The two latest episodes of Sailor Moon are now available on Hulu and Neon Alley. This week we get episodes 73 and 74 which may be memorable to many fans from the 90s as the first new episodes of Sailor Moon seen in years. Following the show’s original run of 65 episodes in North America back in 1995 there was a lengthy hiatus before the second half of Sailor Moon R was finally released. The final 17 episodes of Sailor Moon R played on YTV here in Canada starting in September of 1997 and in the US starting in November of 1998, billed as “Lost Episodes” by Cartoon Network’s Toonami.
Episode 73, A UFO Appears: The Sailor Guardians Abducted, introduces us to Esmeraude who will be the new villain for the next chunk of episodes, but before we start out with her we need to warp up things with Rubeus! More importantly, Chibiusa now knows that Usagi is Sailor Moon and has seen that her transformation brooch, the Crystal Star, contains the Silver Crystal. Naturally, she steals it. Conflicted at first she uses cognitive dissonance to convince herself that Usagi is a bad person and that this is the right thing to do. She ends up visiting Mamoru who shows her the very awesome Tuxedo Mask puppet, reminding us that despite her somewhat evil actions this is really just a young frightened girl we’re dealing with. Since Usagi doesn’t have her brooch she can’t transform which in the end means that the rest of the Sailor Guardians get abducted by Rubeus’s UFO. Usagi is upset and tries to slap Chibiusa at this point, but Mamoru stops her.
À suivre! Right away. Having two episodes at a time sure is convenient for two parters like this!
Episode 74, Defeat Rubeus: The Battle in Space, will be the end of a most hatable character! The Sailor Guardians have been kidnapped but it’s okay as Usagi finally has her brooch back. Rubeus wants the rabbit, known to viewers as Chibiusa, but giving up a (somewhat) innocent kid isn’t what Sailor Moon is all about. What are our heroes to do? Luna and Artemis have a plan! They’ll dress up like Chibiusa and try to trick Rubeus! On second thought that’s a terrible plan. Chibiusa proceeds to jump out of a window and turns herself in. Usagi follows, a big fight ensues and hooray the terrible Rubeus is defeated. But Sailor Moon is being pretty good at this point and not killing a ton of villains so for liability purposes they just kind of leave Rubeus on his spaceship which is blowing up. Esmeraude is more responsible for leaving him to die. Is this horrible? She doesn’t do it because he’s a terrible horrible man. She does it because she’s terrible and just wants him out of the picture. What a dragon! Spaceship explodes, let’s have some pancakes, have a nice day.
Back in 1997 when these episodes first aired on YTV I was all about making a really terrible Sailor Moon site. I guess some things never changed! I like to think my Internet skills have improved since then. For historical purposes, check out The Sailor Moon Page of Funk!, my very old ad ridden Sailor Moon web site which features reviews of dub episodes 66 (episode 73) (cached version) and 67 (episode 74) (cached version) complete with my somewhat thorough list of all of the differences I spotted between the original Japanese version and the dub. The pages are full of broken links and images. The cached version on the Internet Archive has a few less ads and some of those images preserved.
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