Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon Act 25 Review

 

The plot resumes with Demande preparing to destroy everything by touching the two Silver Crystals together. At the last moment however Sailor Pluto holds aloft her Time Staff and stops time. Unfortunately as is revealed immediately after, this was the final taboo and using this power costs Pluto her life

You might be wondering why this is the only taboo that seemingly will kill Sailor Pluto, why this is the worst one, but unfortunately the series just doesn't say. 

Our Heroes open their eyes after bracing for the spacetime collapse only to find that everything's still there except frozen in time. 

The Cutie Moon Rod glows and Black Lady in unfrozen from the time freeze, presumably showing the Silver Crystal protecting Black Lady from the time freeze. Pluto collapses and King Endymion says in shock that she shouldn't have done that, that is it the final taboo. The way he speaks of it suggests it's viewed as so profound that even doing it to save the world was unthinkable.

Sailor Pluto on her deathbed, tells Sailor Moon to get the Silver Crystals, as time won't stop frozen for long. Usagi hastens to her request. Meanwhile Black Lady looks on for the side, and mentions how she feels her body weakening. Chibiusa had never really seen death before the Black Moon attack, the sheltered princess of the Utopia Crystal Tokyo, and when that came she ran from it, and so now doesn't understand the despair that shakes her form.

Usagi brings the Silver Crystals to Pluto, who proclaims she's so relieved, that she's always wanted to fight alongside Sailor Moon, her queen, happy to be close to her

Sailor Pluto and Chibiusa mirror each other this arc. Both have an affection for the King, both wish to be stand alongside the Queen, an expression for their lonely desire for closeness, one burdened with the ultimate isolating responsibility and with the ultimate feeling of useless inducing responsibilityless-ness. So too much the arcs come to a culmination together.

Sailor Pluto gives Sailor Moon her final request, to save Small Lady. King Endymion pleads with her not to die, but Sailor Pluto tells her she made the sacrifice knowingly for all their good and must know face the consequences. Her final words to her hint at the secret love she had for her king, as the mysterious and great guardian of spacetime is a woman with a romantic heart. 

Sailor Pluto recalls Diana from the spacetime door who cries over her forms begging her not to die, with Sailor Pluto petting the small kitten and thanking for guarding the door on her behalf. It does raise the question of why she can leave the door unguarded.

Sailor Pluto gives her final words before dying, addressed to Black Lady, apologizing for not being able to protect her. 

At the passing of the underworld guardian, the other senshi are in sorrow around her body. Meanwhile Black Lady feels strange emotions in her heart. She proclaims I am Black Lady, who stands alone, without friends or allies. Yet even as she speaks these words memories pass through her mind, times with Sailor Pluto, of hugging Sailor Pluto proclaiming Pluto to be her only friend.

Chibiusa remembers a time her mom was angry at yelled at her for running off to the dangerous space-time interval, commenting to Pluto that she wonders if her mom really loves her. Sailor Pluto comments in her mind that hugs and kisses aren't the only form of love, just thinking of someone and watching over them from afar is another form of love. Of course now Chibiusa finally realizes that these words applied not only to her parents, but to Pluto herself. 

Black Lady is overwhelmed with emotions to her surprise. If she is the great Black Lady who needs no one, why do tears now fall from her eyes? The truth is that the heart is often more honest a reflection of ones character then ones mind.

A mighty transformation is triggered within Chibiusa. Her Black Crystals, her devotion to the Wiseman shatters and suddenly she is Black Lady no longer but Chibiusa just as time begins moving again. I love the way Naoko has time return the very moment Chibiusa "awakens." There is finally development and the movement of time that Chibiusa has awaited so long. 

The Silver Crystal goes to Chibiusa and glows with an immense light, overwhelming everyone there, unable to see what's going on. In the Crystal Palace, Neo-Queen Serenity glows and stirs, opening her eyes briefly sensing the change in her daughter. For Chibiusa finally after 900 years awakens as Sailor Chibi-Moon

This is obviously an immense moment symbolically. It is the first exposure to the unknown, to malevolence and chaos, that allows the child to begin to mature and develop. Chibiusa can't run away to Pluto now, she's forced to confront mortality and develop. It's mentioned earlier that the two Silver Crystals can't be used in the same time period due to paradox, but now, and this will come up again in a later arc, but now the Crystal is to some extent Chibiusa's, and can be used. 

However this leads to the saddest moment of the arc and one of the saddest in the series. Everyone's amazed that Chibiusa has finally awoken as a Sailor Senshi. She runs over to show Pluto, but of course....Pluto's already gone. Chibiusa enters a sorrow that she finally transformed, right when she can't show Pluto she finally did it

As a child this was to me what Simba begging his father's body to get up was. It still gets me hard because I really know how Chibiusa is feeling there, though I don't wanna get too personal.

Sailor Moon is sent into a rage against Death Phantom, transforms and gives her famous pre-battle line

Sailor Moon shines the light of the Silver Crystal against Death Phantom, but Death Phantom is totally unconcerned, being more impressed they undid his transformation of Chibiusa. He comments facetiously "and now I suppose you're gonna fight me?" For a spirit of hatred moving a black hole, Death Phantom is pretty cheeky.

Chibi-Moon is watching the battle thinking to herself Sailor Moon really is invincible, wondering if someday she can be that strong too. 

Meanwhile Death Phantom comments that he can still easily crush them and spacetime really starts getting all warped making everything go all shifty. But don't worry, Demande is still alive and he's ready to help...

...Death Phantom. I thought they were fighting.

Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Kamen both take hold of the Cutie Moon Rod and finally finally dust Demande. And what a nice final sting that the sexual assaulter is killed by the real love of Usagi and Mamoru. Death Phantom comments at Demande's passing "what a childish prince" which really does sum it up. In the meantime the spacetime warp grows to literally tearing holes in spacetime, drawing the heroes in

As this happens Death Phantom speaks to them, speaking of waiting centuries, manipulating "them" by speaking of bringing about a magnificent new history. I really love how Naoko Takeuchi creates such an atmosphere with her villains.

Drawn into the darkness of Death Phantom the Senshi fall where they see the Black Crystal itself engulfed in a spirit, the true Phantom from long ago, the spirit of his hatred animating Nemesis

Here Death Phantom finally names himself the Death Phantom, the sole being of cold dark Nemesis, the solitary king.

Death Phantom proclaims in triumph that he is the world Nemesis and now they are triumphant, now they have the ultimate power of the universe, the Silver Crystal, as Sailor Moon was sucked into his darkness, and will be able to do as he pleases. Mercury comments in shock that existing across centuries, Nemesis animated and moves by Phantom's pure hatred trapped there. 

Sailor Moon remains resolute and the act ends with her attacking Death Phantom

Act 25 is a great act. Sailor Pluto's sacrifice and Chibiusa's resultant transformation is one of the most best moments of the second arc. It does maybe go on a bit long, and it weirdly has Pluto summon Diana to her in the middle of her final address to King Endymion, but I personally think it gets the most out of every page. It's really thematically rich too. That the death of one Sailor Senshi, is the birth of another, and moreover the lesson it has to teach to parents.

What I got from this even at that age, is that you can shelter your children from the world for 900 years and they will never grow up, and will end up resentful and bitter at not being able to experience the world. Eventually danger will creep in. Instead you should introduce them to the world, so that they may one day be able to develop and awaken into an adult that can stand by your side and help make the world a better place, something we'll see next act. It's hard, it's very hard. You obviously want more than anything to protect your children. But shielding them from any exposure to the world is a doomed venture. Instead be there for them as they experience it.

The moment Chibiusa pleads with Sailor Pluto to open her eyes, to see that she's finally done it, she's finally transformed is such a heartbreaking moment. Sailor Moon has a lot of tragedies but some of them are so big that they are hard to relate to, like the deaths of everyone on Earth. This is one of the most tragedies in the series, when you manage to finally achieve a dream but the one you wanted to show is no longer there to see it.

The rest of the act is mostly also pretty good. The Demande part is kinda weird, though it's cool to see him finally defeated in such a thematic way and the Senshi finally seeing Death Phantom's true self and being sucked into his darkness is a really cool atmospheric scene. Death Phantom is a scene in himself, distorting spacetime to the point it starts ripping up, and absorbing them into darkness where they see he's the phantom force of hatred animating the Black Hole. 

It's weird talking about these two strange appeals, the appeal of a young girl finally awakening to her duty, and the pain of loss and someone you care about not being able to see you complete your dream, mixed with the appeal of this cosmic ghost story about a super-criminal's spirit becoming ghost magic that brings a Black Hole to life. But that really is the meta-appeal of Sailor Moon to me. The Sailor Moon manga is what the inside of my brain looks like, alternating between these completely different ideas and tones yet it all somehow working harmoniously, or at least moving so frenetically you don't notice a disconnect.