Maddest of the mad, baddest of the bad.
What They Say:
Episode 36: Act.35 Infinity 9 “Infinite Labyrinth” 2
The Sailor Guardians fight their way through to find Hotaru, who is in possession of Chibi-Usa’s Silver Crystal. They manage to defeat Kaolinite but must now face Professor Tomoe and his Daimon monsters.
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
You know, I’m not entirely certain I know what the director is aiming for at the opening of this episode. Are they embracing the camp? It’s really hard to say because the subtitles are becoming increasingly terrible with their broken English and it’s adding a hilarious angle to the overdramatic scenes of evil becoming stronger as Mistress 9 absorbs the Silver Crystal.
The raid on the school continues, which has become a massive nest of alien vines. For some terrible reason, the Guardians decide to split up. Venus suggests the inner guardians head up, the outer and Moon head down via elevator. An elevator in an evil building, what could go wrong, right? It plunges into darkness and Moon wonders if she’s silly for being scared out of her mind about being on the hellalator. No, no you are not.
This episode includes yet another scene where Moon has to summon her inner strength to fight back. Yes, show, we get it, Moon should be past this by now. She’s been down this path so many times by this point and beating us over the head with the ‘friendship power’ is just time filler at this point. Stop stretching the premise.
When it lets out it’s straight into Professor Tomoe’s lab full of daimon and a cackling mad scientist. We get the full background on the Professor from his perspective this time. Unlike the first adaptation, this version stays true to his unredeemable manga self. He wasn’t exactly trying to save his daughter, even before the evil showed up. He was just using her as a means to further his research. The evil alien showing up was just a stroke of luck. He gets the full brunt of the animation budget and the animators look like they were having fun going crazy with the mad scientist animation. Moon hesitates only for a moment thinking of Hotaru and how she would feel, long enough for Uranus to take a hit. There’s no hesitation in the follow up to take him out.
The real star of this episode is Hotaru. Trapped inside Mistress 9 and unable to take back control she instead focuses on protecting Chibi-usa’s soul. The little guardian’s soul is one and the same with the crystal, and Hotaru protects her from Mistress 9’s attempt to absorb and use all that energy. It’s very touching. Not only that, Hotaru realizes when Moon takes out her father. There’s no anger there, only knowing sorrow. Hotaru might just be the strongest out of all of them.
In Summary:
It’s not so much that Sailor Moon Crystal season 3 is backsliding into the depths of mediocrity, it’s just that it’s hard to take the show as seriously as it wants you to. The original adaptation knew when to go for the moment or bask in the cheesy glory of an ultimately simple story of good versus evil. Here, it’s a little bit more mixed than those hard lines of comedy and drama. Then again, this was a series aimed at ten-year-old girls and Takeuchi seemed to always take her audience for granted in the intelligence department. Professor Tomoe steals the show before a tactical error leaves Sailor Moon at half power for the battle to come, but the real heroine here is the older than her years Hotaru.
Episode Grade: B –
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