Now Esmeraude has chosen to go after Chibi-Usa’s elementary school. By attacking them, she causes great chaos and for all of them to fight each other. Enter Sailor Moon, who with the other Guardians comes to clean up the mess. Then Esmeraude gets called off because the Prince has come up with a new plan. And now Chibi-Usa plans on going to the future.
A rather boring and nondescript episode, with the best line being “Afterward, we’ll be sending you all to hell!” by one of the Monsters of the Week. For some reason, that phrase made me laugh enough that I was able to get through the episode. Spoiler alert: he failed.
It truly is amazing how many times this show has pressed “copy + paste” on its episode plots. This one is about as formulaic as it gets. Ami gets the high score on her tests, but for some reason, all the norms start accusing her of cheating. Surprise, surprise, all those people go to the same building, which has been infected by dark energy. Ami goes to confront the Monster of the Week who is causing this, but as she turns into Sailor Mercury, the other Sailor Failures™ get brainwashed as well. That leaves it up to Sailor Moon to SAVE everyone simply by being too dumb to care about her grades. (I am not making this up.) Tuxedo Mask shows up, then Sailor Moon defeats the enemy and everyone goes back to normal.
There was a weird moment in this one. At the end, when Ami said that she was thankful that no one actually believed that she cheated, the other Sailor Guardians all pause, as if they maybe do think she might cheat. I don’t know what happened there, whether translation failed, or whether the animation got messed up. But it’s hard to believe that the other Sailor Guardians suddenly thought she was a cheater after all this.
In any case, copy + paste episode that turns out to be little more than the same formula used in at least half the episodes thus far.
We’re staying topical for this episode of Sailor Moon! After traveling back to the nightmarish world of 2020, we’ve now gone back to 2026, where Artemis is making a trip around the Moon. Only this time around, it’s Luna causing Artemis to fall out of orbit and crash-land in a trap laid by the Black Moon Clan, which forces Luna, Sailor Moon, and Sailor Venus to get in their rocket and fly out to save Artemis. Mars, Jupiter, and Mercury show up for good measure, then Luna and Artemis make up after the Monster of the Week is defeated. Oh, and Tuxedo Mask for some reason doesn’t show up in this episode. Not sure why.
A forgettable episode, and not one that you’ll be writing home from space about anytime soon.
This Sailor Moon episode is set in the year 2020. Everyone’s wearing masks, and there’s the hope of a vaccine on the way that’s going to make everything right. Two people are immune to the virus, though, those being Minako and of course Chibi-Usa. Apparently those two have been playing sports nonstop, because it is impossible to catch the virus on the field, but the instant you take the bench you have to put your mask on and stay six feet from everybody. (Only the part about Minako and Chibi-Usa playing sports did I make up.)
Most of the episode is a humor episode with Minako trying to play nurse to everyone. Esmeraude, who gave everyone the virus, now has a vaccine to give Chibi-Usa that way she can catch it too. I wish I was making this up. Eventually, Chibi-Usa awakens as the Rabbit, while Sailor Venus gets pinned to the wall. But Sailor Moon suddenly gets healed just in time for the 2022 midterm elections, I mean, just in time to deal the finishing blow to the Monster of the Week.
If this episode didn’t scare the living daylights out of me as to what is probably coming in the near future, in a year that just so happens to be an election year, it would have been an all-time classic for how funny it was. Even so, I guess I can sit back and laugh, as I get locked down in my house for two weeks to flatten the curve, which turns into two months, which turns into two years.
Tommy A. Phillips 