Sailor Moon Newbie Recaps: “Rei’s First Date” and “Usagi Becomes a Bride”
One of these days this Mamoru is gonna walk all over you.
These boots were made for walking.
This week in Sailor Moon: cursed hats, crazed animals, and one badass blushing bride.
Usagi’s Panic: Rei’s First Date
In a beautiful city park, Rei and Usagi meet Ami’s good… acquaintance Mr. Kokuritsu, the gardener who looks after all the plants and animals in this vital piece of Tokyo greenspace where young lovers can come to have romantic moments. But not for long: Mr. Kokuritsu will be let go soon, as there are plans to bulldoze the park to build an office building, displacing all the cute animals and beautiful plants. “Shit,” says Rei, “That means I don’t have a lot of time to find a boyfriend and get his ass over here.”
Meanwhile, Mamoru saves Luna from being run over by a truck in front of the arcade. Conspicuously, he does not do this by throwing a rose at it, but by dashing out into traffic in some kind of weird… work out outfit? Usagi, coming upon the aftermath of the rescue, tells him to get the heck away from her cat, beginning an argument that comes to a screeching halt when Motoki comes out side to say hi to his school chum, Mamoru Chiba. Cue my biggest Sailor Moon laugh in a while, when Usagi’s reaction is to express disbelief that Mamoru would be in college.
Not that he would be friends with Motoki. Not that he would save her cat. That he’d be in college.
As Usagi and Ami get focused on a rousing round of the Sailor V game, Rei quizzes Motoki on this Mamoru guy. “Oh, Chiba?” replies, Motoki, “He’s only super smart and probably super rich, since he, a college student, can afford to live by himself in a sweet-ass apartment in Tokyo.” ROMANTIC PARK VISIT TARGET ACQUIRED.
Motoki ships it.
Well, we’ve been given an in to Mamoru’s personal life, and been introduced to a brand new character… what could be next… Oh yes! Nephrite picks Mr. Kokuritsu as this week’s lucky winner of the Getting All Your Energy Sucked Out sweepstakes, sponsored by the Cold Uncaring Movements of the Heavens. He shows up at the park just as Mr. Kokuritsu is moping over the sight of a night crew digging building foundations in his park, and tells the old man that it’s up to him to show humanity just what they’re doing to all those poor helpless animals, by making those animals into killing machines.
Then he curses his hat.
STOP. In the naaaaaaame of loooooooove.
But no. Curséd hat. I can’t express why I find this to be such an amusing idea. I’ve literally been sitting here for five minutes trying to think about what’s so fascinating about the idea of a cursed hat, and I can’t. I mean, I make my living explaining stuff, and all I can think of is “It’s a cursed hat. A curséd hat.” I guess everybody who wants to join me in the Cursed Hats Are Funny Club can join my Facebook group.
Mr. Kokuritsu’s cursed hat gives him the power to control animals, which he uses to, no joke, drive the construction works out of the park with… aggressive moths? I feel like I might be missing some vital cultural reference here, because so far as I know normal moths do not have the power to wreck havoc with electronic equipment.
But speaking of animalistic urges, Rei has a perfect plan to catch Mamoru: run into him so hard that he feels sorry for her and takes her out for coffee. From across the street, Usagi notices the situation just in time for Rei to trip at exactly the right moment for Mamoru to step on her head. And yet, even though the fault in this situation is clearly with Rei, and even though he recognizes her as one of Usagi’s friends, she still manages to turn it into going out for coffee because she knows what she wants and she gets it, dang it. Obviously jealous, Usagi tails them to the coffee place, ostensibly to protect Rei from that jerk Mamoru. She hasn’t enough money to go inside after them, though, until Umino shows up and she makes a bad decision: pretend to be on a date with him in order to take advantage of his pocket money. NO, Usagi, BAD.
Luna decides to get out of this situation, either because Usagi’s being a real weirdo jerk, or because she’s a cat and this isn’t that kind of cafe. She finds Ami, who’s devastated over a drastic change in personality that Mr. Kokuritsu seems to have undergone, booting her out of the park. Wandering near the park, she and Luna come across a park official (who just told Mr. Kokuritsu that the park won’t be bulldozed) being set upon by a pack of red-eyed hell chipmunks, for the crime of dropping a cigarette on the path. Must be the work of the Dark Kingdom!
But wait! Rei’s also dragged Mamoru into the park and out onto the pond in a rowboat for ROMANTIC TIMES, a.k.a. Rei flirting and Mamoru answering in a barely committed way. On the shore, Usagi gets her creeper on, while Umino ponders the nature of chastity until Usagi ditches him to go find Ami and Luna… and Mr. Kokuritsu.
Enraged at finding more people still in his park, Mr. Kokuritsu hits his peak energy, and from his (snicker) curséd hat emerges…
A night elf. Crazy eyebrows included. The resemblance is uncanny.
Time for Ami and Usagi to transform! Across the park, just as everybody’s powering up, Mamoru is gripped by a sudden spasm of… pain? Weakness? Still, he manages to grab Rei and haul both of them over the side of the rowboat as they are attacked by a swarm of youma-controlled birds. Petasos disables Sailor Moon and Mercury with Vine Whip before Rei can make to shore, ditch Mamoru, and come to their rescue with a vine-burning Fire Soul. Then it’s all over but the power moves and Tuxedo Mask showing up in a tree to tell Sailor Moon to believe in herself.
Ami tells Mr. Kokuritsu that it was all a bad dream, and a soaked Mamoru wanders up, not at all curious about how Rei (not to mention her acres of hair—I’m just saying, I have some personal experience) managed to get dry so fast. Rei still thinks he’s Tuxedo Mask, and Umino suggests that now that the panic is over, he and Usagi should continue their date. Usagi bluntly tells him to stop making things up, she never asked him on a date.
And that’s the story of how Sailor Moon was a huge jerk and the Dark Kingdom saved a beautiful park from being destroyed by short-sighted, capitalistic interests. Hooray for the Dark Kingdom!
Speaking of times in which the Dark Kingdom only appear to make things cooler.
A Girl’s Dream: Usagi Becomes a Bride
We bring you now to Usagi’s Home Economics class, where normally the details of seamstressing are riveting, but Home Ec teacher Ms. Akiyama is super distracted with happy thoughts of her upcoming nuptials to a short, dough-faced junior businessman, for which she’ll be hand-sewing her own beautiful wedding dress. Usagi pooh-poohs Ms. Akiyama’s choice of mate: she’ll never abandon her high standards for men. I.e., the college kid who works at the arcade and a formalwearing weirdo who won’t even tell her his name.
While Usagi, Naru, and exposition fountain Umino discuss this over ice cream, this thing goes by:
No comment or explanation is given, but I’M NOT LETTING IT SLIDE.
Ms. Sakurada and Ms. Akiyama run into each other outside a fabric store, and Ms. Akiyama confides in the other teacher that she’s hard at work on her dress, but hasn’t been able to find a silk that meets her standards. This is overheard by Nephrite in his Nephritemobile, and he doesn’t even consult the stars this time: he just decides that Higure Akiyama is his next target for energy stealing. I mean, okay, I guess, the show has previously established that the energy of young love is the tastiest of all.
At the next big fabric sale that Ms. Akiyama attends, he takes a moment to complement her on her choice of fabric, and while doing so, quietly curses it with a youma. Also he does this.
Beware the Poncho Kingdom.
But just before that happens, Usagi, Rei, and Ms. Akiyama all notice that the Juban community center is having a contest: create the best handmade wedding dress, and get an all-expenses-paid lavish wedding reception at whatever future date you should require one. After a vivid day dream in which she imagines a wedding where she marries both Tuxedo Mask and Motoki, Usagi resolves to enter the contest. So does Rei, and, naturally, Ms. Akiyama, who, on the low salaries of her and her intended, isn’t anticipating a particularly fancy wedding.
Since Ms. Akiyama is actually very good at sewing, the episode turns to focus on Rei and Usagi’s efforts to make an entire wedding dress from scratch on zero sewing experience. I have definitely not seen this episode of Project Runway (but I would totally watch it). Rei is the first to try, vaugely remembering that Usagi’s mom is a housewife, and so might conceivably have some sewing experience. A suspicious Usagi brings a well behaved Rei home to meet her mother, but no amount of buttering up Ms. Tsukino can change the fact that she can’t actually sew.
Next is Usagi, who goes straight to complain to Ami about how Rei was trying to use her own mother to cheat and doesn’t that just grind your gears? “Not really,” answers Ami, “I don’t plan on getting married any time soon.” <3 <3 <3 Usagi begs for Ami’s help with making a dress: as a girl genius, Ami strives to be good at every class, so of course she knows all about sewing. Ami cleverly dissuades Usagi from this path by handing her six large tomes of beginner sewing books and telling her to come back when she’s grasped the basics. Naru joins a dejected Usagi as she trudges off to her last ditch idea: beg after school guidance from Ms. Akiyama. Naru is surprised that Usagi would go this far out of her way for the contest.
OH SNAP, ACCURATE SLAM FROM NARU.
When the girls arrive, they’re surprised to see a dumpy guy walking up to Ms. Akiyama’s condo with a bouquet of flowers, eventually realizing that he must be her fiancé. He knocks on the door, asking why she hasn’t been returning his calls. She answers in a totally hot new hairdo, crop top, short shorts, and a man’s button down shirt knotted at the tails, a.k.a., the greatest “I’ve Undergone an Evil Transformation and It’s Been Interpreted Through My Casual Dress” outfit I’ve seen in a while. Then she tells him he better GTFO and not call her again until the dress contest is over if he knows what’s good for him. Mood swinging crazily from anger to anxiety, she has a panic about finishing her dress and slams the door in his face.
Oh, I forgot: Luna was there to point out that this looks like a Dark Kingdom scheme. And just like last episode, since Usagi is totally preoccupied with not-fighting-evil pursuits, Luna goes straight to Ami. They discover the other Sailor Senshi making more drastic efforts to throw together a wedding dress entry: Rei’s trying to steal the rental wedding dress of her grandfather’s shrine, and Usagi is sacrificing three months of allowance for permission to turn her mother’s favorite curtains into a gown. But eventually everybody gets gathered at the Juban Community Center, where the contest is kicking off. Luna orders Usagi to go in undercover as a contestant, but reminds her that she’s not allowed to win, since it’s cheating to use her disguise pen to make a wedding dress. The gang goes in to find Ms. Akiyama, but no luck. That is, until the contest begins, and she crashes it like Maleficent at a baby shower. The host tells her to cool it, and she just straight up mesmerizes everybody in the room. It’s a full on Galadriel moment.
“And the women should kneel before my beauty!” ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR.
This is looking pretty “peak power” like, so cue the emergence of youma Widow, a spider-lady. Before Usagi can get into too much trouble up on the stage in a massive dress, Ami and Rei arrive on the stage on a floating piece of scenery being winched down from the rafters.
I would like a short video about Rei (because it’s totally her idea) dragging Ami backstage, stepping on to this monstrosity of (probably) plywood and plaster, and then browbeating a confused stage hand into lowering them dramatically. All without transforming into Senshi. Yeah, whatever, secret identities? Who cares. Unsurprisingly, this creates enough confusion that everybody has time to transform. The fight is slowed down a little by Widow’s super gross web vomiting ability (would it have been less gross if she’d actually had her spinnerets in the usual place?), and she also delivers one of the creepiest villain threats I’ve seen so far (“I’m going to weave you a beautiful burial outfit… made from your body!”), but three special moves and she’s taken out.
Ms. Akiyama and the rest wake up with no memory of what happened, except, I’m guessing, that Ms. Akiyama won the contest anyway, since she gets her lavish wedding and fancy dress. Man, demonic possession has never looked so good. Observing the ceremony, Ami, Rei, and Usagi muse that it’s not all about looks with guys. Ms. Akiyama’s fiancé didn’t once consider leaving her because of her strange behavior. This positive message is somewhat subverted by Usagi laughing it off and saying that hotness is still of paramount importance to her.
Moon Prism Power Wrap Up
Again, the Dark Kingdom, so helpful. So nice. Can I interest them in cursing my laptop? I’ll be rescued by the Sailor Senshi before my energy is stolen anyway, and then reap the benefits of the proactive use of supernatural powers while I was under their control.
I am confident that nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan.
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