In this set- the debut of Super Sailor Moon! You can tell it’s a Super Form because it’s even more girly and detailed than the LAST one.
And now it’s time to close the book on the first chapter of Sailor Moon S, as we uncover the Talismans that everyone’s been hunting for! And OMG, the whole “the Talisman holder will DIE if it’s removed!” thing, which is OH SO IMPORTANT, will SURELY not turn out to be untrue after all, thus making a lot of the earlier fighting pointless!!
Eudial, first of the Witches 5.
EPISODE #109:
Hey, new opening! Now with a better shot of the Professor, and our first glimpse of Hotaru Tomoe! In a funny bit, Minako starts to worry about the fact that she hasn’t been targetted for her Pure Heart Crystal yet. She not only obsesses over it to excess, but Luna tries to convince her that the enemy just hasn’t noticed it yet, given how USAGI’S was targeted, and she’s obsessed with her boyfriend, eating, sleeping, slacking off and hating her studies- “That’s not being pure-hearted; that’s just being an idiot”.
We finally get more explanation from the villains, as Professor Tomoe mentions that there actually has to be a special person to utilize the Holy Grail- if it’s on their side, they can use it to cover the world in darkness. If a good guy uses it, they can undo all of the villains’ plans.
Minako decides to donate blood at a dangerous rate to prove her pure-heartedness, concerning everyone involved (and drawing the attention of Haruka & Michiru), and then finally gets her wish- her Heart Crystal is removed! And then, in the greatest bit EVER, she lurches forward, grasps the heart… AND RUNS AWAY WITH IT, cackling about how this proves she was pure-hearted after all! Usagi and Eudial are aghast and have to friggin’ chase after the lunatic. Minako finally collapses (with an exhausted smile on her face), as Eudial’s silly Daimon “Doorknobder” manages to slap doors and locks on every exit, trapping Usagi, Haruka & Michiru in with the bad guys. With the heroes concerned over whether or not to transform in front of each other, Usagi, protector of all life, does the only thing she can do- shocking her newest friends by TRANSFORMING right in front of them!
And before the girls can be too shocked by the revelation, they themselves have to transform to save a solitary Sailor Moon from the villain. Therefore, the cat’s fully out of the bag. Doorknobder gets thumped by the Sailors pretty good, and Sailor Moon tries her Moon Spiral Heart Attack at both her and Eudial… who whips out a “Fire Buster” flamethrower, that actually DEFLECTS the attack right into her Daimon! Eudial forces the heroes to group up together for her final attack (threatening an unconscious Minako to get them to do it), but Mina AWAKENS, transforming and then Love-Me Chaining the Fire Buster. Eudial shouts “Damn!” and then flees.
Very important episode, and Minako’s psychosis is always great for a laugh.
EPISODE #110:
Another game-changer, as it’s called The Deaths of Uranus & Neptune: A Talisman Appears!. Eudial overhears a conversation between the other Witches 5 over her repeated failures, with the only one we can see, Mimete, making sure that Eudial is listening- she points out to the others that she’s next in line. Eudial grouses over their plotting and scheming “Did they forget who taught them to do their jobs?”), then phones up Haruka/Uranus, announcing her plans to get the Talisman- Uranus & Neptune take the bait, both having foreseen the Talisman’s appearance that morning. In a great bit, Haruka contemplates the hands that must cause some measure of torment and sacrifice to get the Talisman, but Michiru intertwines her own hand with Haruka’s (“I love your hands”). Um, wow- totally blushing here, you guys.
Eudial leaving a taunting message to Haruka, then getting cut off by the machine, is great, too.
Haruka then calls Usagi to come meet them, and the others talk about it- and we see SAILOR PLUTO in the crowd watching Chibi-Usa speak to Mamoru about it! In civilian clothes! And when Usagi meets the two girls, Haruka TEARS OFF HER BROOCH; warns her that if she interferes again, “– you’ll die!”; announces the coming of the Silence and the need to find the Messiah; and then they leave… in a HELICOPTER?!? The FRIG did they get a helicopter?
Setsuna Meioh (aka Pluto) then makes her first real appearance, saying she’s an “old acquaintance” of Uranus & Neptune’s, and points Usagi the way there. Her voice is classically unemotive and dry, as you’d expect of Sailor Pluto, but she lets out a small smile when Usagi’s willing to go, even though she can’t transform. Uranus & Neptune arrive at the “Marine Cathedral” church in the waters of Tokyo, and of COURSE it turns out that two Talisman holders are THEM. Eudial catches them with her traps and taunts them, but Uranus casually points out that “I can’t have a Talisman”, owing to her lack of pure heart- her hands are too dirty. And Neptune, despite their earlier promise to ignore the fate of the other if it means getting a Talisman, of COURSE walks straight through a deathtrap trying to save Uranus, because of this human emotion called WUV.
Neptune walks through a hall of Laser Fire, then gets blasted by Eudial’s gun, which unleashes her Talisman- a Mirror. Then Usagi arrives, in normal form, and friggin’ TACKLES Eudial off the platform! Uranus cuts this bittersweet little speech about Michiru “going off into your own little world”, chides Usagi’s risk-taking, then admires her self-assuredness that she can save the world WITHOUT the Talismans… but blasts herself with Eudial’s gun (revealing a Sword), telling Sailor Moon to find the third Talisman without them. So they’re prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice after all.
(First Appearance: Mimete, Setsuna Meioh, Mirror, Sword)
Sailor Pluto makes her return!
And renders a lot of searching for Macguffins pointless!
EPISODE #111:
Eudial swipes the Sword and the Mirror and runs away, and the Sailors chase her- the four & Chibi-Moon are stopped by “Sticky Ooze” from Eudial’s gadgets, leaving only Sailor Moon. See… now this is why I wished they’d have built up the Witches 5 as better characters- this would have SO much more impact if she’d gotten even “Jadeite” levels of characterization. But instead, all we see is that she’s kinda mean.
Things happen very, VERY quickly from here on in. Eudial counters Moon Spiral Heart Attack once more, and it looks to be all over. Setsuna Meioh reappears, revealing herself to be SAILOR PLUTO, complete with transformation sequence (which makes her look like the most “womanly” of the Sailors, if you know what I mean), and that the top of her trademark staff is the third Talisman (!!), which draws the other two from Eudial, brings Uranus & Neptune back into the fold, and gives them their Heart Crystals back! The three Talismans form the Holy Grail, which Sailor Moon grasps before Eudial (who’s held everyone off with more fire), thus transforming into an UPPER TIER of Sailor Moon (oh yeah, this is an anime, alright), with a rainbow skirt and cellophane ribbons & junk. She simply one-arms Eudial’s Fire Buster attack right back into her, sending her away.
Eudial flees to fight another day, but Mimete’s sent her trademark snails to eat away at the brakes of Eudial’s van… which ends up killing her, as she drives off the road and into the ocean. Yeah, a death by CAR ACCIDENT, that’s what Eudial gets. Meanwhile, the villains of every prior seasons could TELEPORT, thus making her look like a doofus. Sailor Moon collapses due to her attack against Eudial so Uranus is all “Oh, she’s not the Messiah, I guess”, as Messiahs are supposed to have unlimited power. Thus, that’s gonna be Uranus & Neptune’s new mission- find the Messiah. Who is totally obviously not Sailor Moon (remember that later). Oh, and we see a young girl struggling with some kind of magical pain, and Sailor Moon fans will instantly recognize her as Hotaru Tomoe.
The impossibly-innocent Hotaru Tomoe.
Yeah, this one is BIG. It wraps up the “Eudial” section quickly (giving her a pretty anticlimactic send-off), and throws down all three Talismans in a single two-parter. It’s… kind of odd, in that it’s a huge climax, yet it feels weird because what we’ve been searching for for more than 20 episodes has suddenly been spammed out in only two- all three Talismans coming out at once, in the same episode, when there were so many failed searches before. It thus comes off like all of those episodes were just a waste of time until we got to the REAL story, which is happening now. Pluto’s introduction was a bit of a Deus Ex Machina, killing the tension with a literal “oh hey, I had the other thing we were searching for this entire time; oh, and I healed your friends and it turns out they can survive without the Talismans after all”, which is a HUGELY anticlimactic finish to the major crux of Uranus & Neptune, which was that they were inevitably going to have to kill someone to save the world. Because now it’s revealed that oh- they never actually had to do that at all.
(First Appearance: Pluto’s Transformation Sequence, The Holy Grail, Super Sailor Moon, Hotaru Tomoe)
SWO Productions 