Watch the English dubbed version of Sailor Moon Crystal Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, Friday March 18th at 9pm Eastern Time

Posted on March 16, 2016 by Adam

The next English dubbed episode of Sailor Moon Crystal will be available this Friday on Hulu and Neon Alley. Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, will be available at 9pm Eastern Daylight Time. Daylight Savings Time is in effect so if you’re lucky enough to live in an area that doesn’t celebrate, Sailor Moon Crystal may be released at a different time than you had been expecting it! This week we go to the future and on the way meet Sailor Pluto who pretty much wants to kill Sailor Moon. Sailor Pluto will be voiced by Veronica Taylor. Anime fans may know her best as the voice of Ash Ketchum in Pokémon! Also appearing in this episode is the adorable cat Diana, though I am not sure who will be performing her voice at this time and we won’t actually hear her speak until Act 20, unless there’s some unexpected ADR.

Fans of Usagi and Mamoru will be excited to see them have sex in this week’s episode! This was strongly hinted at in the manga but not at all subtle in Sailor Moon Crystal. We’ll see if the English dub tries to smooth over this sex scene or if they fully embrace it.

Sailor Moon SuperS episodes 136 and 137 are now available on Hulu

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Adam

This week on Hulu and Neon Alley we get Sailor Moon SuperS episodes 136 and 137. These episodes are full of nudity and shipping. Who do you like? Mamoru is paired with Usagi, Ami, Rei and Rei’s Grandfather in this episode! Then Diana is all over Fish Eye, but it isn’t reciprocated.

Episode 136, Protect Mamoru: Ninja Usagi’s Jealousy, ships everyone with everyone else. The gang is hanging out at Mamoru’s place, which apparently is a thing they do. Usagi is jealous because Mamoru and Ami are doing math homework together. While breaking them up a fire extinguisher is set off completely destroying the place. Too bad Mamoru has important work to finish and he needs to concentrate! Rei offers to let him stay at her shrine which naturally has Usagi jealous since Mamoru and Rei are obviously attracted to each other and never technically broke up as they were dating when all those pesky memories from the past went and interfered with their love for one another. As Mamoru moves in Rei’s grandfather has quite an interest in him. Does anyone ship these two? Yuuichirou is instantly jealous, taking it out on Mamoru by super heating his bath. We see a naked Mamoru scene as Rei gets a glimpse of him in the tub. Usagi is dressed up as a ninja at this point, and confronts Rei about what happened. Rei blushes, clearly still interested in Mamoru! Meanwhile Rei’s grandfather has the perfect thing for Yuuichirou. They go out cruising for ladies in the city! This ends up to be more of a series of street harassments than anything else. Ultimately Rei is targeted by Tiger’s Eye and during the fight when Usagi calls for Mamoru he doesn’t come. We get a great explanation for why he always shows up. He seems to have a 6th sense for knowing when Usagi needs him, but Diana insists he continue working rather than come to her aid!

Note that a calendar in this episode once again shows the year to be 1995.

Episode 137, Forest of Illusion: A Beautiful Fairy’s Invitation, is about a man with a fairy fetish! Chibiusa is reading a book about fairies and runs into the author, who clearly wants to meet and fall in love with a fairy. Enter Fish Eye! We haven’t seen Fish Eye target any of the women in the past and now we know why. He’s gay and only interested in men. In order to lure Kitakata he poses as a fairly, which has him dressing as a woman. His gender is a bit fluid throughout the series and mostly in this episode. When showering at one point his breasts are covered in soap bubbles as if something needed censoring, but Fish Eye is a man and we aren’t usually covering up men’s chests in this series. Diana is helplessly drawn to Fish Eye because he smells like fish! She suspects this must be a fish fairy. Unfortunately Kitakata learns that Fish Eye doesn’t like flowers and so his perfect image of a fairy is ruined.

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Sailor Moon SuperS episode 136 - Usagi is jealous of Mamoru and Ami

Sailor Moon SuperS episodes 132 and 133 are now available on Hulu

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Adam

This morning Sailor Moon SuperS episodes 132 and 133 were added to Hulu and Neon Alley. With that we get a couple of hilarious episodes focusing on the fragile nature of rock solid relationships which it turns out aren’t actually fragile at all. First Mamoru and Usagi’s relationship is put to the test and then Luna must deal with Artemis’s illegitimate kitten he seems to have had with some random stray! As expected we did not get the Sailor Moon SuperS Special which takes place between episodes 131 and 132. You can read more about that special in last week’s write up. There is currently no indication as to when, if at all, the Sailor Moon movies and specials will be released.

Episode 132, The Perfect Couple: Usagi and Mamoru’s Love, is not an episode about how Usagi and Mamoru are the perfect couple. It’s about the relationship, or lack thereof, between Saori and Kobayashi, two of Mamoru’s friends. Kobayashi loves Saori. Saori loves Mamoru. Mamoru loves Usagi. Usagi loves Mamoru. Chibiusa loves Mamoru. Tiger’s Eye targets Saori. It’s a whole intricate web of attraction! When Saori and Kobayashi are having a chat at Mamoru’s the conversation is a bit awkward, and it just gets worse when Usagi and Chibiusa show up. Chibiusa does nothing to reduce the tension when she flat out asks Saori what her intentions with her Mamoru are! Chibiusa is rightfully concerned that Mamoru may end up with Saori because if he does she may never be born in the first place! This concern is passed on to Usagi who can’t help but imagine Mamoru straying with this more mature woman. Does anyone actually ship these two together? This relationship reminds me of Hina and Mamoru in the live action series. They are the same age and theoretically compatible but tragically Mamoru has no interest because he loves Usagi. Tiger’s Eye targets Saori in this episode. This is a bit odd as I’m having a lot of trouble figuring out where him and Hawk’s Eye draw the line between young woman and older woman. Hawk’s Eye, who prefers older women, went after Reika, Motoki’s girlfriend who appears to be roughly Mamoru’s age. Saori is Mamoru’s school mate and appears to be roughly the same age but is targeted by Tiger’s Eye who generally pursues younger women. Ultimately during the inevitable combat Saori sees Mamoru call Sailor Moon Usagi and so she sees that she can’t possibly come between the two. Does this leave Kobayashi the winner of the covered silver medal, the runner up consolation prize of the woman who can’t have the man she wants? We will never know as they are never seen again.

Episode 133, Artemis Is Cheating? Enter the Mysterious Kitten, is an interesting follow up to the Sailor Moon S movie. This episode features one of the most hilarious scenes of the series. When asking for help with her homework Chibiusa tries to convince Mamoru that if he doesn’t help her she’ll do poorly in school, be mocked by her friends, never get married and end up old and alone. Her imagination of this shows a white haired old lady Chibiusa sitting with her cat watching the Sailor Moon anime on a TV. Does the Sailor Moon anime exist in the world of Sailor Moon? We’ve only ever seen the Sailor V series to date, but this seems possible. Artemis gets busted in this episode staring lovingly at a Nun. He later confesses he was just in awe because he dreams of getting married in a church some day. Is this a feasible goal for a cat? The Catholic Church does not consider animals to have souls, so I think they would have a bit of trouble reconciling the love between a couple of alien cats from another solar system. Suddenly a cute grey kitten with a crescent moon on her head shows up calling Artemis father, and Luna assumes the worst. Clearly the only logical explanation, given the causal nature of the universe, and that Luna has never given birth to a talking kitten with a crescent moon on her forehead, is that Artemis impregnated a real cat at some point fathering this kitten. The insinuation is simple. Artemis, having sexual needs, has been having sex with one or more cats. There is some room for a non cheating relationship to have caused this prior to the events of the Sailor Moon S movie when Luna and Artemis’s relationship became formalized. Prior to that Artemis was free to do as he pleased while Luna was being pursued by Rhett Butler and transforming into a human to make out with her space man. Luna is understandably upset, but so is Minako! She is not upset for Luna but for herself! Minako and Artemis have a strong relationship! Well it turns out it was just a misunderstanding. Diana is simply Luna and Artemis’s daughter from the future, and now everyone is back to being happy. Artemis laughs it off but sympathizes with Mamoru’s situation, having his future daughter around cramping his relationship with his girlfriend and future wife.

Why bring Diana in now and not two seasons ago? In the Sailor Moon Manga Diana shows up in Crystal Tokyo, like she did in Sailor Moon Crystal, in what is the equivalent of Sailor Moon R in the anime. We never see her at this point and when Chibiusa returns in Sailor Moon S, she returns alone. It’s not really clear why the anime writers chose not to include her but at this point they manage to throw her in for a very brief appearance before she is to be swept under the same rug Chibiusa disappears under during SailorStars.

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Sailor Moon Crystal Act 25, Showdown – Death Phantom, Review

Posted on July 5, 2015 by Adam

The latest episode of Sailor Moon Crystal, Act 25, Showdown – Death Phantom, premiered this weekend on July 4th. It is available to stream on Crunchyroll, Hulu and Niconico. As of now it is currently the second last episode of Sailor Moon Crystal, as there are none planned beyond episode 26. This week Chibiusa becomes Sailor Chibi Moon but this happens just moments too late, as tragedy has struck Sailor Pluto!

As we left off last time Prince Demande was about to stick two versions of the Silver Crystal together which is a bad idea and likely to destroy the whole world. Sailor Pluto, who sees this as being likely to cause certain death to herself and everyone she cares about, decides to stop time to avoid this catastrophe. Too bad stopping time is the ultimate taboo! Even though Sailor Pluto is totally capable of doing it, she totally never should and that means that she will have to die as a result. The physics of this are a bit odd. Everything is still with nothing moving, but clearly there is still air flowing enough to allow the show’s main characters to breathe. The distinction between who and what are not frozen in time seems to be completely decided by Sailor Pluto, though how this is done is not clear. So Sailor Pluto had 3 taboos not to break and she sort of broke all of them, but everyone would have died otherwise so no fault can really be given in this.

Sailor Pluto thanks Diana for protecting the Space-Time Door. So does this mean no one is guarding it anyone? I mean, Sailor Pluto spent a life of solitude simply so that she could endlessly protect the door but now that no one is around to do it… maybe let’s just get an alarm system set up?

Black Lady is saddened by seeing Sailor Pluto dying. She is reminded in this that she is not really alone and so Chibiusa is finally able to break free of Nemesis’s control and, thanks to the power of the Silver Crystal from the future, is able to transform into Sailor Chibi Moon. The name Sailor Chibi Moon is not said in this episode, but that is who she becomes. King Endymion mentions that this is the Sailor Guardian who will succeed Sailor Moon. Indeed this is Chibiusa’s destiny, to become the Sailor Guardian to protect to the world once Sailor Moon is retired though we have a younger unretired version of Sailor Moon from the past to do that right now. This wasn’t a huge surprise, as art showing Sailor Chibi Moon surfaced through official sources before we even got a look at Chibiusa, and of course Sailor Chibi Moon has appeared in other continuities for over 20 years.

A transformation sequence accompanies this change. It wasn’t really clear if this would happen at this point. In the original Sailor Moon anime Chibiusa does not transform into Sailor Chibi Moon during Sailor Moon R. She does so only during Sailor Moon S and even then she has no transformation sequence until Sailor Moon SuperS. It is nice to see her actually have one animated, though at this point this may be the final time we see it, as there may not be a next season of Sailor Moon Crystal.

It is unfortunately that the catalyst for Chibiusa’s change was Sailor Pluto’s death, although her changing prior to this may have been enough to have Sailor Pluto avoid that fate. She is naturally heartbroken at the death of her good friend, and just wanted Pluto to see her make her long awaited transformation.

Oh wait we still have to fight with Nemesis! Mamoru is now unbrainwashed and apologizes to Sailor Moon, supposedly for making out with their daughter and attacking her, and she says it’s okay as if he was apologizing for leaving his dirty laundry on the floor or something. A funny exchange though in seriousness he had no control over his actions, and this is really why Sailor Moon is so easy to forgive him.

Prince Demande tries to attack Nemesis. This doesn’t work and he dies. So everyone tries to attack him and this doesn’t really work. We then go into Nemesis and learn that the true identity of Nemesis who was Death Phantom was Wise Man is actually Death Phantom, so we’re back to calling him that for now. This can get a little confusing. He is indeed the criminal that was kicked out of Crystal Tokyo for killing a bunch of people. He slowly made Nemesis full of evil energy and acquired the power he has today. He’ll probably be getting what he deserves… next time.

Next, on July 17th, is Act 26, Replay – Neverending. This final Black Moon story will wrap up anything related to Crystal Tokyo, the Black Moon Clan, Nemesis and Chibiusa, though Chibiusa continues to be present in the Infinity story arc which follows. This will, as far as we know, be the final episode of Sailor Moon Crystal. There have been no episodes confirmed as following Act 26. This past weekend at Anime Expo at Viz’s official Sailor Moon panel it was stated that Act 26 was the final episode of Sailor Moon Crystal. If there are any plans for additional episodes, not even Viz who is releasing the show domestically has any knowledge of such plans.

Keep reading for more screenshots from this episode and the next episode preview for Act 26.

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Sailor Moon Crystal Act 24, Attack – Black Lady, review

Posted on June 21, 2015 by Adam

The latest episode of Sailor Moon Crystal, Act 24, Attack – Black Lady, is now available to stream on Crunchyroll, Hulu and Niconico. This week we celebrate Father’s Day weekend as Black Lady continues to make out with her father Tuxedo Mask as she and Wise Man attack Sailor Moon, the Sailor Guardians and the Earth itself.

As with Act 23, we focus mainly on Black Lady in this episode. She is controlling Tuxedo Mask, who is now going by his evil name of Endymion, to make him her boyfriend. This seems a bit creepy but, as mentioned in last week’s review, this is Black Lady’s odd way to dealing with the feelings she had as a child now that she has unexpectedly and unnaturally aged and acquired a great amount of power.

Endymion is full on evil now, attacking Sailor Moon with her own attack item. At first this upsets her. Mamoru using the item that they made together against her. She then notices that Chibusa’s possessive behaviour is like how she was feeling earlier in the season, when Usagi was jealous of Chibiusa monopolizing Mamoru’s time. She doesn’t see Black Lady as an evil enemy but as a jealous young girl, and she tries to plead with her.

This doesn’t work well. Black Lady brings a third Evil Black Crystal to Earth which promises to kill everybody. So who’s left on Earth anyway? Crystal Tokyo is pretty much destroyed but we don’t see much of the rest of the planet. Perhaps there are a bunch of people still living a nice life in Canada!

Prince Demande and Saphir are being controlled as well, however Prince Demande’s powers allow him to break out of the mind control. He is attacked by Saphir, who is under Wise Man’s power, and in defending himself he kills him. This does not explicitly happen in the manga. Prince Demande apologizes to his brother but only attacks Wise Man. We never actually see what happens to Saphir beyond this point in the manga, but in Sailor Moon Crystal there is little doubt he is dead. Prince Demande then kills Wise Man revealing an old already dead corpse, but it turn out this was not really Wise Man’s actual body!

Wise Man’s seemingly final form, as revealed at this point in time, is planet Nemesis! Well that’s kind of weird! The old corpse in a cloak was actually just a ruse, the real deal is this evil entity that is the planet Nemesis. Black Lady brings it through a portal down on top of Crystal Tokyo. This scene is reminiscent to the film Transformers: Dark of the Moon where Cybertron is brought to into Chicago through a large portal. My first thought then, as was my first thought when watching this episode, is what a terrible impact this would have on the Earth’s gravity. The Moon is far so it’s effects on us are relatively small, though the tides are not completely insignificant. Put a planet a few hundred feet from another planet’s surface and it will be a whole different story. This seems like a non issue however, as Nemesis is incredibly tiny. We can see most of it coming out of the portal with Crystal Tokyo under it and all considered it would not be bigger than most mountains. I certainly expected the planet to be much larger than this. The actual planet X which Nemesis was inspired by was originally believed to exist due to gravitational anomalies in our solar system which were later explained. A body this small would not have any such strong gravitational effects as it’s smaller than most asteroids and comets.

We get a bit of Sailor Pluto backstory, as we get a look at her when she was quite young. The original Queen Serenity, Princess Serenity’s Mother, speaks to her in the distant past. This would have to be taking place on the Moon in the years of Silver Millennium. She is given three rules to follow! First, don’t move time. Let’s assume this means time travel. She does this all the time, and is why we’re in this mess in the first place. Second, guard the door! She stops doing that in this episode. The third and most important is not mentioned, but we’ll learn all about it in the next episode as she breaks it.

Diana, the adorable kitten, plays an important role in this episode. Sailor Pluto abandons her post, and who can blame her after spending thousands of years in the same clothes standing without a break watching a door, and puts Diana in charge! Could Diana possibly do a worse job than Sailor Pluto who has broken every rule imposed on her? Sailor Pluto’s job is to guard the Space-Time Door, and as far as we’ve seen in this story arc every person who she has encountered has eventually been allowed to travel through time. Why did the Black Moon Clan even need their own method of time travel? They should just have befriended the lonely Sailor Guardian and gotten their own Key of Space-Time to do whatever they want! Diana could literally do nothing and still do the exact same job that Sailor Pluto has this season! One also has to wonder how things go following this episode. We never get an update on Diana’s temporary door guarding duties but we do know that she is never relieved and yet she will later show up in the past. Is there a new guard that we’re not aware of or is Sailor Pluto replaced with a scarecrow or something?

Up next is Act 25, Showdown – Death Phantom. Things are really starting to wind up as Sailor Pluto breaks her final rule and pays the ultimate price to protect the Earth and her friends. Chibiusa will struggle to free herself from Black Lady, who is really her. Will all that work out?

Act 25 will be the second last episode of the series, with Act 26 being the final episode currently planned. There has still been no confirmation of any additional episodes beyond Act 26 for Sailor Moon Crystal. At this point it seems possible that the series will end with the final episode of the Black Moon story arc.

Keep reading for more screenshots from this episode and the next episode preview for Act 25.

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Sailor Moon Crystal Act 23, Covert Maneuvers – Wiseman, Review

Posted on June 7, 2015 by Adam

The latest episode of Sailor Moon Crystal, Act 23, Covert Maneuvers – Wiseman, is now available on Crunchyroll, Hulu and Niconico. This week we are finally introduced to Black Lady, who is Chibiusa aged and made somewhat evil by Wise Man. Black Lady is all about being evil and making out with her younger father from the past, Tuxedo Mask.

The episode starts out with Sailor Pluto warning the Sailor Guardians about not wandering around in the limbo and getting lost in the storm in the Space Time Corridor. Sailor Moon wants to go anyway, and Sailor Pluto caves. Then they find Luna-p and nothing really changed about the severity of the situation, but Sailor Pluto tells them they can’t go on and since Sailor Moon passes out, they give up.

We get a better look at Nemesis this week. Previously I postulated about the state of the surface of Nemesis, which is never very clearly described. Here we see that there are a large number of volcanic eruptions on the surface, so it does at least have a solid rock like surface. Most of the time there seems to be spent somewhere underground. Traveling deep into its core there is a kind of alternate dimension. Black Lady talks about this Castle of Darkness at the bottom, but it’s really just a slab of rock. Supposedly someone would build a castle here but there’s really nothing going on. Nemesis is kind of lame, all things considered. No wonder they want to conquer Earth!

This episode marks the first real introduction of Black Lady. Seems like this was a long time coming. Chibiusa is taken away by Wise Man during Act 21. We see Black Lady a number of times throughout Act 22 be we never get a clear look at her. Finally seeing her it doesn’t feel like a huge surprise, especially since she’s been shown in the anime and manga for some 20 years. As always her appearance here matches that of the manga more than the original anime were she had very little exposition. Physically she seems about the same, though I can’t help but notice she has disproportionately large breasts. Compared to the rest of the Sailor Guardians the proportions seems a bit off. This establishes a contrast between Black Lady and child Chibiusa, though it seems innapropriate to sexualize such a character.

Black Lady’s first order of business is to capture and brainwash Tuxedo Mask in order to seduce him. Naturally this a bit odd as she is his daughter. While a lot of her bad behaviour is motivated by Wise Man’s corruption, there’s no indication that this is. This incestuous relationship will not help Wise Man achieve his goals. Chibiusa is a young girl who is infatuated with her father. This in itself is not that odd for a child. She gets thrown into an adult’s body and she deals with her conflicting feelings as it makes sense to her, by trying to hook up with her father. Let’s remember of course that Chibiusa is over 900 years old while Mamoru is about 19 years old at this point. It may seem creepy for such a young girl to be with such an old guy, but she’s much older than the teenagers he’s usually hanging around with, she just lacks the maturity which comes with a regular transition through adolescence and adulthood. This relationship is a result of a young girl’s emotions expressing themselves through the actions of someone who seems to be in adult, but in many ways is not.

We first see Chibiusa kissing Tuxedo Mask while he is in his full Tuxedo. In the scene immediately afterwards Mamoru is seen only wearing his white shirt. These are the shirts usually reserved for the girls that sleep over at his place. Are we to believe something happened between this original kiss and the time where Mamoru is somewhat dressed down?

The gang travels back to the present day. Why do we keep doing this? Naturally this stay does not last very long but while there we learn that they used Luna-P to erase Usagi’s mother’s memories. This seems a bit drastic. I realize Chibiusa put some of those memories there but she’s been gone for what, a day? Maybe a few hours? Oh well the time storm thingy was too much let’s forget about ever getting Mamoru and Chibiusa back. Should we also go around brainwashing Motoki, Asanuma and anyone else Mamoru knows to avoid any hard questions about his disappearance? We didn’t do so last arc when he died or in this arc when the other girls were kidnapped for much longer times! Usagi mentions that she’s happy to be home but then is sad because her boyfriend and future daughter are lost to time. She feels guilty for being upset about this and everyone finds her impossible to please. In the grand scheme of problems this seems like a pretty huge one and regardless of the relative comfort of sleeping in one’s own bed this kind of problem seems like a legitimate reason to be a bit bummed. All considered, Usagi takes it quite well!

Back in the future King Endymion has a chat with Diana the kitten. He then pets her. Wait a minute! How is this possible? We don’t know much about King Endymion’s ghost like maybe a hologram maybe a sort of astral projection type representation but we do know that he does not have an actual physical form. Chibiusa walks right through him in Act 20 but now that a kitten needs petting he’s able to muster some sort of ability to be solid which he was not able to do to hug his own daughter who’s been traveling through time to save him and his family. No wonder this girl has daddy issues.

Finally Black Lady confronts her actual father in the Crystal Palace. She seems to want to make out with him too but since she’s not a kitten that doesn’t seem possible. She gets kicked out of the Crystal Palace by Neo Queen Serenity. I know she’s being kind of evil here and kicking her out makes some sense but still this is being done by her own mother. It was probably the making out with Tuxedo Mask part that set her off.

Next time, on June 20th is Act 24, Attack – Black Lady. The battle continues as everyone sees more of Black Lady and she introduces everyone to her new boyfriend, Endymion, which naturally turns some heads. We’ll get to see Endymion wielding the Cutie Moon Rod.

With Act 24 coming in a couple of weeks there has still not been any confirmation of any episodes past Act 26. The first episode of the third story arc, should such a thing be announced, should be playing the first Saturday of August but for now we have had no official confirmation that this will happen. As always if we learn any news about the new series and new episodes we’ll post it to the site right away.

Keep reading for more screenshots from Act 23 and the next episode preview for Act 24.

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Sailor Moon Crystal Act 20, Crystal Tokyo – King Endymion, Review

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Adam

The latest episode of Sailor Moon Crystal, Act 20, Crystal Tokyo – King Endymion, is now available to stream on Crunchyroll, Hulu and Niconico. The gang is in the future city of Crystal Tokyo and now it’s time to have the ghost of King Endymion give them exposition about the story to date, including a bunch of revelations of things we mostly knew about.

We meet King Endymion and with that we learn all about Chibiusa, Crystal Tokyo and the Black Moon Clan. King Endymion appears as some sort of non corporeal projection of the real King who is in another room. In the original anime he is a hologram but in the manga and here it’s not entirely clear what is happening. He’s not stored in a computer like Queen Serenity was on the Moon. It seem more like he’s a sort of ghost. But does that mean King Endymion is dead? More on that later.

Chibiusa is Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask’s daughter from the future. At this point we mostly already figured this out. If we hadn’t we can immediately infer this from the fact that Sailor Moon noticed that King Endymion is the future Tuxedo Mask and that Chibiusa calls him father. We can easily infer that this means Tuxedo Mask is Chibiusa’s father, but Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask do not have their “OMG WTF!!!” reaction until they are blatantly told what is what with Chibiusa. Their embarrassment seems to insinuate that these two have not previously had sex. We know this is likely not the case.

We get a description of what’s up with Crystal Tokyo and it seems that in all it’s glory it was … a bunch of islands? We don’t know a ton about Crystal Tokyo but what we do know is that it is the future city of Tokyo. Tokyo is not a series of islands like the Florida Keys. It’s just a city on the Ocean. So what’s up with Crystal Tokyo? It looks a lot like Dubai, a city on the shore of the Persian Gulf but which is also home to a ton of artificial islands along the coast giving it a somewhat similar look. It’s certainly possible that the inhabitants of Crystal Tokyo built these things on the ocean. They would have the technology, and magic, to make it possible. When Chibiusa travels through time she does not arrive in the past in the ocean or in the future on the main land far from the palace. I always assumed the time travel was tied to a specific place but in a different time but this is never clearly established. Regardless, Crystal Tokyo in the manga or original anime was never portrayed as a series of islands as it is seen here. It wasn’t even shown like this in earlier episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal.

This episode has the introduction of the adorable kitten Diana! She is Luna and Artemis’s daughter from the future. Luna and Artemis seem shocked and embarrassed to learn this which suggests that they do not currently have a relationship. Is their relationship a predestination paradox based on them now seeing they will be in one in the future? The show doesn’t appear to work that way.

We learn some interesting things about Nemesis in this episode. King Endymion mentions that it’s orbit is impossible to calculate. Indeed Nemesis is based on a real non existent planet. Many have searched for a planet which explains some inconsistencies in the orbits of other planets. These inconsistencies can better be explained by other phenomenon, but in the Sailor Moon world this is a real planet. In one shot we see the Black Moon Clan on Nemesis with a Moon in the background. This is a first. The Moon is even illuminated in such as a way as to highlight the crescent Moon that is seen on the foreheads of the Black Moon Clan. We have not seen a Moon around Nemesis in any other Sailor Moon canon.

The gang must travel to the past because Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask are disappearing. The excuse given is that Sailor Moon is disappearing because she’s in the same time as Neo Queen Serenity and that she’s occupying a space too close to her. This is fair as she’s lying right near them. Why then is Tuxedo Mask disappearing? Supposedly for the same reason, but this does not occur in the manga. Only Sailor Moon is seen as disappearing. Still King Endymion’s body is not far away so this makes some sense.

We learn that Chibiusa and Diana were the only two to survive the attack by the Black Moon Clan but that they don’t know why. The reason it turns out is that it was because Chibiusa had the Silver Crystal on her, and that she was holding Diana. Too bad we don’t actually see Diana in Chibiusa’s arms when she is attacked. This creates a bit of a plot hole as compared to the manga when Diana is clearly shown with Chibiusa’s at the time of the attack.

This episode also introduces us to Sailor Pluto’s crush on King Endymion! She immediately blushes when she sees him. Perhaps this is why she was so quick to try to kill Sailor Moon earlier! Eliminate Sailor Moon in the past and future King Endymion is all of a sudden back on the market! King Endymion asks Pluto to give Sailor Moon a Key of Space-Time, which she does. This whole exchange seems totally charged as no doubt Sailor Pluto is envious of the relationship Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask have and will share in the future.

What follows is just a ridiculous amount of time traveling. It was taboo to do so last episode but now we go back, spend a quick nap time in the past, then we fly back to the future like it was nothing. Mamoru doesn’t even sleep in his bed. Chibiusa is in the bed and he sleeps on the floor. This makes us wonder where exactly he and Usagi had sex earlier when Chibiusa was in the bed. Did they just do it on the floor? Not very dignified for the future royal family!

Back in the future we see Diana sleeping with future Luna and Artemis. She’s in a room with the bodies of the Sailor Guardians, who are said to have taken the brunt of the attack on Neo Queen Serenity, as well as King Enydmion. So what is up with these people? They appear to be pretty much dead, which would explain the state of King Endymion’s ghost. This isn’t really explained but they are at best near fatally wounded and at worst corpses like the rest of the city.

The enemy this week is Esmeraude and her ridiculous multi arms! This reminds me a lot of Queen Beryl’s hair. This is actually something which happens in the manga though then she has even more arms! She’s seen chocking Tuxedo Mask, Sailor Venus and Sailor Moon with two arms each in the manga though we don’t really see where each arm comes from. Here in Sailor Moon Crystal we have an arm awkwardly coming out of the back of Esmeraude’s neck which just looks weird.

Sailor Moon tries to use her Cutie Moon Rod which doesn’t go that well. It looks a lot like it did when it failed last episode. Actually it’s the exact same image only they fixed the weird half uncoloured animation error they had. Otherwise it is identical as can be seen above. The reason for the failure given is that her Crystal doesn’t work in the future, because you can’t have two Crystals in the same time. Oh that’s nice I guess we won’t have another Sailor Guardian running around the present with the 30th century’s Silver Crystal…

Luckily Tuxedo Mask saves the day with a Double Tuxedo La Smoking Bomber which he performs with the help of the ghost of King Endymion! This is yet another thing from this episode which did not occur in the original manga and for a good reason. If King Endymion’s ghost is fully capable of using his powerful Tuxedo La Smoking Bomber attack isn’t he vastly superior to physical King Endymion? Let’s just get all of the Sailor Guardians running around as ghosts using their attacks without being vulnerable to attack by the bad guys! The Black Moon Clan would really be on the ropes if that happened!

Next up is Act 21, Complication – Nemesis. Sailor Moon is kidnapped so I guess now we actually have to do something! With the previous three kidnappings rescuing them was a priority but now that Sailor Moon is actually gone what are we to do? Sailor Moon is the prisoner of Prince Demande. We will finally see what’s up with the other Sailor Guardians and some big changes may begin for Chibiusa!

Keep reading for more screenshots from this episode and the next episode preview.

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Watch Sailor Moon Crystal Act 20, Crystal Tokyo – King Endymion, Saturday April 18th at 6am Eastern Time

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Adam

The latest episode of Sailor Moon Crystal will be available to stream on Crynchyroll, Hulu and Niconico starting this coming Saturday. Act 20, Crystal Tokyo – Endymion, will be available April 18th at 7pm Japan Standard Time which is 6am Eastern Time or 3am Pacific Time. This week the gang arrives in the future city of Crystal Tokyo to meet King Endymion.

Crystal Tokyo sure is lame! Sailor Moon, Venus, Tuxedo Mask, Luna and Artemis meet King Endymion and then Diana. This will be a great way to introduce us to both of these characters, to get a bunch of exposition about what’s going on and to reveal secrets that we kind of already knew about. This week is all around bouncing around time and breaking the taboo of time travel repeatedly. Sailor Pluto was ready to kill Sailor Moon for time traveling in the last episode but now it’s totally not a problem. Here’s a key. Have fun.

Sailor Moon Crystal Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, Review

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Adam

The latest episode of Sailor Moon Crystal is now available to stream on Crunchyroll, Hulu and Niconico. This week is Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto. The gang travels to the future and are confronted by Sailor Pluto, but not after Mamoru and Usagi spend the night together.

As the episode opens Chibiusa is pleading for Sailor Moon to come to the future to help her mother. Artemis doesn’t care much about that, but has the idea that if the Black Moon Clan is the one that attacked her future city, that might be where Sailor Mercury, Mars and Jupiter are waiting. It would be nice to think that the gang goes to the future to rescue Chibiusa’s family, but in reality they have the ulterior motive of rescuing their friends. Regardless they decide to go, but not before a sleepover!

Chibiusa wants to sleep at Mamoru’s, but she’s not alone! Mamoru tucks her into bed with Luna-P which is kind of funny because it looks like Luna-P is a full sized human and that the ball is just a head. Following this Usagi and Mamoru share a tender moment in which Usagi expresses her jealousy for Chibiusa and then they have sex. This happens in the manga as well. It’s fairly obvious what happens but here it’s even less ambiguous. They kiss, they lie down, they hold each other’s hands and they sleep together. We later see them the morning after where Mamoru puts a white shirt on Usagi. He’s wearing one, Chibiusa is wearing one and Usagi is wearing one. It looks like Mamoru has nothing but white dress shirts in his closet and that he loves putting them on women. I’m not sure why anyone finds this comfortable. These aren’t the shirts that Mamoru wears under his tuxedo. Those have little folds on the collar and frills along the front. These are white dress shirts Mamoru keeps seemingly exclusively for putting on women who don’t fit in them. Not sure I see the appeal of this comfort but it seems to work for him.

In the pre-sex conversation Mamoru sees Usagi almost disappear. What is this? Is Usagi meant to be disappearing because of all this time travel? This is really not how time travel works. If past Usagi was affected I can understand the time travel plot of having future Usagi disappear, as silly as this concept is. But here it’s future Usagi that is in danger while past Usagi is fading a bit. How odd. Perhaps that’s not what this is meant to be at all though. Perhaps this is an omen Mamoru has about the future dangers to Usagi.

We decide to go to the future! Everyone has one job and one job only to ensure this is a success! Hold on to Chibiusa’s hand and don’t let go! They do this and as soon as the time travel starts everyone lets go! Well done folks. This leads to some confusion in the future.

Sailor Moon, Tuxedo Mask, Sailor Venus, Luna and Artemis are the first to arrive at the Space-Time Door. Sailor Pluto is there and she doesn’t seem to care that they are Sailor Guardians! She uses her lethal Dead Scream attack on the whole lot of them. Time travel is sort of frowned upon and Sailor Pluto’s job is to kill people that do this. She’s pretty soft on Chibiusa though as she does nothing to punish her for traveling through time to save her mother. Sailor Pluto makes a comment which I’ve seen translated differently so it’s hard to interpret. In the English translation of the manga and of Sailor Moon Crystal she mentions that “You guys” have always caused trouble for her, which one would assume means Chibiusa and Sailor Moon. This insinuates that she knows fully well who Sailor Moon is and who she has become in the future but is still willing to kill her! The other translation I’ve seen in the French version of the comic simply says that Chibiusa is causing her trouble, or in another French translation that Sailor Moon treats Chibiusa like Sailor Pluto has. If Sailor Pluto really does know who Sailor Moon is murdering her seems like a pretty extreme reaction to running into her in the Space-Time Corridor. While the true identity of Sailor Moon is a mystery to the viewers and inhabitants of the 20th century it doesn’t seem like it’s something she keeps secret from the future inhabitants of Crystal Tokyo.

We learn that Chibiusa is a Princess! Boy I wonder who her parents are then? We see an image of her in a princess dress that is very similar to the one Princess Serenity and the young Queen Serenity wore. Perhaps this is simply the style in the future.

The villains this week are Chiral and Achiral of the Black Moon Clan. In the original anime they were Droids but in the manga and Sailor Moon Crystal they are human. In the manga Chiral is white and Achiral has darker skin. In Sailor Moon Crystal they are white and whiter. What’s next. A white Sailor Pluto? In the manga Sailor Pluto has darker skin. She isn’t black but she is certainly more tanned than the other Sailor Guardians. In Sailor Moon Crystal she’s not much darker than most of the other characters.

While being attacked Sailor Moon tries to use her Cutie Moon Rod but is unable to. We see it partially in black and white but it’s handle is still in colour. An obvious animation error which I expect to be fixed in the Blu-Ray release.

We get to Crystal Tokyo. It’s really bad here. We get a look at what it was like before the “explosion” and it looked quite nice but we also see an image of Chibiusa amongst a lot of bodies of what appear to be normal inhabitants of the city. Their clothes are completely ancient looking. They seem to match closely to what we saw in Silver Millennium on the Moon back in the day or even on Earth during this undetermined time period. Surely it’s not that far fetched that society would revert to some classic looking styles in the distant future. Some formal wear resemble very old clothing in many ways, such as the Tuxedo that King Endymion wears or the dress that Neo Queen Serenity wears. Why then does Chibiusa have a 20th century style school uniform? Her 20th century clothes stick out amongst these other examples of clothes which appear to some 1000 years older, all of this being set 1000 years in our future. But what do I know about style?

We get a nice look at Neo Queen Serenity. She’s lying on what looks like a tomb. It has an inscription on it that says “< <>>”. What’s that about? It looks like Roman Numerals to me, but what do they mean? I wondered at first if perhaps this was Neo Queen Serenity’s birth and death dates. She would be born around 1978 and would have died some time in the 30th Century, that being the year 2900 to 2999. MDC is 1600. CXXXIII is 133. I can’t make any sense of this. Anyone have any thoughts on that? One notable thing is that Neo Queen Serenity’s hair appears to be white, not the blonde that it should be. This could just be an artifact of the Crystal which is enveloping her.

Next up is Diana the cat! We learned earlier this week that she would be voiced by Shoko Nakagawa but we don’t actually hear her say anything in this episode. Her presence is overshadowed by the appearance of a familiar face. Sailor Moon immediately recognizes him as being the future version of Tuxedo Mask. Only this man is not dressed in a black Tuxedo but instead all in white. Why not lavendar? King Endymion in the original anime has a lavendar Tuxedo but is this not the case in the manga? Indeed he is almost always seen in black and white and wearing a very light coloured outfit but it is mentioned as being lavender and is shown in the opening colour pages of Act 20 as being of a lavender colour.

A cool effect exists for this episode. Whenever a character had an extreme emotional reaction, surprise, anger, shock, they showed a funny expression with a comical border. Fans can’t help but notice the similarity between these borders and those used in the original English dub by DiC. These borders were used at the beginning in the episode previews and again at the end during the “Sailor Says” segments. The one included below for comparison is from the episode preview for the second episode.

Next up is Act 20, Crystal Tokyo – King Endymion. The next episode preview drops of bit of a spoiler. It’s already been stated that King Endymion is the future version of Tuxedo Mask. The preview has Chibiusa calling him “Papa”. We now know, as if we couldn’t guess it, that Mamoru is Chibiusa’s father. It’s not much of a stretch to figure that her mother, Neo Queen Serenity, is actually Usagi. The series has not done a terribly good job of trying to hide this from us but I feel like by now we are expected to have figured this out a while ago.

Keep reading for more screenshots from this episode and the next episode preview.

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Watch Sailor Moon Crystal Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, Saturday April 4th at 6am Eastern Time

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Adam

The next episode of Sailor Moon Crystal, Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, will become available to stream on Crunchyrull, Hulu and Niconico starting this coming Saturday April 4th. The show will be available starting at 7pm Japan Standard Time which is 6am Eastern Time, 3am Pacific Time. This week the gang travels to the future and meets Sailor Pluto, the guardian of the Space-Time Door.

Sailor Mercury, Mars and Jupiter remain kidnapped leaving just Sailor Moon, Sailor Venus, Tuxedo Mask, Luna and Artemis to travel to the future with Chibiusa to save her mother. On their trip to 30th Century Crystal Tokyo they are confronted by Sailor Pluto. Will she kill them for trying to travel through time?

More importantly this week Mamoru and Usagi appear to have some sex. Is this the first time this happens? That’s not something we could pretend to understand. It’s been a year since Usagi first slept at his place and a lot can happen in that time. Indeed it’s debateable what even happens here but Mamoru grabs Usagi, lays her down and starts kissing her right before an abrupt scene transition to where Luna and Artemis are also shown sleeping together. They usually sleep in different houses so it does not appear that any sexual activity has happened between these two, but it will at one point in the next 1000 or so years! This episode will briefly feature Diana, Luna and Artemis’s daughter from the future. Her voice actor was confirmed earlier this week as being Shoko Nakagawa, an actress and singer best know for being on the Pokémon Sunday variety show.

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Tag Archives: Diana

Watch the English dubbed version of Sailor Moon Crystal Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, Friday March 18th at 9pm Eastern Time

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Watch Sailor Moon Crystal Act 20, Crystal Tokyo – King Endymion, Saturday April 18th at 6am Eastern Time

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Watch Sailor Moon Crystal Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, Saturday April 4th at 6am Eastern Time