Sailor Moon R Episode 13 - True Love Awakens! The Doom Tree's Secret

Life is funny sometimes. It throws us all kinds of curveballs, and things just tend to pile up without even realizing. Such as with this blog. I'm kind of getting lax in its treatment lately, but that's mostly because I have a lot more on my plate than I used to.

Fortunately, I think I've got like, what, ten people who read this regularly? So at least I'm not disappointing too many folks.

I've been considering a make up week. One post for five days straight, in order to catch up on the backlog a little bit. Sure, it might be overkill, but what am I gonna do, watch good anime?

Pffft. Not until the next episode of Kill la Kill is out at any rate. Maybe I should do little mini posts about that stuff...?

Finally, we're here at what I'm fairly sure is the final episode of the first filler arc of Sailor Moon. I don't exactly have research to back up the claim I'm about to make, but I'm fairly sure that Sailor Moon is literally one of the first anime to ever have filler arcs. Not just a filler episode, but an entire ARC. Because my god, the only reason these episodes were made is because they wanted to give the author more time to write more manga. Before continuing on with the series, of course.

Which begs the question: Why the hell didn't they just wait until the author had moved on? Answer: Because they wanted to cash in on its popularity as soon as possible.

Also, some research seems to indicate that the Doom Tree arc is, in fact, the favorite of some. Which really blows my mind as to how something so incredibly BAD and contradictory could be their favorite. And they call themselves fans of this show...

So when last we left Sailor Moon R, a giant tree grew all over the place. So Venus is about to blast it with some Crescent Moon Power, when Mars goes, "Wait, I'm psychic! I feel something!" Then proceeds to re-enact the final scene from the incredibly shitty Starship Troopers movie:

It's afraid! (insert cheers of joy)

Okay so actually she just determines that the tree might actually be a sentient being, surprising everybody (and nobody). Then it just kind of opens up for the girls, and invites them into its lair. Then the girls pretend like they're suddenly ninjas, and the tree predictably attacks them once inside.

With leaves that shoot acid.

Thank you Admiral Akbar Makoto.

Insert lots of still frames of girls and cats jumping around to avoid acid, which does nothing but make them... bleed?

I'm pretty sure acid doesn't work like that.

Then Mercury puts up some bubbles that freeze the plants in place, and everyone freaks out about Luna getting "grazed". Then the tentacles attack and Mars remembers she has the power of FIRE. They narrowly escape, and run into an elevator.

... an elevator.

THE ENTIRE BUILDING HAS JUST BEEN TAKEN OVER BY A GIGANTIC TREE. Even if it had power, why in the hell would you want to get into an elevator shaft in the first place?! Mercury keeps slamming the "door close" button, hoping that it will do something, yet failing to remember that she's supposed to be the smartest character in this show! It comes down to Artemis to tell them "hey climb up through the escape hatch in the top".

YOU KNOW, THE SMART THING A GENIUS SHOULD HAVE COME UP WITH.

They conveniently escape, and then Mamoru and Usagi are all held by tentacles and reaching out to one another, only to be rudely interrupted by a boot to the fingers once they manage to almost touch.

Hey that was actually kind of dickish! It's a shame you
are totally going to die in the next fifteen minutes.

Then the twins start talking about what they are going to do to their respective love toys. But of course En is loosely based off of a woman, and despite having feelings of infidelity towards her twin brother anyways, and despite the fact that she's wanted to do the exact same he has, she is choosing to exercise her right as a sort-of-woman to be mad anyways. By ordering the tree to absorb only Usagi's energy, of course, because that is clearly the answer here.

Then the twins get into an argument and start yelling at the tree, which just chooses to take energy from both of them anyways, much to the ire of the twins. They get mad at the tree, which then roars and drops both the hostages, and then the rest of the Scouts arrive in time to see the twins holding onto the limp bodies of their pals.

At least they can still agree that they both hate these other girls and cats, and a big fight breaks out, causing the girls to use alll of their brand new attacks which do absolutely nothing!

IT'S NO UUUUUUSE!

Then the four scouts lie on the ground as the twins pummel them with... um... something. Invisible bullshit energy. Yeah that. Even the cats are subject to this, which makes Usagi kind of mad so she turns into Sailor Moon. You can beat her friends, but she totally draws the line when you kick cats.

Boy, it's like she was right in front of you the whole... oh.

Cue the absolutely shitty "I am Sailor Moon" line. She goes on about being a friend to the 'greenery', and something about how god made plants. Even the cats don't know what the hell she's going on about. Not like that's ever something new.

Then the twins get into another talking fit. Ali needs to attack Sailor Moon. But she's totally that girl he has a raging man boner for! Oh, but she totally turned into your worst enemy which means she never actually liked you at all. Which she didn't? I mean let's face it you were kind of a creep the entire time but holy jeez man get a grip.

Of course, in the meantime Sailor Moon is too busy fawning over poor Mamoru, asking him if he remembers her, and that everything will totally be fine. It's not like he's going to die a FOURTH time or anything. She promises. Then they hold hands and everything is fine.

Oh that could almost be very wrong if they were
simply a little bit closer together...

So now both twins are super mad at being spurned by their lovers who never actually even said anything about that, and I realize, it's almost exactly like the relationship between Usagi and Mamoru, across all of their lives. Nobody ever says anything about loving someone, everyone just assumes it, and people wonder why people get mad when folks start acting like things are there that simply don't exist.

En does the only reasonable thing, and invisibly knocks the two people holding hands away because she's never had her hand held so why should anybody else get to do that?

Oddly enough, I'm okay with the villains doing this. Because they aren't even human, and therefore don't actually get any of this shit. Despite having human-ish forms, they don't really understand the culture, so I am completely cool with them acting weird as shit. What bothers me, however, is that this isn't explained by them being alien in the show itself... because everyone assumes everyone else is human.

Then Ali prepares to deal the final blow, and asks the Doom Tree to blow up the planet, and unleash its energy. All of the girls act, but it's no use! That is until Mamoru wakes up and sees Sailor Moon, who introduces herself by all of her past names, begging for him to please remember ALL THOSE TIMES HE DIED. Because hey, they're about to die anyways so what's it matter?

Of course, En is a spiteful bitch, and does the invisible knock you around while laughing maniacally like an evil villain bit. Y'know. Because it was looking a bit too much like Mamoru might suddenly save the day or something. Then they cut in the middle of En laughing and go straight to the commercial break interlude. Whoa, wait, what? You don't even soften the transition? You literally cut it in while she's in mid-laugh? Holy cow man, that's just heartless, cruel, and terrible video editing to boot.

After the break, she's still laughing. And then Sailor Moon tries to protect her man by taking all of the invisible energy attacks, which surprises the aliens for some reason. She declares that she'll do anything for her love, even if it means her life, and Ali is touched. In the heart, not the penis. Or maybe just the brain. Hard to tell, he's got one of those really weird expressions going on while his sister talks about how nothing is more important than the self, so Sailor Moon is really stupid.

Which actually explains En perfect. She's an incredibly selfish person, who is mad when she's not allowed to have two lovers, and who gets mad when the brother she is cheating on with has eyes for another when she's doing the same. While her brother, on the other hand, usually seems torn about the whole thing. It's an actually interesting thing they have going on here.

It's just a shame that the last twelve episodes were pretty shit, because man. This is the kind of thing that could actually be done really well.

So En goes to blast Sailor Moon again when somehow Mamoru gets up to shield her, because he can't be out-machismo'd by a girl. And now everyone is surprised yet again as he continues to protect the stupid blonde, and uh, passes out. Seeming to die for a fourth time. Ali watches on, only capable of saying "Beautiful... it's so beautiful..."

Oh, so he's one of those assholes. The ones who think nothing is more beautiful than dying with the one you love. Great. He comes to a revelation: Love isn't something you can take by force. Who knew?

Exactly like caring for a plant. OH F**K.

The other girls assure En this is the case, and it's because of that they can face anything with love and courage. Those kinds of words really piss En off, but then the white rose finally appears, and Sir Asshole Knight appears finally! Which causes En to completely snap, while they debate philosophy with the Moonlight Knight, who gets knocked into the tree so hard, the damn thing uproots itself entirely and begins to attack the twins.

SHOT THROUGH THE HEART! And you're to blame!
YOU GIVE LOOOVE, A BAD NAME.

En tries to protect her brother from the tree, but it's having pretty much none of this shit at all, and skewers the shit out of her. After falling five feet for about ten seconds, En declares her love for her brother as she dies, and Ali is all like "nooooooo" and then we get to the most wonderful part of this show: Context Theater!

Insert penis joke here... man that's a double joke in itself.

She cries, having never felt this before, and then they zoom in on her face all dramatically and he creams, and then the tree goes and almost runs through the twins again, but then the tree talks and glows and then it's time for trippy visuals where we get to learn everything about the Doom Tree.

See, a long time ago, the tree was lonely, which is perfectly reasonable since it grew up on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere. So it made a bunch of pod people to keep it company. It made them, they worshiped it as a god, and everyone had fun. Until they got wise and started acting like douche nozzles, fighting over its energy, taking it for granted, so on and so on. There might be an environmentalist message thrown in here somewhere, I dunno.

Just like with humans, they turned into terrible people, and eventually the accidentally blew up the planet, so the tree left with as many people as it could. They went from planet to planet, unable to find anywhere to settle down, and eventually only Ali and En were left. They had to do whatever they could to survive. Which kind of sucks I guess.

The Doom Tree is kind of a Beatles fan. Who knew?

The tree tried to communicate the whole needing love thing by shriveling up, somehow neglecting to realize the most effective way to communicate something is to straight up tell people this shit in advance. "Oh hey, morons, YOU ARE KILLING ME, maybe you can stop being horrible excuses for life forms and give me something that won't, all you need to do is stop being horrible assholes, think you can manage that?"

If only it had done that, maybe this entire arc could have been avoided completely.

Oh but it's cool, they got the idea at the very end. It only cost him his sister. Whoops, so much for continuing the species. Then the tree asks to be purified by Sailor Moon's love, and she obliges. Yet somehow it still calls out "cleansing", and then vanishes, and everything is happy yay. Then the Moonlight Knight appears, and it's time for him to reveal his true form!

Yeah, no, sorry. I'm still a dick after all.

Two Mamorus. Oh boy, what's this mean? During the final battle, his memories were wiped, but his will to protect Sailor Moon was strong enough to create it's own bullshit life force to take on a completely different body in order to do that thing he really wants to do subconciously but can't do for some reason?

So... you're telling me Mamoru is actually schizophrenic, except that his other personality (or personalities? oh cripes) can actually manifest a physical form.

Holy shit that is f***ing insane.

Alternatively, he was just the macguffin created to act as a Deus ex Machina because god forbid the heroine actually be a competent individual for a change, who can stand on her own two feet without needing the help of a masculine figure. But that would be a bit too much for Japan in the 90's.

So now that Mamoru has woken up, they two forms become one again, and I guess this means that Mamoru remembers not only dying three times in the past, but he also remembers being a disembodied spirit who was stalking a middle school girl.

If that is not the very definition of completely f***ed up shit, then I don't know what is.

Oh, but En gets brought back to life, and the twins cry and make out as a tiny baby Doom Tree sproutling shows up. They decide, screw Earth, they're going to find a planet where they can make babies and not have to deal with any of this human bullshit they call "responsibility for destroying a city block". Or "harming thousands of innocent bystanders". After all, it's all just a misunderstanding anyways, so they can't really be held accountable for any of that shit, because they have discovered love.

I'd like to see love get this building rebuilt. Or those
people who lived here un-killed.

So off the twins fly off in a magical bubble sort of like the one they arrived in, and go to find some other planet to horribly maim while the main lead just looks on and completely misses the whole point of "justice" by allowing them to not be accountable for their actions at all.

They only wanted to kill one another for being unfaithful
to the other, so you tell me.

Then Usagi hopes that someday the two of them can also be lovey dovey bullshit, and the other girls jump out to make fun of them, and talk about how they need boyfriends and everything is giant purple and gold stars and the end.

It's really quite tragic. They had a great backstory, and I can see now why some folks like the Doom Tree arc, because this last episode? Actually not too terrible.

If you ignore the fact that the characters involved in this show are pretty much terrible people, that is.