The plots (and tree roots) thicken!

As is so often the case, SM dropped lots of exciting story stuff on me the week I have Far Too Much To Do. Between packing for a trip and actually going on said trip, we’re gonna have to do what we did way back during the Nephrite Finale and Sailor Moon Restrict this post to general recaps and overall impressions.

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Aliens are people, too!

These two episodes encapsulate pretty much everything I love about Sailor Moon, using supernatural events to develop characters and provide commentary on love, friendship, and gender roles. And it doesn’t hurt that they were darn amusing, too. This is kind of the show Sailor Moon R should have been from the beginning, really—when you have aliens masquerading as humans, it’s almost a crime NOT to have them constantly interacting with (and being confused by) (and being affected by) human culture and quirks.

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Sometimes I worry that Sailor Moon will run out of episodic plot lines—then I remember that Cheers ran for 11 years, and they never had any aliens to battle, and I know we’ll be okay.

Man, I wasn’t kidding when I called Sailor Moon a “magical girl sitcom” way back in Episode 11. Toss in a laugh track and some flannel and there are days when this show would fit right in with the live-action teen sitcoms airing back in the early ‘90s. This week we’ve got the Babysitting Episode and the School Recital Episode—okay, more accurately the “School Festival Episode,” a long-time staple of school-based anime and manga. But it’s the same concept, really: An episode centered around a performance and one character’s dedication to it.

Nevertheless, SM manages to put its own (thoroughly ridiculous) twist on these tales, as the baby drama is less about the baby and more about Usagi struggling to connect with Amnesiac Mamoru, and the recital reveals some facets of Rei’s character we haven’t seen before. Also, Clow cards. Relatively few of those U.S. school sitcoms had Clow cards.

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Moon Prism Power, Level Up!

Doncha just love shoujo and their emotions-based power-ups? Who needs training and fighting and slowly gaining martial experience when you can just feel feelings SO HARD that you turn jewellery into legendary crystals and absolutely nothing into magic rods? I wish I could’ve spent MY middle and high school years having my FEELINGS converted into Lovely Items: I was a fairly chill teenager and I still would’ve been able to ride into battle atop a sparkling Jayhawk while shooting flaming arrows from my longbow made of dreams and stardust. To victory!

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The pretty guardian in a keffiyeh appears!

I’m on the road, sans my usual computer (and therefore my animated gif collection), and completely burned out from my week-long Utena watch-n-blog marathon, so today’s recaps are going to be an exercise in brevity. Fortunately it’s also an exercise is mostly-filler, so this should be doable.

In terms of general impressions, I had two thoughts this week: (1) Wow, the animation saw one hell of a dive during Episode 49, and (2) It seems like Sailor Moon might be trying to inject some life lessons into its relationships, and not just of the “love conquers all” variety. It’s nice to finally see a close boy-girl relationship that’s an actual friendship instead of a romance (even if we really didn’t get to SEE much of it at all), and I very much hope we get more of that in the future.

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Please keep your arms and legs inside the emotional roller coaster at all times.

It’s hard to feel tension when you know a show isn’t actually about to end, but I’ll give Sailor Moon full credit for giving its best-known side characters some truly memorable send-offs this week. From Ami’s brilliance to Rei’s toughness and even over to Mamoru’s surprisingly sweet “You are not alone” moment with Usagi, these characters died the way they lived – and died satisfactorily, too, true to themselves and their ideals to the very end.

Except, you know, that they didn’t.

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It’s a hectic time in and out of the Moon Kingdom this week.

This would be the week you drop a barrage of plot bombs on me, wouldn’t it, Sailor Moon? It’s not enough that I’ve got Fall anime premiere week, the return of The Legend of Korra, and a mess of family engagements—oh, no, you had to go and add “Moon Kingdom Backstory Episode” to my to-do list, didn’t’cha?

In the interest of getting this sucker out on time (I’ve been trying to make Thursdays my scheduled SM Review day), we’ll be skipping the retrospective and jumping straight into the recaps. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of commentary along the way. Also flashbacks. Sooo many flashbacks.

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