Sailor Moon Crystal Spotlight: Act 14 Recap!

Act 14 maintains the questionable quality of its predecessor. Sailor Moon Crystal at least normalizes its mediocre effort with this latest episode.


Do you ever get the feeling when watching something that this would be somewhat decent if not for what came before it? Watching the last two episodes this about sums up my feelings. By no means has Sailor Moon Crystal suddenly become good, most definitely not great. But at least it has become bearable. For what it is: A too faithful adaption done by subpar writers that are at their best if they just copy the original word by word... which is sad enough. But even though that already sums up my impression of this episode nicely, let's at least take a small closer look.

Technical Performance

I don't know if it's just that I have stopped expecting spectacular things here that I can actually appreciate this. Last time I said that obviously all the budget went into that episode. Well, similar things can be said now. The light effects at least were pretty, even if perhaps somewhat too overdone with the brightness. But then again, this is Sailor Moon. Overdone light effects and pretty colors are expected. I don't have too much of a problem with that. The resurrection of the Moon Palace was done rather well and if everything had been at least around that quality up to this point, THEN we may not have that much to mourn.

The same thing as last time can also be repeated about the music. It is at its strongest in these situations. Of course, for a very small moment I almost thought we'd actually get an Insert for the final scenes but it was just a different BGM..... yeah.

Irritating was the utter lack of creativity in giving Usagi a new transformation. I can't say that I saw anything (except the brooch) that actually changed. Come on, the old anime had a new sequence for every new power-up and that is honestly the norm and the least to be expected in a magical girl anime. Of course by that point the money was probably drained from the excess of all the previous light effects...

Characters

Not much to say here. I think Luna was once again hit well. I liked the touch of having her appear shortly as her human self – or Artemis imagining it. Perhaps the most memorable moment. This episode managed to at least produce a little bit of emotion, something that I had not dared hoped for since the Serenity act. Of course, it comes a little too late and feels almost forced on the viewer without much substance of the previous episodes to go on... Still, the reunion scene at least managed to make me somewhat misty-eyed. But maybe I have to attribute that to my current mood, who knows.

Practical Performance

I have already stated it above. It is a sad thing in and on itself that Sailor Moon Crystal is at its best when it adapts the manga scene by scene in a religiously faithful manner. That was pretty much the case here. The sad part comes from the fact that we have already established numerous times over that this is also the greatest problem of this series. At this point, however, I take real 1:1 adaption over Kobayashi's nonexistent script writing abilities.

So, yeah. I have nothing to say. There was practically no change, except perhaps a few dialogue rearrangements here and there. The scene where the sword got activated was a little bit enhanced here instead of just two small panels that could be easily overlooked in the manga and thusly included the other incapacitated Senshi somewhat into the action. That at least works fairly well.

The only thing actually missing is at the end where Rei tries to call Usagi after her vision, but that's about it.

Oh wait... wait! There is one thing I have to complain about. One thing that most certainly disturbed me. Granted, at first I found it funny, then I thought about it some more and well..... No, just no. Why is Mamoru blushing after Chibiusa's "kiss"? Blushing! She's a kid for crying out loud! All this serves is to give further ammunition to the Mamoru haters... Or at least that's what I wanted to say until I took up the manga again and saw... He did the same there! I never really notice and this only serves to further disillusion me about Sailor Moon. Showing it this clearly (instead of the small one panel in the manga) once again manages to do something that Sailor Moon Crystal has been prone to do. Adapt source material without any regard of how it will look and work animated. This little panel could easily be overlooked while reading the manga, here it leaves a rather disturbing impression. In the end I suppose it is no big deal but I would have felt better to just blame this on incompetent creativity again than to have another flaw of the original so blatantly exposed.

Conclusion

Repeating what I said at the beginning and later on. Sailor Moon Crystal is at its best doing what actually got it into this mediocre state to begin with, relying solely on the source material. Almost any attempt of original script writing to this point failed horribly and as such we have to be almost glad to get an episode like this that simply animates the manga panel by panel.

That we have to be glad about it, is the true tragedy. That we have to have to accept the last two episodes as the more bearable ones of its entire run is pretty much a joke. I don't have any hopes of the last 12 episodes to be any better, so I guess I have to hope Kobayashi-san does not attempt to get creative again so that I can at least pretend to enjoy the rest as a simple animation of the manga I once loved and whose image Sailor Moon Crystal has managed to somewhat tarnish over the course of its run.

Score: 3.75/5

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Gallery/Screencap Commentary

(Source: All Screencaps made by me)

Finally an end to this arc...

Let the show of the pretty bright colors begin...

It doesn't have much else to show at this point.

Nice overlay, at least.

Making these caps I really have to agree with Rebecca on ANN, it is a tad too bright.

Best shot of the episode.

This too.

At last some emotional value, even if not much. A little too late.

Another shot, because we are not likely to ever see it again.

New brooch.

I always wonder... How does a beam so thin purify the entire world or even a country?

I actually liked this for once, the emotion was carried over well enough... which is almost kind of shocking.

All is well again.

Or wait... It's...

It's HER!

The pink menace is here...!

I want to forget this is actually source material. Thank you Crystal for highlighting another problem of the manga so well while failing almost everything else.

I am Chibiusa... and in the name of the moon I will punish this anime with my pink sugar cuteness!