So we all know that in the first episode of R, Luna restores the girls' memories using the crescent on the forehead. 

Which makes me wonder, WHY DID SHE NOT DO THIS IN CLASSIC. After finding the senshi, restore everyone's memories and Usagi could remember that she's the moon princess. 

Like some people do theorize that the girls were literally reincarnated after the final battle with Beryl so the theory that reincarnation automatically blocks Luna's beam may not work. 

Plot hole?  

I think it was because she didn't know everything either in the beginning of classic. She didn't know Usagi was Princess Serenity, all she knew was she needed to find someone who was Sailor Moon. Also, even if she did know Usagi was the princess and all, it would be fricken traumatizing to dump all that info on a not-too-emotionally-stable-and-incredibly-sensitive 14 year old. It was already pretty bad for her after she'd gotten used to weirdness in her life, things would've been worse if she was told all of that at the start.

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Also, even if she did know Usagi was the princess and all, it would be fricken traumatizing to dump all that info on a not-too-emotionally-stable-and-incredibly-sensitive 14 year old. It was already pretty bad for her after she'd gotten used to weirdness in her life, things would've been worse if she was told all of that at the start.

Especially when you consider what it would really mean.  It's one thing for the girls to witness a hologram and be told about the deaths of their past lives and learn about what happened to the Silver Millennium from a more detached third person perspective. It's an completely other thing to actually remember living the full experience.  To potentially remember not only what it felt like to die but to watch as every single person you knew died in unpleasant ways, and to remember all the details of your life that was suddenly ripped away from you.  That is some seriously heavy stuff to just suddenly dump on someone and hope they recover from.

Even beyond that by restoring the memories of their past lives you risk fundamentally altering their very personalities.  I mean a persons experiences are a large part of what makes them who they are.  At the very least the present day senshi likely had different different hopes and dreams from their past selves?  How do they reconcile the two together?  Uh-uh.  You are potentially denying their present versions the chance to live their own lives by burdening them with the full memories of their past?

So no I think Luna definitely did the right thing by not doing a full memory restore on the senshi is the first season even if she was capable of it.

Hmm thinking on it, I think even Luna's own memories were a bit fuzzy too? I'd imagine after having been in some sort of stasis for a few thousand years might do that to you. She didn't even know where Artemis was or that it was him she was talking to through the arcade for all that time. It was also possible that part of the plan was NOT to use the memory beam as they needed to awaken on their own in order to properly adjust and remember their past lives properly. I could see it also be a last ditch effort if matters had gotten desperate.

Who knows, it's possibly something the writers had not planned on doing until they got to R and had to figure out how the girls gain their memories back, so... plot device!

I seem to remember Luna's memories being a bit fuzzy (granted I haven't watched the anime in a while), but even if she did remember everything, I'll agree that it would be traumatizing to give those memories to Usagi right off the bat.

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WHY DID SHE NOT DO THIS IN CLASSIC

I think that it was because during Classic, the Sailor Senshi needed to actually be awakened in the present day, as oppose to simply restoring their memories. When those symbols appear on their foreheads in their respective premiere episodes, it is like their true power has emerged and they are capable of transforming, once they receive their transformation pens.

But when R comes around, they still have that awakened power, they just can't remember, which is why Luna could restore their memories.