With Sailor Mercury and Sailor Mars by her side, Sailor
Moon has begun to score some major wins against the Dark Kingdom. However, the rocky relationship between Usagi
and Rei continues to hinder their teamwork, much as Ami and Luna try to keep
them in line. Meanwhile, Jadite’s
constant failures earn him an ultimatum from Queen Beryl. He challenges the Sailor Senshi Trio to one
final showdown, knowing that if they defeat him again, it’ll be the end of one
General and an opening for another to take his place.
We kick off a new week of Sailor Moon goodness with some
team building and team bickering.
Yet
for all of Usagi’s entertaining verbal throwdowns with Rei, the girls managed
to score a big victory against the Dark Kingdom…depending on who you ask, I
doubt anyones gonna miss Jadeite much.
Supporting characters got more to do and even Usagi managed to get some
one ups on Mamoru (and point out a very icky fact about anyone being
romantically involved with him).
Let’s
break down our third round of Sailor Moon episodes.
The personality clash between Usagi and Rei was clearly
the highlight of this set.
Rei might be
a bit stuck up and a tad selfish when it comes to boys, but Usagi is also the
one who continues to cry in the middle of battle and fuel Luna’s growing belief
that she should have sought out Ami or Rei first.
I like Rei and Usagi is someone I go back and
forth between liking and being really annoyed with…so for me this all worked
out.
One thing is for sure, the battles
with Monsters have gotten easier and a bit more creative since Rei and Ami
arrived.
All three girls have a
different of combat and are all able to put it to good use, even if the end
result is usually Usagi herself getting in the final blow.
They could mix it up a little since Rei got a
kill in during her first episode.
How
about Ami get in some final blows too sometime?
Nice to know that, at the end of the day, everyone has each others
backs, even Usagi and Rei.
Jadeite’s luck finally ran out in this set and I cant
believe Queen Beryl allowed him to stick around past Sailor Mercury’s
arrival.
Every concept of stealing
energy he came up with was more or less the same without a lot of variety and
even when the Senshi confronted him in their climactic duel, Jadeite felt like
a first tier Boss Fight and was going down pretty easily.
He didn’t make it easy though, sending
airplanes to squash Usagi, Ami, Rei and Luna on the Airport Runway.
But thanks to teamwork and Jadeite unable to
spot an oncoming set of big wheels, the crony was taken down.
His final fate feels, idk a tad on the safer
end of things.
But also idk, an eternal
sleep sounds like Death enough to me.
Anyway, out with the old in with the new.
Enter Nephrite, who’s strategy doesn’t
involve gathering energy from groups but from individuals who hit their
critical peak of power before taking it all at once.
Interesting approach and I’m glad he isn’t
just copying Jadeite’s clearly failed strategy.
We also got a quick glimpse of who I guess will be Nephrite’s successor,
Zoisite, but he’s only around very briefly so not much to say there.
I was surprised to see Naru get a story in this set.
Ever since Ami and Rei arrived, I expected
Naru and Umino to slowly be phased out in favor of having Usagi hang out with
her fellow Senshi all the time.
I like
that Naru’s sticking around though.
It’s
a way to give Usagi something outside of Senshi duties to have in her life and
when Naru realized something was wrong with her Tennis Pro Sister, Usagi was
there to help her best friend.
Usagi
deserves to be called a “Crybaby” but she’s got the heart when it matters.
Actually, the first couple of Monster threats
Nephrite launched at the Senshi were entertaining, along with the situations
that brought them into existence.
Preying on Naru’s Sister’s need to be the best Tennis Player and a long
Groundskeepers desire to protect an endangered park were interesting
marks.
I chuckled at the Tennis Monster
looking a lot like David Bowie during his Ziggy Stardust phase and the Plant
Monster looking like an Anime variant Poison Ivy, fun stuff.
Mamoru also got a more sizeable role this time out, doing
more than just his continued hobby of insulting Usagi.
But doesn’t Rei do a lot of that too?
Well here’s the difference: Rei is someone
who interacts with Usagi for more than two minutes on a regular basis and has
Usagi’s back in battle even if theyre not on good terms.
We’ve seen Rei’s good side as well as her
selfish side.
Mamoru has been nothing
but an asshat since he first appeared and very little has been done to change
that first impression.
Sure he saves
Luna from traffic but that doesn’t put him a character I want to like by a long
shot.
If I have to dock points for Rei
its for her romantic interest in the jerk.
Not only is he a jerk, he’s also wayyyy too old for any of the girls to
even think about dating, even Usagi notes that the High School handbook has
rules about that sort of thing.
Even if
Rei is slightly older than Usagi (15 at most), he’s in College and she’s still
in High School.
I don’t like that and it
paints Mamoru in an even creepier light.
So yeah, I’m glad Usagi got a couple of one ups on him by being in very
public places when Mamoru commenced his daily insult barrage…only to be judged
by an entire crowd for picking on a poor High School girl no reason, serves him
right.
Also Rei, you’re the hottest girl
in the show (no pun intended), you can do better.
This was a fun third set of episodes and we even got some
minor plot advancement with Luna discovering the identity of their enemy: The
Dark Kingdom.
And it looks like Mamoru’s
connection to Tuxedo Mask might made a sneaky first appearance when he seemed
in pain when the Plant Monster was close by.
With new foes in play and current mysteries getting more clues, Sailor
Moons in pretty good shape right now I think.
We’ll see if it can keep up the good work when we look at more episodes
on Friday, right here at the Gundam Anime Corner.
No comments:
Post a Comment