At long last Sailor Moon Sailor Stars now has an official release in the United States. Enjoy Hulu’s new banner featuring characters we won’t be seeing until 6 or more episodes from now! This morning the final episode of Sailor Moon SuperS and the first episode of Sailor Stars were added to Hulu and Neon Alley. New episodes will be added every Monday until the series completes. With this we finally wrap up the story with Queen Nehelenia… and then we unwrap that story because well the anime didn’t quite match up with the manga and we need to go back and fix a few things. Sailor Stars was first released in Japan back in 1996 but it was never released in English when the series was originally dubbed. Fans who were looking to see the end of the series originally had to trade fan subbed video tapes, buy the expensive laserdiscs and later buy either bootlegged DVDs or expensive imports with no English subtitles. Some of us actually did all of those. I’d like to thank VKLL for keeping me in Sailor Stars fansubs over the years. Before we get to the first episode of Sailor Stars, we have one more episode of SuperS to take care of.
Episode 166, Dreams Forever: Fill the Heavens With Light, finishes up a story which already sort of seems finished. The enemy seemed defeated as the children of the world, including the viewers, were asked to say “Moon Crisis Power” and vanquish evil, but Nehelenia has one last trick up her sleeve! The circus tent she’s on is floating away in the sky towards the Moon. We get some backstory on why Nehelenia is evil. She was afraid to become old so she ate the mirrors of all of the people who loved her. Before retreating into her mirror she tosses Sailor Chibi Moon off of the tent to her death. Sailor Moon, being the bad ass that she is, does not hesitate and dives after her. This shows Sailor Moon’s true strength. She has no plan. She does not have any reason to expect this to work out but she refuses to give up even for a moment and jumps to her certain death to save her daughter. What follows is a fairly long but tense plunge down to the Earth as Sailor Moon eventually catches up to Sailor Chibi Moon. She finally wakes and summons Pegasus just in time to give them wings and save them right now the ground. Never mind that they are seen breaching the top of skyscrapers over a minute before being rescued, much longer than it would take a person falling at terminal velocity to hit the ground, but this is just for dramatic effect. The world is saved. Chibiusa is saved. Everyone is happy. Chibiusa and Helios say their goodbyes as the Amazoness Quartet decide it wouldn’t be their style to do the same. It is a bit sad that these characters don’t get to become Sailor Guardians like they should have, but the first six episodes of Sailor Stars have enough to fix without doing anything about that.
In the final scene of this episode all characters are wearing familiar clothes. They are actually wearing the exact same things they were wearing at the beginning of the Sailor Moon R movie both in the credits, at the flower garden and then at the Hikawa Shrine. All of Sailor Moon S and SuperS have taken place since the R movie! What are the chances that six people happen to be wearing all of the same clothes on the exact same day after two years? Chibiusa, naturally, is wearing something different. She would not likely have fit in her old clothes and it may not have been kept after her trip to the future and back. What do the movie and this episode have in common? I couldn’t find much though they were both directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara. This may be one reason for the similarity.
 The Sailor Moon R Movie |
 Sailor Moon SuperS episode 166 |
 The Sailor Moon R Movie |
 Sailor Moon SuperS episode 166 |
Episode 167, The Flower of Nightmares Scatters: The Queen of Darkness Returns, is the first episode of Sailor Moon Sailor Stars, but we won’t be seeing the Sailor Starlights, Star Crystals, Sailor Animamates or Sailor Chibi Chibi for a while. Why not? Well because we have to redo a bit of Sailor Moon SuperS to get things to the baseline they need to be at for Sailor Stars. A recurring problem with the original Sailor Moon anime is that it gets written while the manga is still in development so the stories deviate a lot. The main problem that this episode has to make up for is that Sailor Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Saturn were in the later half of the Dream arc of the manga but did not appear in Sailor Moon SuperS. There was this whole story in the manga where Hotaru grows at a fast rate and then they come join the rest of the gang. In the manga Professor Tomoe died in the big battle but in the anime he survived and kept Hotaru, his daughter who he loved. His daughter who he literally sold his soul to protect. The single only important thing in the world to him, his beloved daughter, is snatched away by Setsuna in this episode. This is completely unforgiveable and this is the kind of mess you end up with when your show deviates too much from the source material and then you have to play catch up.
Annoyingly we have to pretend Chibiusa is leaving again. This scene is absolutely terrible. I just can’t stand anything about it. We’ve seen Chibiusa try to leave and fail in Sailor Moon R a bunch of times, and then we see her leave in what is actually a very touching scene. Then Sailor Moon S wraps up with the fake leaving, which is lifted from the manga, which has Chibiusa make a big deal about leaving but then come back immediately. So now Chibiusa tries to leave but can’t because there are shooting stars which it turns out aren’t really what they seem. To make matters worse we do all of this song and dance but Chibiusa’s days are actually numbered and she will leave the series between episodes, with no tearful send off, and is erased from the show like Pootchie going back to his home planet. Surely some may have felt that there was too much focus on Chibiusa in Sailor Moon SuperS, but the answer to this is not, as Sailor Stars plays out, simply to erase her from the story. This scene should have been removed and placed when Chibiusa actually leaves, a time which should have had a stronger emotional impact, but here we are. So Nehelenia is back and the gang is all back together as Setsuna shows up with this new baby while Haruka and Michiru are fighting bad guys. They get their suits upgraded and now we’re all but caught up. Mostly. More on Saturn next episode.
Oh boy that was a pretty negative review. I guess I have strong feelings on some of these things. Don’t let my pessimism keep you from watching! There’s a lot of good stuff in Sailor Moon Sailor Stars to come and this first chunk of six episodes is a very good short arc of episodes which just doesn’t have much to do with the rest of the season.
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Nice Simpsons reference.
I used to send money to VKLL as well to get the subs!! I got to have all the movies and some of Stars!
Wow, I consider myself lucky. I didn’t know about Stars until I got back into Sailor Moon in my teens, and that was when all the videos had been fansubbed and uploaded onto YouTube. You never know how easy your life is until you hear about how other people had to struggle harder to get the same thing.
It was a struggle back then, but honestly that was part of the fun. It made every bit of anime merch you found some kind of rare treasure, and you’d find them in the strangest places (at 15 I found a Devil Hunter Yohko candle hidden away while laying on the floor at a Forever 21). The fansubs were awesome, we’d all get together and have watch parties, and lots of sub groups would send out tapes with 3 or 4 different shows on them.
It’s great to have everything at one’s fingertips now, but honestly I kind of miss the thrill of the hunt.
ashley, you are so on point
It’s psychological. We appreciate things we’ve worked for more than those we get without effort. I can’t imagine having access to Crunchyroll when I was a teenager. It would have changed the way I consumed anime drastically.
Sadly, once anime became easy to get and more affordable…it stopped being as fun to collect for me. I don’t understand that!
I was able to see Stars in 2001 due to a website were you could download subbed versions of it i remember it took a good 3 hours per episode but it was worth it, I got all the way to 178 before the site got shutdown. The rest i didn’t get to see until around 2005/06 thanks to youtube. I have to say overall this is my least favorite arc. I don’t like how you barely see the outers and you never see them transform same with Saturn she is only shown in the beginning and end of the arc and it would have been nice for Chibiusa to get a proper send off and maybe coming back to help fight at the end of the arc. If crystal goes this far it will be able to fix the mistakes of Supers and Stars.
What do you mean the Outers never transform. Uranus and Neptune are the only transformations in the first episode.
I agree I wished they would have put more Uranus,Neptune,Pluto and Saturn especially Pluto since I feel like she is the most neglected of them all with there never really being a back story of her or how she became sailor Pluto like all the others do. Sailor stars is still my favorite though but I also wished they would showed the send off of chibi consider long how she was the focus of two seasons. It is true they show transformations of Uranus and Neptune but would have been nice to see upgraded ones for them and just to see one for Saturn period would be nice since they never show one for here at all.
i do hope sailor moon stars will be available dubbed else where then hulu at moment watching all the sailor moon dubbed shows on ryuanime.tv is sailor stars actually part of the other stories i heard it was a spin off
SailorStars is the final chapter of the Sailor Moon series. It’s not a spin-off.
oh ok im new to sailor moon i did a bit research i read it was spin off but ok thanks for the info
Welcome to the fandom!
When you get to watch SailorStars you’ll get it, but I can see where someone may have perceived it to be a spin-off, given how much things change (limited Tuxedo Mask, heavy focus on the Starlights, Chibi Chibi instead of Chibi-Usa).
I always preferred the corresponding manga arc to the anime SailorStars season, but the ending is pretty solid and it leaves me feeling satisfied.
I hope you enjoy your first viewing of this season, wayne
Cheers and if sailor stars gets away from hulu then I can watch it since hulu is blocked in uk also hope the last few sailor super s come to ryuanim as well im really enjoying sailor moon hope to watch all of them
In fairness to Setsuna, I’m not sure it’s entirely clear she kidnapped baby Hotaru. I’m sure she at least explained the situation to Professor Tomoe first and he may have willingly given her over but the scene cuts away before we can see the rest of what happens which does create this awkward situation. I think there’s plenty of great moments in this episode though, like I love how much more explicit this episode is about Haruka and Michiru’s relationship. Although it was a bit obvious in S it still seemed like they kind of danced around the issue with their relationship but here it’s very clear and explicit and I love Haruka’s cute line about Michiru’s bed talk. I wonder if they’re into BDSM or dirty talk? Already this first episode’s tone seems to establish that Stars is going to be even more mature and darker than S. I wonder how DiC or Cloverway would have censored the nudity of Nehelinia’s monsters? They seem rather revealing for Sailor Moon monsters.
probably just erase the boob and vagina lines like they did for the transformations
They remind me of the Snow Dancers in the S movie which I don’t think they did anything with.
There is no need for someone who posted this article to criticize Chibiusa and the fourth season Sailor Moon. This fourth season reminds of The Little Princess movie between Chibiusa and Helios. And these wacky monsters remind me of the Sid and Marty Kroft series.
i think its okay to critisize, its not going to make the episodes change at all, were all entitled to our opinions and the main reason anybody is upset is because there was so much more potential for this season, whether the dream arc was complete or not. all it would have taken was a conversation with naoko regarding her projection for the season. it is what it is though
I don’t think the author is criticizing Chibi-usa as much as it is criticizing the way the 90s anime treated her character. I personally prefer Chibi-usa in the manga and Crystal myself but it’s a fair point the 90s anime did recycle the trope of Chibi-usa having a fake leave too many times yet did nothing for her when she actually did leave. I’m sure Naoko was probably not pleased with how the 90s anime treated Chibi-usa either hence why we now have Crystal.
I’m not criticizing Chibiusa at all. I’m just a bit miffed that we were shown her departure scene for no real reason, something we’ve seen time and time again, only to have her leave without fanfare. I would have preferred if we had instead gotten a proper farewell for her or alternatively kept her around for the season just as a less prominent character than she was in SuperS.
If one cannot criticize the things they love, one is simply a tool
Without some criticism, how can anyone ever mature or a product show improve?