Luna

Luna is the black cat with a golden crescent moon on her forehead who appears in Naoko Takeuchi's 'Sailor Moon', first serialised as a manga in 1991 and adapted into one of the most widely exported anime series of the 1990s. She is the character who sets the entire story in motion: she finds an ordinary, unmotivated schoolgirl named Usagi Tsukino, tells her she is destined to be a magical guardian, and hands over the brooch that lets her transform.

What distinguishes Luna from the long line of talking animal sidekicks is how firmly she is written as the adult in the room. She is an advisor and a strategist rather than a pet, frequently exasperated by her charge's laziness and appetite, and much of the series' early humour comes from a cat lecturing a teenager who would rather be reading comics. She is joined later by Artemis, a white tomcat who fills the same role for another of the guardians.

Within the story, Luna is not an Earth cat at all but a survivor of a fallen lunar kingdom, sent forward in time with the memory of a civilisation to rebuild — which gives an otherwise comic character a genuine streak of melancholy.

For a generation of viewers worldwide, Luna was the definitive fictional cat: clever, sharp-tongued, and quietly carrying the weight of the plot. She remains among the most recognisable animated cats ever drawn, and the crescent moon marking is instantly readable even to people who have never watched an episode.