Sailor Watches Sailor Moon (Ep. 25 -35): Sailor Jupiter, Sailor Venus, and the Moon Princess

UH, WH-WH-WH-WHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT?!?!?!?

Intro
Okay! So! A lot of stuff happened in these episodes. If you’re not familiar with this series, I’ve been watching through Sailor Moon for the first time, usually at a rate of about ten episodes per installment, (you can check the last three out here, here, and here.) I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit, and, as with the previous installments, this batch of episodes has only served to elevate the show even further. The final two Sailor Guardians have arrived, and many of the series’ longstanding mysteries are beginning to be solved as the end of the first season approaches. There’s a lot to get into here, so let’s just get started.

Sailor Jupiter

Sailor Jupiter AKA Makoto Kino is another attendee of Usagi’s school. Despite being the same age as Usagi, she’s much taller and stronger than her and most of the other characters in the show that aren’t adults. I called Rei “the hammer” of the group in my second installment of this, but she must now share that moniker with Makoto. Makoto is to this group, what Makoto in Persona 5 is to that game’s group. Ie: the badass.
However, unlike Rei, who is ill-tempered and prone to anger, Makoto is fairly friendly. She’s introduced saving Usagi from a group of douchebags who’re trying to rob her. Then, as the episode progresses, Usagi grows closer to her and begins to learn more about her. She’s into cooking, lacks friends due to her intimidating stature, and is still pining over a former flame. Basically, she’s much more softhearted than you might think at first glance.
However, again…she’s a badass. Even just as Makoto Kino she’s a skilled fighter and strong enough to lift this dumb robot thing over her head.

Once she becomes a Sailor Guardian she gets lightning powers.

In short, Makoto Kino is cooler than you or I will ever be.

Zoisite and the Rainbow Crystals

The new main villain for this phase of the show is Zoisite. Jadeite was a blackface wearing, Women Disrespecting ruffian. Nephrite was a more clever and competent villain, who actually ended up having a heart of gold. Zoisite, on the other hand, is back to being more unabashedly evil and duplicitous, but, unlike Jadeite, he has a bit more of a personality. See, Zoisite has… style. He cares very deeply about beauty, in particular his own. In one scene, someone throws something at his face, and in response, he calls them a “prehistoric witch”. In another, he’s forced to go through a sewer, an act which is seemingly very traumatic to him, and only gets worse when he encounters a wall of rats. I know not the words to describe how hilarious that scene was to me, but suffice to say, moments like those have led me to appreciate the character of Zoisite quite a bit.
Zoisite is tasked by Queen Beryl to find the seven Rainbow Crystals. Once he does so, they’ll assemble and turn into the Silver Crystal, which they need to awaken their great ruler or whatever. Zoisite finds the seven Rainbow Crystals by using a…crystal. There’s a lot of crystals in this stretch of episodes. To make a long story short, it would be bad if he collected these things so the Sailor Guardians are trying to stop him. However they have an adversary in this quest besides Zoisite. None other than Tuxedo Mask.

A LOT of stuff happens with Tuxedo Mask in this stretch of episodes, and it’s all very interesting. Firstly, he’s tasked with the princess in his dreams to find the silver crystal. As it turns out, Mamoru is on the hunt to uncover his true identity. Last time, it was revealed that Mamoru was not actually fully aware that he is Tuxedo Mask. Well, as you saw at the beginning of this installment, he finds that out this time. Except that’s not the full extent of Mamoru Chiba’s memory issues.

Mamoru lost his parents in a car accident as a child and actually doesn’t remember much of anything before that point and, as such, has an intense desire to obtain the Rainbow Crystals for himself so that he can finally get to the bottom of all the mysteries around his identity. This is actually super interesting, as it may, in fact, explain a lot about Mamoru’s personality. He’s not just some sadist who delights in being an asshole to children. He’s got a…dark past…*swoon*. But no, seriously though, I like this reveal a lot.
The Sailor Guardians, Zoisite, and Tuxedo Mask actually all end up in possession of at least one of the Rainbow Crystals over the course of these episodes. Thus, Zoisite must come up with a duplicitous scheme to obtain the remaining crystals from everyone else, leading to…

Sailor V(enus)

Having gotten on the bad side of Queen Beryl like Nephrite and Jadeite before him, Zoisite must act fast in order to save himself from a similar fate. Luckily, he’s not working alone.

The man on the left is Kunzite. Kunzite is the stoic and serious counterbalance to Zoisite’s flamboyant and colorful personality. Despite their contrasting personalities, these two aren’t enemies. They’re actually allies and even lovers. I’d heard this show had LGBT representation, so this was pretty neat to see. Not only for the representation reasons either (though, again, very nice). Like Nephrite, this love subplot actually humanizes both characters a fair bit. In fact, I actually prefer it much more than the Nephrite stuff, because there’s no weird age difference. So yeah. Go Sailor Moon.
Anyway, they come up with a plan to pretend to be Sailor Moon, which ends up luring the real Sailor Guardians as well as Tuxedo Mask into a trap. This plan somehow works despite the fact that Zoisite’s Sailor Moon disguise is like…blatantly different to the actual Sailor Moon costume. Like…blatantly different.
Look at Sailor Moon.

Then look at Zoisite!Sailor Moon.

The colors are wrong. Like obviously they do this for the benefit of the audience, so we can tell them apart, but in-universe, it’s a bit of an oversight. Tuxedo Mask is even like “Hm, this could be a trap.”

And it’s like yeah dude. Look at her. That doesn’t look like Sailor Moon. You’ve met her before. You know this as well as I do.

So anyway, Tuxedo Mask gets stabbed.

Then he says this:

Which is like, hilarious. It seems like he’s about to die, but he and the Guardians are saved just in the nick of time, by a mysterious third party, who turns out to be none other than Sailor V.

I wish I had more to say about Sailor V, but she sort of gets lost in the shuffle of all the stuff that happens in these last couple episodes. She seems cool. Certainly seems to be a more confident and experienced guardian than the rest. Not too much else to-HOLY SHIT!!!

There’s another one of these things! I don’t know why Artemis freaks me out so much, but he does. It’s just so weird, after looking at Luna for so long. Surreal even. M-Moving on though, after meeting Sailor Venus, Usagi is struck by a sudden realization. One that could change everything.

Could Sailor Venus be the Moon Princess?

The Moon Princess

Nah, she’s not.

Moving on, Tuxedo Mask and the Guardians may have been saved, but that doesn’t mean that the trouble is over. During their altercation, Zoisite and Queen Beryl discovered Tuxedo Mask’s true identity.

For some reason Queen Beryl seems to recognize Mamoru. He even tells Zoisite to bring him to her alive. Very mysterious. Zoisite doesn’t seem super jazzed about the idea, but he seemingly goes along with it. He challenges the wounded Mamoru to a winner-takes-all battle for the Rainbow Crystals.

Mamoru agrees because he’s a knucklehead. He bumps into Usagi on the way to the duel and doesn’t act like a complete prick to her. This is enough to tip Usagi off. Something is clearly wrong here. Her fears are confirmed when he realizes that he’s bleeding.

…I dunno. He seems fine to me. But not to Usagi, who follows after him. Unfortunately, this just winds up landing them both in the clutches of Zoisite. As a result, they are both forced to transform in front of one another.

I could very easily watch 165 more episodes of every single character in Sailor Moon individually coming to the realization that yes, Mamoru Chiba is, in fact, Tuxedo Mask. Really, it’d be great.

So anyway, Tuxedo Mask gets stabbed. Again.

But worse this time. And upside down for some reason. Usagi starts to cry, and the Rainbow Crystals react to her tears, causing them to finally assemble into the Silver crystal. This is enough to finally bring about the Moon Princess the Guardians have been searching for all this time.

Ladies and gentlemen. I called it. This is some Zelda shit. Usagi is actually a reincarnation of the Moon Princess, Serenity. In fact, as Artemis explains, the Sailor Guardians are all reincarnations. Warriors that fought for the Silver Kingdom against the forces of evil that seeked to attack the Earth. Tuxedo Mask is actually a reincarnation as well. 

AKA the Moon Prince, kinda. Unfortunately, Kunzite kidnaps Endymion/Mamoru/Tuxedo Mask before the two can have a proper reunion. Queen Beryl is not pleased, however, as Zoisite defied her orders not to kill him. So, sadly, Zoisite must meet the same fate as Jadeite and Nephrite. He at least gets to die in a beautiful place in the arms of the one he loves.

This was sad. This is actually like the saddest thing to happen in the show so far. Very well done emotional moment, in spite of the fact that you don’t actually know all that much about either Zoisite or Kunzite or their relationship. It’s just a really well done scene.
After Zoisite dies, Kunzite decides to go back after Sailor Moon and retrieve the Silver Crystal. It seems that he’s easily the most powerful of the villains we’ve had so far, which makes you wonder why Queen Beryl didn’t just send him out first, instead of wasting everyone’s time with her three weaker underlings. Or like, why not send them all out together? Kunzite handily takes out all of the Sailor Guardians by himself. If he, Zoisite, Nephrite, and Jadeite worked together, Usagi would be dead several times over. Just seems like poor strategy Beryl, that’s all I’m saying.
It’s only thanks to Sailor Moon summoning inner strength and believing in herself and her friends and all that jazz that they’re able to escape alive. But Mamoru is still in the enemy’s clutches. It seems like the darkest hour so far. In times like these, one needs hope to continue on. Well, have no fear.

Tuxedo Umino Mask is here. Yeah. Naru and Umino got together. There is still good in the universe.

So yeah, that was this month’s installment of Sailor Watches Sailor Moon. Very quickly approaching the end of this season. There’ll probably be one more installment of this, and then maybe a season retrospective. Then, I’ll give Sailor Moon a break and watch something else for a while. I’m excited to see where this story goes. If you enjoyed this, make sure to follow us on Twitter. You can also follow me on Twitter @Sailor_n00b, if you’d like to see my live tweet some of my reactions to this. You can also talk to me and all the others on our Discord server. And finally, follow the site itself to keep up with all of our articles. Alright. Until next time.