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Sailor Moon Crystal: Season III
Episode 34

by Rebecca Silverman,

How would you rate episode 34 of
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal: Season III (TV 2016) ?
Community score: 4.3

Don't you just hate it when your sickly best friend's father turns her into a cyborg and then gives her over to his evil lab assistant to be used as a vessel for an evil entity? It's even worse when that entity isn't the only being hidden deep in her soul, especially if both personas cause people to want to kill her. This is the unenviable position Hotaru and Chibi-Usa find themselves in this week as the Outer Senshi finally decide to explain precisely what their mission is to Sailor Moon and the others: they are there to prevent the awakening of the Guardian of Silence, Sailor Saturn. Who, as it turns out, has been reborn on earth as none other than Hotaru Tomoe. The resonance of their talismans when Sailor Moon, Tuxedo Mask, and Sailor Chibi-Moon summon the Holy Grail and help to power her transformation into Super Sailor Moon makes them decide to come clean, largely because it shakes them up: the last time all three talismans resonated was when the Silver Millennium fell…and Sailor Saturn awoke to swing her glaive and end it all.

I'm not sure if it was the imagery or the idea of Sailor Saturn – or my memories of one of the best-drawn pages in the original manga – but the story of the true end of the Silver Millennium gave me serious chills. While it would have been much more powerful were the scene completely silent (barring the narration), the sequence of Saturn's glaive coming down followed by the crumble of the castle on the moon is still striking. The fact that she doesn't speak a word, only smiles with her eyes rather than her mouth, makes you understand why the Outer Senshi are so determined to prevent her rebirth as a Guardian – she's death and destruction incarnate, and watching that in action has got to scar you.

Of course, what no one is counting on is that Hotaru is harboring a second supernatural soul within her, and that's going to be an even bigger problem. Rather than give us the return of Sailor Saturn, this week instead brings the awakening of Mistress 9 (although her name hasn't been given yet), whose entrance on the scene has clearly been curated by Kaolinite. She marks the second innocent child to sexy adult transformation of the overall series, the first being Chibi-Usa's turn as Black Lady in season two. The major difference here is that Black Lady was someone Chibi-Usa chose to be, while Hotaru is trying her best to suppress Mistress 9. This suggests that perhaps she needs her Sailor Saturn incarnation as a well of strength to draw from, and the fact that she's been successful at keeping Mistress 9 down for so long might be indicative of that hidden power. She's exhausted it, however, so is unable to suppress the transformation any longer. This is likely to cause a real conflict between the Inner and Outer Sailor Guardians – Sailor Moon and her group are against the other three's plan to kill Hotaru to prevent Sailor Saturn's awakening, but now that Hotaru has become evil (and done serious damage to Chibi-Usa), there's a need to take out Mistress 9. But where Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are likely to want to just put an end to her, the others will no doubt be looking to preserve Hotaru's life and just remove Mistress 9…leaving Sailor Saturn.

Ostensibly Sailor Moon's power up to Super Sailor Moon was the highlight of this week's episode. It just sort of gets lost in the revelations about Sailor Saturn, though, which makes me question why it was held off until this episode and not made the grand finale of last week's. I did enjoy the cliffhanger, but it sadly robbed this new power of Sailor Moon's of its significance, especially the idea that she could only achieve Super status when everyone's powers combined and the grail itself could only be summoned by her family's love. That's important information, so to just sort of glide past it doesn't quite feel right.

That said, we're really getting into the good stuff now. The conflict between Hotaru and the two entities within her, and the idea of Sailor Saturn, are all interesting, and the question of whether or not the two groups of Guardians will be able to come together – or whether Usagi herself is strong enough to bring them together – will be exciting to watch. There's also one very important fact about Sailor Saturn that everyone seems to be ignoring: with death comes rebirth. This has not only been proven in the show's base storyline (that everyone is reincarnated from the Moon Kingdom), but it's also part of the reason any of this is happening to begin with – Saturn has been reborn as Hotaru. Given the way death and rebirth function in this story, perhaps there's less to fear than Haruka clearly thinks there is.

Besides, if she's reborn, she won't have to worry about the cost of repairing her ludicrously expensive apartment's windows. Maybe someone should mention that to her.

Rating: B+

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal: Season III is currently streaming on Crunchyroll, Viz.com and Hulu.


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