Sailor Moon out of the way of Koan's Dark Fire, saying that it's her turn. But that's not the awesome moment. The awesome moment comes when both engage in a Beam-O-War, and Mars, focusing on her injured grandfather, uses Burning Mandala for the first time and utterly decimates Koan's attack. As a bonus, Koan's skirt is on fire when she teleports away!
• Kenji-Papa, of all people, in Sailor Moon R! When a Cardian is attacking the virtual reality theatre, and Shingo is threatened, Kenji-Papa turns Papa Wolf by blasting the Cardian with a fire extinguisher. His reasoning? "It's a parent's duty to protect their beloved child!" Way to go, Dad!
• Nehellenia's defeat in the Super S manga. She tried to steal the Silver Imperium Crystal from Super Sailor Moon, and, naturally, it didn't work. It leads to a moment where Usagi and Mamoru embrace, and in that embrace, the two are able to take back the crystal as they combine their love and their power. Naoko Takeuchi weaponized a romantic embrace. It gets even better as Sailor Moon delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Nehellenia in her One-Winged Angel form.

Queen Nehellenia: This can't be!!!
Sailor Moon: You can't take power! Power is created. And it can't be created alone... nor can it be used alone! I'll show you what our power is made of!

• How could this page have gone for this long without mentioning Sailor Moon R: The Movie? For the last six minutes of the movie, which are also a Tear Jerker and a Heartwarming Moment -- and contains Crowning Music of Awesome -- only two words need be said: Moon Revenge.
• Chibi-usa gets a major CMOA in Super S, when the Amazon Quartet's playing around with Pegasus results in him panicking and catching fire. Her response? To run through the flames, break his magic reins, and embrace him until the fire dies out.
• In the manga version of the Dark Kingdom saga, a brainwashed Makoto try and steal the Silver Crystal. It's Usagi against the super strong Makoto, she's doomed, right? Cue Minako knocking Makoto out with a single kick.