Moonlight Shines Eternal (The Sailor Moon Post: Part 5)

Previously- Part One: The Crybaby Who Saved The World | Part Two: The Crybaby Heals The Future | Part Three: The Crybaby's Idealism Vs. The Pair's Practicality | Part Four: The Crybaby's Dreams And The Dark Queen's Nightmares

Part Five: The Crybaby's Uncorruptible Eternal True Self

"Things end. That's all. Everything ends, and it's always sad. But everything begins again too, and that's... always happy."

I don't believe it. After months of watching this show, months of thinking about it, and months of trying (and stalling) to put those thoughts into words... we're finally at the end. Sailor Moon Sailor Stars. Once we get these couple of thousand words out there into the air, that's it. I'm finished. Well, almost finished. There's a little surprise that will be lurking at the very end, but we've got a whole show to talk about here. One I've been all but chomping at the bit to talk about. Let's get it all out there, clear as day, like a real thesis statement sort of thing. Sailor Stars is not my favorite season of the show. What it manages to be is both a greatest hits compilation of many elements that made the previous four seasons resonate with me in some way, as well as managing to introduce some concepts with inspirational weight that still remain with me. It all sounds like a recipe for great success, but it just doesn't come together in the end. It's so tantalizingly close to doing it, but at the last second they make a blunder. No, I take that back. A blunder is something akin to stubbing your toe. This is a creative writing decision that utterly betrays the show at the eleventh hour and very nearly murders it before it can ride off into the sunset. In the Sailor Moon R post I made a big show out of Usagi and Mamoru's manufactured relationship "drama" and how goddamn toxic it was. I called it the first of two betrayals the show would pull on me. Sailor Stars has the second. We will get to it, and we do have a way of reading it that still crackles, but by God am I going to be angrily scrawling about that one. I just want to put that out there before I begin. This season was still really engaging and had some amazing concepts to think about, and I'll be singing its praises for the next... oh, 2000 words? Rough estimate? We'll take a lot of sugar with our bitter pill. For now, it's time to begin Sailor Stars.

Oops, must've thrown on Dragon Ball Z by mistake--no? Okay...

Oh, I'm sorry, I meant it's time to begin the rapid onset plot advancement mini-arc. Sailor Stars has a paradoxical opening, and I'm not just talking about the time travel shit that'll come up in a second. This both is and isn't the beginning to Sailor Stars. I alluded to this last time, but the short version is that Sailor Moon SuperS deviated a lot from the equivalent arc of the manga, to the point where my watch guide called it "filler". Come Sailor Stars, they could have continued on with an original story arc, but they instead (to the best of my knowledge) adapted the manga again... except the Dream arc of the manga had development for the Outer Senshi. The Outer Senshi, for those of you keeping score at home, never actually showed up in SuperS. In addition, I guess someone thought that Queen Nehelenia deserved a better sendoff than just having her plans foiled and fucking off back into her mirror world. So what do we get? A six episode mini-arc in which a mysterious face in the sky releases Queen Nehelenia from the mirror world and urges her to get revenge on Usagi and friends. While all of this is building up, the Outer Senshi are taking care of little baby Hotaru who, all of a sudden thanks to Nehelenia's attack, begins rapidly growing up. Mamoru gets a piece of Nehelenia's shattered mirror in his eye and slowly becomes mind controlled by her, as do lots of other people, and it's up to the Sailor Senshi to go into Nehelenia's world and stop her once and for all. I'm painting things in the broadest strokes because this really is just six episodes of moving the pieces across the board to match up for when Sailor Stars actually begins. Yes, the end of Sailor Stars ties into this given the mysterious face which let Nehelenia out, but it's not something I want to analyze frame by frame or anything. Rather, I'll just give you some bullet points on what stood out in this mini-arc and then we'll get to the good stuff, so to speak.


-At a certain point, everyone gets separated in Nehelenia's world and we get like an episode and a half of two Senshi each having to fight together. The pairings are really neat, the standouts for me being Uranus/Mercury and Neptune/Mars. It's really cool to see these two groups of different ideologies and strengths having to work together.


-The bit where Sailor Moon gets brainwashed by a beautiful dream and just sort of sits in a field, blissful and oblivious until Jupiter's rose earrings remind her of Tuxedo Mask and break her out of the spell. This is interesting because like, the third episode of the show is all about people falling into comas and Usagi longs to be able to just sleep in a beautiful dream forever. The fact that now she wants to break out for Mamoru's sake is real character development!


-Chibiusa. Oh god. This is actually the end of her time on the show, as well as Mamoru's. We'll get into all of that soon, but I want to point out the threat to Chibiusa here. I mentioned it in R when I was screaming into the void, and now here's the conflict I was alluding to. Nehelenia has Mamoru mind controlled and the clock is ticking before he'll be her slave forever, and this manifests in Chibiusa actually fading out of existence, Back To The Future-style, due to the fact that if Mamoru is lost she'll never be born. Any attempt to reconcile this with what the hell King Endymion did boggles the mind and reduces one to Cinema Sins-esque nitpicking. Look, not even Doctor Who can get consistent time travel rules right. The Endymion breakup gambit has to work on a predestination paradox case because Chibiusa isn't blinking throughout the series any time either Mamoru or Usagi is in danger, whereas this Nehelenia threat is absolutely something that should not be happening and time is being rewritten. More on why that might be later, but at the time watching I just threw up my hands and went "oh so NONE of the villains threatened her existence before, but this one mirror girl all of a sudden will rewrite time? What the fuck?". Again. There's a reason for this. This was not supposed to happen. I'll get to play with that soon, which leads us to our last point...


-The tone. Christ, this is all a bit dismal and grim, isn't it? Even when we have those cool pairings of the different Senshi, they're all still getting defeated and trapped in mirrors. Mamoru's going to lose his mind forever, Chibiusa and her utopia will never exist... we haven't had something this hopeless and full of despair since the first season when everyone died to the DD Girls! This whole thing is just misery and spite and hate, and that's the point. Nehelenia wants Usagi to suffer. It's maliciousness we've not quite seen on this show before, but despite all that... Usagi still pities her. There's no hate. There's only empathy and sorrow. It's enough to free everyone. It's enough to break her hold over Mamoru. It's enough to give her a power boost and, finally, do what couldn't be done at the end of SuperS. Queen Nehelenia, the lonely girl on the other side of the mirror, is healed. HEY. HEY Y'ALL. THIS GRIM TONE AND UTOPIAN IDEALISM WILL BE KEY TO THE FINALE OF THE SHOW. IT MIRRORS ITSELF. Yes. Now then... on with Sailor Stars when it isn't wrapping up stuff and moving chess pieces along. Wave bye bye to Chibiusa and Mamoru, because everything's about to change again.

Goals. (Also they have a bitchin' theme tune.)

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A new set of villains appears on Earth, seeking a super-powerful version of a magic item that exists within select individuals, and can be pulled out of them by their henchperson's magic. Said henchperson, more often than not, is disappointed to find that the magic item is not the special one they need to fulfill their evil goals, leaving it be as a monster themed around that target's special interests appears to attack the Sailor Senshi. A mysterious group of Sailor Senshi with ideologies opposed to Sailor Moon and her group often appears, clashing with "our" Sailor Senshi and never working together due to their supposed differences in goals. Did I just summarize Sailor Moon S or Sailor Stars? Yeah, when I said this was a greatest hits compilation, I meant it. The basic structure here cribs from S, but there are loads of little things. A new mystery boy who has run-ins with Usagi (since Mamoru is studying abroad in America all season), calls her Dumpling Head, and has a secret identity? Straight out of the first season. A strange child who moves into Usagi's house by hypnotizing her family? That's R. I've already gone through S, and everything above was all the stuff that called back to SuperS. The entire past of this show, five years in, is turned into a strange brew of inspiration material.


I may be making the show sound unoriginal, but it's not. Really, it has some incredible new ideas. Chief among them are the new mysterious Sailor Senshi, the trio of the Sailor Starlights. On the surface, yes, they appear ready and willing to kill people for the greater good of whatever they're hoping to accomplish just like Uranus and Neptune were, but there's another dimension to it all. One that, paired with another expansion of the lore, opens Sailor Stars up in its final moments to encapsulate an infinite singularity of creativity and inspiration. The Sailor Starlights, you see, transcend gender. Sailor Star Fighter, Maker, and Healer are all women... but in their civilian forms they're all boys. Specifically a hot new idol group called Three Lights, the lead singer of which is that "new" Mamoru I mentioned. Oh my god. After all that fuss I made about Fish-Eye, all the concessions of problematic nature I needed to make... all I needed to do was wait a season and I'd get three Sailor Senshi who transcend gender and fight against evil? I'm honestly spoiled. Apparently Naoko Takeuchi wasn't too happy with this revelation; it seems she'd prefer that Sailor Senshi status be exclusive to girls. I find that quite reductive, to put it mildly. It's more interesting this way, I feel, especially when you pair it with Sailor Stars' other new expansion of lore...


It would have been enough if Sailor Stars had stopped then and there with its inspiring and interesting trio of new Sailor Senshi, but it actually goes one further. Sailor Stars, knowing that it's the finale of Sailor Moon as a 90's television thing, takes steps to expand its mythos and lore. For all our adventures, we haven't really ventured outside of the solar system that much. The Death Busters and Pharaoh 90 came from Tau Ceti or some nonsense like that, but otherwise it's all been very focused on our sun and its nine planets (and Earth's moon). Sailor Stars makes it 100% canon that other planets in other galaxies and solar systems have their own Sailor Senshi, with their own powers and goals and whatnot. That's what I was talking about earlier. You pair that fact with the entire concept of the Sailor Starlights transcending gender, and anyone from anywhere, in any corner of the universe, could be a Sailor Senshi. This is one of the biggest reasons why Sailor Stars sparkles so well with me. There's an infinity of possibilities now. Think of it! Anyone, from anywhere, could be a Sailor Senshi! For someone like me, someone who came this close to writing Sailor Moon fanfiction, this is nothing less than the show telling you that it can be anything you want it to be, and explicitly making that process so much more possible for you. Do you want to write the story  of Sailor Fire-n-Ice's battle on the planet Frostflame? You can! Wild crossover fanfiction where Sailor Shovel Knight battles the forces of evil? Absolutely! All of these interpretations were valid before, but with the revelation that Sailor Senshi exist across the universe in this world, it all becomes that much more tangible. With its last breaths of relevance, Sailor Stars has opened Sailor Moon up into infinity. How fitting, then, that Sailor Moon's newest form is called Eternal Sailor Moon. That's exactly what the show does here with this reveal; it makes itself eternal by creating an infinity of Sailor Senshi. This is brilliant. It should be the high point of the series, and a fitting end point... but there's someone else. Opening up this infinity allowed for something else to sneak in. Something with more power than anything we've seen up to this point. Lurking in the swirling red shadows of nebula is our villain of the season, Sailor Galaxia. Oh yes. That infinity means that there are both good Sailor Senshi and bad ones. Galaxia's might will be felt, trust me... but let's avoid her gaze for now. Let's move on.

Not until six episodes from the end, when the writers have
put it off for as long as possible, anyway...

Back to the Sailor Starlights. Back to relative safety. What's striking about them is their civilian form of the Three Lights group. Obviously in a show with a bunch of female protagonists, having a group of pop idol boys is an appealing thing. What really interests me is why they do what they do. The Sailor Starlights are, like Uranus and Neptune before them, laser focused on a singular goal and want Sailor Moon and pals to stay the hell out of their way while they do it. Their actual goal is finding the lost princess of their planet, which was destroyed ages ago. Oh hey, it's basically the arc of the first season! Greatest hits. What's really neat is that Three Lights and their songs are dedicated to this as well. Being pop idol space aliens, they have the interesting power of expressing some sort of telepathic thought-sharing with people through their music, which is how they hope to find their princess through the power of song. The literal power of Inspiration flowing through their music. Usagi hears it when she listens in on a Three Lights concert and gets their backstory explained to her via a vision. In addition to that, a friend of mine pointed me in the direction of an episode I otherwise would have skipped. See, this one's really sweet and has a little girl who's in the hospital about to undergo risky surgery. She's a huge Three Lights fan and she draws pictures of the woman that Three Lights keeps singing about. She's getting the message, and a chance meeting with one of the members helps give her the hope she needs. If you'll recall Part Two, this whole "risky surgery" thing is quite a lot like what was happening to me right before I started watching Sailor Moon R. To see the show itself bring it full circle really moved me, and I can't thank my friend enough for suggesting I view this one.


Positivity's nice, but we have a little problem when it comes to the Sailor Starlights. It's not them. Well, not exactly. In the interests of stopping anything radical like "eradicating potential conflict", we have Uranus and Neptune showing up periodically to be really mad at the Sailor Starlights... because they're from outside the solar system? Making them bad? What? What in the fuck? At the end of S I made a big show over Uranus and Neptune's grim determination being actually beaten out by Sailor Moon's utopian idealism, such that they recognized both her and it as the true path to the future. Either I massively misread that as character growth for them, or someone didn't get the goddamn memo, because they're all but right back to where they were. Sure, now they're all like "our mission is to protect you from outside intruders", but it's the same goddamn thing. Just like the show was absolutely on the side of utopian idealism in S, so it is that we don't believe for one second that the Sailor Starlights are actual baddies. They're a little rude and refuse to be team players with the Inner Senshi (and even here when they do Uranus and Neptune barge in to literally ensure that doesn't happen to keep the conflict going for longer), but other than that there's not much reason to distrust them. I'm loathe to suggest writing changes, but I'll dip my toe in. If you want to pull this off? Make the Starlights act more like Uranus and Neptune in S. Then you could show how much Usagi's idealism actually changed those two, and made them grow, by having their new selves contrast against a new group of assholes who are acting like they once did! As it stands, it feels like it's just there to keep anything shocking like "conflict resolution" from happening. We're not done with Uranus and Neptune, though. We'll be back, and it will hurt.

Sailor Galaxia, gaining the almighty power of script editing.

Before we get to the big gun baddies, we should square away one little callback I mentioned just above; the clear callback to Chibiusa. A very small redheaded child named Chibi-Chibi who literally only says "chibi" comes down to Earth about halfway into the show and then lives with Usagi. It's a clear redo of the Chibiusa stuff, only done even weirder. At this point I didn't know what in the hell Sailor Stars was trying to do, but Chibi-Chibi clearly has some power lurking within her; enough to give Sailor Moon another power upgrade and a fancy new attack. We'll... touch back on her. For now, it can't be avoided. We have to talk about Sailor Galaxia and her group. We have spoken of the infinity of Sailor Senshi that opened up with Sailor Stars. Sailor Galaxia is powerful enough to twist this to her advantage; her entire squad of officers is made up of corrupted Sailor Senshi, all of them following a name theme of Sailor (metal) (animal). I don't have too much to say about them all, as they're fairly standard villains by Sailor Moon standards. They try and fail over and over, some of them try to backstab another one, there's some who have great respect for others. It's typical stuff. What is Sailor Galaxia after, though? I only alluded to them, but the magic items this time are called Star Seeds. Galaxia wants an utter shitload of "True Star Seeds" to rule over the galaxy. Make no mistake. Galaxia is no pushover villain. Sailor Galaxia is, actually and canonically, the most powerful Sailor Senshi to ever exist. This means a lot of things. Sure, it means that she's super strong and can easily destroy anyone in a battle of sheer force... but her power goes beyond that.


I'm about to get really gonzo, but Sailor Galaxia has extra-narrative powers. She is an absolute force of nature that can impose her will upon the very structure and tone of the story that Sailor Moon, as a television show, is trying to tell. Don't believe me? She's already done it. Remember Queen Nehelenia's mini-arc? How grim and dire it got near the end when it seemed all hope was lost? How Chibiusa was fading away, despite no other enemy in the show being able to threaten the future like that? That was Sailor Galaxia. She let Nehelenia out, to further her goals... and, extra-narratively, to test her abilities. She flexed her power towards the show in those six episodes, and it bent to her will. Oh, she'll play along with the narrative rules for so long. It's entertaining to her. She'll let everything play out, and then in the endgame, she appears. The final six episodes of Sailor Stars; nay, Sailor Moon as a television show, are nothing less than a battle of narrative collapse. In the blue corner, Sailor Moon. The utopian idealist magical girl show we've been writing about for 20,000 words. Usagi Tsukino, full of empathy and compassion in her heart. In the red corner, Sailor Galaxia: The Series. A show that will twist and bend this other magical girl show to its will, make it grim and gritty, and create precious conflict and despair before finally ending it all. The end of Sailor Moon cannot be averted. It is 120 minutes away. The battle becomes far more than just "will Sailor Moon defeat Sailor Galaxia?". Thanks to this raging fight outside the very narrative, the ethos of the conflict becomes "Which show will defeat the other in the end?". Will utopian idealism shine through, or will the grimdark despair overwhelm us all in what was supposed to be a happy ending? Those are the stakes. Here and now, outside of time and space, the final fight begins.


Well, right away Sailor Galaxia makes her claims known. Her final corrupted Sailor Senshi, Sailor Tin Nyanko, had been half-healed by Sailor Moon's new power. Redemption was possible for this here little kitty in Sailor Moon. In the Sailor Galaxia show, not a chance. Tin Nyanko is vaporized. So, too, is Princess Fireball, the princess whom the Starlights were trying to find all this time with their pop songs. They'd found her halfway through the show and that was lovely... but oops. Different show now. Goodbye, Princess. Tokyo; hell, the world is under assault from Galaxia's sheer energy... and where has the portal to her base been this entire time? A TV studio called Galaxy TV. The show is practically HANDING me this narrative! Of course Galaxia can rewrite this long-running TV show to suit her grimdark needs! She runs a goddamned TV studio! If you thought the Queen Nehelenia arc needled things into dark despair territory, then you've not seen anything yet. Our Inner Senshi are ready to fight and their final battle is all set. One last go-round for the girls we've grown to know and love over 190+ episodes. I'm sure you all have your favorites. You know mine's Venus. Maybe you're a Mars booster. Perhaps Jupiter is your fave? Regardless, you're ready to see them take their last stand and have one final moment in the spotlight.


Sailor Galaxia sees this narrative building up, and her show cuts it down. All four Inner Senshi, minus Sailor Moon, are shitblasted and vanish as their True Star Seeds are taken in a long and drawn-out sequence of misery. Sailor Moon, I don't feel so good. Christ almighty. Oh, but it gets worse. Remember how Mamoru was studying abroad? Well, Usagi hasn't heard from him at all since he left and she's been real worried about it. I wonder where he is? Oh. Oh no. He's been dead the entire time, his True Star Seed harvested. Sailor Galaxia has gone back to rewrite the show to put Sailor Moon through the wringer even more. All of this is terrible, of course. Galaxia's hold over the narrative is strong... but Galaxia also has no mercy within her. While we're still reeling from those series of punches, Galaxia delivers her strongest attack yet on the show... and it lands. What happens next is the single worst betrayal the show has ever pulled, and it is nearly strong enough to poison the well entirely and allow Galaxia to win, there and then. The Inner Senshi confront Galaxia and are handily beaten, but not harvested. Not yet. Galaxia is in need of new powerful Senshi to corrupt, after all, and offers the Inner Senshi a choice. Join her as her vanguards, or have their Seeds taken and die. Pluto refuses, as does Saturn. Nobody touched by Sailor Moon's utopian idealism would be so stupid as to sell it all out just for--

[INTERNAL SCREAMING]

Oh my fucking god. There it is. In a ghoulish display, Sailor Uranus and Neptune join Sailor Galaxia's side, becoming EEEEVIL. Now, I'll tell you how this goes outright; it was all a ploy so they could use the power of Galaxia's bracelets to betray her and harvest her Star Seed in order to finally defeat her, but this plan doesn't work because Galaxia has no Star Seed and she just kills them then and there. That in itself had a slim chance of playing out well, and I am talking slim here... but it gets worse. I'm not clear on what happens when Uranus and Neptune take on Galaxia's bracelets; either her power is actually strong enough to overwhelm and brainwash them to her side, and they break out after a while to enact their betrayal plan... or, worse, they play along as grimdark antagonists for an episode to lull Galaxia into a false sense of security until they can backstab her. I am at a loss for words, and that's astounding considering how I've been mulling over this bullshit in my head for three months. To pull this grimdark edgy "I'M BAD NOW" bullshit with any of the Senshi we've grown to know and love would be damaging. To do it to Uranus and Neptune? The pair who started off as ideological antagonists, only to seem to learn and grow from Usagi's idealism? To piss all of that away and very nearly ruin them as characters-- no, very nearly ruin the entire climax of the goddamned show? It's sickening. For all of our troubles, all of the complete lack of any sort of understanding of what made these characters beloved, what do we get from this shocking twist? 25 minutes. 25 minutes of precious precious grimdark conflict. It's not like it matters in the end; Uranus and Neptune fail, and they're killed anyway. For the sake of one episode of this putrefacted bullshit, the show fundamentally wounds Uranus and Neptune. Not in a "they literally died" sense, but extra-narratively. They've been wounded. I had a friend warn me about Uranus and Neptune's heel turn when I was going through Sailor Stars, and I assumed they meant the pair not being friendly with the Starlights. I WISH THAT'S WHAT THEY MEANT! THAT I could have dealt with? This? This is awful. Right at the very end, the Sailor Galaxia show deals a mortal wound to Sailor Moon. How can utopian idealism possibly come back from this? You've taken the two people most touched by it and turned them into edgy antiheroes because you couldn't squeeze out an extra 25 minutes without ruining them! What the fuck? What possible response could utopian idealism have to such a fatal blow?

The crybaby who saved the soul of Sailor Galaxia.

Usagi, her arms wide. The Sailor Galaxia show would have you forget a fundamental truth. Sailor Galaxia was once a proud and noble warrior, the ultimate bastion of good in the universe. She was strong enough to fight off the literal embodiment of evil in the universe, Chaos... but not strong enough to beat it. Chaos's corruption was too strong for even her, and Galaxia sent her True Star Seed out into the cosmos, in the hope that someday it would be used to stop Chaos. Chibi-Chibi is that Star Seed, and a Light of Hope that can be used to destroy Chaos once and for all. Wielding the holy blade against the rampaging Chaos-Galaxia, Sailor Moon holds her ground and-- Wait. No. This isn't right. This isn't the Sailor Moon, the Usagi, that we know. She's not the type of person to plunge a blade into the heart of evil to destroy it once and for all. We learned after Queen Beryl and Death Phantom. We learned that there's another way. Like Mistress Nine and Queen Nehelenia before them, Sailor Moon's utopian idealism gives her true sight. Face to face with the literal, actual personification of all evil in the universe... Sailor Moon looks right past it and sees a fellow Sailor Senshi in need of redemption. After all the murder, all the character assassination, all the knife-turning of showing Sailor Moon a beautiful dream where everyone is alive and well... Sailor Moon's utopian idealism isn't extinguished one little bit. She heals Galaxia, and Chaos is banished once and for all. Everyone is alive and well, and the show can end. The narrative collapse was averted. Our cost, of course, was Uranus and Neptune. That the show managed to recover from this massive betrayal and not fall apart on me is nothing short of a miracle. So, as Moonlight Densetsu kicks in, we fade out. It's 1997 and we get to see our friend one last time. You know her now, right? Usagi Tsukino. 16 years old. A klutz, a crybaby, a gourmand, and a poor student with failing grades. She's also Sailor Moon, a warrior of love and justice who defeated the embodiment of despair. Not with a holy sword, not with a sacrifice. She did it with nothing but empathy and compassion. Sailor Moon fades from our screens, but one thing is for certain; they were right with the name of her newest form. Sailor Moon, in this moment in time... is Eternal.

That's that. That was Sailor Stars, the final season of Sailor Moon. I can't hate it. I can hate the absolute bullshit they did to Uranus and Neptune, and lament for what could have been... but I can't hate this season. Not when it gave us the Sailor Starlights. Not when it opened the universe up to other Sailor Senshi beyond our solar system. Sailor Stars, for all its faults, has so much more going on with it beyond the surface level stuff. With its dying breaths, it makes itself absolutely eternal. Really, it was already there with all the merchandise and whatnot. Sailor Moon has stood the test of time, and it's utterly iconic. Anyone, anywhere, can be a Sailor Senshi. Despite all this, I lament what could have been. Things could have been stronger, especially where Uranus and Neptune are concerned. They were the most fascinating new characters of S, and seeing them grow and change would have been superb. Instead, we get... well, the shit I've been complaining about for hundreds of words. I managed to make something interesting out of the situation with it all being an extra-narrative battle, but it has to be said: Someone, be it Naoko Takeuchi or one of the anime staffers, betrayed me. Someone chose to do this to Uranus and Neptune, and fly in the face of utopian idealism for the sake of 25 extra minutes of twisting the knife. It's indefensible. It really is a small miracle that I didn't sour on the entire thing, but somehow they pulled it off. Maybe you can see this as a "darkest before the dawn" situation, but my Sailor Moon isn't about that kind of shit. I don't think it was needed. Maybe your Sailor Moon, or the writer's Sailor Moon was... but not mine. Not the Sailor Moon I've been writing about for all this time. It is time to say goodbye to my Sailor Moon, though. We've reached the end. There's one more thing to do, one more bit of wrapup and reveal... but that's a wrap on actually talking about the show. It was beautiful. It was messy. Most of all, it was inspirational. There's not much left to say beyond this. Usagi Tsukino... Thank you, and goodbye.



Epilogue: The Second Transformation

The end.

It's September 14th, 2018. There are many things happening in the world, and many hit songs on the radio. We're unconcerned with world history right now. This is personal history. Here and now, at this moment in time, I have just finished my long summer odyssey of writing about Sailor Moon. My debt to the show has been repaid; for all the words of fiction I didn't spill in 2003, I spilled a shitload of critical analysis words in 2018. But, then, what has this journey been about? I knew, when I wanted to analyze this show, what needed to be said here at the end. The degree to which it will be said, I'm walking back on a bit. In a way, I'm stalling right now. It's something that needs to be said right. The more observant of you who have followed these posts as they've been released may know what's coming here. There's a secret I didn't tell you, back when this began. The prologue, in 2003, was the first transformation. The inciting incident that got me to watch this show again was the beginning of the second. What was it? Well, let's put it bluntly and put it out there. Questions of gender expression. Explorations and self-reflections that were required in order to make sense of things... and what was the outlet I chose? A magical girl show that I remembered from 15 years prior, a show I once got chided for watching. My own private little rebellion, an experiment in feminine energy. I'd love to tell you that this second transformation is complete, and that I'm a whole new me. That would be lying. I still have a lot of ways to go, and a lot of things to figure out. That's the whole point of gender exploration, I guess. I had and still have so many lovely friends who have reached out to help me or give me advice, and I adore them all. They've been here for me through all of this, and so too has this show which I've spent so many words on. The second transformation encompasses all of that, and it will continue for quite some time. Look what we've learned, though! Even a crybaby klutz can be a heroine. She can heal those in need of help with her empathy. She can let her utopian idealism light up the darkest of hours. She can dream a beautiful dream... and, most importantly, she can show you that anyone and everyone can be like her. That's the power of Sailor Moon's utopian idealism. This show never ended. It just went out into the world. It lit a fire within me, a light which will never fade. I'm sure you all have things like that in your lives. Pieces of media which have lit your world up. Dear friends who love and support you at every turn. I hope you all have, and continue to have, such wonderful things in your lives. As for me... I'll still be here, figuring shit out. I can do it all thanks to that one amazing person. Who? You know her.


She is the one named Sailor Moon.


June 7th - September 14th, 2018