The Black Moon Arc is Weird | Sailor Moon R (script)

INTRO:

The Black Moon Arc has always been my least favorite story arc in Sailor Moon. Time travel has rarely been my jam given how hard it is to pull off well, and both versions had things which drove me crazy.

For the manga, it was how rushed it felt at times, especially towards the end, likely given Naoko had to get acts done on a monthly basis with no breaks between arcs. And for the ‘90s anime, the monster of the day routine was nearly saved by how it fleshed out the villains, but the needless drama of Usagi and Mamoru’s breakup, along with how the show handled Chibiusa, made me want to go the Door of Time just so Sailor Pluto could end my pain.

But that all said, this arc does have its merits, and I wanted to talk about them at length. So today, we’re going to be going through the differences of this arc between the manga, Crystal, and ‘90s anime, and how I feel about all of this because it’s my channel goddammit.

We’re also going to be doing this in one video so we can knock everything out in one go, and also because a lot of the points I brought up in both of my previous videos still carry over to this arc. Crystal’s still an ugly, rushed mess that wants to halfheartedly copy off the manga, while the ‘90s anime was still clearly written by men who didn’t understand how young women work, and was dragged out to give Naoko more time to finish this story arc.

With that all out of the way, let’s begin the madness.

CHIBIUSA & HER PARENTS:

In the manga, Chibiusa is actually 900-years-old. You heard that right—900-years-old. In the Silver Millennium, a.k.a. future utopia run by Usagi’s future self, Neo-Queen Serenity, where everyone gets free healthcare and endless gay banquets, everyone lives extended, healthy lives thanks to the power of the Silver Crystal. While normal people age as you’d expect, just without the illness and weakness as they get older, once a member of the royal family hits 21, they stay 21 forever. So you will never, ever… feel 22. Oh it feels good making Taylor references.

Chibiusa, meanwhile, has been stuck in her child form for 9 centuries, which makes people wonder whether she’ll ever be able to inherit the throne from her mother and access her powers. Some kids at school even make her question whether she’s even the queen’s real daughter, because no matter the era, children are always fucking demons.

This is meant to represent Chibiusa’s inferiority complex, and her fear that she’ll never be able to match up to her mother’s legacy as Sailor Moon. She’s still developmentally a child, but she’s had to endure literal centuries of being talked down to and talked about like she’s a failure and disappointment.

In the ‘90s anime, meanwhile, Chibiusa is indeed just a little kid, which explains why she’s such a goddamn brat all the time. However, there are also moments where she seems to be infantilized, making me question whether these writers know how children work? Granted I don’t either because they disgust me, but some consistency would be appreciated.

So while the manga relies on Chibiusa’s feelings of insecurity to fuel her fall to darkness, the ‘90s anime makes her believe her parents don’t actually love her. Which… it’s very clear they do though? They just tend to be tough on her so she can stand on her own, and it’s also clear Wiseman is altering her memories. You could argue that could represent how we tend to darken and warp our own memories to fit the narratives we’ve constructed about ourselves and the people around us, but that’s honestly not how it comes off to me here. At least, I’m not made to care enough about Chibiusa to sympathize with how she feels. I’m just annoyed.

Black Lady herself is… um… yeah that name is a choice. It’s one of those cases where the old DiC dub made the good call on calling her Wicked Lady. Yeah, I get it, she’s in the Black Moon Clan, but… c’mon, y’all, is it really that big a deal to change it to something less uncomfortable? I’m just gonna call her Wicked Lady from now on because it’s just objectively the superior name.

Suffice to say, I prefer manga Wicked Lady by far. To me, Chibiusa becoming an adult who’s now serving Death Phantom makes more sense when she’s been struggling with this inferiority complex stemming from her not being able to age like expected. Especially given manga Wicked Lady literally yeets Luna-P away. Yeah, Evil Luna-P is cute and can be used for some cute gags, but it’s a childhood toy that’s also her connection to Sailor Pluto, so if Chibiusa is trying to disown her connection to her past and the Silver Millennium, why would she keep around this little toy?

This culminates in the manga with Chibiusa, mourning the loss of her friend (which we’ll talk about later), the one person who she believed loved and cared for her, and finally tapping into her true power, becoming Sailor Chibi Moon. It’s an adorably heartfelt moment, but also hits given the person she’d want to see this the most is now gone. It’s the perfect ending for her arc, along with her defeating Death Phantom alongside Sailor Moon.

This doesn’t happen in the ‘90s anime, as Chibiusa stays in the future for a while until partway into Sailor Moon S, and that’s where we get the Chibi Moon reveal. And wow, it is not at all climactic or earned, nor does she feel like an actual Sailor Guardian as much as she does a parody of one. Sailor Moon R instead ends with princess gowns, which… okay then? Apparently princess gowns were just considered your ultimate form in the ‘90s anime for some reason. Not sure why, given the princess form is more akin to Princess Serenity, Usagi’s past self who literally died and had to be reborn stronger with her full powers, but… okay then.

THE SPECTER SISTERS:

Many ‘90s anime fans will remember the whacky Super Sentai style monsters of the day from each season: the Youma, the Droids, the Daimons, and so on. These monsters do still exist in the manga, but they’re not nearly as important (nor campy) in the manga. Instead, the lackeys many of us enjoyed, such as the Specter Sisters and the Witches 5, were written to be the monsters of the day, most of the time paired off with a specific Sailor Guardian.

The Specter Sisters in particular were the monsters of the day for the beginning of the Black Moon Arc, each with her own psychic gimmick give Naoko’s interest in all things obscure: Koan has fortune telling; Berthier has dowsing; Calaveras has channelling; and Petz… well, hers is weird. I don’t know if her weird connection to crop circles counts, but… okay then.

In the manga, each Specter Sister spearheaded a different operation to abduct a different Sailor Guardian, but they each only had one act—in Crystal, one episode each—and as such, were nothing more than shallow villains who exist solely to rival the Guardians. Mars with Koan, Mercury with Berthier, Jupiter with Petz, and Venus with Calaveras. They didn’t have any real personality besides wanting to kill the Sailor Guardians and serve the Black Moon’s cause of… well, we’ll get to that later.

In the ‘90s anime, however, the Specter Sisters got an entire arc within Sailor Moon R to themselves, where they assisted Rubeus in using their Droids to take over Tokyo in the past. Their dynamics between each other as actual sisters got more time to shine, although since the ‘90s anime was written by men, they were all written as vain, obsessed with beauty and being catty with each other over winning Rubeus’ attention. They’re not nearly as individualized as I would’ve liked.

They also were redeemed by Sailor Moon, who used the Silver Crystal to purify each of them, removing the Black Moon’s influence. Which… is odd. It takes away the powers they received from the Malefic Black Crystal, which I get, but this goes into a discussion as to whether the Specter Sisters have earned this redemption. This goes into the difference between redemption and atonement, something which Melinda Pendulum discusses in her video on the subject.

To summarize, redemption is passive. It happens to a character, like the Specter Sisters having the evil cleansed from their souls. They don’t actually have to do anything on their own, nor do they help the Sailor Guardians in their mission against the Black Moon. They remember their pasts, so why haven’t they told the girls about them being from the future, the Black Moon’s plan, and Chibiusa being Usagi and Mamoru’s daughter? Love and Justice episode about the chess episode.

Atonement, meanwhile, is active, with characters actively reckoning with what they’ve done, and taking actions to make amends for those injustices. It’s about accountability. By this logic, the reason Zuko is beloved, and why his redemption arc works, is because it isn’t even about redemption, but rather, atonement. Zuko actively works to understand his mistakes and make up for what he’s done, and that’s why it hits.

So while many enjoy the redemption of the Specter Sisters, I don’t. If the Specter Sisters instead atoned for their actions and actively helped the Sailor Guardians in their fight against the Black Moon, then I’d be all about this. But they don’t. Instead, they go off to work at a cosmetic shop. Joy.

THE BLACK MOON CLAN:

While the Specter Sisters got redeemed, the higher ups in the Black Moon Clan were not as lucky. They were certainly made more sympathetic than they were in the manga, especially Demande and Saphir. Esmeraude is less sympathetic and more pitiable; more a victim of her jealousy, which informs what happens to her far more than it does in the manga where she just kinda gets blown up by Tuxedo Mask pretending to know French.

Rubeus, meanwhile, is weirdly less fleshed out than he is in the manga. In the manga, Rubeus is still in charge of the Specter Sisters and their missions in 20th century Tokyo, but he questions Demande’s loyalty to Wiseman, which eventually leads to Wiseman straight up strangling him.

‘90s Rubeus, meanwhile, is basically just a sexist prick who leads the Specter Sisters on, then ditches them when he’s fed up with them. His primary drive, rather than wanting Demande to kick Wiseman to the curb and go back to their original plot to overthrow the New Silver Millennium, is now proving himself to Demande, and also one-upping Esmeraude now that they have a rivalry going on.

They do a far better job in the ‘90s anime of having Rubeus actively battle the Sailor Guardians as an active threat, especially given he himself abducts the Sailor Guardians in his final missions, but they unfortunately lost his depth from the manga in the process. Which sucks, cuz while his manga self I’d argue is more interesting, he does far less there. The most interesting thing Manga Rubeus does is force Tuxedo Mask to unlock his ability to pretend to know French. No, I will never stop making that joke.

Esmeraude’s a similar case. All she really does in the manga is sit around talking, send out the Boule Brothers for a 5 minute mission, bully Chibiusa, and then get exploded in Fake French. She’s hinted at having a crush on Demande, but they never actually do anything with it. ‘90s Esmeraude, meanwhile, takes over Rubeus’ job after she lets him burn in space… oh yeah forgot to mention, ‘90s Rubeus is left to burn alive on his spaceship. Oh also he got a spaceship.

‘90s Esmeraude is a fun antagonist for a little while, a recognizable threat with a laugh forged from the depths of hell. Esmeraude’s laugh. When ‘90s Esmeraude’s jealousy piques, Wiseman offers her a crown made of the Black Crystal to give her the power to kill Sailor Moon, which winds up turning her into a sad fat dragon with no friends. It’s weird, yes, but you can’t deny it’s objectively cool, and also fits how her envy has led her astray.

My only issue is that the Sailor Guardians never give her the Specter Sister treatment. We never really learn why she fell for Demande and why she was so devoted to him; if we’re going to flesh out the Black Moon, I would’ve loved to see that.

Saphir is mostly the same in both versions. He’s suspicious of Wiseman’s intentions and calls out his manipulation of Demande, but he goes out in two different ways. In the manga, Usagi is kidnapped by the Black Moon and kept on Nemesis for a few acts. When she discovers the Black Moon’s dark reactor, Saphir gives this spiel about how Demande is a fool having the wool pulled over his eyes, but right as Usagi (and presumably, the reader) believes Saphir’s about to ask for help, he instead tries to kill her, blaming her for what’s happened to his brother.

Of course Usagi survives, but Saphir is then possessed by Wiseman, forcing Demande to kill him later. That moment of nearly killing Usagi is an interesting twist, and could’ve worked really well to contrast the Specter Sisters’ redemptions. But the rest of Saphir’s story in the manga just is not interesting, because it’s him just becoming a mindless pawn for Demande to see the error of his ways, but that could’ve been done without sacrificing Saphir’s character, as we see in the ‘90s anime.

‘90s Saphir winds up being branded a traitor by Wiseman, forced to retreat to 20th century Tokyo and turning to the redeemed Specter Sisters for shelter. ‘90s Petz actually has a thing for Saphir, and it’s an unrequited love; one I would’ve liked to see more of given that while it’s cute, it also doesn’t have much weight or reason behind it.

Anyhow, the Black Moon finds Saphir, and when Demande tries to hear Saphir out, Wiseman kills him before he can reveal the truth. It’s a fucked up moment where Saphir goes out trying to reach his brother, and it’s easily one of the most iconic moments of the ‘90s anime that most fans remember. It earned Saphir most of his fandom. Even if the original title spoiled what happened to him.

Now, content warning coming up, we’re going to be talking about Demande’s story, which involves discussions of sexual harassment and assault on Demande’s part. If you’d prefer not to hear about this, or it’s triggering to you, please skip ahead to the time shown onscreen.

Demande, like the others (except Rubeus), is made more sympathetic. He still believes in his cause and does not understand what consent is whenever he goes after Sailor Moon, but the ‘90s anime tries to establish a mutual understanding between the two as Demande dies to save her from Wiseman. It’s meant to show how Sailor Moon can change the mind of anyone, even one of her worst enemies, and part of me finds it endearing.

Weirdly, this attempt to make Demande more sympathetic is also present in Crystal’s changes from the manga. Manga Demande is far creepier than ‘90s Sailor Moon, with more focus given to Usagi’s fear of being, ya know, assaulted. She’s terrified of Demande taking possession of her, and has a deep fear of this somehow tainting her love for Mamoru. And never does Demande feel bad for what he does. This man is creepy to the very end.

Demande’s only remorse is in trusting Wiseman for so long, and not heeding Saphir’s advice to just wipe out the New Silver Millennium in one fell swoop and moving on with their original plan to change the future, which piques as he’s forced to kill the possessed Saphir. Once that’s done, Demande moves in to kill Sailor Moon, but she and Tuxedo Mask use their combined powers to kill him. As I said, Demande is awful and creepy to the end.

Compare this to Crystal, where instead of Demande moving in to kill Sailor Moon, he instead tries to protect her and the others from Death Phantom’s attack. Of course, Demande says he’s doing this cuz he wants to kill Sailor Moon, but it does not have that energy. Before he dies, he looks to Sailor Moon fondly, and his last words are… “My queen.” Death. Yeah, they really tried to tow the line there, and whether they succeeded is subjective.

To me, it fails to capture Demande’s evil and cruelty in the manga, and also fails to make me feel bad for Demande when he sacrifices himself. It tries so hard to be both that it succeeds at neither goal. It’s trying to keep the manga’s storyline mostly intact while also servicing that aesthetic ‘90s fans love about a heroic Demande, and as a result, you get this confused mess.

Death Phantom’s role of posing as Wiseman to manipulate the Black Moon, meanwhile, stays largely the same. The only real difference is that the ‘90s anime never actually explains who the hell Death Phantom is supposed to be.

In the manga, Death Phantom was a serial killer who emerged in Crystal Tokyo, destroying the peace Neo-Queen Serenity had established and spreading crime and violence everywhere he went. She didn’t wanna kill him, of course, so she decided to just banish him to the forbidden planet of Nemesis, because obviously stranding someone on a presumably uninhabitable space rock by themselves is infinitely less harsh than just killing them or sticking them in a cell somewhere.

From there, Death Phantom’s hatred and loneliness drew power from the Malefic Black Crystal on Nemesis, eventually giving him the power to string the Black Moon Clan along and later control them. He posed as Wiseman, a rogue cloaked fortune teller, to make the deception easier, especially given Death Phantom was considered so infamous in Crystal Tokyo.

Death Phantom backstory’s backstory doesn’t seem to exist in the ‘90s anime. In fact, the Black Moon Clan’s history is far different. In the manga, Demande’s little group despised the long life spans granted by the Silver Crystal, and were approached by Wiseman offering them a way to take Crystal Tokyo down. He led them to Nemesis, where their castle and dark reactor mysteriously awaited them, and so they became the Black Moon Clan and began scheming.

In the ‘90s anime, meanwhile, the Black Moon Clan is an older group, said to have been banished long ago to Nemesis for rebelling against Neo-Queen Serenity. Demande and the others are the newest generation of the group, presumed to have grown up on Nemesis and just now joined up with Wiseman, who claims to serve an entity called Death Phantom.

Nemesis itself doesn’t even seem to be all that important in the ‘90s anime. We never visit it, nor does Death Phantom seem to use it as his vessel. It’s just this legendary origin for the Black Moon Clan that we never get to see. I really wish we got to see the Death Phantom story in the ‘90s anime, especially given he’s one of the more interesting nebulous evils that the manga loves to throw in at the end of each arc.

He’s a person who was twisted by his negativity into something far darker and inhuman. I liked Metalia as a personification of Beryl’s jealousy, and Death Phantom’s a definite improvement as a big bad after her, but once we get to Pharaoh 90, the weird evil sludge with no character beyond being gross… yeah, give me more Death Phantom types please.

SAILOR PLUTO:

While Sailor Pluto is introduced in both this arc of the manga and ‘90s anime, she’s far more pivotal in the manga. Her sole purpose is to guard the Door of Time, a duty which is so sacred that her mere existence is kept secret from the other Sailor Guardians. Despite this, she becomes close friends with Chibiusa, who wandered to the Door of Time one day when she was alone, and since then, Pluto has been an incredibly warm, motherly presence that Chibiusa has been able to relate and look up to, especially in the manga.

In the ‘90s anime, this bond is far weaker, with Pluto only really interacting with Chibiusa through her toy Luna-P. Once we go through the Door of the Time to the future, and then back to the past, Pluto isn’t involved in the fight against the Black Moon at all. It makes her introduction incredibly odd, as she has no struggles or arcs of her own to make her relevant.

Compare this to the manga, where Pluto is an incredibly lonely person given her job. She’s dreamed for eternity of fighting alongside her fellow Guardians, and it kills her not to be able to just walk through the Door and kick the Black Moon’s ass. So when Chibiusa becomes Wicked Lady, Pluto is compelled to finally take action (thanks to the adorable Diana offering to slaughter any trespassers on Pluto’s behalf), and even stops time to stop Demande from destroying the entire universe. An ability which she was explicitly told was forbidden and would kill her.

This sacrifice still kills me. Yes, it’s undone in the next story arc, but the death is still powerful contained within the Black Moon Arc. She finally got to help Sailor Moon and her friends directly, just as she always wanted, and that was enough for her. Her last request is for Sailor Moon to save Small Lady, and this is what causes Chibiusa to snap out of it, realized what she’s doing is wrong, and unlock her powers to become Sailor Chibi Moon. Oh god it hits.

So, manga Pluto is better in the sense she’s actually a relevant, important character with emotional ties to the main cast. ‘90s Pluto, meanwhile, is boring and irrelevant.

THE GUARDIANS:

Now we’ve skipped over the first 13 episodes of Sailor Moon R, mostly because it’s a filler arc. The Makaiju Arc, also known as the Demon Tree Arc, was created to buy Naoko more time to work on the Black Moon Arc of the manga before the ‘90s anime caught up, especially given the manga had a monthly release while the ‘90s anime continually released new episodes each and every week.

At the end of the ‘90s anime’s first season, the Sailor Guardians all die and are reborn thanks to the power of the Silver Crystal. Of course, none of them have any memories of each other or their mission, and at the start of Sailor Moon R, they all regain their memories and jump back into action when monsters begin popping up across Tokyo again, because this city is a mess. Why anyone still lives here in this show, I will never understand.

Mamoru, however, doesn’t regain his memories until the end of the Demon Tree Arc. Instead, his subconscious memories of his past life project themselves and manifest into a new superhero of the week: the Moonlight Knight, who throws white roses… god I hate this so much. Of course this is to get more drama out of the story, especially with the new villains Ail and An having a thing for Usagi and Mamoru, which… okay then.

For what it is, this arc isn’t actually all that bad, though the fact Usagi and Mamoru are separated to have their love tested yet again is exhausting, because I guess we just aren’t allowed to write normal couple storylines. They get back together… then break up at the very start of the Black Moon Arc of the ‘90s anime, so yay. Thanks.

This one’s weird, because the breakup scene is powerful, and is probably one of the most iconic scenes of the entire ‘90s anime. It definitely makes me wanna curl up into a ball and die while eating my feelings with a bucket of cope-flavored ice cream. But the reasoning for how it goes down isn’t even legitimate. Mamoru receives nightmares from his future self to… test himself and his love for Usagi? They’re premonitions telling him that if he stays with Usagi, disaster will follow, so he lies to her thinking it’ll protect her, instead of… I don’t know, talking to her about them?

See, Mamoru claims it’s because he doesn’t want the past to dictate his future, and that he just doesn’t love Usagi. If those were actually sincere feelings he was having, I’d find that genuinely interesting. But they’re not sincere. And even though he does still love Usagi, he keeps showing up as Tuxedo Mask, knowing how much it hurts her (and not even bothering to be slightly less useless), and he always happens to be in her orbit, doting on Chibiusa when he has no reason to, and at times even insulting her saying she’s clinging to him.

Honestly, the only way to redeem this for me would’ve been if the other Sailor Guardians did more to try and emotionally support Usagi, or better yet, have a little “chat” with Mamoru to get some answers out of him. My crack dream is Rei leading the other girls in a coordinated effort to stage an intervention while also reading Mamoru for filth. But that, unfortunately, doesn’t happen. Usagi’s pain is mostly just played for laughs, to the point the DiC dub actually comes off as more compassionate. Raye talking to Serena about how she ignored her friends. (DiC dub, Koan redemption episode)

In the manga, meanwhile, Mamoru’s main conflict is not feeling like he’s good enough for Usagi, especially as each of the Sailor Guardians are abducted by the Black Moon. Seeing him try to comfort Usagi is so sweet, and I may or may not scream whenever Tuxedo Mask pretends to know French as he harnesses his powers, given he’s basically Sailor Earth.

There’s even a moment where the manga suggests Usagi and Mamoru have sex, showing it as an intimate moment that only strengthens their relationship. It’s nice to see these two having a better functioning relationship, though even that gets harpooned by Usagi’s weird jealousy towards how Mamoru trusts and protects Chibiusa, and Mamoru gets brainwashed yet again by Wicked Lady and winds up attacking Sailor Moon with the weapon they created together. Will we ever be able to have nice things?

CONCLUSION & OUTRO:

All in all, the Black Moon Arc is far from perfect in any form. The manga did a far better job when it came to Chibiusa and Pluto’s characters, Mamoru’s sense of agency, and selling the threat of the Black Moon and its belief in its mission, especially with Death Phantom pulling its strings. The ‘90s anime, meanwhile, fleshed out most of the villains (aside from Rubeus and Death Phantom) into fully fledged characters, making them into some of the most beloved and recognizable characters of the franchise.

I’m honestly not sure which version I prefer. In my ideal world, we’d have the strengths of both versions melded into one superior Black Moon Arc.

Anyways, if you enjoyed this video and would like to see more content like this from me, then be sure to not only check out my other videos, but also subscribe and ring that bell for notifications because YouTube hates creators. And if you’d like to support myself and the channel further, and you’re willing and able, please consider pledging over on Patreon.

I’m the Unicorn of War, and did you know? Saphir dies! No. I will never let that go.