Sailor Moon Crystal

Episode 20

Lengthy explanations can be handled in a variety of ways, but generally speaking, the least effective is simply to have the characters standing or sitting around while someone holds forth on what they need to know. Naturally, with its history of poor choices, this is the route episode twenty of Sailor Moon Crystal takes. King Endymion, the future self of Tuxedo Mask, appears in spirit form before Sailor Moon, Chibi-Usa, Sailor Venus, and Tuxedo Mask and tells them everything about the new Silver Millennium, the Black Moon, and their own futures. And while he's doing that? There are a couple of flashbacks, but mostly we just get shots of him talking and everyone else's astounded faces. It's a real thrill ride. To compound matters, this is a particularly bad looking episode. There are more off-model shots than on, and a couple of lovely art deco-inspired pictures of Neo Queen Serenity and Sailor Moon can't make up for the messed up proportions, flat, derpy faces, and characters recognizable only by their colors.

On the plus side, Diana is cute.

This is actually a fairly important episode in terms of what's coming up in the immediate future for the characters, especially Chibi-Usa. Her character development is one of the few parts of this episode that is well done. We at last understand why she is so drawn to Mamoru – not only is he her actual father, but due to the effects of the Silver Millennium on its people, he looks just like her father, despite being his past self. King Endymion tells the people from the past that Neo Queen Serenity rarely left the palace, which implies that while she may love her daughter, the business of ruling takes up most of her time, leaving Endymion to be the more present parent in their child's life. Therefore he's the one who makes her feel safest, so it is his past self she's going to gravitate towards. As the episode progresses, we see Chibi-Usa fall deeper into her survivor's guilt and worry about what she's doing to her past parents. She feels helpless, and with Sailor Moon unable to use her powers in the future, she's at a total loss. This is going to be very important to the remaining episodes in the arc, and I do give Sailor Moon Crystal full credit for making it believable. If they were going to get any one thing right during the Black Moon arc, this was probably the one to get.

We also see Usagi's petty jealousy of her own child in the past, as she pouts that Mamoru cares more about Chibi-Usa than her. While the “jealous of her own child” trope is among my personal least favorites, in this case we can argue a justification: Usagi is fourteen. She may intellectually know that she's going to have a daughter, but the physical reality of a (roughly) ten-year-old child appearing and claiming to be hers is so beyond the scope of what she can accept that it becomes too much for her. At sixteen, Mamoru is just enough older to be able to handle the idea, plus he's been living on his own while Usagi is taken care of by her own parents. In this case, their maturity levels are vastly different, making them see the same situation in two very different lights. And in her defense, Usagi realizes that she's being silly. But find me the fourteen-year-old who can control her emotions and act rationally at all times – I know I wasn't one and certainly don't know any.

On the whole, this is an important episode handled badly. You can get away with long talky sections in manga better than in anime, and a deviation from the source material really would have helped here. By the end things even out and are moving in a much more interesting direction, but there are twenty minutes of “King Endymion Explains it All” to sit through first. While it is funny that everyone calls him “King” as if it were his name rather than his title, it isn't enough to really carry the first ¾ of the episode. Here's hoping the rest of the season picks up the pace.

Rating: C-

Sailor Moon Crystal is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Rebecca Silverman is ANN's senior manga critic.