Sailor Moon R Episode 34 - Terrifying Illusion! Ami All Alone

I think I'm starting to get back into the groove finally.

While I'm not exactly dreading this upcoming episode, I'm already pretty sure I know what to expect out of it at this point. I mean, let's face it, after last episode's showing, things haven't exactly been top-tier quality around here.

I wonder what they're going to do today? Let's find out.

Oh. Oh my. Oh my goodness gracious.

Is it Christmas again so soon?

I didn't think there was anything that Sailor Moon could do to get me immediately interested in seeing the rest of the episode within the first second, but already this episode overview looks promising. Most promising indeed. The titular character who has been about as useful as tits on a bull, finally, FINALLY coming around to realize that, seventy plus episodes into her own show, SHE IS MAYBE KIND OF USELESS?!

Hallelujah!

I could care less about the rest of the episode overview. I just want to see her crack.

I'm not sure what audience segment they were shooting for with this episode, but I've got to admit, they are putting it on pretty strong right from the start of the episode. Picture, the Evil Garden of Everlasting Darkness. A woman, monologuing to herself aloud beneath the starless sky. Oh, and she's taking a bath there. Just because.

Giggity gat gat goo.

Then Saphir shows up and he's all like "seriously woman what the hell are you doing" and she all covers herself up and pretends to sound embarrassed but... really doesn't look like it.

Wow, dude just literally walked in on you and you're cool with it?

She tells him how 'rude' it is to just kind of teleport in like that and he's like "what in the hell is wrong with you, this place is basically public domain and seriously don't you have some more important shit to be doing like your job or something?"

I think he's just avoiding the fact that he totally wanted to see her naked.

She laughs it off though and is all "Yeah I'm actually already on that shit, so slow your roll and back dat ass up because guess what? I've got irons in the fire son. Irons. All of 'em. Shit is so hot it'll melt your heart because I am totally going after some bitches in a cram school because hell no to educated masses, we gotta fill their brains with useless shit like pop culture and all that. So chill out dude, I got this."

... it is possible I may have exaggerated a little bit there. But really I'm just reading between the lines, if you will.

So they do this neat transition where they zoom in on the crescent on her forehead and it turns into a real crescent moon over the school where the dark energy point is, and we get to see that... she shows up in a bath robe to drop off that thing she said she already dropped off.

... I guess she was lying about already having done all the work or something. Whatever, all the kids inside start freaking the hell out, and she summons Giwaku.

Otherwise known as Wriggle Nightbug version 0.8.
They've gotta beta test characters somewhere, right?

So she tells her little droid "yo, do me a favor and watch this shit till it's done baking, I got shit to do like nails and stuff, it should be finished by tomorrow night so make sure it doesn't break kay? Later!" And then we get our title slide! Holy crap it's like they suddenly got their shit together again and were all "we should mix things up and make shit interesting for a change." So far, so good.

And we begin our episode again at the middle school, where Usagi lets out a blood-curdling scream because... Ami got the top scores in the entire school. Again.

... why does that deserve a blood-curdling scream that sounds as if you just found a dead cockroach in your lunch box??

So of course, because she's so super amazing, some other chicks have got to be all jealous of the fact that she basically just studies all the time, while they apply the worst makeup in the world to their faces.

Either that or they have effect lighting attached to their shoes.

She overhears them talking about how she "should be careful so people don't call her a nerd" and that really bothers her because... uh, she's a nerd? Eh, I can understand that though. It never really bothered me because I always thought nerds were f***ing awesome, so I wore that shit as a badge of goddamn honor. Ami says that she's used to it, and Usagi is like "yeah well I'm always the worst so I know what you mean" like it's even a comparison. Then some dude is like "oh hey I found this cheat sheet under Ami's desk lol" and of course it puts her entire test in jeopardy. Who brings this evidence to light though?

Umino, of all people.

We might be inclined to think he was a dick, were it not for
actually clever foreshadowing from earlier.

Awesomely enough, this is not an unexpected development, since we got to see him in an earlier scene being tormented by the evil energy at the cram school. So we already know that he is, in fact, being mind controlled. Or at least influenced by Evil Energy. Which... I guess makes everyone band together to slander the person with the highest grades?

... wow I actually talked myself out of that defense of his poor behavior didn't I?

So because Ami and Usagi hang out all the time, clearly something is wrong here. After all who can hang out with an idiot like her and still manage perfect test scores? Clearly she must be cheating. Then Mako comes over to defend her friend, and some dude just straight up grabs her shirt.

Buddy, you just made the worst mistake of your life.

Suddenly people are getting thrown around and Ami is all 'whoa seriously stop being all violent and shit' and they're all "the hell is wrong with you?" and she's like "well, I know I'm innocent so there's really no need to resort to this shit" and for some reason, Naru is just kind of hanging out ignoring the fact that her supposed boyfriend is... being a complete twatwaffle?

Seriously be outraged at him or something.

Oh and Ami makes this comment about how she's just mad she didn't get a perfect score and... uh. Okay. Yeah that's how you play the humble card.

Now the three scouts walk home and Mako notes that all of the people accusing Ami go to the same school, when suddenly a short pink-haired person shows up with some alarming news.

Holy crap news travels fast.

Turns out that she heard it from Umino, who I guess... is literally telling everybody about what a cheating skank Ami is? Like, literally everybody. Including little kids who probably have NO CLUE who he is talking about. Ami's friends get outraged on her behalf, but she's determined to not let this shit get to her. So she runs off on her own after asking them to forget about the whole thing.

As she walks home by herself, literally the entire town is all "oh it's that girl who cheats on tests". Like the entire town. My god. So she walks into an alleyway and has herself a little cry, until she remembers that the dumbest person in the world believes in her, so clearly she has nothing to worry about. At all.

Then she sees a poster and recalls the words we heard like, twenty seconds ago.

That sounds impressive until you realize that means
this school will literally pass anybody.

So of course this means Ami has to go check out this school, which has enough dark miasma to cause her to have a heart attack almost. So it's time for her to transform before the halftime mark while the droid watches on, and she immediately realizes what is up.

Now Mercury, she calls all the girls to the cram school because shit is about to go down, and so everyone is off. But Wriggle - sorry I mean Giwaku - does her thing and makes like, a few dozen copies of herself and straight up tries to dogpile the blue-haired girl, but she's not having any of that today. She learned a useful move and damn it, she is gonna use it!

At least it's better than normal bubbles. Or mist.

After going all Cirno on those bugs, Giwaku makes more of herself and Mercury decides to use a double freezing bubble thing, but quickly realizes that these are just copies and she needs to find the real one so she doesn't get zerg rushed into oblivion.

It's at this point that Giwaku comes up with what is arguably the best idea a villain has ever had in this show. She's going to send copies of her friends out to kill her. I think. She insinuates that Mercury will kill the other scouts once they arrive, so that's my best guess at this point.

We get a commercial break and when we return, the other girls arrive finally and... uh, I guess everything is fine. Mercury tells them all what is up, and I guess even Artemis showed up. Seems that Sailor Moon is nowhere to be found though, and Mercury gets blasted with some weird dark energy, which causes her to imagine that the other girls are now totally making fun of her outfit. And her in general. And... just being complete and utter bitches.

Giwaku uses Confusion! It's super-effective!

Mercury slowly starts to slip into insanity and depression, and is talking back to the other girls but for some reason they're just all attacking her and stuff verbally. She can't believe they would say things that simply aren't true. Why, she's the nicest girl in the world her friends wouldn't act like this right?

But Giwaku continues to screw with her mind, and tries to convince her to basically try and kill her friends. Who, speaking of which, are really worried that their pal has basically snapped, and reach out to try and help her.

Which, of course, we see that Mercury thinks they are trying to attack her.

It's around this point that Sailor Moon, the other cat, and the little brat show up to notice something isn't quite right with the decor for this school.

Gee that statue looks awfully familiar.

Insert transformation sequence into Sailor Moon. And promptly ignore her and cut back to the other girls for a moment wait no cut back to Sailor Moon suddenly showing up behind the enemy to berate her for being an inhuman monster (which she is I mean she is a droid). So Giwaku hits her with a hallucination, just like she did with her pal Mercury, and immediately she starts to hear some things which... may not actually be all that true.

Wait that looks kind of big for being 'flat-chested'.

She hears all the worst things in the world about how she's an idiot and useless and all that other good stuff, but she... straight up doesn't give two shits. Because. Well. She's just that dumb.

And in that one instant, you destroyed all of my hopes
and dreams for this entire episode.

She... she straight up doesn't care. She admits to being an airhead, to being a general nuisance to the people around her, to basically being the reason blondes are given a bad name. And she just doesn't care. Folks can call her stupid, or fat, or breastless or whatever, and she won't care. Which is admirable to a point. But to admit your own faults and then say "I don't give a damn" is a horrifying thought. It's one thing to not care about people saying negative things about you. It's another to straight up admit to them and go "yeah don't care not gonna change".

I gave up trying to figure that out fifty episodes ago.

And of course because Sailor Moon lives in her own little bubble universe, she thinks that the enemy is actually complimenting her. So it's time for the enemy to fall back on her old tricks and just start zerging the hell out of her with all the clones. Which promptly begin to kick the hell out of her until, as you may have guessed, Tuxedo Mask shows up to give his two cents on how unforgivable the enemy is. And also to declare that he is totally gonna school some bitches at school.

Unfortunately he's the one that gets schooled and Giwaku is all "welp time to make Mercury kill her pals" and powers up her hallucination effect on the girl, and once more the girls are all concerned but all she sees is the paranoid delusions of her friends attacking her with words over how she cheated on a test.

Eventually she snaps and uh... lets the other girls climb out of a window I guess. They all stand together and there's some vaguely maddening stuff going on, and the enemy tells her to straight up murder her friends. At this point, she finally gets ready to do something, and begins acting by threatening to let loose a spray of bubbles, but Sailor Moon can't have any of that, and runs up only to get bitchsmacked by her bestest and oldest of pals.

But of course, she's so stupid, she gets up to almost literally ask for another, and says "I believe in you!"

Even though the girl can't hear her, but that's cool because we still see that Mercury is struggling against the mind control here. She finally snaps out of it though and proceeds to use her aqua illusion which suddenly freezes stuff, and the villain asks how she could break free of her control.

Eh, as far as excuses go, this isn't the worst I've heard.

So she calls out for Sailor Moon to wrap this thing up, and of course the droid is just gonna sit there and watch as her annihilation comes forth. I mean it's not like she was frozen in place or anything. She just got a little ice on her forearm, and suddenly she is now so much dust in the wind. The Dark Henge breaks up, the school is returned to normal, Tuxedo Mask gets up and is all "great jaerb gaiz, latas" and Esmeraude is wondering how her minion seems to have failed during her little bath.

How many baths does this woman need anyways?!

But she laughs it off and is all "yeah well there's more places out there and by the way only your brother is allowed to walk in on me like this, so uh yeah you'd better put that thing away because seriously this is getting awkward".

More laughing, and he vanishes, and then she gets angry at her own ineptitude and failure to learn from past mistakes.

Hell, if anything I'd say she's getting worse as time progresses. She has quite literally stooped to making the exact same mistake as the guy she replaced. I guess she just got lazy.

Anyways we return to the girls listening to Ami talk about how she knew her friends would never believe that she could cheat on a test, and that's how she knew she was being mind controlled. No matter what happens all the friends will always trust each other no matter what and then the entire school walks up to congratulate Ami on her amazing test scores.

... yeah. The entire school.

Yeah no she's quite happy being a moron thanks.

Usagi declares she hates studying, runs away, and everybody laughs the end.

.... THIS EPISODE LIED TO ME. THEY MADE IT SEEM LIKE SAILOR MOON WOULD BREAK AND INSTEAD SHE'S ALL LIKE "LOL NOPE".

... well played.

Well. Played.