Sailor Moon Crystal

Episode 23

Remember a time when you were angry as a child. Now think what you would have done if someone had granted you a whole lot of power at the height of your feelings of anger and rejection and think about the awesomely bad choices you might have made, your child self flooded with the power to finally get those people back for slights that felt anything but imagined. If you can put yourself in that position, you might understand what's happened to Chibi-usa this week as she completes her transformation into Black Lady, ally of evil and seducer of her own father. Er, as a young man, before he's really her father. Yes, this leads to all sorts of weird time paradox conundrums about how if she's brainwashing her dad into forgetting her mom before they have her she's endangering her own existence, but it may be best not to think too hard about all of this and just enjoy the show.

And this episode is enjoyable, albeit not quite as strong as its predecessor. The Dark Moon storyline has kicked it into high gear with Chibi-usa's transformation and we begin to really get an idea of how little Wiseman cares about anything but his own goals. We may have suspected before that he was just using Demande and Saphir's dislike of Neo Queen Serenity's rule to manipulate them into doing his bidding, and now that is spelled out for us clearly when the two begin to panic. Demande shows that he really does love his brother when the two are hit with Wiseman's energy, and that one moment of fear when he throws off the villain's rays and Saphir is hit says more about the two as people than all of the episodes that have come before. It isn't taken farther than that here, and that does feel like a wasted opportunity, but this is a case where we have to blame the intense fidelity to the source material rather than any other issues with Sailor Moon Crystal. On the flip side, Chibi-usa is very clearly visible underneath Black Lady's facade – we can hear it in her voice, which carries hints of her younger self and we can see it in her glee at “getting back” at those she feels neglected and wronged her before. This isn't a sophisticated attack, this is a tween getting her revenge, and it shows, particularly at the end of the episode when she gets rejected from the palace. You can pretty much rewrite her lines into some variation of, “Well, I knew they didn't really love me anyway, and now this proves it, so I'll show them I don't need them!” Simply put, there's a real sense that Black Lady is Chibi-usa cutting her nose to spite her face, and that is a major strength of this episode.

Other parts are less smoothly done, mostly in terms of sending Usagi and the girls back to their own time for Usagi to recover. It feels like we could have heard about it rather than seeing the whole scene play out, but more of an issue is that there appear to be no ill effects on Neo King Endymion now that his daughter has hooked up with his past self. I know I said not two paragraphs ago that it's better not to think about the time paradox aspects, but in this case it really is distracting. Also likely to jar you out of the moment is the increased stiffness of everyone's faces in the opening scenes of the episode – they look so immobile that for a moment it feels like watching plastic dolls play out the scene; Pluto and Mercury seem to suffer more from this than the others. On the bright side, the constant flow of Black Lady's hair in the breeze works well, so this feels like a very split episode in terms of visual quality. Viewers may also find themselves split on the transformation scene that takes up a good chunk of time towards the end; I've always loved transformations in magical girl anime, so part of me was totally thrilled to get to see everyone transform in one huge montage...but I'm still not enthralled by these transformations, full of clunky CG as they are.

Issues and all, however, this is a pretty good episode. There's excitement, building tension, and effort made to present Black Lady as a believable version of Chibi-usa. If there's also time issues and pacing problems, along with quality concerns, well, that's par for the course at this point. It's unfortunate, but maybe we should revel in what the episode does right as the Dark Moon story arc heads for its finale.

Rating: B-

Sailor Moon Crystal is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Rebecca Silverman is ANN's senior manga critic.