Michiru is a member of the Sailor Soldiers, female supernatural fighters who protect the Solar System from evil.

In both versions of the story she is portrayed as elegant, sophisticated, capable of sharp anger, occasionally cold, and fully dedicated to her duty as a Sailor Soldier.

[2] Michiru's closest bond is with Haruka, and Takeuchi has explicitly stated that the two are in a lesbian relationship in both the manga and the anime[3] as well as the musicals.

[5] As a character with different incarnations, special powers, transformations and a long lifetime virtually spanned between the Silver Millennium era and the 30th century, Michiru gains multiple aspects and aliases as the series progresses.

She wears a uniform colored in teal and cerulean, and unlike most of the other Soldiers, her gloves extend only to her mid-forearms and has an 8 stars shaped jewel on her teal-colored choker.

As she grows stronger, Sailor Neptune gains additional unique special abilities, and at key points her uniform changes to reflect this.

The first change takes place in Act 44 of the manga, when she obtains the Neptune Crystal and her outfit becomes similar to that of Super Sailor Moon.

Even in civilian form, Michiru has some precognitive gifts, as she occasionally states that "the sea is stormy" when there is an evil presence at work.

She is given three major attacks in the series, and although they all have English names (like those of the other Sailor Soldiers), each is also given kanji in the manga to denote the meaning to Japanese readers.

Chibiusa invokes the Deep Aqua Mirror's strength and power by stating its name and is able to teleport to Sailor Neptune's location.

Michiru's violin, a Stradivarius worth some five million dollars, is called the Marine Cathédrale and is named after "the temple of the sea".

Creator Naoko Takeuchi has said that she was shocked by the changes made to Michiru's personality in the anime series, but that she was glad fans still liked the character.

In street clothes, Michiru is supposed to be an "artist type" and to dress accordingly; in fact, initial drawings are extremely elegant and "adult", because she was originally intended to be involved in the all-female Takarazuka Revue with Haruka.

[29] In the original English dub her name is changed to "Michelle Kaioh" and her voice is provided by Barbara Radecki.

[30] In the stage musicals, Michiru has been played by ten actresses: Kaoru Sakamoto, Chikage Tomita, Miyuki Fuji, Hiroko Tahara, Sara Shimada, Yuhka Asami, Tomoko Inami, Takayo Oyama, Sayaka Fujioka and Ayana Kinoshita.

Asami, the longest-running of these actresses, knew nothing about Sailor Moon when she was given a role in the musical, but came to greatly admire the character of Michiru after reading the manga and watching the anime.

In 1994, with fifty one choices, Sailor Neptune was the seventh most popular character, receiving almost eight thousand votes more than Michiru, who was the ninth.

"[35] In her response to an academic essay on Sailor Moon by Mary Grigsby, author Emily Ravenwood compared Michiru and Haruka's relationship with Zoisite and Kunzite's relationship explaining that "in both cases, the feminine and masculine attributes are highlighted with a heavy hand (deliberate display of stereotypes)."

"[36] In an effort to avoid the controversy that a lesbian character in a cartoon aimed towards a younger audience would cause, given the social mores, Haruka and Michiru's relationship has been censored in certain countries.

However, whether in an attempt to be more faithful to the original Japanese or through failure to edit consistently, several episodes of the former English dub retained a noticeable amount of their casual flirting.

[39] Viz Media and Studiopolis' English-language redub of the series in 2016 would address the censorship issue by restoring any deleted scenes and preserving the integrity of the original Japanese scripts.