When I talk about Sailor Moon, I'm usually referring to the manga and I only rarely refer to the anime, usually to contrast it with the manga. As such to complete this trio of top 5 SM blogs, I was going to make a top 5 list for SM Filler.
I would have just made one for top 5 episodes but that wouldn't be really interesting, it would just be the last two eps of season 1, last two episodes of season 5, and the last ep of the Nehelenia arc at the start of season 5. Given my general dislike for filler, I thought this would be a more interesting idea. Sailor Moon has a lot of filler. I don't mean filler in the way that some anime use it, where it's an episode that's different to the manga. The amount of Sailor Moon where the episode is like the manga is basically just the first episode corresponding to the first chapter. The other 199 episodes of the anime are mostly original with maybe an occasional reference to the manga.
For this I'm assuming an episode that doesn't contribute to the main plot of the season it's in is filler, which is about half the episodes in the series. Minor things can be introduced like a Senshi getting a new attack but no episodes where any plot developments show up. With that said here's my top 5.
5: Episode 156: "Don't Lose Sight of Your Dreams: The Mirror of Truth"
Admittingly I kinda fudged this one. This is an episode that would be in my top 10 filler episodes, and the other 4 happened to correspond to the other 4 seasons so I wanted to get one to represent SuperS, the most filler-filled season by far, so I figured putting this one at five was alright. To say that SuperS's themes was "dreams" would be stating the obvious. I'm pretty sure every third word in SuperS is "dreams." The villains extract the dreams of people to try and search for Pegasus hiding in one of them. In this episode the Senshi meet a completely poor desperate literally starving painter and ask him to paint them for pay, but he paints them as they are. All the characters agree that everyone else's paintings are totally accurate but insist that theirs should be cuter, more beautiful or otherwise better. The metaphor is pretty clear I think, everyone sees everyone else's faults but not their own. Nobody would hire Kamoi because he would only paint them as they are.
Before taking his dream mirror, the Amazoness Quartet member CereCere hires the artist vainly to make a painting of her and Kamoi relents and exaggerates her beauty as she wants, depressing him. As a result when the villains take his dream mirror out, it's grey and dull reflecting the painful grey reality of compromised principles and artistic ideals and the Lemure refused to eat it. This is the episode that I think better than any filler reflects the theme of dreams the season's trying to go for. It's not a particularly new idea (selling out your dreams will leave you empty inside) but I thought it was a rather good and clever visual representation of the idea.
4: Episode 12: "I Want a Boyfriend: The Luxury Cruise Ship is a Trap"
So a lot of the episodes in Season 1 Sailor Moon get a boost to me for being sorta "classic" Sailor Moon and having this sense of iconicness. Despite the more anime-characterization of the Senshi this episode feels very classically Sailor Moon to me. But the biggest reason I like it is Thetis. Thetis is probably my favorite monster of the week from any series I've seen. This is the penultimate episode of the Jadeite arc in the anime where Beryl is all but decided to end Jadeite for his failures. A youma pining for Jadeite, the water being Thetis sees this as her chance to get in with him. So many of the monsters of the week are just evil destroying thing with some weekly theme like the razor one, the time one, the good one, the butterfly one etc. Thetis has her own theme of water, but she has so much more. She's got a clear personality and goal. She's got way more agency then most of the MotW physically attacking Sailor Moon knocking her through a window right after her pre-battle speech, making a cruise ship appear with her powers, making these giant water torrents, transforming into a battle form. She's got way more threat then most youma, something I noticed even as a child. I remember watching Sailor Moon wondering when Thetis would come back because she was clearly more then the random episodic monsters. I just really like Thetis, she's a really good villain.
3: Episode 184: "A Night Alone Together: Usagi in Danger"
Whenever a series goes on long enough, they get a meta-episode playing with its own tropes. This is that episode for Sailor Moon. If you want to just watch an episode of SM without having seen, I'd suggest any episode on this list other then this because this is a reward for long-time fans joking about its own tropes. So the plot is that there's a burglary crime spree in the area of Usagi's house and Usagi...being Usagi gets scared and wants the other Senshi to stay with her leading to every character of the arc and a monster of the week being in one room, to the point that they can't even all fit. This episode is full of really hilarious gags specifically about Sailor Moon my favorite being the one with Aluminem Seiren being upset about Uranus and Neptune showing up...if you've seen the ep you know the joke I mean. That's probably my favorite joke in the series. But yeah for a long-time Sailor Moon fan this episode is just a fun candy.
2: Episode 75: "The Mysterious New Guardian: Sailor Pluto Appears"
I'm not really sure if this is filler because as the name suggests Sailor Pluto first appears but the episode has little to do with her and doesn't really advance the main plot. Chibiusa comes from the future where Crystal Tokyo was destroyed by the bombs of the Black Moon Clan and shows occasional signs of trauma from her memories. In this episode Chibiusa is is lulled into a sleep that will not break, and non-stops dreams of being in the ruins of Crystal Tokyo with a droid resembling the Grim Reaper, Jakoku chasing her. It's pretty clear to see Jakoku represents the feeling of dread and the inevitability of death that haunts Chibiusa. The Sailor Senshi go inside Chibiusa's dreams but their attacks do nothing to Jakoku, inevitable and invincible it seems. The climax of the episode is possibly the best moment in R, where Sailor Moon pleads with Chibiusa to believe in them and Chibiusa gives Sailor Moon the power to overcome even the grim reaper. It's such a heartfelt emotional moment and captures the mythic archetypal power of Sailor Moon as a concept. This is an episode that captures the beauty of pure archetype seeing Sailor Moon the heroine overcome death and inevitability nigh-literally via peoples belief in her.
1: Episode 106: "The Bonds of Destiny: Uranus' Distant Past"
I kinda feel bad calling this episode "filler", this episode is so good and given that Uranus and Neptune's awakening is unknown canonically, I sorta headcanon this as being Uranus and Neptune's actual awakening story. That said it technically doesn't affect the main plot of S so it is filler. Much of this episode's plot is Haruka flashing back to when Michiru recruited her into being a Sailor Senshi. The episode shows the complexities of Haruka and Michiru's characters and the beauty of their love. Even compared to the legendary episode 110, I feel no episode gives a better sense of Haruka and Michiru as characters. Haruka is the legendary soldier of the wind faster than anyone, that nothing could ever trap; not the enemy, not responsibility, not destiny. Michiru is the mysterious Senshi of the seas, a woman of depth and compassion who shows a perfect visage and no weakness. Michiru tries to convince Haruka to join the fight against the enemy but Haruka wouldn't be chained down. The climax of the episode where a Daimon is threatening Neptune's life but Michiru cries and pleads not to accept this hard life of pain making Haruka refuse to run away anymore and transform to save Michiru is such a perfect coallesing of their two characters. Their love is the life of the skies and the seas, the winds whipping out the foams of the seas, emotions bubbling to the surface of Michiru's normally inscrutable heart. The seas catch the winds within, just as Michiru holds Haruka to her side not by catching her, no one could, but by her depths that call Haruka to come to her.
I could wax poetic about this episode on and on but I hope the point's made, this episode is just fantastic and few things could better represent Haruka and Michiru's characters and it is without a doubt in my mind the best Sailor Moon filler episode.
This was Fun! I really think its neat when you give attention to Toei SM. Its a very different series to the manga as you've said and shown several times. But time and time again you have shown me it has a great deal of quality and merit in its own right, with some episodes and movies being right up there in quality with some of your top SM Manga chapters. I think this List helps show that especially as it commends even its filler. Most series I have seen don't have filler and a lot of the ones that do, especially Fairy Tail, have filler of universally poor quality. So its surprising to me to see Filler as good as you have described! The Best Filler from a series i like comes from My Hero Academia, where some of my fave episodes are filler. This is because when it makes filler it simply takes something that we know happened in the manga, but wasn't shown there, like focusing on other groups of character while they are in the same situation the main group is. But these SM Filler eps seem to top even that by just adding these entire additional stories with their own interesting characters, symbolism, and plot that can be legitimently very inspiring and thought provoking and have big impacts in their own right, while still tying into the storyarc to some degree, its both impressive and admirable
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