At the outset, Usagi
runs the business alone but over the first 30 episodes she finds the other
scouts. Ami is the first to be discovered, via a memorable incident
involving a disk and an arcade ... Rei soon follows, as does Makoto. Minako
finally shows up about 10 episodes before the end of the season having
left England to live in Tokyo. They are given their attack techniques and
general purpose in life by Luna, the worryingly organised cat who looks
after Usagi. Basically, they're told whenever a monster jumps out and starts
sucking the life out of a nearby friend, show it the dimensional door.
In order to do this, they'll need the help of a certain Silver Crystal,
a couple of plot-lines and a twenty minute script every day.They soon get
the hang of it and literally pulverise the unfortunate first demons sent
down to fight them by Beryl.The general structure of these surreal battles
is that the Sailors happen to stumble upon whoever it is causing trouble
and use their magic to transform into the Scouts, or 'Sailor Senshi', as
they are often referred to by those fans who think they are professors
of Japanese.
Once they have made their presence known, they use their various techniques
to distract the offending party until Sailor Moon remembers to use her
Moon Staff and send them back to wherever they came from.While the intrepid
girls are fighting against the efforts of Konsite, Zoisite,
Nephrite and Jadeite, the enemies are in turn fighting and plotting against
each other in their quest to thieve the silver crystal and achieve global
domination. They launch offensives in the form of Exorcist-style possessions
(no, its not that serious), evil-inducing make-up and food and, obviously,
random attacks on the scouts and other people. The runts always get rumbled
in the end, though and the scouts are rarely faced with much of a challenge
throughout this season, except perhaps the showdown in the last couple
of episodes.When Konsite and Zoisite make off with Sailor Moon's favourite
piece of jewellery in one of the concluding episodes, there is a penultimate
punch-up in the Tokyo Tower and Zoisite tries to kill Tuxedo (Mamoru) so
that Beryl can have him for herself . He appears to succeed and Sailor
Moon starts bawling, when the strangely obedient crystals return to her
and transforms her into Princess Serenity, allowing her to save the day
and look quite funky. One of the crystal shards flies into her estranged
boyfriend who is captured and slung into a cage at the enemy's HQ. The
scouts, meanwhile, soon discover that this HQ is under the North Pole. They
are soon caught by the comically smug Konsite, who sends them in to the
oblivion of time, but with little success. Instead of landing in the stone
age, the scouts find themselves on the moon and have the past of their
quest revealed to them. They remember how Usagi was a Princess at one point
when Beryl launched an Akira-style wave of destruction on their palace
and surroundings, amongst other fond childhood memories.After they have
been sent back to fight Beryl by Usagi's mother, they all pile into the
HQ for a royal rumble. This is where the 'glitch' comes in. Of course,
they win but there is one little problem....'Oh my God! They killed Ami,
Rei, Mako and Minako!' Yes, I'm afraid 'they' did just that. As you'd expect,
the episode is directed with the intention of stirring some emotion, as
all of the scouts appear in spirit to aid Usagi in her battle agianst a
more powerful Queen Beryl, by combining there powers with Usagi they finally
overcome the evil queen. All the scouts were revived and there memories
of being sailor scouts and of each other were removed along with Mamoru's
and they go on living a normal life. |