ANI-MOVIES, *Sailor Moon Cosmos

Sailor Moon Eternal was a 2-part movie that continued the story first started in Sailor Moon Crystal for what would have been the Super S story arc. The final season originally titled Sailor Stars was also made into a 2-part movie adaptation called Sailor Moon Cosmos. This rounds up the series conclusion, but unlike the 90s TV adaptation, this version sticks closer to the original manga. Premiering in theaters in 2023, both of these movies were exclusively licensed to Netflix streaming with no known physical release in America. The major divide between Eternal and Cosmos is that the prior movies managed to cover most of the events of the story arc in a timely manner, whereas Cosmos tries to dump the entire lore of the finale into a rushed two-part production when a full trilogy would have more sufficient, or at least making each movie longer than a mere 80 minutes.

Taking place a few months after Eternal, a "boy band" called The Three Lights show up and start going to the same school as most of the other Sailor Guardians. Of course, these idol singers are secretly aliens, and Sailor Guardians to boot, even though no one seems to bring up the fact that they're guys who transform into women to fight evil. Usagi and her crew have a new enemy to deal with, Shadow Galactica, a malevolent organization that forces girls from all over the galaxy to become evil guardians called Sailor Animamates. They hunt down good Sailor Guardians and immediately murder them by taking their Sailor Crystals which is basically their soul. Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus all eventually get taken out along with Mamoru, even though Usagi doesn't remember his death at first. The four extra Sailor Guardians equally get killed, leaving Usagi alone with new Sailor Starlights and the princess they protect, Princess Kakyuu. Instead of Chibiusa, a younger girl from the future named Chibi-Chibi shows up to help, even though she usually just says her own name like a Pokemon. Sailor Moon and the remaining Guardians then head to Shadow Galactica's base in the middle of the Galaxy Cauldron, a massive interdimensional vortex where all life in the galaxy came from. The Animamates are under the control of Sailor Galaxia, a powerful Sailor Guardian chosen by the living essence of Chaos to act as its avatar. Galaxia plans to betray Chaos and steal the power of the collected Sailor Crysals for herself, even though Chaos is revealed to be the source of all the other enemies that Sailor Moon fought in the previous story arcs. Chibiusa and the Sailor Quartet show up from the future just to see the Starlights and Kakyuu literally get dusted by Galaxia's remaining lackies. It's left to just Sailor Moon and Galaxia squaring off at the base of Chaos' threshold in an attempt to obtain Usagi's Silver Moon Crystal which will allow the dark forces to spread all over the universe. Of course, Sailor Moon defeats Chaos after Galaxia switches sides, leaving everyone who was killed to be revived like they never even died in the first place. They finally have Usagi and Mamoru get hitched in a flash-forward scene, even with all the other Sailor Guardians not bothering to get boyfriends(or girlfriends)of their own.

Sailor Moon Cosmos is a somewhat fitting finale to the Sailor Moon Crystal retelling of the original manga. No one going into this would bother watching a 2-part movie without seeing the previous anime installments, but still rewarding for old fans and new. The manga ending was even more convoluted than how it was adapted for the 90s anime, so seeing the entire conclusion sandwiched into a pair of movies can give you serious tonal whiplash.