The first episode of Sailor Moon Sailor Stars and final episode of Sailor Moon SuperS are now available on Hulu

Posted on December 14, 2015 by Adam

At long last Sailor Moon Sailor Stars now has an official release in the United States. Enjoy Hulu’s new banner featuring characters we won’t be seeing until 6 or more episodes from now! This morning the final episode of Sailor Moon SuperS and the first episode of Sailor Stars were added to Hulu and Neon Alley. New episodes will be added every Monday until the series completes. With this we finally wrap up the story with Queen Nehelenia… and then we unwrap that story because well the anime didn’t quite match up with the manga and we need to go back and fix a few things. Sailor Stars was first released in Japan back in 1996 but it was never released in English when the series was originally dubbed. Fans who were looking to see the end of the series originally had to trade fan subbed video tapes, buy the expensive laserdiscs and later buy either bootlegged DVDs or expensive imports with no English subtitles. Some of us actually did all of those. I’d like to thank VKLL for keeping me in Sailor Stars fansubs over the years. Before we get to the first episode of Sailor Stars, we have one more episode of SuperS to take care of.

Episode 166, Dreams Forever: Fill the Heavens With Light, finishes up a story which already sort of seems finished. The enemy seemed defeated as the children of the world, including the viewers, were asked to say “Moon Crisis Power” and vanquish evil, but Nehelenia has one last trick up her sleeve! The circus tent she’s on is floating away in the sky towards the Moon. We get some backstory on why Nehelenia is evil. She was afraid to become old so she ate the mirrors of all of the people who loved her. Before retreating into her mirror she tosses Sailor Chibi Moon off of the tent to her death. Sailor Moon, being the bad ass that she is, does not hesitate and dives after her. This shows Sailor Moon’s true strength. She has no plan. She does not have any reason to expect this to work out but she refuses to give up even for a moment and jumps to her certain death to save her daughter. What follows is a fairly long but tense plunge down to the Earth as Sailor Moon eventually catches up to Sailor Chibi Moon. She finally wakes and summons Pegasus just in time to give them wings and save them right now the ground. Never mind that they are seen breaching the top of skyscrapers over a minute before being rescued, much longer than it would take a person falling at terminal velocity to hit the ground, but this is just for dramatic effect. The world is saved. Chibiusa is saved. Everyone is happy. Chibiusa and Helios say their goodbyes as the Amazoness Quartet decide it wouldn’t be their style to do the same. It is a bit sad that these characters don’t get to become Sailor Guardians like they should have, but the first six episodes of Sailor Stars have enough to fix without doing anything about that.

In the final scene of this episode all characters are wearing familiar clothes. They are actually wearing the exact same things they were wearing at the beginning of the Sailor Moon R movie both in the credits, at the flower garden and then at the Hikawa Shrine. All of Sailor Moon S and SuperS have taken place since the R movie! What are the chances that six people happen to be wearing all of the same clothes on the exact same day after two years? Chibiusa, naturally, is wearing something different. She would not likely have fit in her old clothes and it may not have been kept after her trip to the future and back. What do the movie and this episode have in common? I couldn’t find much though they were both directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara. This may be one reason for the similarity.

The Sailor Moon R Movie	Sailor Moon SuperS episode 166
The Sailor Moon R Movie	Sailor Moon SuperS episode 166

Episode 167, The Flower of Nightmares Scatters: The Queen of Darkness Returns, is the first episode of Sailor Moon Sailor Stars, but we won’t be seeing the Sailor Starlights, Star Crystals, Sailor Animamates or Sailor Chibi Chibi for a while. Why not? Well because we have to redo a bit of Sailor Moon SuperS to get things to the baseline they need to be at for Sailor Stars. A recurring problem with the original Sailor Moon anime is that it gets written while the manga is still in development so the stories deviate a lot. The main problem that this episode has to make up for is that Sailor Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Saturn were in the later half of the Dream arc of the manga but did not appear in Sailor Moon SuperS. There was this whole story in the manga where Hotaru grows at a fast rate and then they come join the rest of the gang. In the manga Professor Tomoe died in the big battle but in the anime he survived and kept Hotaru, his daughter who he loved. His daughter who he literally sold his soul to protect. The single only important thing in the world to him, his beloved daughter, is snatched away by Setsuna in this episode. This is completely unforgiveable and this is the kind of mess you end up with when your show deviates too much from the source material and then you have to play catch up.

Annoyingly we have to pretend Chibiusa is leaving again. This scene is absolutely terrible. I just can’t stand anything about it. We’ve seen Chibiusa try to leave and fail in Sailor Moon R a bunch of times, and then we see her leave in what is actually a very touching scene. Then Sailor Moon S wraps up with the fake leaving, which is lifted from the manga, which has Chibiusa make a big deal about leaving but then come back immediately. So now Chibiusa tries to leave but can’t because there are shooting stars which it turns out aren’t really what they seem. To make matters worse we do all of this song and dance but Chibiusa’s days are actually numbered and she will leave the series between episodes, with no tearful send off, and is erased from the show like Pootchie going back to his home planet. Surely some may have felt that there was too much focus on Chibiusa in Sailor Moon SuperS, but the answer to this is not, as Sailor Stars plays out, simply to erase her from the story. This scene should have been removed and placed when Chibiusa actually leaves, a time which should have had a stronger emotional impact, but here we are. So Nehelenia is back and the gang is all back together as Setsuna shows up with this new baby while Haruka and Michiru are fighting bad guys. They get their suits upgraded and now we’re all but caught up. Mostly. More on Saturn next episode.

Oh boy that was a pretty negative review. I guess I have strong feelings on some of these things. Don’t let my pessimism keep you from watching! There’s a lot of good stuff in Sailor Moon Sailor Stars to come and this first chunk of six episodes is a very good short arc of episodes which just doesn’t have much to do with the rest of the season.

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A Sailor Saturn Dal doll and Sailor Pluto Pullip doll are coming soon

Posted on September 5, 2015 by Adam

A Sailor Saturn Dal doll has just been announced on the Sailor Moon official site. Additionally a Sailor Pluto Pullip doll was announced last month.

Sailor Saturn is not a Pullip doll. She is a Dal doll. What’s the difference? Pullip is the name of a specific character and most of the Sailor Moon dolls are Pullip dolls because they roughly match that character’s size. The Sailor Moon Pullip doll is a Sailor Moon doll made like the Pullip doll, the first in the series. Tuxedo Mask does not have a Pullip doll but a Taeyang doll, Pullip’s boyfriend, because he is male. It’s like if Sailor Moon was a Barbie doll and he was a Ken doll. Similarly Sailor Chibi Moon, like Sailor Saturn, gets a Dal doll. Dal is Pullip’s younger sister. Pullip is 17 while her sister Dal is 13. Since the doll is younger looking her model fits better for younger characters. You’ll notice that this doll is a bit smaller and has a different shaped face as compared to Pullip. All this said Pullip dolls, Taeyang dolls and Dal dolls are all part of the same line of products made by the same company, they are simply made using different base designs for the doll. Sailor Saturn’s doll will be released in October 2015 and will sell for 17000 yen, roughly $143 US.

Sailor Pluto finally got a doll. How great! She has been last in so many products but even though coming after Human Luna she was not the last Sailor Guardian to have a Pullip doll announced. We have also gotten a look at Sailor Pluto’s Bandai Exclusive which is a civilian outfit which allows her to be Setsuna Meiou, Sailor Pluto’s civilian identity. Unlike the other Sailor Guardians Sailor Pluto does not have a school uniform (and is not based on a real planet) so she doesn’t have that as her Bandai Exclusive outfit like the others do. She has a purple business suit so that she can be all professional and stuff. Her doll will be released some time in September for 17,000 yen, roughly $143 US, with her Bandai Exclusive version selling for 20,000 yen, about $168 US.

The Sailor Saturn doll will be unveiled on Sunday September 6th at some sort of Spring Doll Show which you can read about at the show’s web site if you happen to be able to read Japanese, which I assume anyone who’s able to attend should be able to do. Due to time zones it’s actually tomorrow in Japan right now. The show should be starting in a few hours.

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Source: Sailor Saturn Dal doll, Sailor Pluto Pullip Doll

Sailor Moon Crystal Blu-Ray vol. 10 review

Posted on August 7, 2015 by Adam

The latest volume of Sailor Moon Crystal was released on Blu-Ray July 8th. As always my review is so late that the next volume, volume 11, is about to be released on August 12th. Regardless, let’s talk about volume 10. This set, like many others, includes two episodes on Blu-Ray in Japanese only. You can order it from sites such as Amazon Japan for 5194 yen, which is about $42 US plus shipping.

The art for this release features the often neglected but never forgotten Sailor Pluto! This is fitting since her character is featured prominently on the disk. We have Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, and Act 20, Crystal Tokyo – King Endymion.

The charm is Sailor Jupiter’s Star Power Stick. This fits with the trend we’d been seeing.

Included as always is a 20 page full colour special book. This includes summaries for Act 19 and 20, art, character designs for Sailor Pluto and some of the Black Moon Clan, a page for Fumio Osano, Osabu, as well as two interviews. The first interview is with Akiko Kosaka, a composer who provided many songs for the original anime as well as Gekkou, the ending theme for Sailor Moon Crystal. The second is with Ai Maeda, the voice of Sailor Pluto.

Quality for this release is great, as always. The video is 1080p and looks better than the streaming releases. There are a lot of minor changes to the animation from the original version. Nothing from these episodes in particular jumped out as me as being significant. You can always check out Crystal Comparisons to see changes for any episodes, includes the acts 19 and 20 which are provided in this set.

The disk is Japanese only and also include a commentary track featuring Munehisa Sakai, the series director, as well as Shizuka Ito, the voice of Sailor Venus, and Misato Fukuen, the voice of Chibiusa. I can’t really comment on the content of these commentaries, as I don’t actually speak Japanese.

I can’t tell you whether or not it’s worth it to buy this set. Do what you did with the last 9. The video quality is great and it’s worth having for a hardcore collector but North American fans who like their money may find it makes sense to wait for the English dubbed and subbed release we will be getting at some point in the future.

Keep reading for more photos of this set including pictures of all pages of the included special book.

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Sailor Moon S episodes 124 and 125 and the dubbed version of the second half of Sailor Moon R are now available on Hulu

Posted on July 20, 2015 by Adam

We’ve gotten a lot more than usual added to Hulu and Neon Alley this week. Sailor Moon S is almost done as we wrap up most of the story with episodes 124 and 125, introducing us to Sailor Saturn. In addition fans can also watch the second half of Sailor Moon R, episodes 69 to 89, dubbed by Viz on Hulu. These episodes were added with this past Friday’s Moonlight Party 4.

Episode 124, The Coming Terror of Darkness: Struggle of the Eight Guardians, is where a bunch of fighting happens before the epic finale. The Sailor Guardians are set to stop Mistress 9 and so they are storming the enemy stronghold. Sailor Pluto freezes time to prevent a helicopter accident and dies anticlimactically for breaking this taboo. Sound familiar? Indeed, this is taken right out of the Black Moon Clan story arc of the manga, only Sailor Pluto doesn’t die in Sailor Moon R and her returning for the SuperS movie and Sailor Stars is not ever really explained. So a ton of monsters show up. They are red proto Daimon type things which is what happens when you don’t put a Daimon seed in anything. They are quickly dispensed with. Inside the building Sailor Uranus and Neptune confront Professor Tomoe, or rather the Daimon Germatoid who is in control of him. The two are separated so that Germatoid can be dispensed with leaving Professor Tomoe as the good guy he once was. Sailor Moon has a fun confrontation with Hotaru, who tries to get the Holy Grail, because she’s really just evil Mistress 9 posing as an innocent girl. This doesn’t really work out as Mistress 9 is revealed once again!

Episode 125, The Shining Shooting Star: Saturn and the Messiah, features the very very brief appearance of Sailor Saturn. As Sailor Guardians go Sailor Saturn is the least shown one of the bunch as this it the only time we will see her until Sailor Stars and she is the only Sailor Guardian never to get an animated transformation sequence. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We’re still dealing with Mistress 9! She couldn’t get the Holy Grail from Sailor Moon in the last episode so she tries to get her father to get it which … works perfectly. Sailor Moon gives the grail to Professor Tomoe who in turn hands it to his daughter. But Mistress 9 puts it in the big Galaxy contraption thing to summon Pharaon 90, the big evil from the season that we haven’t really seen at all, but we are to believe he’s behind all the bad stuff. Things are going bad but… Hotaru turns into Sailor Saturn! This is great! She returns Chibiusa’s Pure Heart to her. Everything is looking up. Sailor Saturn can even go and kill Pharaon 90, too bad she’ll have to die to do it. The moral thought expedient continues! First we wanted to kill Hotaru to stop the end of the world but now she is willing to sacrifice herself to save the world. The end result is still Hotaru dying, but since she is willing it’s somehow better. Sailor Moon won’t have it though. She was not on board with killing Hotaru and she is not on board with letting Sailor Saturn kill herself and so she hurls herself into Pharaon 90 after Sailor Saturn. Emerging from the chaos is a battered Super Sailor Moon and a baby Hotaru. This pretty much ends the main story of Sailor Moon S. What follows next week are two kind of terrible episodes which follow the conclusion of the primary story arc.

Support the site by buying Viz’s dubbed and subbed episodes of Sailor Moon on DVD or Blu-Ray using the links below:

Sailor Pluto’s heart shaped Garnet Orb can be seen on new photos of Pluto

Posted on July 14, 2015 by Adam

This morning NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft was a mere 12,500 km from Pluto. While approaching it took the above photo, the highest quality photo taken at the time, which reveals a large heart shape on the dwarf planet’s surface. No doubt this is Sailor Pluto’s heart shaped Garnet Orb which lies on top of her Garnet Rod. This Garnet Orb is one of the three Talismans, the other two being Sailor Uranus’s Space Sword and Sailor Neptune’s Deep Aqua Mirror.

Sailor Pluto’s status as a Sailor Guardian has come into question since her planet was downgraded back in 2006. Despite more recent rumours to the contrary Pluto is still very much not a planet. That said the appearance of her Talisman across the surface of her dwarf planet’s surface is a big deal. Until now the only celestial body with something on it’s surface represented by the character was the rabbit on the Moon from which Usagi, who’s name is the Japanese word for rabbit, gets her name.

One might also argue that Sailor Jupiter’s Flower Hurricane takes some inspiration from the Great Red Dot of Jupiter which is technically a anticyclonic storm. Storms are only called Hurricanes if they occur around North America. Those centered near Japan are actually called Typhoons, which makes one wonder why Sailor Jupiter’s attack would be named after something which can no occur where she lives.

Now we must ask ourselves how Naoko Takeuchi managed to know back in the 90s that Pluto had a heart on it’s surface even though we didn’t get these pictures until today. Time travel seems to be the most logical explanation though we must remain open minded to alternative theories until an official statement is made.

Source: NASA

Watch Sailor Moon Crystal Act 25, Showdown – Death Phantom, July 4th at 6am Eastern Time

Posted on July 2, 2015 by Adam

The next episode of Sailor Moon Crystal, Act 25, Showdown – Death Phantom, will be available this coming Saturday, July 4th, at 7pm Japan Standard Time which is 6am Eastern Time, 3am Pacific Time. Since that’s nice and early you’ll have more than enough time to watch it before your mandatory yearly viewing of the hit film Independence Day. As always the episode will be available to stream on Crunchyroll, Hulu and Niconico. This week we say goodbye to a Sailor Guardian and hello to a new one as everything changes.

Where the last episode left off Prince Demande was just about to put the two Silver Crystals together, which is meant to be a disastrous suggestion of the scope of crossing the streams. Sailor Pluto has three rules and she’s broken two so why not just break the third now? Judging from the next episode preview a lot of the episode will show Chibiusa struggling to free herself from Black Lady, though this internal struggle is not something we see a lot of in the Manga. It’s finally time for Chibiusa to come into the role she was born to play, but will she be just a moment too late?

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 S episode 114 and 115 are now available on Hulu

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Adam

The two latest episodes of Sailor Moon S have been added to Hulu and Neon Alley. This week we focus a lot on boy crazy Mimete and her crazy antics, as well as getting a good look at Hotaru and her mysterious past.

Episode 114, I Love Idols: Mimete’s Dilemma, has Mimete and Minako facing off against each other in a contest to find the lead in an idol’s next movie. Jinta Araki is a heartthrob that both Minako and Mimete are infatuated with. Minako has long had a dream of being an idol, and this fits right in with that. As with many other times in the series, this creates a situation where one of our heroes befriends one of the enemies without realising what is really going on. The contest goes well for Minako, who is quite surprised by her success. She passes the swimsuit part of the contest, which will please a certain reader who is a big fan of episodes with swimsuits. She makes it to the final five before being cut, though she will do much better in a later episode. Mimete loses and, as always, freaks out and attacks the target who she was previously infatuated with. Mimete is like Kirk from the original Star Trek series who would frequently kiss a girl and then hit her all in the same episode.

Episode 115, Shadow of Silence: The Pale Glimmer of a Firefly, is all about Hotaru. The title is a pun in Japanese, as the word “Hotaru” means firefly. The episode starts out with a nice conversation between Setsuna and Chibiusa. Even though they were BFFs in the future, they don’t get to interact much in the present time. There’s little question at this point as to whether or not Hotaru is the Messiah of Silence who her father, Professor Tomoe, is talking to. When she has pain during their conversation we immediately cut to Hotaru in pain on her bed. When Chibiusa visits Hotaru she is turned away, but Hotaru pursues and reveals the full extent of her health problems when she falls ill and needs to be hospitalised. In some flashback scenes we see a lot of what has been going on with this girl. She has some sort of dangerous ability which first manifested itself when she was a child and killed a fish. Later we see her in school when she unknowingly hurt a boy in her class. Her school uniform in this scene is from the Mugen Academy, which Haruka and Michiru also attend.

Support the site by buying Viz’s dubbed and subbed episodes of Sailor Moon on DVD or Blu-Ray using the links below:

Sailor Moon S episode 110 and 111 are now available on Hulu

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Adam

The two latest episodes of Sailor Moon S are now available on Hulu and Neon Alley. This week a ton is revealed as we get two of the better episodes of the season and one of my favourite episodes of the series as a whole. We find out who has a Talisman, we see the Holy Grail, Super Sailor Moon and even a new character who will be real important later this season. As of episode 110 we have a slightly modified intro. Sailor Chibi Moon and Hotaru appear where they did not in the intro for episode 109. They will both feature prominently for the rest of the season.

Episode 110, The Death of Uranus and Neptune: The Talisman Appears, has Eudial finally discovering who’s Pure Hearts are Talismans. She contacts Haruka and Michiru to let them know about it. They are troubled by this, as to their understanding extracting these things will mean the death of those who have the Talismans, but they have been prepared all season to have blood on their hands to get them. Anything to stop the end of the world! Haruka is unhappy with Usagi being Sailor Moon, so she takes her transformation broach. There’s a lot of that going around. Everyone is off in helicopters of all things to meet Eudial. We learn that the Talismans are actually in Sailor Uranus and Neptune. As they were prepared to take the lives of others to save the world, they are equally prepared to take their own lives. First Sailor Neptune has her Pure Heart extracted, and then Sailor Uranus uses Eudial’s weapon on herself, extracting her own Pure Heart. All hope seems lost as Sailor Uranus and Neptune are seemingly dead with their Talismans revealed! To be continued!

This episode is full of great drama, and Haruka and Michiru first struggle with the idea of having to take someone’s life to save many, and then later have to sacrifice themselves to do so. It’s a moral question that is weighed over and over throughout the series. Is it worth the sacrifice of one life to save many? A twist of the classic trolley experiment. In the Utilitarian eyes of Haruka and Michiru the answer is yes, but Usagi feels much differently. No single life can be sacrificed to save others.

Episode 111, The Holly Grail’s Mystical Power: Moon’s Double Transformation, follows where episode 110 left off with Sailor Neptune and Uranus dead! Or are they? Eudial takes off with the two Talismans and there’s a silly bit where the Sailor Guardians get stuck in glue. Finally a familiar face shows up and reveals herself to be Sailor Pluto! Although Sailor Pluto appeared briefly in Sailor Moon R this is the first time we see her in her civilian form, Setsuna Meioh, and therefore the first time she is seen transforming. It turns out she could have saved us a bunch of trouble because she knew all about the Talismans and has one herself! Once the three are put together we get the Holy Grail. Why is Viz trying to spell it Holly Grail? No idea. It’s just nonsense. The Holy Grail is a well established religious item, the target of King Arthur’s quest, and holly is a kind of plant we decorate with around Christmas time. Luckily in the episode itself the item is referred to as the Holy Grail, not the Holly Grail. Anyway with the three Talismans together Sailor Neptune and Uranus’s Pure Hearts are restored and all is good! Now Sailor Moon can transform into Super Sailor Moon, allowing her to get a nice new outfit, and Sailor Chibi Moon gets these little things in her hair. Cool? With that Eudial is quickly defeated, but she does not die at the hands of Super Sailor Moon. Trying to drive away she learns from Mimete of the Witches 5 that her car has been sabotaged, causing her to fall of a cliff seemingly to her death. She is never seen again. Mimete is pretty much terrible. She will be the focus on the next bunch of episodes as she takes over as the main villain. We will be made to feel sorry for her later but try to remember this cold blooded murder when that time comes. A new character is seen in this episode as a young girl is seen screaming when the Holy Grail is created. This is Hotaru Tomoe, the daughter of Professor Tomoe. We’ll be seeing more of her real soon.

Support the site by buying Viz’s dubbed and subbed episodes of Sailor Moon on DVD or Blu-Ray using the links below:

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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Sailor Moon News

Bringing you the latest news about the new anime series Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal and all things Sailor Moon.

Tag Archives: Sailor Pluto

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