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Sailor Moon Crystal: Season III
Episode 35

by Rebecca Silverman,

How would you rate episode 35 of
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal: Season III (TV 2016) ?
Community score: 4.3

As the song goes, the darkest hour is just before dawn, and for Sailor Moon Crystal, that hour seems to be now – this week's episode opens with a doctor announcing that Chibi-Usa has gone into cardiac arrest. Apparently when Mistress 9 took her Silver Crystal, she also took her soul, and now Chibi-Usa is dead. That's a pretty heavy way to begin the episode, but fortunately Mamoru's healing powers can give her what basically amounts to a stay of execution – if he holds her hand, he can keep her body alive with his magic. So they bring her to his apartment so that he can do just that.

Wait…so does that mean that Usagi, Mamoru, and the others just stole a dead body from a hospital? Granted, it doesn't seem like a very good hospital, what with letting a crowd of people stand in the room while doctors just stand there, look at the heart monitor, and say the equivalent of, “Yep, she's dead all right.” But still, there's something a little strange about the whole thing that takes away from the emotional heft of the episode, even if they do manage to get it back fairly quickly, with Mamoru asking for some time alone for he, Usagi, and Chibi-Usa's mostly dead corpse.

Fortunately this is a momentary lapse in the episode's judgement (although not in the quality of the subtitles; these are the worst so far), and there are better things ahead. Along with a very sweet scene of Usagi and Mamoru comforting each other, which drives home their bond in a way that feels more natural than most of their “couple” moments thus far, we also have finally reached the point where Uranus and Neptune can't bring themselves to pretend that they're as cold as they've been acting anymore. After announcing that the only way to bring Chibi-Usa back to life is to kill Hotaru (or rather, Mistress 9), the Outer Senshi say that they will do it themselves. Usagi, who really doesn't want to sit this one out, realizes that she can't chose between Hotaru, her future daughter, or the world, and while nothing is firmly said, the look Mamoru gives her implies that she's Sailor Moon, she doesn't have to choose – she should just save them all. She and the Inner Senshi set out, but quickly fall prey to Kaolinite's latest trap. When Neptune sees it in her mirror, Uranus decides that they will go save their fellow Guardians, breaking her previous stance on keeping their missions separate. The loss of Chibi-Usa is likely behind this decision. Having lost one compatriot, Uranus and Neptune realize that they are not okay with letting anyone else die, and that maybe they really are all stronger together. (Doubtless the fact that all of the Guardians are needed to summon the Moon Chalice also helped in this revelation.) If they don't join Sailor Moon now, they may not ever have the chance to again.

The coming together of the team as an almost whole (we still lack Tuxedo Mask and Chibi-Moon) is the point of the episode, if not the highlight. Chibi-Usa is special to all of them, and all of the Guardians have a stake in bringing her back to life. As Princess Serenity was the glue in the Silver Millennium, Chibi-Usa is now that force in this life, and saving her proves to be a bigger motivating factor than killing Hotaru for the group.

Of course, that doesn't mean that Hotaru's death isn't still on the table, but what no one realizes, including Mistress 9, is that Hotaru herself is still very much present, captured in thorny Sleeping Beauty vines inside Mistress 9's body. The use of the vines, which generally are accepted as a visual reference to at least the Charles Perrault version of the tale, which is the first to use them, is particularly interesting when you consider Hotaru's position: she is trapped within Mistress 9, while within her slumbers the spirit of Sailor Saturn, so she's almost a two-fold Sleeping Beauty, or a Sleeping Beauty/Rapunzel hybrid figure. Since Takeuchi does not shy away from fairy tale and mythological themes (arguably the entire series is based on a combination of the Selene/Endymion myth and the Princess Kaguya tale), this can be seen as a deliberate use of the tale types. Both are stories in which True Love saves the day (more or less), which opens the door to the possibility that Hotaru can be saved by someone who truly loves her, just as we know that Chibi-Usa can, and in a sense already is in the process of being saved, given Mamoru's current actions. With Professor Tomoe's admission that he implanted Mistress 9's “egg” in Hotaru years ago, we know her dad isn't a candidate for saving her, but we do know of one other person who has never doubted her friend's goodness…which also plays into the homoerotic themes of this season as a whole.

Despite its harsh beginning, this episode is definitely moving the story towards its metaphorical dawn. With Kaolinite taken care of (somewhat anti-climactically; the battles are not great this week) and the knowledge that Hotaru is still alive within Mistress 9, along with the affirmation of Usagi and Mamoru's bond and the coming together of all of the Sailor Guardians, things are definitely looking up. And for you Mamoru/Tuxedo Mask fans, the new ending theme will just add to that glory – he struts, he poses, and he stands dramatically in a wet, clingy shirt. (Plus the song is much better than that creepy Chibi-Usa and the Dudes one.) Now if we could just get some better subtitles and a return to running animation not looking completely awkward, everything would be coming up (purple) roses.

Rating: B

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


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