This week on Hulu and Neon Alley‘s new episodes of Sailor Moon Sailor Stars everyone dies! With episodes 196 and 197 Sailor Galaxia has laid siege to the city and she’s going through Star Seeds like candy. This includes some favourite characters and someone who it turns out has been dead for most of the season. Also we find a convoluted reason to get good guy superheroes fighting each other, something I despise and which film critics seem to be sick of too!
Episode 196, Countdown to Destruction: the Sailor Guardians’ Last Battle, is pretty much what the title says. Galaxia is destroying the city and collecting Star Seeds. She got one earlier in the season, then one last episode and now she’s going for a whole bunch. Did she get others through the season on other planets or did she do that earlier? Not really important. What is important is the return of Sailor Saturn! She arrives already transformed of course, because there was no money for a transformation sequence I guess. We start off with the Sailor Starlights confronting Galaxia and then Sailor Chibi Chibi Moon brings the gang in to assist. This does not go very well as she kills Sailor Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus. It’s really all about Sailor Mars though. It’s always all about Sailor Mars. This mirrors the first time everyone died in the first season where Mars is the last to go and the first ghost to touch Usagi. It’s never Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus. It’s Mars and the rest. It’s Rei and the rest. Once again we see Sailor Moon single out Sailor Mars as her single closest friend. She has a big heart and has a love for all of her friends, but there is something special about this relationship which transcends all others. As if that weren’t enough we see the Star Seeds join others and Sailor Moon recognizes one that shines brighter than any other. Mamoru’s Star Seed. It turns out there was a good reason he hasn’t been returning her letters and that’s because he’s dead. Having Usagi be generally unaware of Mamoru’s death was a big change from the Manga, but one which I think worked well with the story of the Manga. Usagi thought he was being distant and her relationship with Seiya was a distraction from this. Turns out he was not being a jerk at all. Sailor Star Fighter sees this Star Seed and all I can read from her face is “Wow. Even this guy’s Star Seed is cooler than me.”. Poor Seiya never had a chance.
Episode 197, Ruler of the Galaxy: the Menace of Galaxia, isn’t done killing people off. First we see what happened to Mamoru. As we know he never got to the states, but it wasn’t clear what happened on that plane. Galaxia faced off against him and took his Star Seed. Tuxedo Mask’s reaction to this is priceless. He does not fear what she will do because he knows that Usagi will defeat her. I wonder what happened to the rest of the plane. Surely if it had gone down or everyone had been killed it would have made headlines and Usagi would have heard about it. Perhaps in this world of superheroes and weekly monster attacks on the city a missing plane doesn’t get noticed. So the gang is teleported away from Galaxia, which is very temporary. Enter Sailor Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Saturn who are once again already transformed. We learn that Sailor Galaxia is the one who orchestrated the return of Nehelenia to awaken Sailor Saturn so that she could have another True Star Seed that wasn’t otherwise in the game. This is like using a cheat device to catch Mew even though he’s not in the game. This makes me wonder why Hotaru didn’t have a True Star Seed inside of her prior to becoming Sailor Saturn again. Is that really how this works? After a little fight it seems like Sailor Uranus and Neptune decide to be evil. Is this what happened with the Sailor Animamates? It got the impression that they were slaves but getting Sailor Galaxia’s bracelets does not seem to cognitively affect these two. We get a fight between good guys. This is a pet peeve of mine in comics and comic based properties, but here it isn’t about who would actually win. I’m sick and tired of excuses in Avengers movies for the heroes to fight each other and now in the summer of movies that are nothing more than convoluted reasons to have good guys fight each other I think I’ve hit a saturation point of tolerating this kind of Batman V Superman and Civil War nonsense. So Sailor Uranus and Neptune kill Sailor Pluto and Saturn. The rest of the gang arrives just at the right time to see them die. Oh well I guess this means no transformation sequence for Sailor Saturn ever! Maybe in Sailor Moon Crystal we will see this. So Sailor Uranus and Neptune seem to be evil and Usagi’s next. To be continued!
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Very sad what happened to the Inner Guardians, as well as Saturn and Pluto. Three episodes left!
Sometimes the one you argue most with is also the one dearest to you.
I take it you didn’t like Batman v. Superman and are not looking forward to X-Men: Apocalypse or Captain America: Civil War?
Haven’t seen it yet and trying to keep an open mind. While I enjoyed the first two Avengers movies my most hated part of each was silly reasons to have Avengers fight each other. I’m reminded of all the times Ryu or Ken gets brainwashed in some anime series so that they can fight each other. People just want to see who would win in a fight!
Well, if you want my opinion, I enjoyed BvS. Yeah, it wasn’t the perfect movie, and parts dragged, especially in the first half, but for what it was aiming for, it did a very good job, much better than Man of Steel, and I’m looking forward to Suicide Squad in August.
I feel sailor Mars and sailor moon being super close is like you said a mirror of sailor moon season 1 of the 90’s anime because I believe it was an unexpected success. They probably thought this was the best time mirror their beginning. I always thought part of the reason they killed all the soldiers again in sailor stars was some what of a throwback to Season 1. The manga had them die in stars, but the way how they kind of died was similar to the first season of the 90’s anime. I wish the anime did not make it seem like sailor Mars was sailor moon’s best friend because it makes draws a lot of emphasis that she seems to care about Mars more. I can believe that someone you argue with a lot is also someone you can be close with just because that had happened to a lot of people including myself but it makes it seem as if Mars is the most important which kind of sucks which holds true for the first season as well.
Everything you said about Mamoru, his death and the fact that you no one was suspicious when a plane went missing is true. I mean maybe Galaxia fixed those problems but seriously that has always been one of the issues with the series both in the manga and the 90’s anime. There are so many plot holes that don’t make sense. Crystal didn’t fix any of the plot holes already in the manga but if they reboot the series again let’s hope the people writing the anime series fix the plot holes. There are too many to name but that whole bit about Mamoru basically tells you how little the writers even paid attention to the anime series. That is a huge plot hole. She would have known much quicker that he died because either the news would report about it or something.
Now on to sailor Saturn. I’ve been waiting for this episode and how it makes Galaxia such a terrible villain. I’m assuming sailor soldiers have the true star seeds/ sailor crystals, not regular people so sailor Saturn had to be awakened to steal her true star seed/ sailor crystal. Unfortunately it creates a huge plot hole for Galaxia because I’d she knew Saturn had to be awakened that means she knew who sailor Saturn is or else why would she need to awaken her or think that she needed to be awakened? It makes the whole series of victims of the day and her not attacking the sailor soldiers for their star seeds / sailor crystals make even less sense. It’s like she is the most useless villain ever. If she knows who the sailor soldiers are which for sailor Saturn it seems like she knows who they are why did we have to see all those useless episodes of the victims of the day when she knows who the holders of the true star seeds are? Major plot hole this season and the same reason Galaxia is a terrible villain.
Now on to Saturn. The outer soldiers for me deserved more screen time and should have appeared in SuperS. In the manga sailor Saturn never transforms into her original sailor solider form, I believe. This should not have been a problem to give her an opportunity for a transformation sequence since the anime wasn’t really following the manga anyway. She could have had a transformation sequence so there really was no excuse aside from laziness as to why sailor Saturn never had her own transformation sequence. With all that filler they definitely had the budget and time they just decided not to do it. Sailor Saturn literally appears to die. In the anime and the manga it seems they didn’t know what to do with Saturn she is supposed to be this destructive sailor soldier but she has one attack in both versions. Not only that they that Galaxia is so strong they she loses quickly in both he anime and manga. I don’t mind that sailor Uranus and Neptune turn on sailor Pluto and Saturn. If they worked all separately but it’s the fact that he outer space were like their own team that seemed to make it all messed up. Why would the otters steal the star seeds of their own teammates? Shouldn’t Saturn have been strong enough to take down both Neptune and Uranus if not the annoying Galaxia?
It’s sad because outside of sailor moon S we learn nothing about Neptune and Uranus. We know even less about Pluto and Saturn. Saturn had the worse scenario where the series doesn’t even give her any focus. I always noticed that even as I watched the stars series as a kid. It was depressing that the show seemed to mainly focus on sailor moon. I actually wanted to see more of the outer sailor soldiers. With crystal they could have fix their potholes and given us more outer sailor soldier stories but neither of those things happened.
The big slap in the face is Pluto and saturn’s death had terrible character and animation design. More than that it’s obvious both the writers and directors never thought about giving the outer soldiers some focus or storylines or charsacter development. Less sailor moon focus and more inner and outer soldiers would have been nice.
There was a show a few years back called Jorneyman. The main character disappears (time travels) while on a plane and it’s a big deal. No one can figure out how he got off a plane after checking through security. Imagine Mamoru just disappearing after checking in at the airport, boarding the plane but then not going through customs in the US. Oh boy. In fairness I would not be surprised if the customs system is not linked, but the University or someone may wonder where this guy was. Seems like a paperwork nightmare!
The part about Galaxias animates attacking ordinary people and not the sailor guardians is the biggest plot hole of the whole anime for me and it makes zero sense. Lets say that they dont know the senshis civilian identities (they did in the manga hence we never had this issue) why not attack them when they show up every single time the enemies targets someone without a star seed. And why does the enemies even target men? All sailor senshi are Female (apart from Mamoru though this is another plot hole from both the manga and anime).
I quite honestly don’t see any plothole in the manga but Nehelenia being banned on the dark side of the moon, when there wasn’t anything like that in the Silver millennium (because the moon was shining)
You have many valid points. One of my main peeves with the 90’s Stars anime (and manga to a lesser extent) is that we have the fascinating outer senshi and the inners who could still use more development, yet they instead choose to focus on the three most boring senshi in the series, the Starlights. I was so disappointed that they didn’t use this season to build up an epic showdown and give us more Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Saturn and instead wasted so much precious time on Seiya’s antics.
And they seem to mostly sit around and watch for the final battle anyway.
Rei’s death is one of the saddest moments in this season and it always makes me cry every time. In regards to the inconsistencies of Galaxia’s actions, the best argument I’ve heard is that Galaxia is a sadist and she probably enjoyed watching her pawns waste all this time knowing that everyone would die in the end and that was why she did all this for her own twisted game. In fairness to Haruka and Michiru, their betrayal here makes more sense than Batman and Superman because we’ve seen before in the S season that Haruka and Michiru are moral consequentialists who will do whatever they can to bring about the greater good, even if it means sacrificing an innocent person’s life or betraying their loved ones. Putting this in perspective, their betrayal is very fitting with their cynical personalities. One issue I do have with this is that it does seem a little bit homophobic that it seems like it’s only the lesbian characters that do this in the show. You never see any of the other Sailor Soldiers betray their friends like this and even when Hotaru first became Saturn, she never did anything this cruel. It seems to be reinforcing a stereotype that gay people lack morals and that we can’t be trusted to be loyal partners. I think the 90s anime’s treatment of Saturn’s powers is my biggest disappointment with the season. All throughout S they kept hyping up as the most powerful Soldier and this major threat but she never seems to get an attack that actually works or even a stock footage sequence like the other Sailor Soldiers get and that seems a shame because I really love Hotaru otherwise.
But it’s hard to believe and a little bit sad that there’s only three more episodes to go before all of Sailor Moon is officially available subbed in the U.S. It feels like this day would never come and we would get an official release of Sailor Stars available over here. I still remember just a decade ago when it seemed like we would never get the R movie and the S season released in the U.S., even in a heavily edited dubbed version, let alone in a uncut release. It’s too bad though we’ll probably have to wait a few years to even be able to own Sailor Stars on DVD but I can’t wait for the day we’ll get to see this season dubbed.
To be fair we currently don’t have the R movie as it’s out of print.
I wonder if Viz will stream the movies and the specials on Hulu after they’re done with the series.
I was hoping we’d get them when the respective seasons went by. Oh well.
Nehelenia is still the best villain in this series. Crazy, unstable and powerful. She was truly a force to be reckoned with. Also just plain gorgeous. I would love to see am alternate future where she and moon are friends.
the first episode of Season 3 will be called “Act 27, Infinity 1 Premonition-Prequel”