Sailor Moon Crystal Act 31, Sailor Pluto – Setsuna Meioh, review

Posted on May 11, 2016 by Adam

The latest episode of Sailor Moon Crystal aired on Japanese TV on Monday May 9th and is now available to stream on Crunchyroll, Neon Alley and Hulu. This week Sailor Pluto returns as Setsuna Meioh while Makoto faces off against an evil plant lady! Overall I thought this was a really great episode with fantastic animation, though I found some of the subtitles a bit distracting. There seemed to be some fairly basic grammatical errors or just sentences that weren’t written like people really talk.

The big thing this week of course is the return of Sailor Pluto. Throughout most of the episode Setsuna Meioh, Sailor Pluto’s civilian identity, doesn’t have any memory of being a Sailor Guardian. What exactly is going on here? The Sailor Pluto we saw in the future did not come from the present. While the Space-Time Corridor can be considered to exist outside of time in some sense, I always assumed that Sailor Pluto guarded it throughout time. So there should be a Sailor Pluto in the past, present and future, living through time. Which Sailor Pluto is this? We will get a bit of an explanation next week which really only raises more questions. I have a lot of thoughts on this but I will get into them in my Act 32 review.

Reika and Motoki show up again, as they’re going to school with Setsuna. The two are bickering and fighting a bit as Motoki has mentioned Makoto, one of the many young girls that comes into his arcade, and Reika doesn’t really appreciate this. Imagine how she’d feel if she watched the live action series! While on the train Motoki suggests going to have dinner near the Mugen Academy. Reika doesn’t want to because of the ominous clouds! Oddly when we see the buildings in the distance there does not appear to be any more clouds there than over the train the two are on, where it’s also raining. What?

Sailor Moon Crystal Act 31 - Chibiusa's hot teacher

Sailor Moon SuperS episode 135 - Kyuusuke, Chibiusa and Momoko badmouth Morino

Back at Chibiusa’s school we make an important discovery. Chibiusa and her friends have a hot teacher! Where did she come from? She looks nothing like this in the manga. In the anime we see their teacher in the Sailor Moon SuperS season, but this does not appear to be that same character. That character was struggling with aging while being single and Kyuusuke teased her for not being able to get a man. This teacher shouldn’t have any such problems! Meanwhile Kyuusuke is not subtle about his attraction to Chibiusa. As the class is encouraged to give the items they made to someone special, Kyuusuke choses to give his Sailor Moon pencil holder to Chibiusa. She misses the point obviously. Shouldn’t she be totally into this guy because he looks just like her father?

Sailor Moon Crystal Act 31 - A Brock looking guy who's into Makoto

Sailor Moon Crystal Act 17 - Makoto's father was Brock from Pokémon

Speaking of guys who look like fathers, who’s this guy who’s hitting on Makoto in the botanical gardens? He kind of looks like Brock from Pokémon. You know who else looks like Brock from Pokémon? Makoto’s Dad! If Chibiusa is any indication girls really dig guys who look just like their Dad so Makoto should be all over this dude! Instead she daydreams about her Sempai, who we learn is named Nichogi. This episode, and the manga equivalent, are the only time we hear his name which was never mentioned in the original Sailor Moon anime. He doesn’t look like Brock from Pokémon which just doesn’t make sense if Chibiusa, Freud and Jung are to be trusted and all things considered I don’t think they should be.

This week’s villain is Tellu of the Witches 5 who is posing as Ruru Teruno. She’s in charge of phys ed and the botanical gardens. What an odd combination of interests that also overlap with Makoto’s very specific mix of girly and tom boy tendencies. Her power level is 404, double that of last week’s villain, but because this manga is from the mid 90s it’s unlike it’s a reference to http code 404, page not found. Tellu has created the Tellun flower which is this evil flower which drains people’s energy, a plot not unlike that of the Sailor Moon R movie. The Tellun plant in bloom blankets the floor with pink flowers which looks a lot like the asteroid which was blanketed in Kissenian flowers in the film.

Lots of Hotaru going on this week as we see that girls are terrible to each other sometimes. The other students at her school comment about how weak she seems and that she wears long sleeves even in summer. A change that we saw last week was that Mugen Academy students were starting to wear different uniforms with short puffy sleeves over the longer sleeve versions we’d seen earlier, and that Hotaru continues to wear. Next week we will see just why it is that Hotaru wears long sleeves and stockings. She’s not just hiding scars but also something kind of evil as she gets upset at her classmates and crushes a metal pencil box in a frightening display.

Usagi starts to suspect Hotaru, as she’s the daughter of Professor Tomoe, and so she comes along with Chibiusa to visit her. If only Chibiusa had been honest and shared Hotaru’s secret that her father makes monsters we would be able to avoid a lot of this stuff but whatever. Usagi snoops around Hotaru’s house while Chibiusa helps her friend get her Silver Crystal fix at which point she once again shows signs of being some sort of evil being stuck inside the body of an innocent looking young girl.

Sailor Chibi Moon steps it up this week by finally getting her Moon Rod. She pleads to her mother to get a weapon and then Luna P turns into this item. I’m not sure her mother did this because I thought Luna P was more related to Sailor Pluto. So she uses this device to do her ridiculously sweet Pink Sugar Heart Attack move which is animated nearly identically to how it was in the manga.

Finally Sailor Pluto shows up with her Dead Screen attack killing Tellu, who somehow turned into a big monster, and saving the day. Unfortunately this appearance is not preceded by a transformation sequence. Based on what happens in the manga it is entirely possible that we won’t be seeing Sailor Pluto or Saturn transforming in this particular story arc, though we can hope that a minor change will allow them to transform on screen.

Next week Act 32, Infinity 6 – Three Soldiers. will give a bit of an explanation as to where and when Sailor Pluto came from. We’ll get some back story on the new Sailor Guardians and face off against the final members of the Witches 5.

Keep reading for more screenshots from this episode and the next episode preview for Act 32.

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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 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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Sailor Moon R episodes 81 and 82 are now available on Hulu

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Adam

The latest episodes of Sailor Moon R have been added to Hulu and Neon Alley. This week we very slowly make the decision to go to the future as Chibiusa decides to go back to Crystal Tokyo and then we take an entire episode to chill in limbo trying to get there.

Episode 81, The Dark Gate Is Completed? the Targeted Elementary School, introduces us to Chibiusa’s school friends Momoko and Kyuusuke. Momoko is presented as Chibiusa’s good friend, as she will be later in the series. Kyuusuke is kind of along for the ride and will later be seen as having a crush on Momoko. We haven’t gotten much of a look at her circle of friends outside of the main characters from the show but it would seem that part of Chibiusa’s plan to get the Silver Crystal and save the future involves enrolling in the local school and attending each day. We learn in a bit of a flashback to Chibiusa’s first day at school that Kyuusuke gave her the nickname of Chibiusa while teasing her for being small. Chibi is a slang term to mean small person or small child in Japan, so this fits. The Usa part is simply short for Usagi, the name which she got from her mother, whoever that will turn out to be. Esmeraude has filled Chibiusa’s school with evil energy, causing children to hilariously attack each other. This brings us to our villains Chiral and Achiral. These two appear as members of the Black Moon Clan in the manga. Sailor Moon kills them with her Moon Princess Halation which would, if they are humans, be the only people she kills in the entire season. While Sailor Moon kills many Droids she has a great record when it comes to humans this season. She heals the Ayakashi Sisters one by one. For liability purposes it is fire and less so Esmeraude that kills Rubeus. Without getting into spoilers Esmeraude is not technically killed as a human and then Saphir and Demande do not die by Sailor Moon’s hand. So what are these characters? They have gems on them which indicates that they may be Droids, but are not clearly referred to as such in the episode and we do not see them created or get turned into a pile of ash like other Droids. I pondered this question for years until finally I saw the Sailor Moon R Memorial. The Memorials are single season summaries narrated by Luna which were released on video. In the Sailor Moon R Memorial all of the season’s Droids are listed including, as the caption in the image below shows, Droid Chiral and Achiral. Indeed, Sailor Moon’s hands remain unsullied by murder for the Sailor Moon R season! As the episode wraps up Chibiusa decides it’s time to go back to the future and save her family.

Episode 82, Journey to the Future: Battle in the Space-Time Corridor, covers our long trip to the future! I remember how excited I was, back in the 90s, having waited so long for new episodes and watching VHS fan subs of Sailor Moon R. I just wanted to see them get to the future already! How exciting that we are finally going, and we spend a whole damned episode just traveling through time! Chibiusa has finally decided to bring the Sailor Team and Tuxedo Mask to the future with her to rescue her mother with the help of the Key of Space-Time. This doesn’t go as smoothly as one would hope. First things first, we see Sailor Pluto! While she had a decent part in the Black Moon arc of the manga Sailor Pluto doesn’t get much attention during this season of the anime, as her appearance is limited to what we saw in a dream and her protecting the Space-Time Door. She tries to attack Sailor Moon, not recognizing her, but stops when Chibiusa interjects. Sailor Pluto sort of exists outside of time so it’s not really clear how old she is or just what time she comes from or goes to, but it doesn’t really matter in this season’s context as she just exists in this vortex which is between time. What follows is a lengthy walk through the Space-Time Corridor where it’s terribly important not to let go of your partner’s hand, only that is exactly what happens. Chibiusa sees a familiar looking face in her mother who turns out to be a Droid. The monster is killed and everything is great until they get to the other side of the corridor. It turns out that really terrible view of Crystal Tokyo we saw in Chibiusa’s dream was actually incredibly accurate. The future really sucks and everything is really wrecked. More on that next week when we actually get to spend a little time in the future!

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

Tag Archives: Space-Time Corridor

Sailor Moon Crystal Act 31, Sailor Pluto – Setsuna Meioh, review

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

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

Sailor Moon R episodes 81 and 82 are now available on Hulu