Sailor Moon Crystal Episode 12 [ Love Is Anguish ]

How does one talk calmly about an episode of their favorite show that is essentially sitting on their lap, riding them to town, and telling them to enjoy something they know won’t be over for weeks? Well, the same kind of person who can make a joke about horses and send it down perverted lane. This episode on Sailor Moon Crystal: HERE ARE SAD THINGS AND YOU HAVE TO WAIT FOR EVEN MORE SAD THINGS!

This is one of those really interesting two parters, essentially. We have all the Senshi now working together to defeat Endymion, but they can’t. As it turns out he has a piece of the Crystal inside of him and it makes his power immense. All the while, nobody can makes the crystal work but Usagi so I suppose they just tainted it?

I don’t want to summarize the episode because it’d be cheating all of you out of the experience of Crystal. I think this might have been one of the first episodes to genuinely make me worried they were messing up Usagi’s character, if only because they had her sword wielding twice. From what I remember Venus does most of the sword wielding? In either case Usagi first does not use the sword to outright kill someone but destroy their power source, which killed them. I’m really put off by that because I’m so used to Usagi who is like “NO COME ON I LOVE YOU EVERYONE LETS LOVE EACH OTHER”

But it’s not bad? Usagi makes it clear killing people isn’t her MO and when she actually does something that outright hurts someone, that person being Mamoru, she immediately turns the sword on herself. That feels pretty in character even if there are times I wonder. It’s hard to balance out that perfect mixture of weakling and amazing heroine, and the original anime failed in it’s own right to do that many times. Usagi was forced to do many of the same things she did to Mamoru here in the original, and in the original she must outright destroy Beryl and she KNOWS that kills her. Perhaps once they get to the seasons where she turns into even more of a pacifist we’ll see that balance more clearly?

Don’t get me wrong, Usagi in this anime is almost unanimously better. She fights for her friends and her planet and when the time came to fight Mamoru, she didn’t cry and say I can’t. She reluctantly took the sword and struck him down, unable to let him be what he was. She knows that’s not really him and she’s not going to let it stay that way, even if she loses him. Knowing she’d lose him forever? Her own life was forfeit. I’m sure this is a big area of contention for viewers because what does it say about her?

Well, I’d say it all around means the same thing to me. I think Usagi in both stories makes it clear what Mamoru means to her. They both find the courage to fight but when Usagi has to strike down Mamoru in front of her in Crystal she can’t take it. I can’t really say I know how to feel until I see what it ultimately becomes. Is it bad for her to leave the world behind? Well of course it is, but it’s highly implied this is their destiny and they’re being toyed with by fate. I can’t honestly say I’d know what to do if I repeatedly lost the person I could remember loving more than a life time ago.

But the best part about this episode in my opinion was how they handled the bad guys. Namely, Beryl and the Four Generals. Beryl gets a flashback scene and we finally understand she too has been driven by a degree of love, that has twisted into a sick lust for power that Metalia has only intensified. Seeing the once blatantly ignored background villain show her true colors as the ultimate baddy of the season is pretty epic, and seeing Beryl finally shown when she was more human is slightly gratifying. She destroyed the world for love. D’aww.

We also see the Four Generals get sense knocked into them with the Sailor Planet Attack. This is pretty gratifying because of it’s differences in the manga, but nothing is more heart breaking than Venus and Kunzite looking to each other with love in their eyes only for Kunzite and co to be utterly destroyed by Metallia. A lot of this happened a bit differently in the manga, from what I know so who knows I might be wrong, so it makes me wonder if Naoko herself approves this or wanted this? I have no clue. Maybe they’ll release some sort of interview footage with the DVD release.

Overall, despite it’s flaws this episode is staying true to what Crystal shows: Usagi loves everyone, her friends and Mamoru, and having to hurt anyone or lose anyone kills her. Even if you think the differences are too stark, this anime shows the same Usagi we’ve all known and love. Next week we reach the end of part 1, as it says the final battle, and hopefully that means there will be an english release. For all my hemming and hawing over certain actors, I think Stephanie Sheh, Cherami, Kate, Christina Vee and every single new actor will be able to live up to this. The director was in charge of Tiger and Bunny, a splendid dub, and so you know what? Let’s all be optimistic and excited. This Crystal dub could be a new age for anime, and let’s hope Sheh and her co actors show that to be the case.