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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