Sailor Moon S Episode 34 - Shadows of Destruction! The Awakening of the Messiah of Silence

It feels kind of nice to finally have some weight taken off of my shoulders, and at the same time it feels a little strange to me as well. Now that I'm trying to get back into the swing of things in a semi-regular fashion, it's a lot like coming home after being away at college for two years.

Everything may look the same, but there's no denying just how very different you are today.

On that note, I'm looking at the next episode of Sailor Moon S. As I recall it was starting to shape up pretty good, so let's see if it somehow manages to continue this?

Today's episode looks pretty damn promising, actually. The Messiah of Silence is going to wake up, and the girls have to decide if getting rid of Hotaru is really the only way to keep the world form ending. Some serious shit looks about to go down, and honestly I am kind of excited, because this feels like the show finally reaching its full potential.

Roll the intro, because it's time to get on with this.

We begin with... a title slide! Holy shit that never happens.

Also this might legitimately be the longest title for this
show we've ever had in English. Criminy.

We actually begin at the school of doom, where the entire student body has been assembled to become a zombie student army.

So basically... they told everyone that there was a problem with their financial aid and that everyone needed to come in to fix them all at the same time and insinuated if they didn't do it today none of them would be able to continue classes. Typical.

Haruka and Michiru overlook the school on some kind of weird zen garden on a rooftop somewhere, and talk about how the blowing wind is telling them evil is coming and the world is crying or something.

But seriously zen gardens man. Why does this roof have a roof?

Then some bubbles float by and Chibiusa and normal-Usa are takng a bath, the big one slips on soap etc etc comedy ha ha so funny god she's clumsy and now they are attempting to drown one another. They wind up going to bed not wanting to murder one another for a change, and then Usagi heads off to have a chat with the cats about some shit going down at that one school place. Her plan: Get Hotaru and run or something.

Speaking of Hotaru, she's currently having a panic attack while her dad and that blue-haired chick watch.

Also what the hell is with those glasses? What kind of
prescription are they anyways???

Okay so it's not just me, we really haven't seen this one before. Her name is Cyprin, and she Has A Plan. Also blah blah you're the only one I can rely upon and yadda yadda I'm totes better that Kaorinite no need to worry and off they go. But Kaorinite is watching from the ceiling because she is magic, and can't help but notice that the professor seems to say the same thing to lots of people for some reason.

Also, is hanging upside down really the best way to hide?

But the girls see one another, and Kaorinite vanishes to crush a metal pipe and declare she must get the purest heart of all. Chibiusa's! Why not!

Uh, holy shit. They are not being very subtle here are they.

So then tiny girl has the most wicked dream ever, where her friend desperately cries for help as she gets swallowed up by those hands from Ghostbusters.

Zuul approved?

She wakes up from the nightmare, decides her friend is in danger, and then the student body of Mugen Academy continue doing the Nazi death march. The school isn't asking much of them for completing their financial aid packages - merely their pure hearts and all that, en masse. Not a big deal.

So hearts begin to get taken and our heroines who are now suddenly on the scene watch on in horror as they are all collected. Then they get outed, and trapped in a bubble and sent off to some other dimension or something. Good thing Michiru and Haruka are part of the student body, because they find out the girls were taken upstairs, and that they probably ought to do something about this.

Upstairs, our five heroines find themselves in the Dean's office.

As long as his name isn't Craig Pelton I think they'll be fine.

They meet up with Cyprin, who is somehow in that chair behind the desk, and greets them with a humble smile.

I think Putin is more subtle than this.

Welp, no point in hiding, so the girls straight up transform right in front of her because, well, yeah. Kind of pointless to not at this point. So they do that, which eats up a ton of time because they needed to use stock footage at some point during this episode. Hell, each scout even gets their own little tagline at the end, which is kind of a cool little addition that further manages to eat up the time budget without requiring any new animation.

So now that this is FINALLY over, the villain proclaims their inevitable victory, Mars tries to fry her, and the windows explode but she remains unharmed. Mars gets pushed against the wall and blasted with balls of light, and since there's no awesome music you know the scouts are in some serious trouble here.

"Chains mean nothing in the face of crippling student debt!"

Oh yeah, by the way, there are also two of her.

They are twins or something.

So after Venus fails to be effective, Jupiter does a thing and gets slapped down, and now pretty much everyone is on their toes not sure what to do. Which means we should cut to commercial so they can figure it out!

Upon returning, we find Chibiusa at Hotaru's empty house. She transforms because everyone is getting a damn transformation today, Kaori is just inside the house for some dumb reason and sees this happen, and chuckles to herself at how fortunate it is that the girl just so happened to come to this place where she is at.

Off into the creepy empty house the girl goes, and finds Kaori who is all "yo Hotaru wants to see you so come with me" but then Tuxedo Mask happens.

Not even a joke bro just shows up out of literal nowhere.

I can't help but feel like this scene was just kind of tossed in there without any real thought put behind it. I mean, this house has been empty for how long? Why would Chibiusa come here to find her friend? For that matter, why would Kaori go hunting for said girl here? And don't even get me started on why Tuxedo Mask is just suddenly here now, saying shit as if he totally planned for all fo this to happen.

Then Kaorinite does a thing, Sailor Pluto shows up and... wait, what the f**k is going on.

And within ten seconds, Chibi Moon gets captured, Sailor Pluto goes "oh no", and Kaorinite vanishes into some weird black portal with the brat.

Now Mercury is doing a thing I guess, and getting slapped down. Whatever will the girls do now?

You mean their actual teamwork, where they act as a team
instead of just attacking them one at a time?

There is something very wrong with the pacing in the second half of this episode.

Very, very wrong.

So now everyone goes running off or something and uses actual teamwork to try and separate the twins I guess or whatever. It's pretty nice when the girls actually do work together, and Jupiter manages to catch one of them off guard, and once separated they just keep striking from the mists to wear them down, and eventually get the twins to blast each other to death. So much for them!  Now things are back to normal-ish, except a portal opens up to... uh, something?

If I find out the secret underground lab has been in some
weird alternate dimension this entire time, I will be
kind of angry in general.

GOD DAMN IT.

So now they're off to the secret not underground lair lit entirely by dark lights. Also Uranus and Neptune found their way in here somehow just in time to see... a thing.

SUDDENLY, SACRIFICE!

Oh look, there's a 'ceremony' going on. Oh no, Chibi Moon is there. Oh no giant purple force fields keep the girls from doing anything. Oh yeah and those other girls show up in time to see what's going on and freak out. Oh hey and look Kaorinite is there and so is Hotaru Devil Thing. Sailor Moon dives into the barrier thing, falls over, and then some weird music starts playing which is kinda cool and creepy.

Oh and the "messiah" has finally awakened, and has a purple arm come out of her chest to dive into Chibi Moon's.

Kind of digging the design here but man the pacing sucks.

But Chibi Moon is just glad that Hotaru is okay, gets her heart ripped out, and the purest of hearts floats over to the girl, who literally eats it all up.

Sailor Moon makes one desperate plea to Hotaru's father, to please stop this if he loves his daughter. But he reveals that love's got nothing to do with it, and Hotaru transforms into something that isn't Sailor Saturn... but something called Mistress Nine.

I dunno, this is kind of a cool overlay effect.

So they realize that they weren't trying to awaken Sailor Saturn this entire time, but that Sailor Saturn was simply possessed by the Death Busters or whatever. But this is still bad! I think. So the villains have won! Huzzah or something. Just as Kaorinite is all "yay we won I love you professor" she gets slapped up by Mistress Nine, and killed because her job is done now.

The villains vanish, the girls grab Chibiusa and evacuate before the building explodes, just in time to see Pluto, Tuxedo Mask, and the cats. They're going to have some things to talk about between episodes.

Oh and thankfully those two got all those other students out before it started exploding so yay no one actually got hurt or whatever.

And then they went to Mamoru's place for Reasons.

What the hell are you even talking about?

Okay, so basically the cats engineered some bullshit excuse where so long as Mamoru is alive, Chibiusa stays that way too. Great. Usagi gets all weepy and shit, the Setsuna is all "yeah so I'm going with those other two bitches to beat the hell out of Hotaru."

Obviously this doesn't go over well with the others.

I love how sassy Makoto looks.

There's no other way to say Chibiusa at this point, so Setsuna says. And Usagi is all "dont' want anyone else getting hurt" so all the girls head out to... do a thing I guess? They just kind of walk around while saying they're about to go do a thing. What that thing is, that's anyone's guess of course but it looks like they're all going back to the school that just blew up, so chances are it's Final Boss-related.

This looks kind of cool as a still image. Animated? Not so much.

End of the episode, and... god, I am kind of torn up about this. Because on the one hand, I love the direction the show is taking at this point. But at the same time, they are killing it with shitty pacing, and just having things suddenly happen because oh crap they are running out of run time, and so instead of properly having scenes set up to make things flow naturally, they decide to eat up a full minute or two of run time with nothing but all the transformation stock footage they can cram in.

I can only pray that the new series will do this arc some real justice, because holy shit this could have been completely amazing, as opposed to merely lackluster.