The Dream Arc resumes where the last act left off, with Chibiusa running away from Usagi and Helios after coming to think that the maiden was Helios really searching for was Usagi, filled with embarrassment and insecurity at feeling lesser than Usagi. Chibiusa admits to herself that she always thought it was Usagi, that she never really thought the maiden Helios wanted was her, though it still hurts her.
I love how Naoko draws the eyes of the characters. You can really feel Chibiusa's emotions in her glassy eyes in the last panel; how she's not truly surprised at it, it's exactly what Chibiusa thought, yet it's still immensely painful.
Chibiusa reminiscences to herself of nostalgia times, times as far back as...last act.... where she was happy he called her "maiden", how she thought she might have been able to do something, but thinks she was wrong, that she's weak and small. I have some contention with how this arc presents Chibiusa. Chibiusa has had one of the largest impacts of any character in the manga, only after Usagi and maybe a couple of other characters. She helped in the destruction of Death Phantom. She outsped the Outers to get to Hotaru first. In-Universe, Chibiusa has seriously and successfully aided in the preservation of the universe and narratively Chibiusa has had some of the largest character focus and progression in the series so far, so it doesn't really make sense to me that Chibiusa would be feeling this useless to the point that it's a major focus at the start of the Dream Arc. Her feeling like she can't measure up to Usagi, sure I get that. It's a classic case of the child of an exceptional parent feeling high pressure to live up to their parentage. But she acts here like she's absolutely useless. On some level, I get that's the point, that in stewing in her own negativity here, she's exaggerating it and that her feelings are meant to be irrational but relatable. If you find Chibiusa really relatable in her struggle here I can understand finding this is a lot more evocative even if, or perhaps especially because, it's not really a "rational" feeling.
Usagi and Mamoru try to find Chibiusa before the storm breaks. Meanwhile Helios appears before her, trying to comfort her. Not knowing how else to show his affection, Helios suddenly kisses her, turning into a mystical horned humanoid boy looking a similar age as her as he does so.
Helios assures Chibiusa, telling her it is because of her that Super Sailor Moon can be as strong as she is, and that she is always greatly needed. As Chibiusa blushes from her presumably first kiss, Helios tells her she is surrounded by love and that while he has to go because he can't maintain this form long, she shouldn't cry because he knows they will meet again.
I think it's a pretty sweet scene, even if the logic is a bit wonky. It accomplishes its objectives well; to be a sweet demonstration to Chibiusa of the love others have for her reassuring her of her place, as well to invite intrigue about Helios, the pegasus that can apparently temporary turn into a horned humanoid.
Usagi, Mamoru, and Ami catch up to Chibiusa, Usagi basically pouncing on her with a "we were so worried" mom hug, holding Chibiusa, telling her they need to go home or she'll catch a cold. Chibiusa briefly asks about Helios but Ami confirms that Helios left them without saying a word, implying to Chibiusa that she was the one Helios really wanted to talk too.
Humorously and cutely Chibiusa never stops touching her face during this exchange and continually blushes through it, surprised as the new romantic feelings blossoming in her heart.
However things are not going so well with Helios at the moment. Helios falls in into darkness, appearing again as a pegasus in a cage. Nehelenia congratulates him on being able to temporarily escape but says that soon the land will belong to her as well, that his little astral projection can't stop her. Helios defies her, stating that she can't break his spirit and that the prince and princess will destroy her. Nehelenia shocks him and he thinks at how the planet is in grave danger.
Nehelenia leaves the prisoner to talk to Zirconia. Zirconia holds a projection of the Earth in her witch hands, marveling at its beauty, saying it's like a crystal ball. Interestingly that sorta parallels how Princess Serenity described it in the first arc...as though Zirconia might also be of Lunarian origin.... Nehelenia tells Zirconia that they will start a new reign here soon, that the White Moon Kingdom people having only newly been reborn to this world are like babies which I think is a pretty cool statement reminding that to immortal lunarians the current age of the Senshi, measuring under two decades for even the Outers, is infancy.
Nehelenia proclaims she will take the Silver Crystal for herself. Zirconia unwisely tries to mention that only the true heir can unlock the power of the Silver Crystal but Nehelenia asks her dangerously doesn't she know she IS speaking to the true heir of the Silver Crystal? Interestingly though, unlike a lot of these types of scenes, Nehelenia doesn't seem to be mad, nor Zirconia in her apology to be scared, possibly because and spoilers later in the arc but, Zirconia is part of Nehelenia, meaning this is moreso a stray doubt in Nehelenia's mind and her own narcissism deflating it. As though to confirm their union, the two being creepily giggling together.
We cut to Rei, the focus of this act, practicing her archery, however her heart's clearly not in it and her lack of focus is commented on. Immediately after Rei is shown with the other Guardian Senshi reading a book on shrine management, causing a funny comment from Usagi that she looks like Ami-chan. Rei explains her grandpa is sick so she has to take care of the shrine. Ami asks if she's hiring and Rei explains no way, that costs money, it's against her principles to waste money like that.
Minako comes up and says she has the perfect plan, which of course means a hairbrained scheme. She suggests that Rei gets married. Rei, angrily asks why she would do that but Minako comments that while she knows Rei hates boys, she can just think of it as a servant. She can just relax while the man does all the work. Rei is temporarily taken by the idea of having a servant and Ami annoyed comments that this isn't the kind of talk high schoolers should be having. Minako and Makoto then engage in "normal high school girl talk", both proclaiming in chorus that they want boyfriends.
Rei takes over running the shrine and gives some marriage charms to some teenage girls who get all giddy at the prospect of giving them to their crushes. Rei notices this and thinks back to Makoto and Minako's declarations that they want boyfriends and wonders why everyone wants boyfriends so badly. She comments to herself that she never really had a fanciful dream, she just planned to take the Hikawa shrine because that seemed the most natural course of action. Better to swim with the flow of the river rather than against it, if you can.
It's a very common interpretation that this is a 1990s manga way of expressing a character's asexuality, something which will be supported more this act. Rei doesn't really desire a relationship for its own sake. I'm not an asexual but I have read from asexuals before that Rei's internal feelings this act are a relatively realistic representation of it.
Rei's grandfather goes into a flashback thinking Rei, commenting that she was always a strange child, even when she came to him even when she was still in Elementary School. In the flashback Chibi-Rei rushes after the crows at the Hikawa Shrine which come to her. She tells her grandpa matter-o-factly the way only a young child can without arousing suspicion that their names are Phobos and Deimos. Phobos and Deimos are the names of Mars' moons.
Rei's grandpa that someday she will fly away from this place, though where she will go he doesn't know.
We cut to the Senshi investing the Dead Moon Circus the next day. Usagi and Chibiusa are easily amazed by all the attractions, though apparently it's extremely expensive with 10,000 yen for the best seats in the main circus tent. In a...surrealist type joke, we see after its mentioned how expensive it is ZIRCONIA giggling to herself surrounded by money. The Quartet would obviously make sense, they're bratty children who would want that money for their illicit uses, but Zirconia's some kind of otherworldly witch type character who serves a QUEEN directly and can manifest all this circus nonsense. What she could possibly want the money for is bizarre.
Usagi tries to keep Chibiusa on track for their mission but Chibiusa gets distracted by all the fun attractions around and everyone slowly starts getting swept up in the circus fun. It's possible that this is all the subtle hypnotic suggestion of the carnival, perhaps not even magically induced but just in the normal mundane trickery circuses and casinos use to warp the perceptions of people inside to let go of their worries. Rei is usually the most focused of all them, yet even though she brought Phobos and Deimos with her for safety, she still finds herself no longer that concerned, saying she feels "like a kid again."
Childhood is obviously a theme this arc. Here Rei associates being a child with the feeling of responsibility-less. Rei obviously never had a normal childhood. Her mother died at a young age and in anger at her cold politician father she left for her grandfather's shrine. Even there she was considered a strange child where we saw in the first arc rumors about her and her mystical sixth sense abounded. It's possible Rei is as perfectionist and stubbornly independent as she is because she's always been set apart by others and filled with pressure. Willpower is admirable, but without an aim it is useless, and this act so far has demonstrated Rei's lack of aim, unclear in what she wants to do. It is natural she will inherit the duty as leader of the shrine, and therefore it's only "normal" afterall for a girl to take a boy as her partner, even if she doesn't want to, so that he can bear part of her burdens for her. At least that is what the world seems to tell her, to flow downstream and not to fight the current. To become as a child, without responsibility, is appealing for someone burdened like Rei is, but it means losing one's independence and following the stream even where it takes one where they don't wish to go.
Palla Palla watching it comments at Rei's declaration that it's because she is at a circus. Rei, thinking she hears something, turns around finding the mirror house and feels inexplicably drawn to it. The manga emphasizes its magical nature as when Rei enters it, immediately the door disappears and Phobos and Deimos can't follow her. Meanwhile CereCere calls out the show is about to begin and the other Senshi go to investigate, though the cats get kicked out because no cats allowed.
The quartet begin their circus show along with the other Dead Moon Circus members that begins to hypnotize the crowd, including the Sailor Senshi. Much like the second arc with Luna-P, it's kind of confusing how this works on the Senshi know when they've previously shown that brainwashing them doesn't work, and it's not like this is made out to be super strong brainwashing. I guess you could say it's because it's more subtle brainwashing and they're not trying to resist it per se but eh. Still feels kinda weird to have our heroes brainwashed so easily. VesVes wonders whether they should make the captive people their slaves or feed them to the lemure. The Senshi are dizzy and pseudo hypnotized until Mamoru notices there aren't' any exits in this place, snapping him out of it.
Meanwhile Rei's wandering around the Mirror House, noticing some of them aren't showing any reflection. A small Rei appears in the mirror, and tells her it's no trick, that she's an inner Rei here to guide her. I like how Naoko subverts expectation here. Last act we saw a small Mercury appear before Mercury guiding her, but while both Ami and Rei emotionally regressed symbolically into children this act, this little Rei is a trick of the enemy and not a guide of Rei.
The young Rei recounts Rei's lifestory, that her mother died young, her busy politician father had no time for either of them, and she's lived with her grandpa since then, that she hasn't been happy since she was young. The young Rei tells Rei that she hates how the others relying on her so much, that she wants to be independent. That she should just get friends who do what she wants, and perhaps a boyfriend who adores her, showing an image of the young Rei in the arms of Tiger's Eye.
Rei is a perfectionist type of personality, who strives hard, yet has lost focus of what she is striving for. In the first arc, she was unsure of whether even to BE a Sailor Senshi or not. For someone like that, having less perfectionist friends, especially when working as a team, would seem like they're just taking advantage of her. Of course, that's not really Rei's mindset, but the little Rei is introducing the idea as though they were Rei's thoughts to further confuse Rei. I like the subtle difference between Ami and Rei's confidence demonstrated in their nightmares. Ami's nightmare involved being abandoned and left alone. Rei just naturally assumes she could get more friends, sycophantic ones even, and a boyfriend who would do anything she wanted, if she wanted and her nightmare is more one of betraying her convictions and independence.
Rei easily banishes Tiger's Eye with a mystic charm, though is clearly drained from the experience. PallaPalla is annoyed but claims that because of the charm she put on the Mirror House, it won't be broken so easily. PallaPalla resummons Little Rei and Tiger's Eye, with Little Rei commenting on how even if she has to kiss boys she doesn't like, that's all it takes to live a life of luxury being married and never having to work, claiming that's what happiness means to girls.
Everything here is made to play on Rei's insecurity that she is not like her peers by deliberately framing it as this is the norm for all girls. By some combination of nature and nurture agreeability is more common among young women and to defy the norms of your peers, to defy what is natural and easy for hard work is looked down upon as arrogance. Rei has the will to defy this, but having lost her aim, Little Rei uses this as a weapon to attack Rei's insecurities.
Rei tries to transform but the transformation doesn't work due to the darkness preventing anyone from transforming Usagi and Chibiusa saw two acts ago. PallaPalla laughs at her misfortune and tells Tiger's Eye to devour the girl with beautiful dreams, in body and in mind.
Outside the cats notice Phobos and Deimos flying erratically. The two caw violently and crash through the mirror house, distracting Tiger's Eye temporarily before appearing to Rei in the form of two small flying humanoids.
This is a really interesting little bit of the lore which will get a bit of expansion in the fifth arc, but Phobos and Deimos are sentient entities who help "Princess Mars" just as Luna does Princess Serenity. Either through Phobos and Deimos' magic or via her sixth sense, Rei senses the others are in danger without her, and Phobos and Deimos grant her the Mars Crystal to transform.
Mars is reminded of her passion, and feels a new fire arise within her, a stronger fire, that she swore a life of chastity to her princess and transforms. She hears the advice of Sailor Neptune in her mind, that she is the psychic senser of the Guardian Senshi the same way that Neptune is for the Outer Senshi, and it's her job to guide them, but she must hone her focus like an arrow, and as she hears these words she uses her new attack, a bow and arrow made of flame to kill Tiger's Eye.
Once again we see the contrast of dreams idea. Mars material dream was to take over the shrine, something that made her feel in a daze because it was something she was just doing naturally, and it made her apathetic to the world, feeling like she was just following the flow of things. However, her true dream is to fight for her princess, to guide them with her psychic powers. It's these things that make her feel alive, like she has a "fire" within her. It is in remembering her true dream that she can focus her heart, make her feel like she's putting all her will and passion into something. Her material dreams made her feel alone because she wasn't like the other girls, but her true dream made her feel connected to the others because she remembers she where all her passion is directed, why she has no interest in the things of this world.
The Mirror House disappears, and Mamoru notices an exit has reappeared. It's a bit of a weird thing time-wise but apparently all that stuff with Mars happened in the time Mamoru was looking for an exit. Possibly a reference to the warped perspective of time in dreams, but I think more likely it's just dramatic timing. The Senshi exit none the wiser about the danger they were in, while the Quartet and Hawk's Eye get annoyed and upset respectively at the death of Tiger's Eye and the failure of their mission. Mars finds the other Sailors and fills them in on the details.
Later the Quartet are brooding on their latest defeat with PallaPalla getting upset. VesVes wants to just attack the Senshi but JunJun reminds her Zirconia told her they'd get crushed in a direct attack. CereCere suggests they just toy with them a little longer and the four face into the distance menancingly.
Act 41 has the unfortunate quality of coming immediately following one of the best acts in the arc, and especially given its similarities in structure, will sort of inevitably be compared to it in my mind and coming up short. While Act 41 touches on subjects as deep as Act 40's, Act's 40 were brilliantly interwoven and interconnected, while Act 41's are harder to connect together. It's not a bad act, it just has a hard act to follow.
Talking about Act 41 itself, it's a bit of a mixed act. I can say numerous things in its favor. I think Helios and Chibiusa are cute together, and Helios' defiance towards Nehelenia is a pretty classic heroic scene. Zirconia talking to Nehelenia is interesting foreshadowing, the Phobos and Deimos stuff was conceptually interesting, and the scene with Minako advocating Rei getting betrothed to get a man-servant was a funny scene that led naturally into the act's symbolisms by contrasting Rei's desires to the feelings of her peers. Rei's character exploration as well touched on numerous deep ideas that are central to understanding Rei; personal independence vs having others rely on you, aromanticism, focus and intuition, the archery metaphor, doing what is natural, what is normal, what is expected of you vs having the ambition to be different, and of course the theme of the arc; the division between the material dream and the unifying beautiful dream.
But that's where my criticism of the act comes in, it only touches on these ideas. It takes a large amount of ideas, more than any Dream Act and briefly alludes to them all. I say this as someone whose quite good at picking out patterns and symbolism and who adores this series, has read it a thousand times over, this act is one of the hardest to explain the symbolism to because the patterns in all these ideas are there but scant and only lightly made. There are some connections; like the connection made of Rei's insecurity expressed by the Small Rei that in her aromantic nature, she is not following the natural course the way the others girls do, but these connections are ones I struggle to make because they're only lightly implied at.
On some level, I would accept that this was intentional, that the broad metaphor being made is like Rei's flame arrow, that for the shot to be fired the act must amp up the tension backward and focus it on a target. similarly this act has a problem a lot of earlier Dream Arc acts have, things just sort of happen. I understand to some this is a feature, not a bug, it makes it more "dreamlike" to just suddenly have Phobos and Deimos break into the other dimension and give Mars her crystal. But for what additions these may give to the atmosphere they gain, in my opinion, by sacrificing plot/thematic cohesion, the sense that everything that happens is meaningful.
My feelings towards this act are definitely not negative overall. I view this act as an ambitious act that is perhaps a bit disunified. I will say some parts are genuinely great as mentioned at the start. I think pretty much all the parts prior to Rei's sub-plot, the first third or so of the act is classic atmospheric Dream Arc stuff, and I think the Rei plot is pretty good, it just could have been tightened up and focused. I get that Naoko wanted to mix things up and didn't want to do the exact same thing as the prior act with Ami, and things like Little Rei being the one tricking Rei rather than guiding her as happened to Ami is a good misdirect, but the solution still could have been more sensical narratively and thematically. It wouldn't have taken too big a change, perhaps Young Rei in the flashback saying something to Phobos and Deimos as crows about her true dream, to find companions like them and guard them with her life, and then have them reiterate that to her when they rescue her, maybe giving her some kind of expression that they're showing her the same loyalty she did them would have really tied the themes together more clearly.
As a few more minor notes I'd also add: I think Tiger's Eye was an alright episodic villain and I thought it was cool Rei actually had some success against him using her mystic charm even without transforming since Naoko doesn't really use Rei's miko background often in the narrative outside arguably the sixth sense. I think the Quartet really differentiated themselves personality-wise even if narratively they basically act as a group, though it's a bit weird PallaPalla seems to cast all the spells. It was pretty amusing both when Rei's grandpa called out for Buddha and Rei chastized him that it was a Shinto Shrine, and when Ami was annoyed and commented that their talk was not the talk of High School girls. Pretty good act overall.
Act 41 is a pretty cool act to me, it seems to have a much more firey sense to it, but as if one would light a fire inside a cave and would end up making it more dark by coating everything in smoke because this is still an extremely dream like chapter that goes into the surrealism of our mysterious foes. Even the stuff before getting to Rei seems to follow this theme, as Helios offers a lot of additional Intrigue to who/what he is and what he truly wants but is also brazenly defiant against a clearly much more dangerous entity holding him captive. Rei is great in this chapter, i love her cool relationship with her Crows, reminds me of Odin which fits her character as the wise, sixth sense having shrine maiden she is, and its sweet how she takes care of her crazy grandpa and works hard to upkeep the shrine. The Dream tries to play on Rei's insecurities, trying to reduce her inner fire of passion to a smoldering flame who takes the easy way out, and costs through life on nothing more than her beauty. But in true Mars-ian fashion, Rei basically gets insulted by the very suggestion, shes a strong independent woman dammit and shes gonna work twice as hard just to spite this inner voice in her head. Something I thought was cool is how this is perfectly contrasted with the conversation earlier between Zicrona and Nehelenia, where Zicrona, another part of Nehelenia's being expresses her own inner doubts and Nel brushes them off calmly self assured in herself. Rei's inner doubts scare her far more, as she doesn't wanna become like her father that uses others as a means to an end, and fights against those desires with far more vigor
ReplyDeleteGreat blog. Rei is an interesting character. I really like the exploration of her character as a girl who has a lot of passion having trouble with a focus, and it was her connection with others that gave her that focus. Using a bow and arrow as a way to show the combination of passion/willpower and focus is too perfect. You continue to explain the themes pretty well in terms of material dreams vs true dreams and how they tie into the main themes of the manga. Also, I like how you compared the romantic ambitions with each one of the Senshi in this blog. I didn’t really think about Rei being asexual, but that does make a lot of sense in hindsight. Other than the stuff with Rei, I do really like the scene where Helios comforts Chibiusa. I understand the character development there might be a little redundant since Chibiusa has grown since then, but I guess it is a good way of showing it is hard to completely overcome irrational feelings.
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