Sailor Moon Episode 45 - The Sailor Warriors Die! The Tragic Final battle

This is proving to be an incredibly busy week for me. More work piled onto my plate (writing-wise), and yet still meeting the deadlines. Which is an incredibly good thing, let me tell you, it feels good to be able to do stuff like this. Even if it, y'know, is kind of a harrowing process (some days more than others).

With all of that having been said, it's nice to know that people are reading this blog. Lately, it seems to have been getting a little bit of attention. Not a whole lot, mind you, but enough to make me think that there is a chance more than three people read it. Which is nice.

You might have noticed a poll thingy over on the right. I put that there in the hopes that I can gauge how many people are visiting. It's not a very good measure, obviously, but it's better than the stats I do get (which don't really indicate how many people just go straight to the main page in their browser, I think).

So I guess what I'm saying is, thanks for sticking around so long, or if you're just finding this place, welcome. I hope you enjoy. Feel free to spread the blog around, get the word out and make people laugh. Or in the case of KnJ, to warn them never to ever watch that show even if they are being paid to. Which I'm not even.

... suddenly I feel like I am doing something wrong. Shit.

Speaking of doing things wrong this is going on way too long so lets jump into this episode and get this shit done and over with.

Oh, lovely. Today's episode: Mirror match! The great evil is about to be revived, so let's have the Sailor Scouts face off against poor clones of themselves. In terms of just completely and utterly uninspired plot twists, this one ranks incredibly low. It would probably be a bit higher on the list if, y'know, they actually kept this shit a secret long enough for the episode to air.

Yes. Evil SWIMMERS. Just when you thought
it was safe to go back in the water...

Anyway there's talk about the final battle yadda yadda and then the episode starts up with a news cast. The sunspots are growing larger, and there's also hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, birds and planes, and Lenny Bruce not being afraid. It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

It goes on to say that scientists have linked these events together, even though this has never before happened in all of human history. Now, I'm no expert on scientific theory but... generally speaking, if a sunspot appears and starts growing larger, and it has never before been linked to, I dunno, the end of the freaking world before, I might be inclined to believe that there is, in fact, some other factor at work here.

It's a shame there wasn't a race of wise moon elves to guide humanity to this point. Oh waaaait...

Well. That sounds a little too good to be true.

That's a pretty hefty title slide, I have to admit. Plus, for something that is supposed to be incredibly tragic, one would think that knowing ahead of time everyone you know is going to die will kind of dampen the impact. Considering there was a single episode in all of this run that went against convention, and didn't give us a title until much, much later in the show, maybe they could consider repeating that again.

But that's what I get for expecting anything more than mediocrity from this show. So much wasted potential... sigh.

While we're on the topic of waste... holy shit.

So in this episode, we learn that the rabbit's cooking is a violation of every health safety code known to humanity. I think we've learned just how the scouts are going to die.

Those facial expressions are simply priceless.

So today, she's tried her hand at curry. I'm not sure she is aware how curry is cooked. Or even what goes into curry in the first place.

Squid goes into everything. At least, to terrible
cooks in anime. Why is that?

Usagi takes the first bite of her own cooking, and is moved to tears by the taste. It is too spicy to handle, and odds are will keep her in the bathroom making volcanic eruptions all of her own for the rest of the night. That's my guess anyways. I could be wrong.

Then all the girls meet up at the shrine, because they've got nothing better to do for the end of the world. Their fearless leader is dying to know: Did Rei kiss Yuichiro before leaving?

Hold on, you guys are still at the shrine. You haven't left yet. Therefore, what you said is completely stupid. Well, twice as stupid as it normally would have been. She only brings it up because, 'what if something happens' which is totally a subtle foreshadowing technique used when the title of your episode is EVERYBODY DIES THE END.

Speaking of romance, Makoto is all "yeah when I get back I am totally having a full-fledged romance". Like she even knows what that means? I don't even want to get into it because oh my god that girl has some serious issues. Hell, even Ami is considering romance after the end of the world is averted because, well, why not?

Then everyone transforms, because it's the almost-final episode, so we might as well pad out as much time as we can by showing every single transformation, while narrating that they'll be combining their powers to teleport straight to the North Pole (at D-Point of course), and then on to destroy Beryl in one shot.

So everyone holds hands, they break the ground, and everyone vanishes in a poof of light, with no cats to keep them safe this time.

Fun fact about the North Pole: IT IS REALLY FRIGGIN' COLD UP THERE. A fact that Sailor Moon is not afraid to remind everyone else of a lot. Eventually, Mercury manages to utilize her mad computer skills to locate something which is clearly within visual distance of the group.

You needed a computer to tell you where a giant plume
of evil purple smoke was coming out of the ground.
And this is the genius of the group...

Ah but Beryl can't allow anyone to interfere with the revival of Metalia, so she does something she should have done forty episodes ago. She addresses the Peanut Gallery.

They've bested your four greatest warriors, and NOW
you think it's a great idea to use the wall of minions?!

Then those five I showed you in the first image show up. The DD girls.

DD girls.

Y'know, I get it. I really do. Dark Dimension girls. It makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, I really don't think that they did any sort of research here, because over here, that takes on a completely different meaning.

Completely different.

Outside, the wind stops, and the evil energy intensifies. Suddenly, Tuxedo Chained appears.

And they say Mercury is the smart one... props to
Jupiter for using Common Sense for a change.

Then there's a fairly okay bit of animation where they do a close-up of his face as he weakly asks for help, causing poor little Sailor Moon to feel all kinds of bad because, as Mars put it, she is an incredibly simple-minded person. I get the feeling she won't wait for Mercury to finish her scan before jumping into this trap with arms wide open.

As predicted, she immediately runs forward, causing all but Mercury to chase after her and, eventually, pin her down in the snow. Because she's a moron. Then he explodes and turns into a monster, one of the DD girls. This causes Sailor Moon to go off on a spiel about how monsters shouldn't toy with an innocent girl's heart, at which point the monster reveals, well, there's five of them. Which is the same number as this team has. Boy oh boy, won't this be an even match.

Then some mist comes up and the image shows up again as the five girls vanish, allowing the artists to recycle the sequences used not even two minutes prior, and prompting Mars to ask what kind of idiot would fall for the same trick twice.

A special kind of idiot, that's who.

So dog pile on the snow minus Mercury, and they barely avoid becoming smashed pumpkins again. Jupiter prepares to hit the image with a lightning bolt, but is interrupted by... Motoki?

I just realized how hilariously out of context this image
could be.

Right, so somehow, the image of Motoki causes Makoto to freeze up. Did she have a crush on him or something, because I could have sworn that was somebody else? Then again, this is Makoto we're talking about. Slap any random guy in front of her and she'll start swooning for no readily apparent reason.

Then she gets tentacled both from below and in front, and the Scouts suddenly realize how utterly boned they are.

Five on one? Aw crap. Sorry Jupiter. You've been voted
off the island. Goodbye.

Moon and Mars try to move in for the save, but then the five monsters surround Jupiter and block the shot, attempting to electrocute her. So what's she do? She calls down the very heavens upon herself, blowing up everything around her, including herself.

Then she becomes magically encased in a pillar of ice.
I know lightning does weird things but... really?

She seems to have survived all of this, at least for a few more seconds, where she tells everyone to hurry up and get to Queen Beryl and end all of this crap. Sailor Moon cries about how she's breaking her promise to come back alive and all that, and that the "King of Hell will yank your tongue out" for lying.

... wow. That's some, uh, pretty harsh stuff to say to someone whose seemingly dying wish is "hey, go finish this fight and save the world please?"

Then she passes out/away, encased in the ice, leaving only four girls left. If she wasn't dead before, she probably will soon given the subzero temperatures she is being exposed to. Commercial break!

After the break Sailor Moon says that if this is what they have to go through, they should give up and hand over the Silver Crystal. Yeah, because... handing a thing over and then letting them kill you is better than fighting to stay alive? That's some great logic, princess.

She then starts freaking out to the point where Mercury delivers a well-placed slap to the face. Because damnit, hysterics aren't going to help us here, and neither is telling the enemy you surrender after having come this far.

Mercury knows just what to say, telling them not to waste Jupiter's death, and immediately offers to stay behind while the others go on ahead, in order to stall the monsters who clearly did not die from that explosion. She reasons that she is clearly the best person to stay behind, seeing as how she has pretty much nothing in terms of offensive power. I mean really, her power is to shoot a mist of bubbles. That's as non-offensive as you can possibly get.

... said every person who dies two minutes later.

Then there were three: Mars, Venus, and Moon, and off they go to smoking purple crater. Mercury gets assaulted by the lover's illusion, but she is too smart to fall for this. So instead they make the ground explode in front of her, at which point she uses the power of bubbles to fight against lava.

First of all, how lava is coming out of the ground in the North Pole, I have no freaking clue. Secondly, bubbles against lava? That does not seem very effective in the least. But somehow, it manages to do the trick to some extent, and she appears to be facing off against three of the fairy girls, who dive-bomb her from above. Seems that they are using illusions which can somehow be made real, which is a pretty bitchin' power to have, if you ask me.

Ah, '90s computer graphics, how awesome you were.

She manages to figure out that the stones on their head are what generates the illusion, so she's going to do something about this. So she generates a protective bubble and walks into the flames. Only she forgot about the part where they all use tentacles, which interrupts her and leaves her completely exposed to the heat of molten freaking lava. To which the evil DD girls ask about what cooked food item they will compare her to.

Then they say to hell with that and just run her through real quick-like. Because, y'know, if something's worth doing, it's worth doing it right.

Yep, that's pretty dead right there.

Of course, she's still got the energy to crush the crystal on the one girl's forehead with her PDA, therefore removing her ability to generate illusions, and then she gets her lonely death sequence, having severely crippled her opponent's ability to fight. Then the other girls feel it when Mercury dies, which causes their leader into a further depression, completely sapping her will to fight.

Venus is the only one paying attention though, when the ground around Moon lights up like christmas, and pushes her away to safety just before the attack lands.

Yep, more tentacles. You gotta watch out for those.

Once again, Sailor Moon tries to give up, but Venus says that she'll never forgive her friend if she does that, at which point she gets dragged into the ground screaming her head off, at which point everything just simply explodes after the enemy says "yeah, we'll just kill you then take the crystal, kay thanks."

Though, this being the last time she'll ever get to use her power, Venus makes damn sure she takes another one down with her.

Dodge this.

That's three down, two to go on both teams, and now Mars is starting to think that, maybe they might just not make it out of this thing alive. So it's time to give the heartfelt "yeah, even though we always fought, this was kind of fun and I thought you should know that" speech. Because, well, this really is the actual best time for this kind of thing. Mars prepares to go fight the other two monsters who appear in front of them, but Moon is like, "nah, just go home, seriously, I got this now, I'll do my job I promise just don't die on me."

But her bestie is all like, "sorry princess, but I can't do that because you need to save your strength for the big bad. Somebody call for a barbecue?"

Except for the writers of your story. Whoops.

So off she goes all bright-spirited, but you know it's all just for show. The enemies dive into the ground, then take her from below, using the ice to literally eat her alive before she can even act.

Well... yeah. That just happened.

Then out from the ground comes one last  monster to try and finish the princess off, but is interrupted by a giant blast of fire from Mars' ice tomb, literally engulfing her in them.

This episode is just full of really satisfying screams.

Of course, Mars is still dealing with her own enemy, who decides to finish her off for killing her last remaining friend.

Then there was just one, on each team. The leaders of each side.

Or at least, that's what the enemy thinks, until Mars grabs hold of her tentacled self in one last act of defiance.

Hey, you didn't let me finish, bitch.

Then everything explodes yet again, leaving Mars surrounded by a bunch of impossible icicles, and she dies too, leaving only Sailor Moon left to fight. Which means this is the perfect time for a solo cry session in the arctic. Also a great time to pretend this is all just a horrible dream.

Except it isn't, because your friends are starting to show up as ghostly apparitions behind you, telling you to stand up and do your freaking job.

.... yeah, that's not going to scar anyone for life, I'm sure.

Somehow, this gives her the strength to continue on, believing that she is, in fact, not alone. You'd think this was the perfect place to end the episode. You'd also think wrong, because they have one last card to play.

RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE.

So yeah, remember that Endymion guy? Yeah. He's awake now.

Despite all of the incredibly negative things I have to say, this is, by far, the best episode of this series so far. I'm not saying that just because almost everyone dies in it mind you. I'm saying it because, sadly, it's true. Things happen, plot progresses, and they even give us a very small taste of what is to come next episode right there at the end.

It's like they remembered how the end of season one was done, and decided to try and shoot for that continuity thing one final time.

*sniff* I am so proud of you guys. It's like you're actually trying just a little bit now. At this rate, you might be able to pretend to be a mediocre show at best.