Review: Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: Cosmos

Not sure if you should watch Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cosmos: The Movie because you’ve yet to watch Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cosmos: The Show? Don’t even worry about it, because there is no such show! ‘Cosmos’ is actually the follow-up to Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal: The Movie, which is a continuation of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal: The Series, which, in turn, is an animated adaptation of the original manga Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, which was written and illustrated by Naoki Takeuchi.

So here’s what you’ve missed so far – On what seems like just another ordinary day, 14 year old Usagi Tsukino encounters an enigmatic talking cat named Luna on her way to school. This inciting incident leads Usagi down the rabbit hole into a magical and dangerous reality that places her smack dab in the middle of an ongoing war that turns out to be the war to end all wars – an interdimensional, time-traveling, realm-rending uber-battle that threatens the very fabric of all existence. She learns she is a Sailor Scout – one of the elite squad of young people chosen to defend the multiverse against the forces of ultimate evil, along with a charming coterie of other pre-collegiate champions for justice. One of those young heroes is Usagi’s secret crush, Tuxedo Mask, who is also a student named Mamoru and a Moon Prince named Endymion.

The Scouts are eventually joined by the tiny scout Chibiusa, who turns out to be Usagi and Mamoru’s time-traveling daughter. Chibiusa wants the Scouts to help save her mother, so everybody goes together to the future, where they all get to meet the Sailor Guardian of Spacetime. The sweet and loving Chibiusa evolves into the bitter and furious Black Lady, everybody gets brainwashed, friends and lovers are forced to battle against each other, and the day is saved by Neo-Queen Serenity, aka Future Sailor Moon. The whole crew get new Planet Powers and return to the past.

Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune join the crew, which means they’ve got a full solar system on the go. Usagi evolves into Super Sailor Moon and the world is almost destroyed by Pharaoh 90 and the Death Busters. Sailor Saturn sacrifices herself to save the others, and everybody who died in the battle is resurrected. Some time later, a pegasus named Helios appears to the Scouts, warning them against the threat of the Dead Moon Circus. The Circus invades their dreams in an effort to steal the Silver Crystal, and a black rose blooms inside Usagi, which prevents her from stopping Zirconia from spreading dark energy. Everybody gets trapped inside an evil mirror, but they all escape eventually.

So that’s where we’re at when Cosmos begins. Now, you’re probably thinking that crystals are less important now than they were in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: Crystal since we’ve entered into Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: Cosmos territory, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. If anything, crystals are somehow even more important now!

Mamoru/Tuxedo Mask, is supposed to be going away to Harvard, but is black-crystal ghost-punch disintegrated at the very moment he’s about to (finally) propose to Usaki. After that happens, Usaki acts super weird, and Michiru-Kayosa rocks an incredible violin solo. A dark crystal is observed in the shadows.

After that, everything goes sideways – every member of the suspiciously hot boy band ‘Three Lights’ has transferred to their school, and Chibiusa has disappeared and been replaced by the wildly annoying Chibi-Chibi, who only communicates by repeating everything you say to her, and Usaki gets headaches every time she thinks of Mamoru, who seems to have ghosted her in favour of an Ivy League education.

The suspiciously hot boy band turns out to be, hands-down, the most scantily-clad Sailor Guardians ever, and that’s a pretty high bar. One of them also starts their Sailor transformation with a little soft shoe tap-dance, which is a fully incredible sight to see.

‘Cosmos’ is a perfect ending to the Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Saga – it’s got all the things you want from the franchise at this point. There’s space battles, mind control, self-doubt, messed-up scenarios, and a queer-friendly agenda. 

There’s also some high-ass stakes on the go – Mercury and Jupiter are the first main characters totally blasted into nothing dust, but they’re not the last – eventually, the bad guys pretty much annihilate the entire team, which means Usaki needs collect a whole lot of crystals to resurrect them all. Things are also extra complicated, battle-wise, because all her new foes are also Sailor Scouts, fighting to save their home planets. One of those Scouts is named Sailor Aluminium Siren, who I thought was named Sailor Aluminium Siding for the whole movie. It’s an objectively hilarious name for a Sailor Guardian, and a pretty good concept for the mascot of a construction business.

Usaki really is one resilient, inspiring magical girl. She manages to hold up psychologically under the most insane circumstances. Hardly a day goes by without somebody close to her revealing that they’ve been replaced by a shapeshifting alien, or are having their minds controlled, or being erased from existence. She can, of course, always use her powers to save the day, but she also knows that her powers are the only reason the day ever needs to be saved in the first place. To make matters worse, people are always reminding her of that fact – she gets blamed for everything! Look how messed up Peter Parker is from that one time he didn’t stop a guy and the guy later killed his uncle, which arguably isn’t even his fault. Sailor Moon always has to just shake it off and keep moving – even when all her dead friends and fiancée are telling her, literally, that everything, ever, is her fault. Cosmos goes deep into the effects all this psychological trauma has had on Usaki, without becoming so dark that it’s no fun. Example – the reason that she can’t remember that Tuxedo Mask was disintegrated at the airport has nothing to do with magic, she’s just blocking out the memory herself because it’s too painful to think about. It’s a nice bit of realism in a spaced-out, cosmic narrative.

Want to know if Tuxedo Mask and the Sailor Scouts come back to life one more time to save the universe or remain punched to dust? Check out Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: Cosmos on Netflix today!