Another sad day for Sailor Moon fans. Voice actress Hikari Yono, who was the voice of Kaolinite in Sailor Moon Crystal died on November 15th at the young age of 46. It was mentioned that she had been dealing with an illness at the time of her death, though specifics were not given. Hikari Yono has appeared in many other anime series over the years.
Source: Anime News Network
The Sailor Moon Monopoly game is now out in stores and online. I got my copy from an EB Games store in Ottawa (the Canadian equivalent to GameStop) a while back and it seems like many fans have done the same. With the game in hand we can get a good look at exactly what’s going on with the various pieces! As we’d discussed earlier this seems to be Sailor Moon S the game for reasons which I can’t really fathom. The various characters are mostly all from Sailor Moon S, mainly the villains being the Witches 5, Professor Tomoe and Mistress 9 as well as the inclusion of all Sailor Guardians including Sailor Moon S’s new additional Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Saturn. With the Viz video releases now having reached the end of Sailor Moon SuperS this seems an odd way to do it. Perhaps the game was simply in development for too long or this may have been an intentional choice as many of the Sailor Guardians introduced in this season would not appear in Sailor Moon SuperS and a Sailor Moon Sailor Stars Monopoly game would not be as recognisable to fans. For whatever the reasons, it’s Sailor Moon S Monopoly!
As with many other versions of Monopoly this really is the same old game we’ve seen time and time again with a different esthetic. This was immediately obvious to me as I’ve played countless hours of the game in my youth and I even spent quite some time programming a Monopoly computer game in Turbo Pascal when I was a child (the game mostly worked well but lacked houses, hotels, Chance and Community Chest cards). This is good for purists who want to have the same game experience as normal Monopoly. One thing which I think is fairly odd however is the completely random grouping of characters for most of the properties. Allow me to rant a bit about each one.
First we have Luna and Artemis, as a single property, bundled with Mimette of the Witches 5. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just use this, one of the only two pairs of properties, as Luna and Artemis? Mimette does not fit with Luna and Artemis at all. The characters don’t ever actually interact.
Next we have Eudial, Viluy and Tellu. This actually works! They are 3 of the Witches 5 and since there are no sets of five properties (most are groups of three) this sort of works!
Then there’s Cyprene/Ptilol with Kaolinite and … Sailor Chibi Moon! Kaolinite does have a brief interaction with Chibiusa at some point and the two characters do show up together in succession in the later versions of the Sailor Moon S credits. Cyprene and Ptilol fit only with Kaolinite. It would have made more sense to have put Mimette with her fellow Witches and then put Chibiusa with either her parents or maybe with Sailor Saturn!
Next is Sailor Mercury, Mars and Jupiter. There are all Sailor Guardians so this works decently. Aside from Sailor Moon they do spend some time together before Sailor Venus joins the show so I’ll say this is one of the three less terrible one.
Next is Sailor Venus, Professor Tomoe and Sailor Pluto. None of these characters have much to do with each other, except perhaps for a brief interaction between Sailor Venus and Pluto in one episode of Sailor Stars. Sailor Venus belongs with the Sailor Guardians from the first season while Sailor Pluto fits in better with Sailor Uranus and Neptune or even with Sailor Chibi Moon. I would personally have put her with King Endymion but that’s because I like trolling people. Professor Tomoe is a villain and if he’s going to be paired with anyone but his fellow villains from the season it should probably be his daughter, and not the Sailor Guardians who steals his baby from him in Sailor Stars.
Next is Sailor Uranus and Neptune with … Tuxedo Mask! Naturally Sailor Pluto would have worked better here. There’s nothing these two lesbians love more than the show’s male love interest! At least Sailor Uranus and Neptune are together where they belong.
On the last side we have Sailor Moon with Sailor Saturn and Mistress 9. This sort of works since Sailor Moon fights Mistress 9 and sort of saves Sailor Saturn but these characters would fit so much better elsewhere. Saturn should be with her father or her friend Chibiusa and Mistress 9 could easily fit with the villains! It does of course work that two versions of Hotaru be grouped together.
Finally we have the only grouping that works well, and that is Neo Queen Serenity and King Endymion. The only issue here is that they don’t really appear in Sailor Moon S so they don’t fit with the game at all.
Other groupings make some sense! The railroads are all items, either Talismans or Sailor Saturn’s Silence Glaive. The utilities are replaced by Sailor Moon’s items, that being her broach and rod. Jail and Free Parking are unchanged. It seems like there’s an opportunity here to use something a bit more Sailor Moon themed for these. Maybe Pharaon 90 sends you to the Tau Star System or something like that. A missed opportunity which leaves art which ultimately clashes with the rest of the game.
When it comes to the game pieces they are nice! These are the three Talismans, Sailor Moon’s Cosmic Heart Compact and Spiral Heart Moon Rod, and the Holy Grail. They’re all things and not characters but then aside from the dog most Monopoly game pieces are just things anyway.
The money is a bit odd. The colours and values are more or less kept from real Monopoly with different characters appearing on each bill. The money is all shown with an M with a slash through it. Moon dollars or something of the sort. It’s not like Sailor Moon takes place in a universe they don’t use normal currency. We frequently see prices and money in the series being yen. Is there some rule that a themed Monopoly came have some weird non existent currency?
Finally we have the Love and Friendship Cards. These seem to basically be Chance and Community Chest cards with the flavour language changed and the same dollar amounts and consequences. The descriptions of what is occurring are just random events occurring during Sailor Moon S.
Should you buy this game? If you wanted to I imagine you already would have! It’s just one of a very, very, very long series of Monopoly games with images based on many franchises. The specific decisions made in adapting this game seem to be pretty poor as someone with a minor amount of effort would likely have been able to put together property groupings and other aspects of the game which work much better. It seems like someone with next to no knowledge of the franchise was given a list of characters, art and perhaps episode summaries of Sailor Moon S and that they threw together a version of Monopoly that superficially seemed to have made sense. For my money the Sailor Moon games by Dyskami Publishing are a much better way to play a Sailor Moon game.
Keep reading for more photos of this game.
The latest episode of Sailor Moon Crystal premiered on Japanese TV on Monday June 6th at 11pm Japan Standard Time. Shortly afterwards, starting at around 10:30am, it was available to stream first on Crunchyroll and later on Neon Alley and Hulu. Act 35, Infinity 9 – Infinite Labyrinth, mostly takes place inside of Mistress 9 and in an elevator.
Mistress 9 ate the Silver Crystal of the future. This is the one Chibiusa stole from her mother in the 30th century and has been using to fight as Sailor Chibi Moon. More importantly, Chibiusa’s soul is now fundamentally tied to this Crystal which causes all sort of problems, mainly that she’ll die if it’s apart from her body and consumed by an evil entity. How exactly does this work? Sailor Moon’s Silver Crystal of the present is similarly tied to her soul. It’s her Star Seed and all that fun stuff. What’s Neo Queen Serenity doing in the future? In the last story arc Neo Queen Serenity still seems bound to the Silver Crystal of the future so what happened to her when her daughter went gallivanting around time with it? Sure she was dormant for most of the last season but now that her daughter is gone on her training is Crystal Tokyo defenseless? Did Neo Queen Serenity need to somehow disassociate herself from the Crystal? If I take a powerful Crystal and keep it in my pocket for too long will my soul get tied to it like Golum being bound to the one ring?
My favourite part of this episode takes place within Mistress 9. Chibiusa, bound to her Crystal, is lost inside of Mistress 9 who basically ate her. Hotaru goes out of her way to protect her and her Crystal. These are two sort of ghosts or spirits stuck inside of this body which has been controlled by this evil entity. Hotaru hasn’t known Chibiusa that long, but she has strong feelings for her and is protecting her with everything she has. It seems like Mistress 9 won’t be getting full access to that Crystal just yet, which is unfortunate since she immediately destroys the Taioron Crystal once she gets something better. This is kind of like getting a new phone, deciding you don’t need your older out of date phone, and destroying it only to realise there’s some software problem with the new one and you can’t use it but oops I obliterated the iPhone 4s. Too bad so sad.
A lot of this episode takes place in an elevator which somehow leads to a bunch of weird mistakes. Let’s see what we know. The gang starts on the 56th floor, obvious from the sign we see and what is mentioned, and Sailor Venus decides to take one group and go down floor by floor while Sailor Moon and the people who want to kill Hotaru are going to take the elevator to the basement. Look at this chart. How terrible is this thing? It has a column with floor numbers, a column with descriptions, a second column with floor numbers and … that’s it. There are no descriptions for the second column! What’s on floors 31 to 60? The manga equivalent pages show an extra column there with descriptions of what’s on those floors, but there’s nothing here. Minor nitpick but that’s how it is.
Sailor Moon gets in an elevator with Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Pluto and in doing so they go down. All indications from shots in the elevator shaft seem to indicate that it is going down at incredible speeds. A line in the manga, omitted from this version, speaks about the effect of the acceleration that Sailor Moon is feeling. Watching the floor numbers we seem to go from 50 to 40 in a number of seconds. Then we go from 30 to 20 in nearly a minute. It’s a few minutes more until we get to 6. Following this things get weird, we go into this weird other dimension, and then we arrive at floor zero. Or is it? There is clearly space for two digits on the display however when we are in single digit floors, like 6, we don’t have a preceding zero. It’s “6” not “06”. Also the numbers take up the full height of the display while the display on the final floor takes up half. The manga chapter has the gang travel down to floor negative infinity. With the infinity symbol, ∞, being like a horizontal 8. The manga has them mostly travel through basement floors to get there though. Here the floor indicator, which looks like “oo” could be taken to mean infinity. There is no negative floor indicator on the display. The reason for which those two os aren’t touching could be an artifact of the display. The show have easily avoided ambiguity by just putting another row of dots between the two numbers and having oo display as ∞. Also notable is that there are 60 buttons shown and 60 floors in the directory, so any basement floors don’t seem to be listed. If there really are on the minus infinity floor what does this even mean? If they go down infinity floors they would go through the earth, outside of our solar system and galaxy and beyond the reaches of the known universe.
There is a flashback to when the Death Busters arrived. We see the accident once again and Hotaru’s face is real messed up in one shot! Koalinite is called Kaori, as she appears to have been a normal human woman working for Professor Tomoe before this incident. She was infected by an egg and then Professor Tomoe decided to infect himself with one. We also learn that Mistress 9, who was placed inside of Hotaru, was once Pharaoh 90’s partner. This seems to be new to Sailor Moon Crystal. The other Witches 5 however were created artificially.
For the second time we see Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Pluto on their home planets. Uranus seems tiny. We can actually see the curvature of the planet. Uranus has a diameter of about 4 times that of the Earth. That means its surface is much flatter than the Earth’s surface. Do you ever find yourself gazing out at the horizon and actually noticing the curvature of the Earth? Probably not. Based on the curve we see here Uranus should be roughly the size of The Little Prince’s asteroid. Just imagine tracing out a circle from that thumbnail image and it wouldn’t even be larger than your computer screen. Alternatively if Uranus is the right size Sailor Uranus could be huge. She’d probably be about the size of the Earth’s Moon for this to work. Sailor Pluto appears to actually be on Pluto. Previously we saw her guarding the Space-Time Door but it wasn’t clear exactly where it was. What’s the deal with this thing? In Crystal Tokyo when there was this door at the end of a long hall which led to the Space-Time Corridor, were people traveling to Pluto as an intermediate before going back in time? Did the door itself move at some point? Who’s even protecting this door in the 30th century now that Sailor Pluto is dead, Diana went back in time and Neo Queen Serenity has no Crystal? Maybe it’s that pink haired kid who isn’t Chibiusa. How rare would children be in a world where humans live 1000 years? Pretty rare.
We learn that when they were bored and alone Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Pluto would look at Queen Serenity and Princess Serenity. For some reason Princess Serenity is pointing to her bracelet in this image. It must have been new at the time.
Bad news for Professor Tomoe, who turns into this big monster thing. Sailor Moon hesitates to kill him because he was Hotaru’s father a few minutes earlier. Realistically he hasn’t been Hotaru’s father for some time, though I wonder if Kaolinite and Professor Tomoe have little spirits of themselves wrapped up in thorns inside their minds somewhere. Oh well. He gets killed.
Sailor Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus are attacked and Super Sailor Moon transforms back into normal Sailor Moon. She seems to think this is because something happened to her friends. Not a great omen.
Next week is Act 36, Infinity 10 – Infinite – Upper Atmosphere. There’s more of Hotaru’s ghost resisting Mistress 9 and being all bad ass. With only three more episodes the story arc will be done soon. These next three episodes were originally one massive manga chapter!
Keep reading for more screenshots from this episode and the next episode preview for Act 36.
The latest episode of Sailor Moon Crystal aired on Japanese TV Monday May 30th at 11pm Japan Standard Time. Shortly afterwards, starting at 10:30am Eastern Time, it was available to stream on Crunchyroll, Neon Alley and Hulu. Act 34, Infinity 8 – Infinite Labyrinth, has Chibiusa dead and the gang reluctantly fighting to save her.
First off we have a new opening theme. Once again it’s In Love With the New Moon but this time sung by Momoiro Clover Z. They sang Moon Pride, the opening theme for the first two story arcs. This version is fine but I prefer the first version by Etsuko Yakushimaru. Not sure I have much else to say about that. Momoiro Clover Z seems like a perfectly mediocre J-Pop band.
Chibiusa is dead. The day fans have been waiting for since the 90s is here! With her soul ripped out, Chibiusa’s body dies. The doctor announces quite clearly that she went through cardiac arrest and then passed away. All hope is not lost though, as Mamoru is able to keep her alive through some sort of healing touch. It’s as if he’s able to keep her blood pulsing with his heart which only makes sense considering he has magic healing powers. In the manga he mentions that her body is so small that supporting her is easy, but in Sailor Moon Crystal we get the impression that this is draining on him.
Usagi is heartbroken by this, and really feels as if Chibiusa is dead. What option is there to save her? Well they just need to kill Hotaru! Actually they don’t have to kill anyone, they just need need to defeat Mistress 9. Not every enemy needs to be killed when they’re defeated! Oh right this is the manga version where Sailor Moon kills pretty much anyone. Original anime Sailor Moon seems to win over and heal more villains. Anyway the trolley problem is a bit different now. Instead of kill Hotaru vs. the world it’s Hotaru vs. Chibiusa vs. the world. And now the trolley has run over Chibiusa and is heading towards the world and pulling the lever will make it roll back in time, bringing Chibiusa back to life and then killing Hotaru. I’m not sure I want to attempt to illustrate that. So much to say despite hesitation everyone, including Mamoru, supports the idea of moving forward and trying to get Chibiusa’s soul back.
The whole thorn thing seems to be new to Sailor Moon Crystal. There are thorns around the building at Mugen Academy which makes it seem something like when the Makaiju grew all over the apartment building in Sailor Moon R. There are thorns and roses all around the lobby. What’s more Hotaru’s soul, which we see occasionally inside of Mistress 9, is held down by thorns. The manga doesn’t have this level of thorniness, and Hotaru is just seen sort of floating around in nothingness. This is a sort of physical visualization of the way she’s restricted inside of Mistress 9. All this really means is that Hotaru is still alive, so there’s still hope.
The Witches 5 return and now there are 6. Everyone seems to be getting a dream of something they would like. Sailor Mars sees a version of Eudial which pretty much just want to make out with her. She pins her down holding her hand and seems to want to kiss her. Did I ever mention that Eudial is my favourite of the Witches 5 and that Sailor Mars is my favourite Sailor Guardian? I’m totally shipping these two. The rest of the gang are presented with predictable things. Sailor Mercury sees a powerful artificial intelligence supercomputer, which is cool but probably nothing compared to the supercomputer on the Moon which has the consciousness of Queen Serenity uploaded to it. Sailor Venus holds a microphone for a while but doesn’t actually sing, which is disappointing. Sailor Jupiter likes flowers. The recurring theme is making them all want to quit being Sailor Guardians.
Sailor Moon gets a whopper of a dream. Chibiusa tries to choke and kill her! This is fake, unlike the time Chibiusa tried to shoot her in the head! This really is a great episode for Chibiusa haters! Sailor Moon doesn’t buy it though.
Turns out Kaolinite is actually a monster! This is not in the manga and new to Sailor Moon Crystal. She transforms into this weird kind of Daimon who the Sailor Guardians quickly dispose of. We see a couple of new attacks with Sailor Neptune’s Submarine Reflection, which is awesome, and Sailor Pluto’s Chronos Typhoon, which is completely disappointing.
To wrap up the episode Mistress 9 eats the Chibiusa’s Silver Crystal! How terrible! Does she even know that Chibiusa’s soul is in there? Good news for Hotaru though. She’ll have some company inside of Mistress 9.
Next is the new ending theme, Only Eternity Brings the Two Together, sung by Kenji Nojima, the voice of Tuxedo Mask. This ending theme contains wet shirt Mamoru which I find looks like something out Yaoi fan art. I guess some readers will appreciate this!
Next week is Sailor Moon Crystal Act 35, Infinity 9 – Infinite Labyrinth 2. Mistress 9 has reunited Chibiusa and Hotaru inside her being. Isn’t that great! Even in death these two good friends can hang around together! We’ll also see naked Usagi in this episode if that’s something that interests you.
Keep reading for more images of this episode and the next episode preview for Act 35.
This morning was the premiere event for the first episode of the Sailor Moon Crystal Infinity Arc in Japan. Some lucky fans were able to watch Act 27, Infinity 1 – Premonition, ahead of the rest of us. Only those in attendance were able to see it but a new trailer has been released so that we can see Sailor Uranus, Neptune and some of the Death Busters in action. On top of this we got a lot of news about the series, which is set to premiere on Tokyo MX on Monday April 4th at 11pm Japan Standard Time, 10am Eastern Daylight Time, and every Monday after this. It will replay on other channels throughout the week. There has been no mention of streaming options for international viewers. For now we are hoping for more information while relying on our friends in Japan to record the broadcasts so that they will be fan translated early in the week. Watch the trailer below.
The series has a new opening and ending theme for the Infinity arc. The new opening is “In Love With the New Moon” by Etsuko Yakushimaru who sang the cover of Otome No Policy on the 20th Anniversary album. The new ending theme is “Eternal Eternity” and will be sung by the voices of Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, Junko Minagawa and Sayaka Ohara. A CD release with these new songs will be released on April 27th and is already available for pre-order from Amazon Japan and CD Japan.
The animation looks a bit different from what we’ve seen, though it’s hard to tell specifically from just these clips. My concerns about the lack of shading in the preview image aren’t worrying me with what we’ve seen from this footage. I think what we’re seeing in this trailer looks quite good, though they are likely just sharing the best looking stuff they have. What do you think?
Source: Sailor Moon Official Site
Update: [2016-03-09] I previously mentioned that 11pm Japan Standard Time was 9am Eastern Time. This has been corrected to 10am Eastern Daylight Time. I was not keeping in mind the upcoming time change occurring this weekend which puts this release under Eastern Daylight Time, as Daylight Savings Time will be observed for many in the Eastern Time Zone. I’ll be sure to include the correct time zones when April 4th approaches. Apologies to those in the Eastern Time Zone who do not observer DST who are probably just really confused by all this nonsense.
Keep reading for more screenshots from the trailer.
There was a live streaming event this morning in Japan, related to the upcoming Infinity arc of Sailor Moon Crystal. Art was shown, but since we’d seen that earlier this week this was not a big revelation. We did not get any details about a schedule for the series but we did get cast information for the upcoming season. Junko Minagawa, the voice of Sailor Uranus and Sayaka Ohara, the voice of Sailor Neptune, joined the event. The actress voicing Sailor Saturn, Fujii Yukiyo, showed up momentarily via a separate video.
In addition to this the actors playing the Death Busters, including the Witches 5, were announced. A full cast list, with IMDB links, is included below.
Sailor Uranus – Junko Minagawa
Sailor Neptune – Sayaka Ohara
Sailor Saturn – Yukiyo FujiiProfessor Tomoe – Takuya Kirimoto
Kaolinite – Hikari Yono
Pharaon 90 – Takaya HashiEudial – Chiaki Takahashi
Mimete – Yuki Nagaku
Viluy – Rina Honizumi
Tellu – Naomi Ohzora
Cyprine – Umeka Shouji
I don’t watch much newer anime but a lot of these voice actors have a great deal of experience from recent years. MoonSisters.org posted a nice summary of all of their works on their Facebook Page. Most noteable is Takaya Hashi, who will be voicing Pharaon 90, who played a few small characters in the original Sailor Moon anime. He played Astronomer Dr. Sergai Ajimov in episode 120 of Sailor Moon S and the ventriloquist in the Sailor Moon SuperS Special.
Another odd thing was the inclusion of Cyprene but not Ptilol. In the recent musical Un Nouveau Voyage only Cyprene appeared, though Cyprene and Ptilol, twins, appeared together in the manga and original Sailor Moon anime. Assuming Sailor Moon Crystal will continue to be faithful to the manga it seems only logical that Ptilol will also be making an appearance. If this is the case she will likely also be voiced by Umeka Shouji.
Also announced at the event this morning was “The Exhibition of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon” in Tokyo from April 16th to June 19th. This exhibit will have stuff from the Sailor Moon comics and anime as well as merchandise for sale.
An image of the Infinity arc’s art was revealed, but as this was the same we’d seen earlier this week this wasn’t really anything new. We continue to wait for some confirmation of a timeline for the new episodes. At this point we can only speculate as to when it will be released.
Thanks to Twitter user @aers00 for streaming the event. I was unable to view the feed on Niconico and so I was happy to have an option to watch it while showering and getting ready this morning. I hope others who were looking to do the same found the feed as well.
We’re getting that much closer to the end of Sailor Moon S with the two latest episodes added to Hulu and Neon Alley. This week with episodes 122 and 123 we get introduced to three more members of the Witches 5!
Episode 122, Believe in Love: Ami, the Kindhearted Guardian, is a total Sailor Mercury episode. In fact it’s very reminiscent of her first episode in which the Dark Kingdom uses computers to try to drain Crystal Seminar students’ energy to feed to Metalia. This week the Death Busters are using computers to steal Mugen Academy students’ Pure Hearts to feed to Hotaru. As we are getting close to the end of the season we need to go through more of the Witches 5 and so we are introduced to Viluy. Viluy poses as a student at Mugen Academy, Yui Bidou, and in doing so she crosses Ami who is investigating the school. She is very intelligent and we learn that the research done at Mugen Academy is not only cutting edge for the mid 90s but actually quite ahead of anything we’ve done by 2015. She has an army of nano robots. Nano robots or nanobots are miniscule robots which, when working as a team, are capable of great feats such as turning the world into grey goo. We have nothing close to what is portrayed in this episode in existence today as nanotechnology is still in its early stages. Viluy uses these robots to attack the Sailor Guardians but when her bracelet is damaged they end up turning on her which kills her. This episode continues to ask us moral questions as Ami defends Hotaru from Haruka and Michiru who want to kill her in order to save the world from destruction.
Episode 123, Shadow of Destruction: the Messiah of Silence Awakens, introduces us to the final two members of the Witches 5. Cyrpine and Ptilol are considered to be a single member of the Witches 5 because of reasons I don’t pretend to understand. Do we refer to twins as a single entity? Then why are we calling a six member team the Witches 5? I think it’s nonsense personally, but that is what they are called. How much can they be considered to be a single person when they end up attacking each other? Things get pretty serious in this episode as Kaolinite kidnaps Sailor Chibi Moon. Her Pure Heart is so great that when it’s fed to Hotaru she transforms into Mistress 9. This leaves Chibiusa near death as Mamoru needs to use his own body’s energy to sustain her life. The gang is now ready to confront Mistress 9 and the Death Busters in the next handful of episodes. They missed their chance to kill Hotaru while she was young and defenseless. We’ll see what kind of destruction she will bring now. A funny scene in this episode shows Professor Tomoe adjusting his glasses with his middle finger, making it seem like he’s making a rude gesture.
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The two latest episodes of Sailor Moon S have been added to Hulu and Neon Alley. This week we have a bunch of the Witches 5 dying as we explore the mysterious Mugen Academy and get some backstory on Hotaru and Professor Tomoe’s tragic past. Why does so much happen in such a short time? Well there are not many episodes of Sailor Moon S left and there’s a lot of story related to the Infinity Arc which we haven’t touched on at this rate so the solution is just to go through characters and plot points at neck break speed. A bit of a change from the first season where each of the Shitennou were given roughly equal billing and now we have a very uneven distribution of episodes for each of the Witches 5.
Episode 120, An Invasion from Another Dimension: Mystery of Mugen Academy, goes into Hotaru and Professor Tomoe’s history a bit. Now that Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are sort of trying to kill Hotaru, her and her family have skipped town. Chibiusa tries to see her but is unable to. A little research into Professor Tomoe shows that he has a tragic past. In a flashback scene we see him in a lab accident which seems to kill Hotaru. An entity from another dimension, Pharaon 90, appears to offer to save her life but in exchange he enters Professor Tomoe’s eye, essentially taking over his body. While Professor Tomoe is this season’s villain, he actually cares a lot for his family and is powerless to stop the enemy. We learn that Professor Tomoe owns Mugen Academy, the school that Hotaru, Haruka and Michiru attend. Mugen is the Japanese word for Infinity. When this manga arc is referred to as the Infinity Arc, the word is Mugen, which is also the name of the school. At Mugen Academy Mimete uploads herself into a monitor, which seems like a great plan until Tellu shows up. In the style of all of the Witches 5, she pulls the plug and Mimete dies! We are tempted to cry for Mimete as she begs for her life with her cutesy little voice, but let’s not forget that she killed Eudial in cold blood not long ago.
Episode 121, A Bewitching Flower That Steals Hearts: Tellu, the Third Witch, further develops the very short lived Tellu. When at episodes 120 you’ve only shown two of the six Witches 5 you have a problem which can only be solved by killing a bunch of them in short time. Last episode Tellu killed Mimete and we need to off her too if we want to move on! Tellu’s short lived single episode plan involves using evil plants to steal people’s Pure Hearts. This all goes decently but not really well for her and she ends up getting killed by her own plant monster. Oops! Now we only have three more of the Witches 5 to get through with 6 episodes left in the season. Also Kaolinite is still around and being the villain so we’ll have to take care of her at some point. With Tellu defeated she leaves behind a student ID from Mugen Academy. That place again, two episodes in a row? Well we didn’t talk about it for the rest of the season but something definitely seems up with it now!
A pamphlet for the upcoming Sailor Moon Musical Un Nouveau Voyage or A New Journey has been posted to the official Sailor Moon site. This update includes images of the previously unseen Professor Tomoe and Kaolinite. We also found a picture of 5 of the Witches 5, Mimete, Eudial, Viluy, Tellu and Cyprine. There are actually 6 members in the Witches 5. Did we leave one out on the assumption that Japanese children can count? Ptilol is has not been revealed at this time though since she’s just a mirror image of Cyprene with red instead of blue hair and clothes I’ve put together this approximation of what she might look like. This is absolutely not a real image of Ptilol, just a silly image edit I made.
The newly revealed cast members are the following:
Yuki Kaon as Professor Tomoe
Kei Ohgi as Kaolinite
Ayaka Ida as Mimete
Saya Chinen as Eudial
Yui Hasegawa as Viluy
Momoko Sadachi as Tellu
Maana as Cyprine
Since this musical continues to use an all female cast Professor Tomoe is portrayed by a woman.
Image source: Vietnamese Sailor Moon Fan Club
The two latest episodes of Sailor Moon S were added to Hulu and Neon Alley this morning. This week we get episodes 112 and 113 which focus on a new character, Hotaru Tomoe, and her mysterious family.
Episode 112, Who Is the True Messiah? Chaos of Light and Darkness, doesn’t really deal with who the true Messiash is. The new villain, who we saw last week, is Mimete of the Witches 5. We also get a look at her in the Death Busters’ HQ with Cyprine in the background. Mimete is kind of insane. She killed Eudial in the last episode and is all over the map this week, first falling in love with an actor and then attacking him and ripping out his Pure Heart. The main thing which occurs in this episode is the first appearance of Hotaru. We saw her briefly in the last episode but we get a proper look at her here. Chibiusa loses her hat and Hotaru helps her retrieve in. The two are instant friends. This is the special encounter that Neo Queen Serenity told Chibiusa she would be making in the 20th century. We’ll be learning much more about her as the season goes on.
Episode 113, A House Filled With Evil Presence: The Beautiful Hotaru’s Secret, does not actually explain much about Hotaru’s secret. This episode features a very exposition filled interaction between the Sailor Guardians of the outer solar system and Tuxedo Mask. Everyone transforms for the sake of transforming without a villain in sight, which is a bit of a waste. We learn that Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Pluto protect the solar system from outside invaders while the Sailor Guardians that appeared previously protect against things from inside the solar system, like we had in the first two seasons. They aren’t too fond of Sailor Moon. Chibiusa and Usagi pay Hotaru a visit at her home. There they run into Kaolinite, who is somehow not dead. Usagi is shocked by this, as she encountered her in battle many times. Chibiusa arrived after Kaolinite’s supposed death so she doesn’t see this as odd. Somehow Kaolinite does not recognize Usagi, who she encountered in civilian form on her birthday, and Usagi just shrugs the whole thing off thinking it’s just a similarity. We see Professor Tomoe, Hotaru’s father, and here it is revealed who he is. Not much sense hiding it as we know his last name already. We also see him talking to a weird zonked out Hotaru who seems to be the Messiah of Silence. Will Hotaru destroy the world? She seems like a nice innocent girl, but when she comes face to face with Usagi’s broach, which contains the Silver Crystal, she sort of freaks out and seems to want to eat it. Surely this is not the last we’ll see of Hotaru as there is more going on with this girl and her creepy family who are clearly associated with the season’s villains.
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