Review: Sailor Moon Super S Part 2 DVD

Share

SAILOR MOON SUPERS PART 2

What is your dream? Whatever your dream is, no matter how big or small, the Sailor Scouts will protect it. Even if it means going up against hallucinogenic circus creatures with mouths on their stomachs.

Sailor Moon for the most part is pretty, silly, but full of moments of finding strength in yourself and in your friends; not Season 4 of Sailor Moon Super S. It took all of that cute stuff, mixed it with a good heap of crazy, and a dazzle of circus flair. For it is set to trip you out and make you debate if this was reality or if it is a nightmare from eating too much sweets (funny enough, there is an episode where the villain is centered around dentistry.)

It isn’t really essential to follow the Sailor Moon series consequentially. Each season follows the same pattern based of the New villain wanting Something. New villain makes dumb henchmen attempt to get it. Sailor Scouts fight and prevent henchmen from getting that Something until the New villain gets mad and goes after it themselves. Sailor Scouts almost become defeated until some magic associated with the Something will manifest therefore boosting Sailor Moon up another level to defeat the New Villain.

Therefore, the seasons are flavored as according to their main Villains. For instance the first season is the red-haired and iconic Villainess, Queen Beryl. For Season Four, the main Villain is beauty-obsessed Queen Nehalennia.

Queen Nelhemia was a young Queen who was beloved by all of her people because of her beauty. Her confidence was based so strongly off of this flimsy character element that it was enough of a reason to destroy her kingdom. This begins when she sees a unsavory glimpse of what she will become in the future, she is horrified that she is wrinkled and old. So begins a cascade of destruction and ending with her being trapped in a prison inside a mirror as created by Queen Serenity (The mother of Sailor Moon’s previous life as Princess Serenity).

Her importance on beauty may be questionable but her determination is unflappable as she communicates her wishes to a crone witch, Zirconia, to help her gain the power of domination. The buck stops here though as instead of focusing her own immense power to obtain this desire, she uses henchman. And not just any henchmen. Henchman that were previously animals and now human: The Amazon Trio which consists of Fisheyes, Hawkeyes, and Tigereyes. Take a guess on what those previous animals were.

Now, this is where is gets Weird. I throw the blame entirely on the concept designs of the henchmen and the creatures that they call upon to fight the Sailor Scouts. They are all some sort of drug-induced nightmare-causing circus themed creatures. There were some that had mouths on their stomachs or were just pastel colored abominations. The only positive note that I attribute to these creatures was that it did give the season a sense of “uniqueness” and creativity. None of them were really successful of course, so there was no real danger.

One distracting thought was the idea of the main theme being a circus in general. A circus is where the audience is entranced by beings that do not fit the stands of “normal” or perform acts that are supernatural in nature. Does this not go against Queen Nehalennia’s need for beauty, the core of her soul? Perhaps because it is due to her beauty that these circus acts flock to her side and do her every bidding so she doesn’t have to expend valuable energy on her beauty than overlooking her circus minion.

The goal of the henchmen is to obtain the Golden Mirror. Each person the henchmen target would be trapped as their dreams are extracted from their bodies in the form of a mirror. The henchmen can then thrust their heads into the mirror to “look” into the dreams. They are looking for soul of the elusive Pegasus for Queen Nehalennia to complete her domination. Only one person has this Golden Mirror. With each rejected Mirror leading them no closer to the Golden One, the Amazon Trio’s time is up and the Amazoness Quatest jumps in.

Season Four is not just unique in henchmen creations but also in having TWO different henchmen groups. The series then transitions from a season of just weird creatures to truly demented looking creatures thanks to the psycho traits of Amazoness Quartet.

The quartet also brings their own strange characteristic chant:

Always remember not to forget, a child’s dream is a dream they should never get.”

The quartet is made up of Besu Besu the Beast Tamer, Cele Cele the Trapeze artist, Junjun the Tightrope walker, and Para Para the Ball Balancer. They are all young girls who do not believe in growing up and that dreams are useless. They are dangerous in their youth and their recklessness. Even so, they are the most skilled henchmen and would have been a true threat to the Sailor Scouts. Only their strong focus on having fun and being young kept them from actually do serious damage.

Para Para alone could have just destroyed everyone. She had an unnerving tendency to want to kill things for fun. The dentistry episode previously mentioned is a really good example of why one should stay far away from her.

Touching upon the technician aspects of the DVD, the graphics were much more cleaner in this version of Sailor Moon Supers Part 2. Now and then the introduction of the songs will switch between having the subtitles on and off. When it is on, pay close attention to the lyrics. It is not the same wording that many of us have grown up with.

One very strong dislike with this season are some of the graphics with the monster being destroyed and the transformations. None of them were easy on the eyes and could give you a headache.

It was a great return back to the Sailor Moon universe and viewing in the original style. Even with all of the crazy circus happening, there were some pretty sweet episodes. Some were so sweet that tears were indeed shed. Personally, my favorite episodes were No. 147 (“No Prince Charming”) and No. 151 (“Heartfelt Melody”) as these episodes showcase a bit more about my two favorite Sailors: Jupiter and Mercury. In “No Prince Charming,” Makoto (Sailor Jupiters) shows the lengths that she will go for love while in “Heartfelt Melody,” we see that Ami (Sailor Mercury) is not just smart but also very passionate in music.

So whatever your dream may be, hold on tight to it and run away from any creature with a mouth on its stomach or demented circus children.

The Sailor Moon Super S Part 2 is available now from Viz Media or your local media retail source.

 

For more information, go to Viz media here: https://www.viz.com/sailor-moon

Share

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.