Haruna Sakurada, known as Patricia Haruna in the English dub, is the junior high school teacher of Usagi Tsukino. She maintains a youthful demeanor regardless of her actual age in all versions of the series, though her personality shifts slightly between adaptations. In both the anime and manga, she sports long brown hair and can be quite strict, particularly when dealing with Usagi's laziness. However, she also has a romantic side, often dreaming about finding a husband, which makes her an easy target for the Dark Kingdom during the first series. As the anime progresses, like many minor characters, she fades into the background and eventually disappears when the Sailor Senshi leave middle school.
The kanji in her name translate to "cherry blossom" (sakura), "rice field" (da), "spring" (haru), and "vegetables" (na). The "spring" part of her name becomes a playful pun within Naoko Takeuchi's works: Haruna briefly appears in an earlier series, The Cherry Project, which features her sister Fuyuna in one of its side stories. Other characters with similar names appear in Takeuchi's works, such as Natsuna in Codename: Sailor V and Akina in PQ Angels. The Japanese words fuyu, natsu, and aki mean "winter," "summer," and "autumn," respectively.
