Episode 10: Moon a.k.a taking away all the guesswork

So this episode was pretty good at throwing me for a loop. There was some serious Shyamalan crap going on. Not because of the story, but because of what they chose to reveal.

Lets start at the beginning.

After the events of the last episode, Luna suggests that the senshi go to the moon to fill in all the blanks of their missing past life memories. They set the date for the 15th cycle of the moon when i t's at its fullest.

One late night meeting later, they meet and use their powers to transport themselves the 403,111 kilometer distance to the moon without having to worry about the earth's gravitational pull, or air for that matter because... reasons.

Despite the fact that the moon has a diameter of over 2,000 miles, the senshi find the stone remains of the Moon Kingdom and along with it, the sword in the stone. King Arthur wasn't around to pull it out so Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter give it a shot, only to be shown up by Venus who manages to pull it out in the end.

The queen appears, her will having been transformed into a holograph, and gives the senshi a full explainaton of what happened so many years ago. This is the point where things get interesting and you have to wonder how much information was Naoko willing to divulge in this remake.

Now we all knew that the princess often went to the Earth to see Endymion, even though it was forbidden. But we never knew the initial reason why. Turns out that the moon is a pretty sucky place to live. Originally, she went to Earth for it's greenery, wind, and blah blah blah. She just happened to meet the prince by chance and fall in love.

Next, we see that the princess did indeed kill herself after Endymion's death. This we knew from the manga, but it was conveniently left out in the original anime. Probably to keep from scaring little kids with too much death and despair, at least in the FCC edited US version.

The queen tells Usagi this and that and the girls return to earth.

Interestingly enough, the story takes an interesting turn when Zoicite, Kunzite, Nephrite, and Jedite follow Baryl to Metellia's chamber and discover the truth about their past lives as well. We see some rare images of the generals in their past lives too. But it's all meaningless as Beryl forcibly brainwashes them to do her bidding.

Next is the fight! The newly brainwashed generals have decided to turn Tokyo into the new North Pole because..... well there really isn't a good reason.

The other senshi finally pick up on Venus's pleas to Kunzite and it is revealed that the senshi and generals had fallen in love in their previous lives!!! WHA!!!

Now Sailor Moon fans know that this had been an up in the air, pure speculation, head cannon of an idea. We had ony gotten small glimpses of the possibility through artbook pictures and the ocassional flashback in the manga. But the fact was that Naoko never came out ans said that it was true, nor did she ever say that it wasn't. It was a fantasy of ours to believe that the senshi also had true, predestined loves.

But let's be real. to say that the senshi did have lovers from their past lives only to be denied those loves again, since the generals turned to stone in manga, was just too cruel. Maybe it was more merciful to leave the girls ignorant of those particular memories since, they wouldn't get a second chance like Usagi.

This is pretty amazing and I have mixed feelings about it all. What will this mean in the end? Are we going to explore those relationships further or is this just gonna be one of those plot devices that will hang in the air only to be ignored later on down the line? Will the senshi get to have a happy ending in love or will Usagi be the only one who gets the guy? Only time will tell.

Moving on.

The shock of this discovery causes the senshi to loose focus, but Sailor Moon saves the day with her tiara. The senshi pull off a planetary attack which is... visually underwhelming, and Sailor Moon's healing escalation gets upgraded to intersteller heights. I mean, the chick goes to friggin space.

The generals are unharmed and still under Baryl's control, before making a speedy escape. Beryl starts the long standing tradition of bringing Mamoru under her control to do her bidding and the episode ends.

I gotta say, the biggest suprise was the wealth of information about the senshi's past lives which had before been left up to one's imagination. It's nice to have the closure, and yet, I'm worried that these areas will not be full explored and will leave us wanting. If that's the case, wouldn't it be better just to leave it the way it was?

Who knows.

One to the next episode!