M&M DreamWorks: Sailor Moon Crystal Spotlight: Act 13 Recap!

Following the death scenes (both literal and figuratively), Act 13 managed to dig Sailor Moon Crystal out of its early grave. At least barely.

Last time I had proclaimed Sailor Moon's death scene symbolic for the series. As such I went into this weekend's presentation with almost zero confidence and the lowest amount of expectation and excitement since the beginning of this anime's run. Maybe it was that lowered expectation but somehow for once Sailor Moon Crystal did not manage to disappoint. It was in fact fairly nice... So let's take a look at it.

Technical Performance

At least now we know where all the meager budget went. Into this episode. There was, at the very least quite some pretty light effects, especially when it came to the Silver Crystal. Granted, I've seen far more spectacular things (like in a single episode of Bahamut) but for the standard we need to start expecting – and sadly accepting – this was pretty nicely done. In fact all the beautiful shots of the Silver Crystal were probably the best part of the episode.

The music once again proved that it is fairly ideal for these moments, making a strong background drop for several situations. Of course, no Insert again. I doubt we're ever going to see/hear one and as such the soundtrack on a whole continues to pale not just compared to the first anime but in general.

The Sailor Planet Attack FINALLY got a different animation... too bad it was altogether too short – and useless – to really impress.

Much worse can be said about the scene where Sailor Moon makes her staff longer... Just... what exactly was that supposed to be?! You cannot honestly mean to say THAT is the extension of your animation capability? Right?! Oh wait... it probably is. Enough said.

Characters

Not much to say here. The characters were hit fairly well for all the situations and the slightly changed scenes that were there have little effect on the individual characters. I liked the touch with the flashbacks before the Senshi decide to give up their power to awaken Sailor Moon. This one highlights well the girls' friendship, even if the series rushed pace failed to really develop any such thing. If the whole 26 episode would have been used this moment could have been made much better by more content and stronger development... Oh well.

Practical Performance

Overall the flow of this episode was good enough. The absence of the Shitennou and as such the adaption being much closer to the manga again, albeit a few small changes clearly did the episode much good. For the second to last episode of this arc, the mood was caught nicely and everything really necessary was there.

Of course, no episode of Sailor Moon Crystal survives without its hiccups and lapses of poor or simply incompetent changes in the script... Even if they had very little impact on the performance, they are still wasted opportunities, so let's get to them.

Let's start with the good things. The main one was perhaps cutting out the section where Luna was first brought back to the command center. This always struck me as rather idiotic in the manga, covering all that distance seemingly in an instance and then going right back into the action. Instead Artemis took Luna straight to the moon from D-Point. This actually helped maintain the flow of the action.

I've already talked about the flashbacks being inserted before the Senshi decide to give up their power. This bit, however, seems to have cost the episode the necessary space for the Silver Millennium flashbacks that happened after the sword scene and before Usagi's awakening. This isn't a great deal but I still find it quite sad. For once I can live with the tradeoff though.

What I cannot accept is the lack of Mamoru's blindness. Not such that it was taken out but the fact that there was no real reason to take it out. It had very little impact at all on the story as it was but I feel it just belongs here since Mamoru's recovery feels a little too smooth this way.

A remnant of the Shitennou mess was the stones. In the manga Endymion had the stone with it and it broke into four pieces while catching the sword for him. Here the Shitennou were just getting destroyed as he and Sailor Moon had their showdown last episode. Yet the stones were just... there. I suppose they appeared there on their own but that just makes it even more cheap and appear like a deus ex machina.

Conclusion

For once most of the small negatives can probably be ignored while still enjoying this episode. It's not stellar quality and I am way past making any nostalgic-induced praises but after the culmination of badness within the last episode, I feel Sailor Moon Crystal made a miraculous recovery. Not a grand one and certainly not an epic episode but... by the series' standards one of the better lot. But perhaps I'm still just grasping at straws, who knows? I'm not keeping my hopes up for a better future either way...

Score: 3.75/5

(Note: And no, for the moment I am not bothering with translating this anymore. The reason is simply that I have no primary place to put it right now and translating often costs me more time than writing up the original recap and for an anime I am not considering worth that much effort anymore to justify so much investment, it came down to drop one of them. As I'm sure more people in Germany understand English more than English-speaking people understand German... well, that choice was simple.)