Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon Act 49 Review

 

The Final Act of the Dream Arc.

Eternal Sailor Moon summons her new wand, the Eternal Tiare and calls for power from all their guardian planets to join together, coming together in her Tiare. Didn't this already happen at the end of last act?

This time differs however in that Mamoru also awakens the power of his Golden Crystal and send it to Eternal sailor Moon, with the narrative paying special focus to Chibiusa and Mamoru, meant to be resolving character moments for this arc.

granted, I don't know how this is any different for Chibiusa since again, she did this exact thing at the end of last act, but for Mamoru at least this does make sense since he started this arc not believing in his own power and now he's contributing arguably the biggest power to help Eternal Sailor Moon.

Eternal Sailor Moon attacks Nehelenia with her new attack "Starlight Honeymoon Therapy Kiss" which somehow hits Nehelenia from another dimension and Nehelenia spends three pages dying where she gives her dying speech as she reverts to just an ugly Zirconia, proclaiming she wanted to be the true lunar queen, that she is the eternally beautifully Nehelenia and most surprising of all that...she wanted Mamoru's hand in marriage?

So I understand the symbolism Naoko was probably going for here, but this just doesn't make sense objectively. Nehelenia's curse was destroying the Earth and killing Mamoru. Zirconia, who is part of her as shown here has tried to kill Mamoru several times, and Nehelenia was arguably going to kill him back when he and Usagi were in Elysian the first time, when she got angry about them shining their crystals at her. If her goal was to claim Mamoru as her beloved ala Beryl, it doesn't make sense that she would be doing all these things that would have killed him.

I understand where Naoko might have been going symbolically. The point of the arc is people forgetting their true dreams in exchange for material dreams, and as said by Nehelenia the darkness calls for the light and vice versa. I could understand the idea of she wanted the love of the Prince, that was her true dream, and she mistook the material dream of becoming the true Lunar Queen, a tool to achieve her true dream, as the more important one. That's the theme of the arc. But it doesn't make sense to have her be so aware of her dream here and at the same time be doing things that would actively kill him. Best case scenario, it's very convenient timing that she happened to remember her true dream right when it was narratively convenient at the last moment before the heroes killed her and not very well explained. Worst case scenario is Naoko just wanted to make her dream husbando seem hotter by saying "yeah even these eldritch abominations want him." .. honestly the worst case scenario might be somehow better than the best case scenario here.

With the death of Nehelenia, it's revealed that the entire time they were trapped in the moment of the eclipse as seen in Hotaru's game earlier in Act 44 when the moment of the eclipse didn't stop, and the eclipse finally ends with everyone on Earth waking up

This arguably can be used to explain some of the surreal elements of the arc including the weird temporal distortions and was likely what Setsuna originally sensed given she's connected to spacetime. 

Eternal Sailor Moon notes that the long nightmare is over, and flashbacks to her childhood in the Silver Millennium. The young Princess Serenity runs up to her mother crying as Venus told her a scary story of a horrible black monster living in the dream that eats up crybabies. She asks if that's true. Queen Serenity in response gives her a little speech I adore. Each of carries within our hearts a star. Light and Darkness are always side by side but if you let the darkness know you're afraid of it, it will swallow you up. To overcome the darkness of the mind, you must always let the star inside you shine brightly.

I don't know if Queen Serenity understood the truth about Star Seeds and was cleverly explaining the concept in a way a young child may be able to understand or if she is wise enough that she intuited a part of the fundamental nature of reality and is explaining exactly what she knows. Either way, this is at once a beautiful expression of the central theme of the series; the ennobling power of love, an expression of her maternal wisdom and love telling Usagi what she emotionally needs to hear to fight her own fears, and also hyping the audience for the Stars Arc. I get irrationally happy every time I get to this part because it's a great part that also makes me think the Stars Arc is imminent. It helps that Queen Serenity is a rarely used character, used for impact and that it's really drawn beautifully.

Back in the present, Eternal Chibi-Moon rushes off to Helios, only to find his humanoid body laying comatose on the ground. She pleads with him to open his eyes and gives the sleeping Helios a kiss, awakening him.

If we were going to  have the dark fey from Sleeping Beauty, we were obviously going to have to have someone be awoken by a kiss from their true love. As mentioned the drama of Helios being dead doesn't work for the reason Chibiusa herself explained last act, but emotionally speaking it's right for this to happen.

Helios opens his eyes and sees the lady that gave him prophecy earlier superimposed upon Chibiusa, revealing it was her that gave him his revelation earlier. He asks why she's crying and she puts her hand to her lips, and she says she's crying from joy that he's awoken. It's all very sweet. However then Diana tells Chibiusa that her crystal transformed into the Pink Moon Crystal and that's what awoke Helios.

So that latter part just doesn't work for me at all. Helios and Chibiusa's relationship is very sweet and everything about the maiden Helios searching for really being Chibiusa is good. However Chibiusa already made the Silver Crystal into her crystal in the second arc, the conflict and the resolution she had in this arc was a repeat of the Second Arc. It was awakening the Golden Crystal that broke the curse of Nehelenia that allowed Helios to be revived, not anything Chibi-Moon did. And for that matter what did Chibiusa do this act that made the crystal hers? In the Second Arc, it was the death of Sailor Pluto and symbolically her coming to realize that she had responsibilities herself, that she wasn't a failure of a daughter but the young princess who would somehow have to rule over the kingdom. Sure falling in love and kissing are elements of maturation but they're not unique to Chibi-Moon. This very scene of Chibiusa awakening Helios with a kiss is the inverse of the first arc where after the battle with Metaria, Mamoru awoke Usagi with a kiss. If anything this part is a demonstration again of how she is similar to her mother, rather then her own person. This part isn't unique to Chibiusa or to this arc. 

Helios follows Eternal Chibi-Moon out into Elysian only to find to his shock that it's been fully restored and he thanks Eternal Sailor Moon for awakening the Golden Crystal. He gives his prince a staff to carry the Golden Crystal upon, and just as Usagi channeled the spirit of Neo-Queen Serenity in the Second and Third arcs, Usagi and Mamoru channel the spirits of their future selves.

I think it's really cool the way Naoko has foreshadowed this moment by showing Usagi channel Neo-Queen Serenity's spirit at least three times since she awoke the Silver Crystal.

King Endymion and Neo-Queen Serenity rather casually destroy the Dead Moon, causing an immense light in the sky which is proclaimed to be the light of their coronation. 

This will be important later. 

The Sailor Senshi change into their princess dresses, save for Chibi-Moon and Saturn. It seems the implication is because the others are old enough, they are to be formally dressed for the royal occasion while Chibi-Moon and Saturn are still developing and don't need to be. Or Naoko just wanted to draw them in their princess dresses again. Now that Endymion has awoken his crystal, he is Prince of the Earth, just as Serenity awoke the Silver Crystal in the first and became Princess of the Moon and the two can be royally wed, uniting the houses of Moon and Earth.

Saturn goes before Neo-Queen Serenity and kneels, presenting the four Amazon Stones. At Saturn's request, Neo-Queen Serenity unseals the Amazoness Quartet who, Nehelenia's spell being broken, transform into four Senshi of the Asteroid Belt, the Amazon Senshi.

The Quartet secretly being Senshi explains the earlier part of the series where Sailor Saturn was telling them they needed to "awaken", the same language used for a Sailor Senshi. 

Sailor Ceres says that the Amazon Senshi were sleeping in the Amazon when Nehelenia noticed their sleeping power and somehow used the curse to make them puppets of the Dead Moon Circus. The Amazon Senshi says they will re-enter into their slumber as they wait for the future, telling Chibi-Moon that someday they will fight beside her and protect her,Chibi-Moon realizing that they serve the same role for Chibi-Moon that the Guardian Senshi do for Sailor Moon. Saturn thanks them and tells them that they will protect the princess until then.

The Amazon Senshi depart, and Chibi-Moon watching them go says that there will come a time she will stand as a fully fledged Soldier, and they will be beside her.

This is a pretty effective plot twist that I think is fairly well foreshadowed with the paralleling of the Quartet and the Guardian Senshi, and Saturn's refusal to fight them instead trying to get them to "awaken." While, as I've said, I think it's kinda repeating the Second Arc's theme, I do think Chibi-Moon's sentiment is sweet here. On some level I wish Chibi-Moon could have spoken more to her Senshi here, though I understand that would have lessened the impact of Chibi-Moon' dramatically and looking into the distance and expressing the desire to see them again someday.

Helios tells them it's time to return to the surface and summons his pegasus to take them there causing Chibiusa to gasp and proclaim he's like a knight on a white steed.

And like any good Naoko moment, this raises way more questions than it answers. Even though she was probably just trying to write fanservice for a young female audience.

Back on the surface, the Senshi say their goodbye to Helios. Helios says he will continue to pray for them from Elysian, putting special emphasis on Mamoru, the prince. Chibiusa all cutely stands in front of Helios with her hands on the edge of her skirt nervously as the two say goodbye. Helios tells her that he awaits the day they meet again with all his heart, and Chibiusa excitedly tells him that she will see him again, when she's grown into a real young woman. As Helios leaves, Chibiusa thinks to herself that Helios is her prince. She turns to see the Senshi enjoying the cutesy romantic affections of the young girl and encouraging her.

It's a really adorable little scene, and one that I admit, I find kinda relatable with the Senshis' reactions. The teasing affectionate encouragement of a young lady in her romantic ventures by her friends and peers. 

The act ends with a little linking between this arc and the next. Mamoru comments to Usagi that despite the battle being over, his heart still beats so warmly in his chest, like a little star is born in his chest, wondering it's the Golden Crystal he feels. Usagi paraphrases what Queen Serenity told her long ago. She tells Mamoru that each and every one of us has a star in our hearts, and the warmth you feel in your heart is proof that your star is shining brightly.

Looking at her loved ones around her, Usagi thinks to herself that to make her dreams come true, she will fight to protect the people important to her. Looking into the sky at the bright star she begs the star in her heart to keep shining and giving her strength. And if you know what's coming, you know why that's fitting and why she'll need it.

Everytime I read it, I get so excited for the Stars Arc. It carries a hint of that writing in it metaphorical expression of the feeling of meaning expressed in cosmic imagery, the star of our hearts burning brightly. 

As the epilogue act for the Dream Arc, Act 49 doesn't have to keep up the stakes of the large fight against Nehelenia that's gone on for the last several acts and can moreso focus on writing things that Naoko wanted to put in just to expand the lore, foreshadow the next arc, or just because she thought it would be cute. Broadly I think it does a good job at this, though as I've mentioned there's a few points where Naoko does as she is wont to do, sacrificing a measure of in-universe logical consistency or explanations for something to make better emotional or symbolic sense to the reader. 

Examples of this abound. Naoko repeats elements like the Guardian Senshi powering Eternal Sailor Moon from last act or Chibiusa going through some aspects of her Black Moon Clan arc development because she wants to create the emotional effect associated with the unity of the Senshi and Mamoru's development or appeal to the sense of the development of Chibiusa from childhood. She has Chibiusa worry and cry over Helios and awaken him with a kiss though Chibiusa explicitly knows Helios is alive, repeating an element from the Dark Kingdom arc in doing so, because she wants to invoke classic Fairy Tale symbolism. She has Helios take the Senshi to the surface on a flying white horse even though to this point Helios was that horse because it's wish fulfillment. As a problem, this is much better then the opposite problem. Creating emotionally moving, meaningful writing for the audience that doesn't make sense in itself is a lot better than writing something that is technically coherent and consistent but lacks spirit and meaning. However, it is an area I would say could be improved.

The highlights of this act, of which there are numerous are great. Very fitting for an act where time finally progresses literally, probably the best thing about the act is the feeling of progression, the excitement it gives to the readers for what's coming next. Some of this may be because I know what's coming next but that is definitely the feeling the act strives to make in the reader. Chibiusa's development is filled with declarations of how she will focus on growing into a young woman, how will she meet her prince and her Senshi again in the future. King Endymion and Neo-Queen Serenity's joint coronation not only will literally be an event recalled next arc but is an event celebrating the transition into a new royal phase, and the act ends with Usagi declaration symbolically looking into the future. The act gives the readers a sense of development just as the curse of Nehelenia holding everyone static, symbolically connected with the way the characters all fell into a static place fixated on their material dreams only to be freed by realizing their true dreams. Just as the characters break past their stasis and face the futures, so too do the readers get that sensation with the continual calls to the future.

The stellar imagery is also on-point in this act. I adore both Queen Serenity's explanation of the stars within our hearts and the callback Usagi makes later expressing it to Mamoru. It's a beautiful seamless connection between the themes of the Dream and Stars arcs, simple enough that both symbolically (a potential reader) and literally (Princess Serenity) a child being told a story can understand it, yet with a hidden depth that moves me reading it even now as an adult. It's concrete enough to be applicable to daily life, but abstract enough that it can be applied to numerous ideas. Is the star of our heart love? Meaning? Our true dreams? It's deliberately not any one of those as it would make the idea too specific, instead being exactly as abstracted as need be to be potent imagery. 

Broadly speaking Act 49's purpose is to serve as an epilogue for the Dream Arc and to prepare the reader for the Stars arc and I think it does it admirably enough. I would perhaps have liked Naoko to stick to her own rules and world-building more; not have Nehelenia's true dream so blatantly contradict her actions and have Chibiusa's character arc more notably diverge from her mother's so she can feel more distinct as a person for instance. However, the act provides very cute and moving content and imagery and provides the series with some momentum heading into the final arc.