Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon Act 21 Review

 

Act 21 begins as the last act ended, with the abduction of Sailor Moon by Demande and Wiseman. Mamoru and Minako call out for her in shock and despair. It immediately cuts to a dream sequence of the unconscious Usagi where she sees an older Chibiusa running off with Mamoru

I do like the clever little thing Naoko does where if you don't know what's happening, you think this is just an extension of the themes in the arc so far; that Usagi is afraid of being left all alone by Mamoru and Chibiusa. However the dreams of the Senshi have foretold the future, including Usagi's seen in the first act. So if you do know what is going to happen, you know what is really being foretold in Usagi's dream.

Usagi awakens in an unknown place, her head aching wearing a strange dress...writing that sends a chill down my spine. The sequence of Usagi on Nemesis over the next two acts I find particularly affecting. There is an allusion to sexual harassment and potential assault, something I find particularly disturbing a concept to consider even in comparison to crimes of similar magnitude. Naoko expertly evokes this fear and will use it for one of the most awe-inspiring sequences in the manga.

Usagi quickly finds Demande's hologram of her future self, where Demande greets her, referring to her as Neo-Queen Serenity. 

While it's technically correct that the two are the same person, I think this is used to show Demande's obsessive desire to control Neo-Queen Serenity by having him desire to use that name even when it's less fitting.

Demande demonstrates his ability to control Usagi's body at will, forcing her to sit so she doesn't try to fight him. Demande says he wanted to show Usagi that the Silver Crystal wasn't the only thing with infinite power, that they of the Black Moon Clan were young revolutionaries who hated how the queen "infected" the Earth with "lies of long life" creating complacency. I find it peculiar how Demande frames this as though the Queen was lying them, even though they seem to recognize the Silver Crystal actually does grant immortality. 

Demande unveils the Black Moon Clan's plans. After the destruction of the Crystal Tokyo, they plan to go back in time and rewrite history into being a Pro-Black Moon Clan timeline, Operation: Replay. Demande declares that bodies were made to age and die, conflict and war are inevitabilities, and that the Silver Crystal's immortality and eternal peace are therefore blasphemies before God

The irony being that while he decries the Silver Crystal as unnatural, he seeks to literally rewrite the timeline. Because that's totally natural. Once again, there is the insistence that the Silver Crystal is unnatural or unreal. It is "Maboroshi no Ginzuisho," the "Illusory/Legendary Silver Crystal", something ethereal, an ideal that guides people. That will become very relevant again in the next chapter. It's why the Black Moon Clan hate it and call its powers "lies." Its infinite power doesn't come from anything physical and temporary but from the eternal; faith and love. I think this connects really interestingly with themes in the first and final arcs, as well as to things like the second arc statement from Sailor Pluto that the Silver Crystal's power does not change with the eras, its power is the same in all eras.

Demande on the other hand claims that via the power of energy, specifically that of the Black Crystal, space and time are at his control, and with the power of the Black Crystal he will conquer every planet in every dimension. Demande transitions into talking about his encounter with Neo-Queen Serenity.

During the assault on Crystal Tokyo, he was going around, among the people dying from the attack when he spots a crying girl that looks like Chibiusa. Because he found her crying mildly annoying he grabs her and kills her in his hands...as though to cement even further Demande is as evil as a human can be in Sailor Moon. Neo-Queen Serenity saw the event and Demande was instantly smitten by her inhuman beauty, describing her as a goddess...yet she looked at him with slit eyes of cold hatred like he was subhuman. 

Gee, I wonder why. 

Demande uses the Evil Eye but the Silver Crystal encased Neo-Queen Serenity and returned her to the palace. So this might be a plot hole because earlier they said that Neo-Queen Serenity was encased by the Silver Crystal when the explosion dropped on Crystal Tokyo, which is clearly not happening here. I don't know if this is meant to be two separate times, but if it and she can actually get out after it's encased her, why hasn't she done so already again. 

Demande comments that now he finally has Neo-Queen Serenity under his control, commenting that Usagi's eyes are just like the Queen's before forcibly kissing her. Usagi slaps him, actually sending him back with it and tries to transform only to find that her power is nullified on Nemesis

This is very effective atmosphere-building and suspense-building. Having Usagi be powerless here obviously gives the sensation of hopelessness and Demande's being an obsessive sexually harassing madman who has Usagi in his grip is chilling. I'm very sensitive to themes of sexual harassment and sexual assault in fiction, however I think Sailor Moon, especially the next act has I think the best depiction of the theme. 

Usagi thinks to herself that these people aren't human, they're demons. Meanwhile far away, Neo-Queen Serenity stirs in her sleep sensing something is wrong. Meanwhile King Endymion is giving more exposition to Mamoru and Minako about Planet Nemesis, a Black Hole world that changes it's orbit. He also very clearly lays out the basic properties of a Black Hole

So wait, does this mean Usagi and everyone else there are just....standing on a Black Hole? That doesn't really make sense. But whatever, I guess sometimes this universe runs on Super Mario Galaxy physics. 

Mamoru and Minako are obviously anxious to rescue the others but the Dark Crystal prevents them. Diana describes the Black Crystal as the evil antithesis of the Silver Crystal. While the Silver Crystal infinitely produces energy, the Black Crystal infinitely absorbs energy. Both also warp space and time which actually makes sense. Matter-Energy distorts spacetime, that's what gravity is. The Silver Crystal is the source of energy so distorts spacetime one way, and the Black Crystal distorts it oppositely by absorbing matter-energy. Without the ability to use the Silver Crystal, it seems like the heroes have no way to fight the Black Crystal but Minako comments that only Sailor Moon and Neo-Queen Serenity can use the Silver Crystal.

However, Luna suddenly gets the thought that if Chibiusa is Neo-Queen Serenity's daughter, she should be able to use the Silver Crystal as well since the blood of the Silver Millennium was passed to her as it did from the original Queen Serenity. King Endymion refutes this, saying that Chibiusa carries no power and surprising them greatly by saying that Chibiusa is actually 900 years old getting cute shocked expressions from everyone

While Chibiusa is physically and mentally around age six at this point, she simply stopped developing long ago for mysterious reasons that will become thematically important later. King Endymion states because she is the first born to the lineage of both the Moon and the Earth, her aging is unknown. A lot of times of in manga, or media in general, the gag will be that this character that looks like a child is actually super old and is also mentally that age but here it's actually this girl is physically AND mentally young she just has existed for a long time without developing. Chibiusa is still very clearly a young child physically and never claims to be anything else. This does sort of raise the question of "if she's 900 years old wouldn't she have gathered some more intelligence and maturity just from experience even if her brain hasn't actually developed physically" and that gets into weird complex questions about brain-mind connection and what it means to develop, but I think the implication is we're supposed to handwave that as part of her lineage.

Minako asks if Chibiusa doesn't have any powers, how will she ascend to the throne one day. Kind of a weird follow-up question to ask but I do like the response. King Endymion responds immediatly with "her awakening will come!" saying it is her destiny. It's such a subtly sweet moment. 900 years of nothing, but King Endymion is STILL sure his daughter can do it. Not a hint of doubt. 

Luna asks when the conflict with the Black Moon Clan started and King Endymion speaks of an encounter centuries ago in a time of perfect peace, when suddenly a man with powers, codename: Phantom, appeared restoring crime and murder with his powers. He was defeated by Neo-Queen Serenity and sealed away on the planet Nemesis. Peace was restored and all was forgotten, until a new batch of rebels showed up bearing his insignia, the current Black Moon Clan.

There's a slight mistranslation on this page. It states Phantom "and his crew" were sent to Nemesis. The original just says "Phantom" was sent there and later it will be implied it was only him.

Luna questions if they are Phantom's descendent but King Endymion says that none of them attained the long lives granted by the Silver Crystal so Phantom would have died out so long ago, he doubts they would even remember Phantom. Yet despite that...they were drawn to Nemesis as their base where Phantom once was banished, as though they were being called too... this is once again where we see the glimmers of Cosmic Horror Naoko seeds into her writing and it's great

Mamoru looks at the cracked Cutie Moon Rod, made by his and Usagi's love, and agonizes over how he swore to protect her promising to Usagi's spirit he will find a way to save her. It cuts to Usagi who actually somehow thinks she hears Mamoru's voice briefly. Usagi comments on how scared she is, alone and defenseless, and it's painfully evocative. Usagi guilty and painfully thinks to herself about how someone other than Mamoru kissed her and feels especially guilty over how the last time she saw him they had a horrible argument, and now she may never see him again.

This, this is really good. Even though Usagi did nothing in regards to Demande's actions, she is feeling a level of guilt for it. This isn't right, but it is real. One of the worst things about sexual harassment is the insidious way it makes the victim feel as though they were in some way responsible for what happened to them and Sailor Moon not only expresses that but actually correlates it with and builds it into the plot and I can't talk about how here since the resolution is next act, but it's fantastic.

Usagi thinks to herself about how even though they were fighting the enemy, she was constantly distracted by Mamoru and Chibiusa, and now she's pretty much dead. She's in the base of her enemies without any power or the ability to even transform. But then she remembers what Queen Serenity told her.

The Silver Crystal is controlled by Usagi's desires. Usagi thinks to herself her heartaches, her loss of faith in herself...before realizing maybe that is the the reason she lost her power and goes into awesome self-pep talk. She is Neo-Queen Serenity, ruler of the next era, and it is her duty to protect Earth and everyone in it, as images of Chibiusa asking Usagi to save her mama, her loving friends, her sexy boyfriend (sans-shirt, calling back to their intimate night) flash around her. She is not along, and just as everyone else believes in her, she has to believe in herself!

I don't talk about it enough, but Sailor Moon is awesome. Not Sailor Moon the series, I talk about that plenty. But Sailor Moon the character, Usagi Tsukino is awesome. When Mamoru says he loves Usagi because she always shows a different side to her, I believe in him, because of scenes like this. Usagi is in a position where she should be at her lowest, she's a 14-year old crybaby who has been demeaned, harassed, brought to a place where she has no powers, had her friends systematically captured to make her feel powerless, and so much more. Yet still she is able to reach her friends emotionally to say "I'm not alone." She's still able to find the courage somewhere to believe. Usagi Tsukino is my favorite character period.

After that comes a several page long sequence where Usagi's emotions awaken her friends in the distant prison room they're in, they try to transform, realize they can't because they're still on Nemesis, and fall unconscious again. There technically is slightly more that happens, they find skeleton, but not much. I get it's foreshadowing, but would it kinda feels like a bit of a pointless interlude this chapter. Could you not have had the Senshi stay awake (spoilers: that wouldn't effect anything in the plot since the Guardian Senshi re-awaken and escape next act), so it feels like something happened? I don't know, it's a very mild complaint but it does feel a little pointless. I guess it's good for rebuilding the atmosphere with them finding a skeleton in the corner of the prison room they're in.  

Usagi and Wiseman sense Usagi's friends brief awakening though Usagi can't do anything about it and Wiseman doesn't really care. In his Crystal Ball you can see his target is Chibiusa. It cuts to the small rabbit herself who reminiscences about first coming to the Modern Day Tokyo. There's a really sweet point where Chibiusa notes that her mom, the impossibly impressive and power Neo-Queen Serenity, the person who seemed an impossible idol to ever get close too in the past was a ditzy girl who got yelled at a lot.... "just like me."

This is really sweet just within the story for the obvious reason; Chibiusa has been laboring under the feeling that Sailor Moon is a perfect unbeatable Senshi who grew up to be the perfect idol of a queen and that she as her goofy ditz of a daughter who can't even use powers is a disappointment. Yet her mom in the past was a lot like her. However there's even more angles I really like it from. 

I don't know how universal this is...I think it's fairly common though it's an especially big thing for me. When most of us are young we view our parents as perfect. They seem to know everything, can do everything. And one of the elements of maturity is coming to realize that no, your parents don't know everything. They're flawed people who have made mistakes and have probably done you wrong at least once. And what's beautiful to me is so long as they as they are still at least decent people, that brings ones love for ones parents to an even greater height. When someone is perfect, them doing the right thing is easy. But if someone is trying and struggling with things, that makes their sacrifices for you all the more meaningful. It's the moment you realize your parents didn't have all the answers, they were just trying their best. Chibiusa similarly is seeing that her mom wasn't always the great queen she constantly sees, she was a young girl once too, who was as flawed as she was. Usagi didn't always get it right the first time, she didn't even always get it right the second, third, or fourth times. I don't wanna talk too much about my personal life experiences, but for me this theme really hits me emotionally.

There's also another way I look at it that I really like. Sailor Moon is one of the first Magical Girl series actually written by a woman who had seen Magical Girl series in her youth. She said in creating Usagi that she wanted to create a Magical Girl that young girls could better relate too. I don't think this was Naoko's intent in this scene here, but I do sorta think it presents what made Sailor Moon appealing; that after hearing stories told of more perfect Magical Girls, the young girl Chibiusa finds one that is just like her, that makes her think maybe she could be one.

However from that wholesomeness we turn to Chibiusa remembering in contrast what her life was like in Crystal Tokyo, people mocking her and saying she's not even the queen's real daughter because she can't use the Silver Crystal, feeling like she'll never be able to fill her amazing mother's shoes.

It's very good drama for Chibiusa I think. We have her whole dramatic arc really set up in these three pages. Once again I love how Naoko makes this so fantastically cosmically high-end, yet also relatable. Most of us don't have a Magical Goddess-Queen for a mother, but I think almost anyone can relate to the feeling of feeling like you won't be able to live up to someone you admire, and I think it especially hits hard if it's a parent, where there's an expectation that you WILL be able to do so. 

However after this, the truth that Chibiusa has been hiding, making her feel so guilty is revealed. In an effort to prove herself, Chibiusa goes in and steals the Silver Crystal one day. Without her Silver Crystal, Neo-Queen Serenity was unable to defend herself or Crystal Tokyo against Demande. In Chibiusa's mind, she's responsible for this.

I think this might be one of the themes of this arc, or at least this chapter, responsibility. Chibiusa thinks she has responsibility for the Black Moon Clan. The Black Moon Clan meanwhile push the responsibility for their actions unto Usagi and the Silver Crystal while Usagi feels guilty and takes an inordinate amount of responsibility unto herself.

Chibiusa runs off to find Pluto, who she describes as her "only friend" flashing back to meeting Pluto for the first time. She finds the doorway somehow inside the Palace in Crystal Tokyo, when earlier Queen Serenity showed it to Luna on the moon.....where is the Spacetime Door? Sailor Pluto tells Chibiusa only people of the Silver Moon's lineage can enter here, which is an...odd statement. Either she means are "allowed" to come here, in which case why did she attack Sailor Moon earlier, or "are able to come here at all" in which case what is her job function? 

What follows is a really wholesome moment between the two. Sailor Pluto after mentioning the Silver Moon lineage, says that Chibiusa is the beautiful spitting image of her mother, something which Chibiusa thinks only her parents has ever said to her and has some fun with her, giving her the magical toy Luna-P to make her feel happier when she's sad

They have such a sweet friendship because Sailor Pluto is the lonely guardian of spacetime in a world derived of life, symbolized by the lively youthful Chibiusa, and Pluto is the type of wise maternal-type figure who can help Chibiusa see the things she needs to see. Sailor Pluto tells Chibiusa it is her destiny to someday perform miracles like her mother does.

Back in the...present? Future? Back out of the flashbacks, Chibiusa and King Endymion are talking to Sailor Pluto about what to do with Sailor Moon having been captured. Endymion asks Pluto for help and she obliges, looking happily at him. Chibiusa notes she looks happier then she ever has looking at Endymion, and feels jealous and lonely that her only friend now seems to also like someone else more than her

Chibiusa tries to run away again, as she typically does when upset, through space-time but accidentally drops her time key. So instead of traveling to a different time she instead quickly becomes lost in the dark space-time storm. However a strange figure appears.

The Wiseman emerges from the strange otherworldy fog, commenting to Chibiusa that her heart's rejection of her world has brought her "here", to the forbidden far edge of the world, through all barriers. Wiseman offers the little girl all her dreams, everything she desires, if she comes with him. While Demande is meant to evoke the evil of a dictator strutting around on full display, performing vile acts to show his power, Wiseman here is meant to evoke the child abductor, more subtly creepy, offering kids candy if they just come with him.

As a mild sidenote, I find it really interesting to note that one of the reasons the people mocked Chibiusa as not being her mother's was by her not having the mark of the Silver Millennium on her forehead...but she has it here. As though her destiny has finally come.

Act 21 is a great act, really starts to get into the best of the Black Moon Clan arc. The act basically has two sections as well as the exposition section about Phantom; the Nemesis section with Usagi, and the Chibiusa section, both of which are not only good, but have a fantastic part, and which connect and parallel to each other and other parts of the story. 

The Nemesis section not only sets up for next arc which has one of, if not the best parts in the Black Moon Clan arc, it's also really good on its own. At first its distressingly evocative. It's realistic in how Usagi at first blames herself for being victimized, even when she did nothing wrong there, and it makes you wanna cheer on Usagi a lot, but then it goes super triumphant and awesome with Usagi being ready to rescue her friends even though she's powerless on an evil black hole planet. I would say it starts off a little exposition-heavy, and kind of unnecessarily so, repeating a few points we already know or could easily figure out, and the sequence with the other Guardian Senshi could have had them just stay aware. But those are really minor to me. Acts 21 and 22 together to me are such a great sequence to show how awesome a character Usagi is. 

The Chibiusa section, as befitting her character in general, is full of far more cutesy and sweet elements, including the supremely heart-warming moment of Chibiusa thinking to herself that her mom in the past was just like her. But as befitting her character in this arc specifically, it has a sad undertone. Obviously there's the ending where she falls under the sway of the Wiseman, but there's also her guilt over believing to have caused the destruction of her home and everyone she knows. But on the point of Wiseman's manipulations, that's also one of the creepiest scenes to me in Sailor Moon, not only because it's evoking the idea of the child kidnapper, but also just how it's both Wiseman speaking in these weird esoteric terms yet paradoxically very quiet. It's the sort of creepy of when a character enters a room and people are doing some kind of chant or prayer that sounds ominous but is in a language you don't understand. It gives the sense of foreboding-ness more than direct dark language would. 

You also get a few extra fun or interest little bits like the gag about Chibiusa's age or the backstory on the Criminal "Phantom." These are obviously not even in the same tier of great as the other two parts, if only because they're way shorter and can't have much build-up, but they're alright additions. It's overall pretty interesting I think that the two parts of the act also connect, if only in small amounts by the shared idea of Usagi and Chibiusa taking the responsibility of the Black Moon Clan's actions unjustifiably on their own shoulders while the Black Moon Clan blames others.

I can understand that maybe some of this is exaggerated in my mind by my own experiences. If sexual assault is less of a fear for you, or you don't have as strong an emotional connection to the theme of realizing your parents are also flawed people like you, I could understand not liking this act nearly as much as I do. With that said, I definitely consider it a great act.