Sailor Moon Crystal: Episode 4 [The Princess and the Crystal]

Luna is examining the identities of the Sailor Scouts. . . .only to reveal at the beginning of this episode she knows who Tuxedo Kamen is, and she wonders if he is a friend. . .or a foe.

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Usagi is once again waking up late, now with a candid shoujo manga lying under her as she freaks out at her alarm. Have I mentioned how genuinely endearing this goofball is? As usual while watching this show I get tears in my eyes. Oops, nostalgia and tears breaking out. Usagi actually makes it to school on time and has a moment to talk to Naru, who tells her of a Princess from an illustrious land of rare gems that has come to exhibit a priceless treasure.

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Rei and Ami meet up at the arcade only to learn Usagi was given detention for sleeping in class. The two hang out at the arcade and manage to beat the boss together, and it’s really touching to finally see some of the Senshi interact WITHOUT Usagi. It’s actually hard for me to recall, thinking on it, when the Senshi were developed as girls outside of Usagi and their sordid romance stories.

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Usagi finally makes it to the Arcade and Luna explains that there are three of them now. Rei wonders who the Youma are that attack, but Luna points out to them their most important mission is to protect the Princess. No one knows who she is because her powers were sealed away so no one could find her. WOW. Thanks for that Crystal, the one fucking line of exposition needed to make all their bickering and searching in the original actually make sense. To protect the Princess, her power and likely the memories of her, were sealed away. This makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE NOW!

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Luna explains that once all the Senshi are awakened the location of the Silver Crystal, the ultimate power of the Moon Kingdom, will be revealed. They are all the key and due to this must all be awakened. Usagi however lets this fly through one ear and out the other, to the disappointment of Luna and her team mates. Usagi becomes more interested in the conversation that went on between Umino and Motoki, about the Princess of D and the ball that Usagi would love to go to.

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Rei says she has a bad feeling about this party, and we cut to the Four Kings as Beryl commands them to find and use the Crystal to revive their Great Ruler. Usagi can’t leave well enough alone and decides she’ll be going to the dinner party as well! The rest of them worry about getting in but thanks to the Disguise pen the only thing security can find wrong with them is their pet, which they’ll of course take care of.

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I have to say that while they look nice, this is the first time age has shown on this series. None of these outfits would be considered in style, and are a little dated.  Usagi slips in and gets something on her dress, and frantically searches for her handkerchief. It’s none other than a familiar Tuxedo clad man that picks up her embroidered-with-her-name handkerchief, and meanwhile Rei and Ami notice something strange about one of the Princess of D’s companions.

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Usagi feels lonely standing out on the balcony until a man who is quite clearly Tuxedo Mask asks her to dance. The next few minutes are a gratuitous display on the behalf of the love story of Mamoru and Usagi. Most of you watching know the story, so it’s very easy to explain. But picture this, a man driven by an unknown desire for something he doesn’t understand. It drives him to fight even those he is interested in to be the one person to obtain this mystery treasure. The truth behind it he doesn’t even realize is he wants to find one woman, the woman he loves above all else, and be with her again. His only drive is leading him to find the woman he loves that he cannot even recall.

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Usagi is only fourteen, but even she can’t explain the warmth she feels around him and the draw he has on her heart. Luna interrupts their dance and Tuxedo Mask disappears as we see the Princess’ companion is truly Nephrite, another of the four kings, come to take the treasure. At least Jaedite didn’t like. . . scare young girls before getting what he wanted, he had the sense to knock them out first?? He summons a monster to possess her and while Rei and Ami transform, they aren’t quite fast enough to catch her. Usagi catches her before she jumps off the building with the treasure only to be knocked over. She however is caught. . . by Tuxedo Kamen! The two of them fall only for Usagi to use her pen and save them both.

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The second screenshot. . . might be my first big issue with the 2-d animation of this series. There were some derp moments before, but this is a big budget scene. There is NO excuse for an anime that only comes out EVERY TWO WEEKS to have such a poor quality shot. Honestly? The animator keying this scene should be ashamed for doing such a shoddy job on Tuxedo Mask’s face. I have a lot of sympathy when a show comes out every week and animators are pushed to the brink, but if it comes out every two weeks to ensure quality and consistency then they sure let the ball drop on this and the dance scene. They made up for it in some shots but I feel since I have to wait two weeks for one episode this is a ridiculous error. He goes from looking his age to looking 12. Ugh.

this shots good though. humma humma
this shots good though. humma humma

Mid transformation Usagi remembers her tiara was burnt up in the last battle, until her entire body glows and warms up from her pendant. She remarks that the warm feeling she felt when she and Tuxedo Mask danced embraces her, and she gets a new tiara! THE CONSISTENCY OF THIS SHOW!

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Nephrite holds an immense power over Princess D, and none of the Sailor Scouts seem to be able to do anything. Tuxedo Mask calls out and declares only a powerful light can stop the darkness, and Luna tells Usagi she must use her new tiara to reflect the moonlight onto her!

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Holy shit SHE REALLY REFLECTS THE MOONLIGHT! Oh my God, this anime definitely does something different. The Sailor Senshi have a variety of abilities and seem to learn to use a multitude of things. I no longer feel as if they’ll do the same thing every episode and I really like that, it highlights how genuinely powerful the Senshi is. Also, Nephrite actually doing things because this anime adaptation is much more fond of showing the powers of the Four Kings. That being said, the Four Kings appear as soon as he loses his grip.

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Wow. Uhm. Kunzite is. . . .very. . .attractive…now. . .uhm. coughs uncomfortably. . . Have I ever mentioned I like silver haired bishounens? Each of the Four Kings introduce themselves and tell the Senshi they will have the Crystal at any cost, and make the world bow before their great ruler. Princess D recovers and reveals the secret treasure, a very beautiful pure diamond carving of herself. The Senshi realize this isn’t what they’re looking for, but Usagi is nowhere to be found. Instead. . . she is sleeping on the balcony as Tuxedo Kamen observes her.

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As he observes her, he remembers the dance they had together. He looks at her face in the moonlight, and pulls her in for a kiss. In the soft moonlight, she recalls this is a familiar feeling to her. Sweet lips…a warm feeling.

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But as he embraces her in the moonlight, Luna stops him. She demands to know why he is always appearing before them. He admits he is looking for the Silver Crystal as well. Luna asks if they are enemies. He admits, if they are looking for the same thing, they might be. He disappears into the night. Meanwhile a storm approaches. . . and a certain girl is caught in it.

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Is Tuxedo Mask an enemy, despite the shared connection between he and Usagi? Who is this girl, and could she help lead them to the Princess? We’ll find out next time, on Sailor Moon Crystal episode 5 – Makoto, …Sailor Jupiter!  As we reach my favorite Sailor Scout all I can think is that, this anime has some flaws. The animation has no excuse to be as subpar as it can be. But I feel like crying when I watch it, in a good way. Few things make me tear up as badly as this anime, as it plays on my heart strings. If you loved Sailor Moon as a little girl and it changed your life like it did mine, you know how this feels. Even if the English dub were to be abysmal and the box sets 100 dollars, I’d want this. Because this anime made my life what it is today. It’s why I’m here and why I write today. For all of it’s issues, this anime lives up to the feelings all little girls held in their hearts when the original aired. See you next time.

Oki

This Post Has 12 Comments

  1. Wanderer August 16, 2014

    Looking at this without the nostalgia-filter-lense, I see a girl with nothing between her ears but air who can’t concentrate on anything important for more than half a second before getting distracted to look at that pretty thing over there. And I see a weird stalker in a mask who molests girls in their sleep. That’s kind of not cool.

    1. Oki August 16, 2014

      Wanderer, I like you, and I’mma let you finish, but that’s fucking stupid.

      Let’s examine Usagi, a lazy girl who just wants to do what she wants to do. Her entire life has been about weird dreams and strange feelings she can’t explain. NOTHING about a teenage girls life dictates she should be prepared or able to properly fight demons and evil with capacity. She doesn’t study, but if you know anything about the series her entire appeal is her kindness. Even as a princess she wasn’t smart, but people loved her for her heart. If you have an issue with that, it’s her character, so either resolve you don’t like her or get over it. Usagi’s entire thing is loving people. Friend or foe.

      And with Tuxedo Kamen, YES, if he was simply some guy who showed up sometimes to stalk this girl with no indication of consent or remorse then he would be a fucking asshole. And it WOULD be not cool. But that’s not what he’s doing? On MULTIPLE occasions Usagi has made it clear she is thinking of him and wants to be with him. His main memory during the moment before he kisses her is of her saying she was thinking of him. He is the one who broke off their physical contact, not her, and she has made it VERY clear she is interested in him. She was semi conscious, and had she been like THE FUCK THERE IS SOMEONE KISSING ME, she would have made it VERY clear.

      Before you get on the politically correct train, Usagi and Mamoru are destined lovers whose entire identity is to be rebon to find one another. She’s not some whiney teenage girl whose too stupid to know what she’s getting into, she is a reborn girl who knew her one identity was to love someone. Usagi and Mamoru’s romance is a point of contention in many ways for some people, but to call them both stalkers or say it’s not cool is just….epically missing the point. They’re connected. They feel each other in a way they can’t explain. Every glance has made for a moment of love and longing, and BOTH have clearly consented. In real life, if a girl is sleeping and you kiss her because she is willing around you it is creepy. But are you holding a story of destiny and romance to REAL LIFE standards as if they can be compared? Naoko wrote it as an ethereal romance. On multiple occasions the two have basically declared they cannot live without each other. In the manga, Usagi has almost killed herself in response to him dying.

      Are Usagi and Mamoru a perfect example of love in our world? No, but fuck that, that’s not what they ARE. They are not just some high schooler and a teenage middle schooler shooting some adolescent feels. This is a story with an empowered female cast and if Usagi didn’t want it, it would be made clear and she would kick his ASS. The truth is, Mamoru is almost explicitly an ACCESSORY to Usagi with his blinding love, devotion, and sheer will to be with her EVEN WHEN HE HAD REASON TO BELIEVE THEY WERE ENEMIES.

      So please, do not bring the nostalgia shit up with me. I’m all about CONSENT and happiness but it’s much the same of judging the Queen of Attolia (Megan Whalen Turner) on gender standards. You cannot judge it based on our world, our idea of love, our image of consent, because the entire point is they are two halves of the same whole who are drawn to each other. Yeah kissing girls who are asleep is generally bad but this is SAILOR MOON and this is DESTINY much in the same way Snow White is represented in the Disney version. You can’t judge a fantasy romance story on the same standards if it’s clear both parties want it, and if Usagi DIDN’T it would be VERY clear. Yeah, Mamoru shouldn’t steal a kiss. Usagi shouldn’t abandon her friends to dance with a guy who might be an enemy. They’re drawn to each other in ways they can’t explain, and that’s all there is to it. This is not about rape culture, Usagi is not like “well he’s hot but I’m not sure” every time their eyes meet, they know they both want it, they feel it in their hearts. SHE WANTS TO BE WITH HIM SO BADLY HIS LOVE GIVES HER A NEW FUCKING SUPER POWER

      Now if you want rapey in this universe, original anime Prince Diamond is a good place to start, bro.

      1. kirtro August 16, 2014

        Oki, I think you forgot to drop the mic

        1. Oki August 16, 2014

          I completely respect Wanderer’s opinion! He is a valid and posting member of the community and his insight is appreciated. That being said, this is angryanimebitches, everything I post comes with a built in mic drop.

      2. Wanderer August 16, 2014

        You make a somewhat stronger case than the episode did. I should note that I wasn’t being completely serious in my above post: I probably should have indicated that. But I do think there are some issues of concern.

        I didn’t feel the strength of the emotions involved. While I know the story, I don’t feel the series is doing a good job of portraying it as more than “a schoolgirl with her head filled with ideas from shoujo manga has her life saved by a handsome, mysterious man, and she convinces herself she is in love with him.” I KNOW it’s more than that, but I don’t think it’s coming across well. And we have almost nothing from Mamoru’s side. So when he comes in and kisses her while she’s asleep, even though the show has shown she at least has a crush on him, under normal circumstances that would be bad. Luna’s arrival and demand that he “stay away from Usagi-chan” definitely came from the perspective of seeing a guy forcing himself on an unconscious girl. That’s probably what got me thinking in that direction. Upon reflection I should have phrased it a bit less seriously.

        I am sorry though, but Usagi was an airhead in this episode. Ignoring Luna completely in the arcade, crashing the party not because she thought it was important but simply because she wanted to dress up and look pretty and be around other people who were dressed up and looking pretty, running off to dance just because she’d dressed up immediately after Rei had just told her that something really bad was going to happen there and they needed to find the princess and protect her, and later having to have Luna remind her (TWICE) to use her powers (hey, you’re falling off a balcony. Why don’t you use your superpowers to save your life, since the only person there is someone who already knows about them? And then: hey something evil is going on, transform already!).

        I think the problem is they didn’t show any redeeming qualities for her in this episode. We saw her kindness in the previous episode when she determinedly became friends with Rei, but in this episode all she did was show off the weaknesses of her character.

        1. Oki August 16, 2014

          See, now that makes a lot more sense! I think, really, both anime adaptations struggle to show the cutesy side of Usagi that seems more harmless than downright stupid. This anime is however doing a better job, but it still has its flaws, you’re right. I think the reason the best episodes so far have been the recruiting episodes is because we see her kindness and appreciate it. She’s a bit of a derp.

          On Mamoru’s end, I think the reason is we never hear him SPEAK. Certainly when we see his face it seems to portray genuine curiosity, but he doesn’t say what he wants. He’s thinking it, but we’re not hearing it. And those are valid concerns, hopefully they’ll address it. You’re right in saying the phrasing made me take it awhole nother way, and let’s hope as the series goes on they’ll show what we KNOW more and not what seems to be lacking.

          I think Luna’s going to hit herself when she goes, oh yeah, the princess did have a boyfriend. . .and they had similar hair styles…uhm. . .you know…….gonna go here

    2. Tigercrane (@ashveridian) August 16, 2014

      Yeah Im with you on this one. Daydreaming over a guy does not, in any way, resemble consent to be kissed. The fundamental truth is that she CANT consent to a kiss while sleeping, even if she would normally consent to it while awake. Add in the fact that she’s a middle schooler (not legal by Japan’s standards) and he in high school adds a level of skeeze to it all that Im just not comfortable with. Maybe its just differing cultural standards here, but that part really soured the episode for me.

      Meanwhile I disagree with you whole heartedly about Usagi’s character.

      1. Oki August 16, 2014

        Again, I have to protest the simplification of the issue. If this was just a girl and a boy in an anime it’d be skeeze level, you can just read my review of Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun to see how I feel about it, I hate to pull this card but, the experience they’re going through is not equivocal. From an authorial perspective, they were set up this way for it to happen this way, if it happened consciously it would be …honestly, I hate to say this- if they kissed in a perfect situation the entire conflict of the first section would be over. Derp. Bad writing, but that’s all it is, not quite the same as rape. Also, age of consent in Japan is 14 so she is in fact legal!

        At least we agree on one thing, right? lol!

        1. Tigercrane (@ashveridian) August 16, 2014

          See, if this was further down the story, I’d agree. But at the moment here, they’re still essentially strangers, which is why it feels super skeezy to me. And while its not rape, it can definitely be seen as sexual assault. Even if we knew Mamoru’s thoughts here, it doesn’t change the fact that they don’t know each other outside of baddie bashing. But then again, Usagi and Mamoru’s relationship has never been a selling point to me.

          I dont get the expectation people have that Usagi be a monster stomping badass already. She’s literally a 14 yo kid whose lead a rather ideal and easy life that’s just been given superpowers and the expectation to go out and fight an unknown, unnamed evil, find a all-powerful macguffin thats supposed to be held by this princess they know absolutely nothing about, not even what she looks like. Oh, just the fate of the cosmos is hanging in the balance. TBH, if she weren’t an airhead and a ditz, she’d probably be having anxiety attacks by now. The other inner senshi, by comparison, have had harder live with feelings of loneliness, isolation, and exclusion which…kinda serves to toughen them up emotionally? Which is also why they’re so adamantly loyal to Usagi because she’s literally the first person in their lives to offer them unflagging love and acceptance.

          1. Oki August 17, 2014

            I think the main issue here is the point of consent, and we should really examine that. Period, consent should always be present and Mamoru should have had it. That he didn’t is wrong, yes. These are inescapable truths, but the main reason I think using sexual assault as a statement is overtly wrong is that from a cognitive perspective, we as VIEWERS know that Usagi had no problem with it. In reality, as a character Mamoru was wrong for what he did. But I don’t think we with our omniscient perspective can define it as such. His behavior is problematic, but the action was in truth as genuine as he MEANT it to be, and because of that I can’t hate him. If we could judge every situation from a genuine omniscient experience in real life, we might judge it the same, because we could see if a girl was consciously accepting of this behavior even while unconscious. We can’t do that though, so we require consent and that’s extremely right of us to do. But Usagi wanted it and we as the viewers KNOW she did, the problem is Mamoru didn’t really explicitly know that. He was going off assumption, and that’s bad, but putting the label when we know it’s not the truth as viewers. . . almost seems incorrect? Basically, you have every right to be bothered but also see that from our perspectives we KNOW it wasn’t that way, so we have different viewpoints than Luna or other viewers.

  2. Tigercrane (@ashveridian) August 16, 2014

    I actually like that screenshot. Its literally the first time I’ve seen Mamoru look like he’s close to Usagi’s age. Hell, the whole reason they made him a college student (and Usagi a high schooler as a result) in the old 90’s dub is because they didnt think they could sell the idea of him being a high schooler because he looks like a grown man.

    Plus there’s the whole comedic value of “I can’t believe this Mary Poppins shit worked!” expression he seems to have.

    I also feel like I have to defend the animators here a bit, too. I mean, so far as this series goes, Mamoru’s face there is a really mild offense to say, Rei’s rubber anatomy in the last episode, or her eyes. She was painfully off model for a lot of the scene before her transformation.

    That being said, the reason this show is released every two weeks isn’t too assure quality, its because SMC has ZERO SPONSORS. Aside from the basic budget Toei may have given them, SMC, being a global streaming show, does not air on a network. It’s not syndicated. The animators, the voice actors, the translators, nearly everyone involved with this show is doing it because they love Sailor Moon. Most of the animation crew got into animation because of the original anime itself. So this is a passion project, the animators doing this are doing it for a substantial pay cut or doing work off-hours from their normal job. Its the same reason CGI was employed for the transformation scenes. Spreading releases out to every two weeks allows post production, color correcting, and general polishing and editing to happen within a reasonable time frame, considering the budget.

    1. Oki August 16, 2014

      So strange, you’d think itd have SOME sponsorship, but that’s good to know. At least in Crystal he DOES look like a high schooler. That being said, thanks for the discussion you’ve added, it’s food for thought.

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