WEEKLY VISITOR SPECIAL INTRO (and by special I mean retarded:) Boobermonkeys is still reading? Well, not this he ain’t. Anyway, welcome to what cannot really be called the first Moonbeak because I’m planning on hosting it at the same place where the rest of the Sailor Moon Episode Guide has gone undisturbed for like a year (when I figure out why my spearnet login isn't working.) But I wanted to link to it somewhere since my actual Webpage O’ Fury is still as dead as the Undertaker and slightly less mobile. I’ll be making allusions to wrestling throughout, something I tried to avoid when doing the first 39 Mooncaps, so…I guess I’ve grown as a writer in the last year and a half. I’ve matured from someone who bores people with anime recaps to someone who mentions the Undertaker for no reason.

Anyway, I should tell you what’s happening in the series. It was dubbed into English by Dic, a company worthy of it’s name. Sailor Moon and various other girls whose first name are Sailor must go beat up the evil Queen Beryl. That sums it up pretty well. Darien, Serena/Moon’s eternal soul mate and masked git in a tuxedo, has been brainwashed and turned heel by Beryl because, basically, Beryl thinks he’s sooooo cute! Luna and Artemis remain talking cats, it’s still season 1 so Amy/Mercury remembers her love-interest Greg, Raye/Mars still hangs with Chad and Grandpa, Lita/Jupiter has the hots for an arcade clerk named Andrew, and Mina/Venus doesn’t really do anything until next season. For more detailed (and wordy) explanations, feel free to wade through the still periodically wrestling-referencing Sailor Moon Classic Episode Guide itself. Some day, I will fix the index page so it links to this recap, though I doubt that script error will ever go away. And no, there is no “Sailor Moon Junior” to go along with Classic. Unless you count Rini, so yeah, there kind of is.

The show:Everyone’s favorite expository device after radio news (television news) tells us that a giant sunspot is melting the polar icecaps and threatening the world. Queen Beryl is using ten or twenty cans of aerosol hairspray a day. She’s that evil. Artemis and Luna decide that this falls under the jurisdiction of “Scout Business.” With nary an old woman looking to cross the street, the Scouts are free to save the world. Mina, Lita, Amy and Raye steel themselves for the fight ahead. Serena…not so much. She asks Raye if she’s kissed Chad goodbye yet, which annoys Raye but makes Amy crack a smile. That won’t be so funny when you’re scraping chunks of Martian off the polar ice caps, Moonie. Artemis and Luna are wearing casts, selling the beating they took from Malachite, whose name vaguely sounds like Mordecei. IT’S ALL COMING TOGETHER. You know they’re super-intelligent talking cats because they give the girls a pep-talk instead of constantly gnawing at the bandages. Serena languidly transforms into Sailor Moon. You can tell this episode is gonna be packed, because we don’t see all five sequences in their entirety, only the primest highlights from each one. The Scouts join hands and contact the spirit of teleportation, causing everyone’s hair to float. Geez…Mars and Venus must be three times as heavy when wet. And…the Scouts are like instantly at the North Pole. My, we are moving right along in this episode, aren’t we? Moon is the only one bothered by being at the North Pole in a short-sleeved blouse with microskirt. Mercury’s computer detects that the volcano emanating a huge column of mysterious smoke, sticking out like a sore, smoke-belching thumb in the otherwise empty landscape, would be a good place to start looking for clues about the Negaverse’s polar base.

Now we cut to Beryl, utterly bereft of Generals and forced to talk to that bizarre solid wall of Negaverse Dweebazoids that have been in the background of every Negaverse scene so far. “So,” she says, “the Sailor Scouts want to pay us a visit? Finally. It’s about time.” Amen, sister. I didn’t think Jedeite would ever stop despoiling spas and radio stations with his Nega-power. She asks for volunteers to vanquish the Scouts and earn a place in “Nega-history.” Nega is such a useful prefix. Some Nega-pixies nega-volunteer for the dangerous nega-mission. Who’s yo nega now, bitch? The Doom and Gloom girls, who in a striking coincidence are five females each of a different color, appear. The Five Scouts vs Five Evil Females = the subtext of about eighty bajillion future showdowns. Though sometimes it’s just four, one for each inner. And one time the leader, and thus Moon’s counterpart, is a man. And Tomo’s four villainesses work really well until there’s this fifth one that splits in two, and maybe it’s supposed to be the evil opposites of Uranus and Neptune, but that doesn’t work either because…look, just forget it. Why must you overanalyze every detail, reader?

The Scouts are back in town. Well, back on screen, but still wandering a frozen waste. Moon wants to hire a dog sled, but her complaining is cut off when Mercury detects some life signs. On the surface of the planet. Humanoid, Captain. Well whaddya know, Tuxedo Mask is dying, and suspended (somehow) in mid-air from some chains! In the middle of a snowfield! That’s something you don’t see everyday. Mercury’s genius IQ suspects treachery, and warns the others to stay back while she uses her tricorder. Moon ignores her and rushes ahead to aid her illusory boo. Mars, Jup, and Venus dash up behind her and take her down before she can get herself killed. Merc is too busy playing solitaire on her computer to care. No, wait, as Tuxedoid Mask’s eyes glow red with evil, Merc concludes that it isn’t really him. Damn she’s smart. Tuxoid shoots those crazy asparagus of death that killed poor Nephlyte, and the non-Moon Scouts barely manage to drag Serena clear. Tuxoid turns into the Blue Diamond Doom and Gloom Girl, and Serena is pissed. Pissed posing by the Peroxide Princess. The other Doom and Gloom Girls (Raspberry Red, Green Clover, Purple Horseshoe and…Orange Orange) now appear, then fade away and are replaced by an image of Andrew the Arcade Clerk. “Hey Jupiter,” one of them sez evilly, “somebody here’d like to chat with you.” Jup isn’t that stupid, is she? I mean, she just saw them pull this trick using Tuxedo Mask mere seconds ago, right? Well, she’s stunned, but doesn’t actually get to bolt forward stupidly before some asparagus shoots out of the ground to grab her little ankle booties. More asparagus shoots out of Andrevil (the Arcademon Clerk.) Moon and Mars prepare to attack. Raye: “Jupiter, we’ll get you out of this, so help me!” Um…you need to help her, not the other way around. Jupiter offers them thanks, but prefers to die, apparently. She does Jupiter Thunder while surrounded by Doom (and Gloom,) and…then American editing kicks in as we see reaction shots over battle sounds. Despite having hands even larger than those of Kurt Angle, Lita falls to the Nega-chicas. The D&G Girls (who are both eviler and cooler than D&D girls) say that Lita is, “with us, in the Negaverse!” That’s like DBZ’s “next dimension.” Here’s a vision of a cheery Lita waving goodbye and heading for a bright light. Sailor Moon demands they give Jupiter back. They fail to perform necromancy on request. If you had Jupiter in the pool (not like that, pervs) then you’re smarter than I am, as I figured she’d last until near the end. It’s a good thing the D&G girls didn’t know what Freddie looks like, or they might have been able to kill Lita two or three times over. Moon, I should note, is classified by geeky fans as one of the 2 Lunar Scouts, who are pretty much immune to anything. The 4 Inners, not so much. With that said, 1 down, and 3 to go.

Time for a meeting of the minds. 3 total, with Venus and Moon making up one collectively. Merc detects something, but believes it to be a trap. So…she’s going to go check it out alone as the others proceed to the volcano. I thought she was supposed to be a genius! Moon: “But Mercury, it’s not safe!” Mercury: “Nobody ever said this was going to be safe.” Not bad, but I’d have preferred if she’d said something like, “if they send one of yours to the Negaverse, you send one of theirs to the morgue.” Wowza…this really is clipped, as we cut directly from Merc talking to Moon to Merc some distance away and alone. Guess she had no farewells for Mina or Raye. Cause she is so totally gonna die. Merc sees Greg all chained up, and thinks, “Greg Spivey of the Psychic…Companions Network? What are you doin’ here!?” Haha, perfect. Greg and Chad get mentioned in the same episode. This has got to be the only time. Amy: “Greg? It can’t be! It’s got to be an illusion!” Man alive. She’s just way too smart for this team, by virtue of not being rock stupid.

Commercials. Hey…edited out. I was apparently actually watching this when I taped it. I taped it off Cartoon Network, so the odds are these would have been commercials for Dragonball Z. On UPN it would have been The Nanny. This show never sells, you know, actual products.

We’re back. Amy is smart enough to scan the thing, and can tell it’s a trap. A stalemate would occur, but the D&G’s decide to make lava shoot out of the ground and shit. Man…why didn’t any previous villains exhibit half this kind of offense? Amy manages to cool the lava with scrubbing bubbles, but now the D&G’s fly around above her in triangle formation and do some kinda Final Fantasy Delta Attack. DESTRUCTION RAINS FROM THE HEAVENS! You should have concentrated your attack on killing the tiny one, and left the skinny one and the fat one for later, Ames. Merc is the deadest Anderson since Gene. Amy: “I think my scouting days are over!” Some D&G girl: “You got that right, Techno Dweeb.” MEOW! To kill her is bad enough, but to call her a dweeb? Shame. She’s…well, sorta squeezed to death by a seaweed corset. The D&G girls decide to steal her computer for use in tracking the other Scouts. Speaking of the other scouts, they feel a distinct drop in the team’s overall IQ and pause to mourn their blue-haired pal. Merc’s voice-over also provides a hint. Merc: “I’ll be with Lita!” Guess she’s dropping by Kane’s for some dog-murder. Poor Double A. Everyone knows she was a fictional girl of average size and average ability, but she parlayed that, into what I would call a very…abbreviated life. Fortunately, anime is loaded with blue-haired girls to take her spot. But not just any spot. 2 down, 2 to go.

Moon drops to her knees with grief. “We shouldn’t have come! We’re not ready!” She makes a good point. Mars demands they push forward to avenge those prepubescent girls who were killed by vegetables so that they might live. Moon does “dramatic” crying, which is different from Serena’s “comical” crying. Venus sees a patch of Big Booger Red Evil forming beneath Moon, and GORES her to safety, taking the asparagus of death that can appear anywhere at anytime bullet herself. Geez…her death gets no lead-in at all. Venus was thoroughly screwed in the first season. I think her biggest scene was the one where she stared at everyone blankly for two minutes before saying “I don’t know!” Oh wait, she’s still kicking, as she takes down one of the D&Gs (Raspberry Red) with a point-blank Venus Crescent Fresh Beam Smash before biting the big one herself. She already has a better record than Val Venis, even in death. The world is short one Kochan. Her sister Ryo will have to take over. It’s a shame, as I was gonna make all these jokes about her reverse figure-4, which she learned from this young, small-nosed guy named Rialf Cir who wanders around screaming “Oow! Oow!” I guess he keeps stubbing his toes. 3 down, 1 to go.

Who’s that who’s about to die? R-E-I. Mars forcibly drags Moon away from the remaining D&Gs, then stops and stares into space all pensively. Mars: “Sailor Moon, I think you’re supposed to face Beryl alone.” Moon thinks she’s being ditched, when in fact, it is that Mars knows what’s coming. You don’t have to be Mercury to piece together that the last Inner Scout is about to die (though it helps to be Mars and not to be Jupiter or Venus.) Raye can read the writing on the wall. I don’t think she needs anything at all (arms around her, drugs to calm her, etc.) The remaining two D&G girls float around leering at the remaining two Scouts. Hmm…Dic dubbed something out, as I only saw one of the five D&Gs die and now we’re short two. Two of their deaths were edited out. I’m gonna give Amy the benefit of the doubt and say Lita only killed one. Moon wants to retreat with Mars so they can both train and come back later (perhaps after having careers and kids and maybe grandkids,) but Raye ain’t havin’ none of it. She decides if she’s gonna die, she may as well take two of them with her. She’d be balls-out if she were, you know, a boy. Things don’t start well, as a mountain of rocks swallows her up. Battle sounds occur. She doesn’t use the Mars Celestial Fire Surround until next season, but let’s pretend she uses it here and I call it the West Coast Pop. Mars: “Take that Nega-toad! Yeah, hot, isn’t it? Ha-ha!” The ha-ha was awesomely cocky. Few characters can laugh haughtily as they die. Anyway, as usual we can’t what the Hell is happening, but Mars proved herself twice as good as any of the others (and infinitely better than Moon) by taking out both remaining D&G girls. Unless Lita killed two. Wait, she had to have…Amy was only attacked by 3. Damn, Amy is a jobber, and the Raye/Lita debate at Gamefaqs can never end. Anyway, referee Springy New Guy declares Sailor Moon the winner of this Survivor Series match-up. Mars’ post-death missive: “See you around, Meatball Head!” Um…that implies that you fully expect her to fail and die, Raye. I could have sworn she mentioned Chad when she died, but I may have been thinking of the Japanese subtitled version. Raye doesn’t care about Chad as much as Rei cares about YuuichirouiucuooddoeunspellableJapname. Rei-chan is dating Chadmurglurgleoo. 1 is the loneliest number you can know, you know.

Beryl notes that Moon is alone, and sends a glowing red energy thingie to fetch her. Sailor Moon promises to set her gal pals free again, apparently by using her “Get Out of Death Free” card. Then she gets zapped to the Negaverse, finally, for the showdown with Beryl. Beryl and Moon skip the lengthy speeches likely featured in the sub. Shadows cover one of Beryl’s flanks, but part to reveal that Prince Darien is on his knees, kissing her hand! Oh man, Serena can’t be liking this much. I mean, kill all of her best friends (not to mention Raye,) fine. But to steal her boyfriend? Before Serena can react, Beryl orders Prince Darien to attack. He does his manly best to overcome a dozen episodes of shitty villainy by diving right at Moon with his sword drawn. She rolls clear and immediately counters with the moon scepter…whatever attack. It blows his hair around, but fails to de-evilfy him. Beryl taunts, as well she might. Darien lunges, then we cut to him standing there looking very much like someone who just completed a broadside swing while Moon looks very much like someone who just ate a broadside swing. Here’s the sun and some sunspots for some reason. Now Moon reaches for the wand…Beryl exercises her jaw some more, and…well sheeit! Moon uses the tiara attack on Darien! The voice-over tries to hide it (“I know she’s wrong about you Darien, you’re not evil…please let this work…”) but that attack is not known for healing. It’s known for cutting things into two smaller pieces. Moon looks surprised that she did it, even. Darien collapses, clutching much more bloodless wound than I remember from the sub, and then pulls himself to his feet. And…uh-oh, we’re getting those cheesecloth filter flashback scenes. Fuzzy pictures of Serena and Non-Evil Darien’s beautiful memories together (mostly of Serena sticking her tongue out at him) accompany light muzak. And now she produces that damned locket he left her way back in the Chicken Boxer episode to play the awful theme song. “All you have to do is touch it,” Moon pleads, managing to make it not sound all that dirty. Darien does, and is freed from Nega-control. He now nega-knows that the posi-cute posi-blonde is a better catch than the old nega-hag with the weird nega-shoulders that spout nega-bones. A red rose falls out of his cape. How significant. Darien thanks her for breaking the creepy mind control thingie. He fell just a little short of breaking Dragoon Kain’s “evil nega-control heel/face turns” record. Now Moon and her boo can face Zeromus together. Why, I must ask, all the FF jokes? Do I really think that’s going to broaden the appeal of something this intrinsically…not…broadly appealing? Anyway, Beryl gets what is easily her best line of the whole series in, “That’s so sweet I’m getting cavaties.” She’s not known for good lines. “This sailor brat’s not going to insult me in my own place!” Especially now that all of her roommates died before making rent. She throws a big ol’ black crystal of death, and we head for break. Go ahead and guess how Moon avoids getting killed. Go on, guess! I’ll give you a hint: there’s only one last person she likes who hasn’t died…

No, not herself. Come on.

Commercials. Edited out again, but that awful Cartoons, Cartoons show probably got some dap. More dap than Chad got. Haha, I taped this back when Moltar hosted Toonami. That ruled.

One last segment and it’s over, bear with me. This one is mostly unrebeakable music anyway. So, Darien throws a rose at the stone and tackles Moon. The rose splits the stone and sticks itself in Beryl’s cleavage, devastating her. She disappears. Darien, who is clearly supposed to be riddled with chunks of murderous nega-crystals of death, kinda lays there. Serena looks weepy. Darien: “I’ll find a way back to you.” Moon: “You can call me meatball head!” He laughs. And…they cut away as though he were fine. Ugh. I’m starting to see why these purists go off on all-caps rants at Dic. Beryl goes crawling to the Negaforce (a kinda fiery evil face thingie.) It bitches her out briefly, but then decides to power her up. I think in the original version it merged with her, but since Dic never explained what the Negaforce actually is, I can’t bring myself to care. A huge Beryl, like, the size of a building, is back to chilling in the icy waste. Moon approaches with a look of grim determination. A dialogue occurs between the two, with whoever is off-camera talking (and occasionally Moon talks in close-up when her lips clearly aren’t moving at all.) They’re ventriloquisting each other! Beryl shoots a big ol’ blast of nega-whatever, but when the nega-smoke clears, Serena (in her Princess Serena duds) is standing on a big pillar of ice that brings her up to Beryl’s height! OMG! We cut back, very briefly, to Tokyo, where the lights are going out. Serena’s fake not-from-the-Moon family worries about her. Luna gets all sniffly as Artemis tries to be manly and tough while trapped in a lovely little fluffy wuffy kitty body. We’re back to the actual showdown now. Serena: “I’m not afraid anymore!” Beryl: “You should be!” A DBZesque beam battle starts, with Beryl shooting black stuff and Moon using the wand to counter with friendship and love and femyness. Awful awful bubblegum music plays in the background. Any more saccharine and mice would be getting brain tumors. Each Scout appears to offer their support (or, in Raye’s case, to make a threat.) I’m waiting for Tellah and Edgar to stop by. Then the Scouts’ ghosts latch onto her wand to leech off her heat. The Kamehameha forces the Garlic Gun back! Queen Beryl…just kinda stands there screaming “No!” Dodge, you idiot! She doesn’t listen to me, and dies. Desperately short of time, the show ends with Luna and Artemis narrating a montage of random shots that indicate the dead Scouts were magically reborn with no memory of anything that happened (not just today, but ever, so Raye finally has an excuse to forget she’s in love with Chad since she can’t even remember Grandpa.) Then things get even more confusing as Serena (“a hospital volunteer”) visits Darien in the hospital. He says her hair looks like meatballs. Ahchacha. And thus ends one of the most successful and beloved seasons in the history of anime. And the Japanese laugh at US.

Sailor Sez: “Today started out bad for the Sailor Scouts…” Yeah, kinda. Holy crap Dic sucks…they’re not only using a scene they omitted from the episode as part of the message at the end…but they’ve matched up the voices wrong! The ghosts of the dead Scouts inspire Serena to fight on. Jupiter uses Mars’ voice to tell us to be true to ourselves, Mercury uses Jupiter’s voice to tell us to be strong, Venus uses Mercury’s voice to tell us to do well in school, and Mars uses Venus’ voice to tell us to think positive. All of those are important lessons to be gleaned from this episode. Especially the one about doing well in school.

Thoughts and reflections: Well, I’ve had better ideas. Writing this took a billion years and it's somehow four times the length of the other Moonbeaks. Kudos to anyone who got through it all. I like this series, but this is as atypical of the goofy plot-stalling episodes I like about Pastry Monsters and Chicken Boxers as you’re gonna get. The last episode of Sailor Moon Classic is notoriously referred to as the worst American-dubbed piece of anime ever. It’s usually referred to this who didn’t know Sandy Frank Productions added characters to their Gatchaman dub “Battle of the Planets,” but this is still pretty stinky. Two episodes were spliced into one here, because the action scenes from both were more than Dic was willing to show. This isn’t to say they were all that hot, just that Dic didn’t like them. The only D&G we see die is the one Venus got, but Jup and Mars nuked two apiece. And Mercury…in the original she distracts the D&G’s, and then sacrifices herself in an attack that disables the illusion power that was giving the other Scouts so many problems. Here…she wanders off, dies, and then the D&Gs use her computer to track the others. So…Mercury’s sacrifice actually hurts the Scouts. Gee…why not have Steve Austin pour yellow water on her while you’re at it? The scene from Sailor Says where the Scouts root Moon on from the afterlife never worked for me anyway (as the idea of her finally standing up for herself by herself is kind of important,) so that one can go. But to bring it back for the “Knowing is half the battle” segment reeks of laziness. The Darien/Moon battle was ok but even more watered-down…Evil Endymion actually tries to strangle Moon to death in the original, and he bleeds aplenty when she has to tearfully dice him up. It was a little disturbing, actually. But not funny. None of this was funny. The big ending, in which everything is brought back to normal with no explanation other than “love and friendship conquers all” is widely known (to me) as “The Sailor Moon Ending,” because pretty much every season ends with Moon in a gauzy dress shooting pink stuff at a baddie as bubblegum pop plays. The unique twist here (odd that the unique twist comes at the debut of the idea) is that the Scouts don’t remember each other afterwards. It could have led to some neat interactions as they met each other anew. Instead, it just ends in the second episode of Season 2. You don’t have to read about that. I promise.

Lines of the Episode:
Raye: “Let us help or I’ll never speak to you again!” Um Raye…you’re dead.
Serena: ”Hey Raye, major question. You didn’t forget to kiss Chad goodbye, did ya? I like it cause Raye responds with growling sounds.
Mars: “Take that Nega-toad! Yeah, hot, isn’t it? Ha-ha!” Famous last words.