Episodes

Episode 1: Arrival!! Sailor Sun is here!!

Chibi Usa arrives on Ceres and is introduced in school. During recess, a ghostlike monster attacks the colony. Chibi Usa transforms into Sailor Sun to fight it. From her dialogue with Diana, it’s clear that (a) she has been Sailor Sun for a little while already, it’s not a surprise to her, but also (b) she has never actually fought as Sailor Sun, so her powers are still pretty new to her. The ghost drops a crystal shard when it’s defeated. Chibi Usa finishes her first day at school, ending with bumping into a quiet girl with black hair. The girl doesn't bother to talk to Chibi Usa even as Chibi Usa tries to apologize--she just keeps on walking.

Episode 2: An elegant leader! Sailor Ceres is awakened.

School election season! Despite Diana’s half-joking encouragement, Chibi Usa does NOT run for any school government positions. The whole school is very enamoured with Kiku Hanae, who’s beautiful and elegant and is definitely going to win. During voting, Chibi Usa tries to make small talk with Nai, but her classmates tell her that she’s barking up the wrong tree. Nai doesn’t talk to anybody, ever. The next day, Hanae wins student body president! During her acceptance speech, a Ghost attacks. Chibi Usa transforms to fight it, and during the fight, Hanae tries to help by throwing literally anything she can at it. Diana realizes that Hanae is a Guardian, so she gives her a transformation pen. Hanae becomes Sailor Ceres and helps Chibi Usa fight the Ghost. Once defeated, the Ghost drops another crystal shard. Once everything’s cleaned up, Chibi Usa congratulates Hanae on her win.

Episode 3: The quirky artist! Sailor Pallas arrives!

There’s an art show happening on campus. Chibi Usa wants to make more friends at school, so she goes with Hanae. She catches Nai looking at the artwork and looking sad, so she tries to strike up conversation again, but Nai just walks away from her. A Ghost attacks the art show, and targets Aya. Chibi Usa and Hanae transform to protect her, and while Sailor Sun and Sailor Ceres struggle with the monster, Diana realizes that Aya is a Guardian. She gives Aya a transformation pen, Aya becomes Sailor Pallas, and helps the Guardians defeat the ghost. This ghost also drops a crystal shard, and Diana and Sailor Sun guess that maybe all the Ghosts have them.

Episode 4: Who will win?! The shocking video game competition!!

There’s a video game tournament in town and Diana of all people wants to take part!! She is a cat. She convinces Chibi Usa to attend in her place so she can at least backseat game. Chibi Usa, completely out of her element, convinces Hanae and Aya to join. Hanae isn’t very good but she likes how pretty some of the characters are. Aya is VERY good but won’t stop trolling her opponents. Chibi Usa and Aya make it to the finals, but in the middle of the game, a Ghost attacks!! They must abandon the game to find a safe place to transform. The guardians defeat the Ghost and collect its crystal shard, but Diana is disappointed they didn’t get a chance to win the tournament.

Episode 5: How relaxing!! A beach even on the asteroid?

Beach episode?? The colony opens up a simulated beach resort area and Chibi Usa has tickets!! She of course has to dodge the subject of how she got tickets, because she has not told Hanae or Aya that she’s the princess yet. The three of them go, get to wear bathing suits, drink tropical drinks, and Chibi Usa keeps having to keep employees from spilling that she’s the princess. Once they’re finally getting to relax, a Ghost attacks!! It gets distracted for a minute by cute pool floaties, giving the girls a chance to transform. They defeat the ghost and Chibi Usa has to once again shut up the employees who all want to cheer for the princess and her victory.

Episode 6: Home run!! Sailor Juno, the powerful senshi!

School sports festival! Chibi Usa and Hanae are absolutely killing it at gymnastics. Aya is killing it at track. The girls are having a lot of fun competing! Nai is there, and she is the least enthusiastic cheerleader anyone has ever seen. During the baseball game, a Ghost attacks!! Before the girls get a chance to confront it, Akane comes at it with a baseball bat. This gives the girls a chance to transform. Diana realizes that Akane is a Guardian, and gives Akane a transformation pen. Akane becomes Sailor Juno, and together, they all defeat the Ghost and collect its shard. Afterward, the game resumes and Akane’s team wins!!

Episode 7: A delinquent?! The righteous Sailor Vesta!!

A rumor is going around about a delinquent starting fights for no reason. Chibi Usa is worried! This colony is supposed to be a nice place, and if someone is acting up like this, they must be in trouble. She asks around, and starts to learn that this delinquent might actually be fighting to defend victims of bullying. Chibi Usa finds them and it’s Kaoru! She finds Kaoru getting hassled by some of the bullies she’s fought with in the past. Chibi Usa figures they probably have problems too, but in the moment, they need to back off. Chibi Usa, her friends, and Kaoru all chase off the bullies, but then a Ghost attacks, going after Kaoru! The girls try to get Kaoru to run so they can transform, but Diana gets that feeling again. She gives Kaoru a transformation pen, Kaoru transforms, and the girls defeat the Ghost and collect its shard. Afterward, Hanae makes note that she’ll have the student council follow up with all those bullies.

Episode 8: My mom is the queen!! Chibi Usa's frustrating assignment!

The girls' class has them doing those reports where they have to interview their parents about their jobs and whatever. This is highly problematic for Chibi Usa, who is of course hiding the fact that she's the moon princess. After awkwardly dodging questions about her parents from her teammates, she tries to divert attention to... Nai! Nai just says she doesn't have parents, which makes the conversation too awkward to continue. At home, Chibi Usa goes on a holo-video call with her parents and tries to work out what to write. Usagi is still Usagi, which makes everything difficult. By the end of the call, it's late at night and Chibi Usa is dreading her presentation tomorrow. The next day, the students present their interviews. When it's Chibi Usa's turn, a Ghost attacks the school! What a relief. In the panic, the girls are able to sneak out and transform. They defeat the Ghost and collect its shard, and manage to waste enough class time that the teacher has to push the remaining presentations to tomorrow. Chibi Usa is relieved, and resolves to just lie on her project instead. Much easier.

Episode 9: Fun with classroom technology! VR madness!!

The girls' physics class puts them into a VR simulation to run some experiments with moving objects. Chibi Usa gets grouped with Aya and Nai, and Hanae is paired with Akane and Kaoru. The story switches between the two groups as Hanae's group goes through the experiments normally, with Akane especially having fun knocking things around. Chibi Usa's group, however, is absolute chaos, as Aya keeps pulling the perameters to extremes just to see what will happen. In the chaos, a Ghost attacks--in VR!! It gets beaned several times by the simulated objects that Aya has sent flying. Finally, for the first time in the series, we see someone get a reaction out of Nai, who gets frustrated with the chaos and shuts down the simulation. Realizing the Ghost is actually real, Nai runs for it, giving Chibi Usa and Aya a chance to defeat the ghost and collect its shard. They go and find Nai hiding in a bathroom, and they tell her the ghost is gone, and Aya apologizes for treating the assignment like a game. They go back to the lab and finish their assignment the right way. Chibi Usa is glad to have finally had a real interaction with Nai.

Episode 10: A mystery in the Asteroid Belt! The secret of the crystal shards

Chibi Usa and her team get a call from Ami to visit the excavation site. On the train ride there, Chibi Usa decides that now's the time to finally tell her team that she's not really Asahi Hina, she's Tsukino Usagi, the princess. They're shocked to varying degrees. Kaoru asks if she's the Moon princess, how come she's Sailor Sun now? Chibiusa starts explaining, leading into a flashback scene.

She's meeting with Helios in Elysion. She shows Helios her Pink Moon Crystal-- but it's got a golden sparkle deep within it now. He tells her that it's not a Moon crystal at all--it's the Pink Sun Crystal. She's confused, and he tells her that here in the land of dreams, he sometimes comes across snippets of dreams from long, long ago. Once, there was a Sailor Sun. She was powerful and well loved, but something happened to her. He tells her what an honor it is to be the successor to this ancient power, and promises to keep searching through the ancient dreams to see if he can find more info from her.

Outside Elysion, she finds Hotaru waiting for her. Chibi Usa confides in her that she's terrified that her parents won't be proud of her. Her mom wanted so badly for her to become the new Sailor Moon. Hotaru assures her that not only are her parents proud of her, but Hotaru is, too. She's excited to see the Sailor Guardian that Chibi Usa is becoming.

The train arrives at the excavation site. Ami meets them, and the quartet are excited to meet such a celebrity. Ami isn't part of the archaeological team (she's a medical doctor), but she's been here helping out for a while because the excavation has been getting attacked by Ghosts. The other Inners have been nearby too, patrolling around the Asteroid Belt, and she thanks Chibi Usa and the quartet for keeping Occator safe, since they're stretched so thin over such a large area.

Ami shows the team some of the artifacts being excavated, and explains that it looks like the Asteroid Belt--and most of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids--used to be a planet that strayed too close to Jupiter and broke up. Before it broke up, it had colonies on it that belonged to some ancient, mysterious Solar Empire. It was ruled by a Sailor Sun, but she didn't live here--this planet was a colony, not the capital.

Ami asks if Chibi Usa has collected any crystal shards from the Ghosts she's faced. Chibi Usa produces her shards, and Ami produces some of her own. Ami explains that these crystal shards look to be the remains of an ancient Sailor Crystal. She asks to see the quartet's Sailor Crystals. She looks at them, and says that she has a hypothesis that the quartet's sailor crystals used to be crystal shards just like these ones, but that they grew and became their own crystals in their own right. All the rest of these shards had that potential, but never grew, but all of them--the shards and the quartet's crystals--are the remains of some ancient Sailor Guardian's sailor crystal. Hanae asks if that's why the Ghosts attacked them--they wanted their crystals. Ami says it's possible that the Ghosts want to assemble the rest of the shards all together. She doesn't know what will happen if the shards are reunited, or who the sailor crystal belonged to.

A ghost attacks!! With Ami's help, they dispatch it in no time and collect its shard. Before the ghost disappears, nearby screens flash some images, including the face of a sailor senshi. It's too fast to make out details though, and Chibi Usa is frustrated because the senshi looked familiar but she needs to look more closely. Ami entrusts her crystal shards to Chibi Usa, and they resolve to try and reunite all the pieces and hope that it sheds light on this mystery.

Episode 11: The mysterious Nai! Conversations during detention.

Chibi Usa wakes from a dream about a dark-haired Sailor Senshi. She’s late for school! She gets detention for being late. Turns out the only other person in detention that day is Nai, who slept through class. While doing her math work, Chibi Usa tries to start up conversations with Nai–about the work, about why she’s so sleepy today, and so on. Eventually Nai talks and says that she’s not really sure why she was sleepy–Chibi Usa asks if maybe she was up late reading or playing games? Nai responds oddly, seeming to not really know what she does when she isn’t at school. Before Chibi Usa can push her on this, a ghost attacks the school. Chibi Usa tells Nai to go hide, and once she’s alone she transforms and contacts the others. They fight the ghost, which seems determined to get into the school, and defeat it. They collect its shard. Afterwards, Chibi Usa cannot find Nai at all. She finishes her detention work and meets her friends outside, worried about where Nai must have gone.

Episode 12: A visit from the queen! The parent-teacher conference.

The King and queen have gotten their hands on new tech to disguise their appearances and look completely different! They have come to visit and to attend teacher conference day. Thankfully, the hologram tech they’re using only has a battery life of a couple of hours so they can’t bother her all day. Her team is ecstatic to get to meet the KING and the QUEEN of the whole solar system, and they hang out the night before. Neo Queen Serenity and King Endymion ask Chibiusa to catch them up on what’s been going on on Ceres, which they all do. Serenity feels a little sad that there’s Sailor Senshi stuff going on and she doesn’t get to join, but Chibiusa assures her that she’s a real Sailor Senshi now and she can handle it.

During the actual teacher conference, things are going okay (if a little embarrassingly) until a ghost attacks!! Chibiusa excuses herself to go fight it. The disguised Endymion and Serenity are pleased as punch to get to watch their daughter in action… until their batteries start to run out and they have to make a run for it to avoid being found out. Afterwards, they meet Chibiusa at home and tell her how proud they are of her.

Episode 13: Let’s get buff!! Akane’s intense training!

Akane has the idea to make everyone do INTENSE PHYSICAL TRAINING. She reasons that they’ll be even better Sailor Senshi if they’re all in peak physical condition. They spend a day at the gym and track, doing various workouts and engaging in slapstick antics. Aya and Hanae get especially annoyed eventually, since they already feel like they’re doing okay and this training is too strict! They fight with Akane about it, but before they work it out, a Ghost attacks!! They end up using some moves that they learned during their workout to defeat the ghost, but they also have a little difficulty just because they were really worn out. Afterward, Akane and the girls all agree that working out is a good idea, but maybe they shouldn’t be so intense about it.

Episode 14: A gift for her parents! Kaoru’s cooking mission.

Kaoru’s parents are coming home after being at the mining site for several weeks. Kaoru is determined to make them a big feast to celebrate being back in civilization, since she knows that outside the artificial biome, the food they have to eat isn’t as fresh. She’s not 100% sure of her cooking abilities though, but she is DETERMINED.

Kaoru enlists the rest of the team to help her cook. Hanae and Akane have the most cooking skill of the team, but the two of them have completely different ideas about what would be good to make. Aya snuck a bunch of weird stuff onto the cart while they were shopping. Chibi Usa can cook all right with a recipe so she feels confident, but these weirdos keep changing the recipe!! While the team has an argument in the meat aisle, a ghost attacks the grocery store!! When it gets distracted by the lobsters in the seafood section, Sailor Sun is able to deal the decisive blow.

Afterwards, they talk it out and decide on a menu. They cook it all up with only minimal comedic errors, and by the time Kaoru’s parents arrive, the feast is ready!!! It looks a little strange, but it tastes great. Kaoru is super happy to see her parents, and her parents are happy that their daughter, who is so often treated like a delinquent, has such good and caring friends.

Episode 15: A fragment from the past! Hotaru’s visit.

The episode starts with Hotaru on the surface of an asteroid, finshing up fighting a Ghost. She collects its shard, but as she picks it up off the ground, she finds something.

Flash forward to later, and as Chibi Usa and her friends are exiting school, Hotaru is there waiting for them. She has brought cookies for Chibi Usa and everything. She treats the team to lunch, and the quartet buzzes about getting to meet another of *the* Sailor Senshi. Hotaru tells them they shouldn’t be so starstruck–they’re senshi now, too!

The girls all go around town, shopping and having fun. At the end of the day, the rest of the team leaves and Hotaru walks Chibi Usa home. She gives Chibi Usa the shard she collected earlier, then says she wants to show Chibi Usa something. It’s the thing she found on the asteroid–a piece of some kind of ancient piece of artl. It’s in the style of ancient Greek pottery, and depicts two Sailor Senshi– one wearing the same uniform as Chibi Usa’s Sailor Sun fuku, and one who’s obscured by cracks in the artifact, leaving her body visible but her head/face destroyed. Hotaru says she thinks it’s an artifact from the Solar Empire. Chibi Usa is enraptured at the sight of the previous Sailor Sun, who has beautiful long, curly hair. Chibi Usa says she’s dreamed about these two–she thinks that in those dreams, she was this Sailor Sun. She wishes she could better remember the other Senshi.

A ghost attacks. Chibi Usa wonders if it’s after the artifact, or after the shard. Either way, she and Sailor Saturn battle together, defeating the Ghost handily and collecting another shard.

That night, after Hotaru has gone, Chibi Usa dreams of being a sailor senshi with long, curly hair, alongside a sailor senshi whose face she can’t quite make out.

Episode 16: Prepare for opening day! Aya’s art debut!

Aya got chosen to exhibit her art at an art gallery! She gets a whole wall to decorate any way she likes with however much art she wants, and she wants to go HAM. She asks Chibiusa and the girls to help her out with getting the decorations and hanging done in time. There’s a lot of having to go back and forth to craft and hardware stores, and Aya having to show the girls how to mat and frame things. Aya gets stressed, trying different things and not liking them and changing things. The girls are a little frustrated she keeps making them redo everything, but they recognize how stressful this is–it’s her first time exhibiting art like this, after all. While she’s in the middle of another freakout, a Ghost attacks! They have to defend the art! Aya takes out all her frustration on the Ghost, and they collect its shard. After, the girls give Aya a pep talk. They finish the wall, and it’s weird as hell. The next night is the opening for the show, and all the girls show up, dressed to the nines. Aya’s wall is very popular!! She’s relieved, and thanks the girls for helping her through all that.

Episode 17: Hanae’s sweet home! An asteroid adventure.

Hanae wants to rent some space suits and go outside the colony’s artificial biosphere. She thinks it’s kind of weird to live somewhere and never see the real place! The girls think this will be fun, so they agree. After having some laughs about how silly the space suits look, they go out onto the surface of Ceres outside of the bio-dome. They bounce around in the low gravity, lift huge boulders, and have some laughs. Hanae feels a little wistful. She realizes that this world is hers, she’s its guardian and it’s her patron planetary body. It’s a strange thought, she thinks, to live somewhere your whole life and go so long without realizing exactly what it is to you. Somehow it feels right, though. Most people she knows moved here, but she was born right here on Ceres. Chibiusa thinks that’s pretty cool–being the first generation born on a planet. Just then, a ghost attacks! It’s going for the city!! The girls transform, and engage in a low-gravity space battle.

Episode 18: Dreams of a lost past! Sailor Sun’s regrets

The girls have a couple days off school! Chibi Usa gets an invitation from Helios to come to Elysion, so she brings the girls on a vacation to Earth. Crystal Tokyo is very exciting to visit, but Elysion is especially special–a place that most people never get to visit, except in dreams. Helios greets the group, and Kaoru immediately demands to see Helios’s horse form, to Chibi Usa’s embarassment.

Helios tells them that he found some dreams of the Solar Empire, and offers to show them. Obviously they all want to see.

In the first dream, they find themselves in a beautiful garden, full of flowers that the girls have never seen before and with greek-style pillars rising in the distance. It’s beautiful and tranquil. After they get their bearings, Chibi Usa notices two figures in the distance– Sailor Sun and the other senshi. Chibi Usa runs after them to get a better look at them, but no matter how much she runs, she doesn’t seem to get anywhere. The garden never ends, and Sailor Sun and the mystery senshi never get any closer.

Helios tells her that this dream is only fragmentary, and they can’t interact with it. It’s just not possible to get a better look. He tells them there’s one more dream he found, but it’s… not quite so nice. Chibi Usa demands to see it.

They find themselves in the same place, but it’s less idyllic. The ground shakes, they can see magma rising from the ground in the distance, and when they look up, they can see a huge planet hanging in the sky–heading straight for them.They can hear screaming, and when they look to the source, they see Sailor Sun again: this time she’s in her princess dress, a beautiful, ancient Greek-style dress in shades of white, yellow and pink. She’s floating off the ground, glowing, holding out her Pink Sun Crystal as though trying to stop the planet from falling down on them.

As her effort seems to reach its cresendo, she calls out a name: Phaethon.

Her crystal shatters. She falls. The planet speeds in its descent, soon taking up almost the entire sky. The girls, caught up in the scene, scream.

Helios returns them to the earlier, prettier dream. They all catch their breaths and calm down. They realize that what they saw was probably how things ended for Sailor Sun and, looking at the faraway images of the two Sailor Senshi, they wonder if the other senshi with her was Sailor Phaethon. Helios agrees that their conclusions are probably correct. He says that sometimes he catches snippets of dreams that he thinks belonged to the previous Sailor Sun, and they’re full of grief and regret. This is probably her regret: not stopping this great disaster. Chibi Usa wonders what planet this took place on, and Helios says it wasn’t Earth. He has a connection to the Earth, after all, and he can tell: the planet they’re on in this dream isn’t it. The Earth was the planet they were crashing into in the bad dream.

Hanae, who pays attention in science class apparently, realizes that what they witnessed was the Moon being formed. The girls act surprised and she reminds them that the moon formed because a planet crashed into the Earth. Parts of it sank into the Earth, and other parts of it and the Earth were flung out and became the moon. Sailor Sun’s planet was Theia, the impactor that hit the Earth in that ancient time.

The Moon Kingdom, Chibi Usa realizes, was born because of the Solar Empire’s destruction. She cries. The girls wonder if it’s because these are her own memories, after all, and she’s starting to feel the other Sailor Sun’s sadness.

The girls comfort Chibi Usa, and resolve to pass these revelations on to Ami so she can tell the archaeologists. They might be able to figure out more from their artifacts if they have better context.

As the girls leave, Helios apologizes for showing her something so sad. She disagrees, thanking him for helping her understand the past better. He promises that next time, he’ll show her something much happier.

Episode 19: Protect the artifacts!! Legacy of the Solar Empire

Occator High School is having an exhibit on the history of the Asteroid Belt, and Ceres in particular, and has a bunch of the newly-discovered artifacts on display in the gym. A bunch of archeologists are there to explain both the science and history of everything to the various groups of students going around looking at things. We see Nai, looking really intently at one of the murals of Sailor Sun. Chibi Usa notices this and talks to her about it. Nai says it’s a really beautiful picture. Something about the subject feels so familiar to her. Chibi Usa understands the feeling.

Once Chibi Usa finishes talking to Nai, she discovers that Ami is there! Specifically, Ami is here to talk to Chibi Usa and the quartet.

Once they get somewhere private, Ami tells them that between the information they told her, as well as some new murals and tablets they’ve found, there’s been a lot of progress in figuring out more about the Solar Empire. She confirms that the planet that became the Asteroid Belt was indeed named Phaethon, and that it had a Sailor Senshi.

We get a flashback, while Ami narrates more information. The Solar Empire was based on Planet Theia, which was smaller than the Earth but, according to the tablets they found, had been chosen by the gods to be the center of civilization in this new solar system, and Sailor Sun was created to rule them. The quartet are surprised at the mention of the gods, and Chibi Usa tells them that yeah, the gods are a thing. Sailor Pluto’s dad is Chronos, god of time.

Ami agrees, and points out something interesting: the tablets say that the king of the gods is Kronos, not Zeus. So this all happened even before the Olympians came along.

Sailor Sun, whose name was Queen Rhea, ruled over her planet, Theia, along with a couple of colonies. The biggest colony was on Phaethon, and when Phaethon got its own Sailor Senshi, she was so happy. The two of them watched over the development of the Solar System together, working with the gods to create new planets and make order out of the chaos of the early Solar System. During this flashback we see various scenes of Sailor Sun and Sailor Phaethon (whose face we still don’t get to see) hanging out together, flying through space together, addressing their people, who all seem happy to see them. Gals being pals.

Out of the flashback, Ami says that the records don’t say anything about the scene the girls saw, but that they do mention Phaethon’s orbit becoming unstable due to ‘fighting among the gods’. After that, the records end. Knowing what happened to the planet in the end, it seems obvious to Ami why the records stopped. The girls think on that, somber, when they hear shouting. MULTIPLE ghosts are attacking!! They’re messing with the artifacts!! The archaeologists are doing their best to save the precious cultural pieces, but they need help. The Senshi, Ami included, hide and transform, then set about fighting the ghosts. It’s a tough battle, but with Ami’s help, they’re able to defeat the ghosts. Chibi Usa and the others collect up the shards. When Chibi Usa takes out the little bag she uses to hold the shards together, she notes that it looks like they almost have all the pieces. Then, suddenly, someone tackles her. It’s… Nai?!

Nai, looking almost posessed, snatches the bag and runs for it. The girls try to follow, but another Ghost appears out of nowhere and holds them up–by the time they dispatch it, Nai is long gone.

Episode 20: Beauty and Power! Hanae's Glamorous Pageant.

Chibi Usa wakes up in the garden on Theia. Before she has time to be confused, she notices Queen Rhea sitting beside her. Rhea talks for a little while about what a beautiful little planet Theia was, before apologizing to Chibi Usa for everything that’s happened. She explains that she knew that moving entire planets was more than she could handle, but she had no other choice but to try. She thought that she would reincarnate, but she never did. Chibi Usa says that she (Chibi Usa) has the Sun crystal now, so she’s Rhea’s reincarnation! It took a while, but it happened. Rhea just smiles sadly at her.

Chibi Usa wakes up in bed.

That day at school, Hanae tells her that she got accepted into a beauty pageant and it’s tomorrow, but when Chibi Usa reacts (loudly), she shushes her. Hanae’s a little embarrassed, because she thinks the other girls might think it’s a little vain of her to enter a contest like that, but Chibi Usa disagrees. Hanae’s really pretty, after all! She should be proud of that!

The reason Hanae told her is that she wants Chibi Usa to help her pick her outfits, and maybe help out backstage when she needs to change her clothes quickly. Chibi Usa is ON IT. They go through Hanae’s (sizable) wardrobe, picking out costumes for each section of the pageant, while turning down texts from the other girls asking to go out and do things.

The next day, they do the pageant. Chibi Usa hustles her butt off backstage to get Hanae changed between each segment. Near the end, there’s a short intermission while the judges deliberate. It’s then that something attacks–but this time it’s not a ghost, it’s…Nai? Sailor Phaethon???

Nai/Phaethon looks almost zombielike, her eyes a hollowed-out black and her skin porcelain-white with cracks in it. As she attacks, she seems to focus completely on Hanae, not Chibi Usa. Chibi Usa and Hanae are unable to get a moment to transform until they’re helped out by the rest of the Quartet! Turns out they were in the audience the whole time, and were pleasantly surprised to find out that Hanae was part of the contest!! Sailor Phaethon focuses her attacks on them, and Chibi Usa and Hanae are able to transform and then join the fight. They’re able to fight the undead (?) Sailor Guardian off, and eventually she escapes.

Frazzled, the judges stumble back onto stage, and very hastily declare the winner. It’s Hanae!!! The girls all cheer for their friend as she collects her flowers and crown.

Episode 21: Lights, Camera, Action! The Making of a Documentary.

While hanging out after school, Akane tells the girls she wants to make a documentary. The girls wonder why, and she explains that her parents want her to go into the sciences, and while she really likes the subject, she definitely doesn’t have the patience to do the meticulous work of science all day every day. So she thought she’d try out other ways of using those studies, to show her parents that she can be smart and academic without doing boring things!! The group agrees on this course of action, and all get excited about different parts. Chibi Usa wants to help do research, Aya wants to make the graphics, Hanae wants to do Kaoru’s makeup, and Akane wants to do the camera work!! They decide to do a documentary on life on an asteroid colony, since it’s a topic they know well. There’s a montage of them researching things, filming at the edge of town where they can see the un-terraformed landscape outside, and filming Akane talking about topics in front of different landmarks. They’re out doing interviews with bystanders about their feelings about living on Ceres when Sailor Phaethon attacks!!!

Once again, she focuses her attacks on the Quartet, ignoring Chibi Usa, so they have to take turns getting her attention to get all of them a chance to transform somewhere hidden. Once again, they fight her off until she gives up and runs away.

Afterward, Kaoru thanks the group for their help with filming. She takes the next few days to edit the documentary, and they watch the finished product together. It’s sloppy, but they all feel proud of the thing they made together.

Episode 22: The Contentious School Project! Aya and Akane’s Quarrel.

There’s a group project for science class, and everyone forms groups of three. Hanae and Kaoru get grouped with one of their other classmates, and Aya, Akane and Chibi Usa are grouped together. At first this seems great!! We see a short montage of them studying their assigned topic, complete with both Aya and Akane being confused by it and Chibi Usa having to find them lots, LOTS of visual aids and videos. They figure it out together.

Aya wants to make the project super weird and artsy, as she usually does. Akane disagrees with this approach. It’s about a difficult subject, one that they had a lot of trouble with, so she thinks they should make it easy to understand so that when they present it to the class, the class will understand. It should be straightforward. Chibi Usa thinks there’s a middle ground to be found here, but every time Kaoru writes a portion of it, Aya adds illustrations that are so over the top they cover up the text. Chibi Usa keeps having to keep the peace, and it’s exhausting.

After school, Chibi Usa hides behind the school to get a little peace before going back to work with her partners. She wonders what on earth is going to get these two to agree. Just then, there’s a loud noise. Sailor Phaethon is attacking the school!! She’s definitely going after the Quartet, since that’s what she’s been doing this whole time. She transforms and runs in the direction of the racket. She finds Sailors Juno and Pallas, dodging attacks while trying to show their project to Phaethon. They each show their respective parts, asking her opinion, and she wrecks all of them.

This, somehow, gets them thinking that their approach might not be working.

Together with Sailor Sun, they chase off Sailor Phaethon. Afterward, Akane and Aya agree to listen to each other and try to meet each other halfway. With Chibi Usa helping both of them, they make a presentation that’s both pretty, AND easy to understand! Yay teamwork

Episode 23: The Gods, Unfair?! Sailor Sun’s Lament.

Chibi Usa wakes up on Theia again. This time Rhea is in her sailor uniform, and the proto-Earth is visible in the sky, looming large but not terrifyingly close yet. Rhea tells her that war had broken out among the gods. Kronus had been willing order into an otherwise chaotic solar system, and with his attention occupied, the planets and asteroids were left to push, pull, and collide once more. The night that Phaethon fell, Zeus had struck Kronus down.

Zeus didn’t want to continue what he considered to be Kronus’s vanity project.

Chibi Usa asks what happened to Sailor Phaethon. Rhea explains that when her planet was pulled apart, she tried to stop it. Her sailor crystal shattered, and scattered into space with the pieces of her planet. Rhea couldn’t make it there in time. She couldn’t even find all the pieces–only the biggest four.

Chibi Usa wakes up in bed.

The girls have a test coming up in literature class, and they’re studying for it at the library. They’re learning about mythology and read the story of Phaethon, Apollo’s son who borrows the sun-chariot for a joyride and ends up causing so much trouble that the gods had to shoot him down. Chibi Usa becomes unreasonably mad about the story, how the gods were so unfair to Rhea and Phaethon and then just write the mythology to make themselves look better, like they didn’t just let two worlds end just because they didn’t care enough to save them.

The Quartet just ask her if she’s been remembering things, and Chibi Usa nods.

Before she can get into the details, Sailor Phaethon attacks. Chibi Usa chucks the mythology textbook at her while the girls transform. While everyone fights, trying not to destroy all the bookshelves, Sailor Sun tries to talk to Phaethon. She tries to explain to her that it’s her! Sailor Sun! Rhea’s reincarnation! They shouldn’t fight! They should talk it out!

Phaethon is not moved.

Sailor Sun continues, insisting that it’s not fair that the gods were so cruel, and she’s right to be mad, but she and the Quartet had nothing to do with it, and so on and so forth, but it’s no use. Phaethon doesn’t seem to hear her words at all. Phaethon keeps attacking the Quartet specifically, and Sailor Sun can’t allow her friends to be hurt. In the end she has to fight back, and this causes Phaethon to once again escape.

Sailor Sun cries, frustrated. Why do they have to fight? Why can’t she just tell them what she wants?! But Ceres tells her: It’s clear what she wants. She took the shards the ghosts dropped… what she wants next are the Sailor Crystals from the asteroids. The Quartet’s Sailor Crystals. Juno adds that it’s clear that the four of them can live, or Phaethon–but not all of them. There’s no way either they or her can compromise.

Sailor Sun hates to agree, but she knows Juno is right.

Episode 24: Phaethon’s attack!! Save Juno and Vesta!

Chibi Usa gets a call from Kaoru in the middle of the night, saying that Phaethon’s attacking her house. When Chibi Usa, Ceres and Pallas get there, Kaoru’s already gone. They realize Akane is missing too. They run to her house, and find her missing as well. The three remaining sailors pool their power together to try and sense where ther missing friends are. They can sense them in the archaeological site! The sun is rising by now, so they change into their civvies to hop the train over. When they get there, the train is canceled–there’s some sort of weird phenomenon happening at the site and everyone’s focusing on trying to get the archaeologists back, so obviously they aren’t letting anyone else come in.

The girls go transform and head over on foot, because lol sailor senshi don’t need oxygen. On their way, Sailor Sun calls Ami–who isn’t at the site today–and tells her what’s up, just in case. Ami tells them to wait for the other senshi to arrive, but Sailor Sun refuses–her friends are in danger, and she’s not going to wait around.

When they finally get there, the site has been overgrown with big weird-looking flowers. The three make their way inside, but there’s weird ghosts and vines and it’s hard to tell what’s an illusion and what’s real. It’s a total maze, and it seems to extend deep into the asteroid’s underground. Eventually, Pallas gets dragged away by vines. While Sun is trying to get her back, a vine whips at her, and Ceres takes the blow. As it pulls Ceres into the wall and the wall starts consuming her, Chibi Usa asks why she endangered herself like that. Ceres says it’s because she knows she herself can’t save everyone alone, but she knows for sure that Sailor Sun can.

Ceres is consumed by the vines in the wall, and despite Chibi Usa pulling and clawing, and shooting, the vines, she can’t get Ceres or Pallas back. She falls to the ground and cries.

She has a vision. Chibi Usa is on Theia. The Earth looms overhead, huge in the sky. Rhea stands before her. Chibi Usa asks her what she should do now.

Rhea says she needs to save Sailor Phaethon.

Episode 25: A message to the heart! Soothing Phaethon’s sadness.

The scene from the end of last episode repeats, with Chibi Usa having a vision of Rhea on Theia and Rhea telling her to save Phaethon.

Chibi Usa asks why Phaethon is doing this, why she would hurt her friends. Rhea says Phaethon probably doesn’t even realize what she’s doing. Her spirit is fragmented, all she knows is that she needs to be whole again.

Rhea says this is all her fault. She wasn’t strong enough to protect her friend, and she wasn’t strong enough to reincarnate. The only reason Rhea’s here at all is because the Earth and Moon came together. The two planets who subsumed the remains of Theia came together and had a child–and Rhea could finally reach out, if only a little. Chibi Usa isn’t a proper reincarnation. They share the same powers and a connection in their dreams, but that’s all. They’re different people, and Chibi Usa will never inherit the entirety of her memories and feelings. Still, she pleads, she hopes Chibi Usa can empathize with her, and do the one thing she failed to do: save her friend.

Chibi Usa steps out of the maze and out into a large cave, with huge salt crystals lining the edges. Phaethon’s vines crawl all over the crystals. Nanimo Nai kneels in the center of this chamber, trying to piece together the different shards of her sailor crystal–including the sailor crystals of the Quartet. Tears fall from her broken eyes. Seeing Sailor Sun approach, Nai attacks, filling the chamber with an overwhelming vortex. Sailor Sun struggles to walk forward against the wind, getting battered and knocked back as she does. Eventually, she takes out her Pink Sun Crystal, and uses its light to create a path. She gets to Nai, who’s ready to counterattack, but then Sailor Sun offers to help.

She kneels down, and helps Nai put the pieces back together. Nai transforms and becomes Sailor Phaethon–but not the broken form she’d attacked them as, but as her true self. She thanks Sailor Sun, and starts to talk about how relieved she is to no longer be trapped in the darkness–until she realizes that Chibi Usa is dressed as Sailor Sun, and she isn’t Rhea. The truth dawns on her, and she breaks down in grief–and pushes Sailor Sun away with another vortex attack.

Vines start to rush at Chibi Usa, but a barrier appears to protect her. Sailor Saturn is here! She flies in on Helios’s back, and when they land, she hops off and Helios resumes his human form. Sun says she understands why Saturn is there, since she called for help, but why is Helios here?? Helios says that he heard the call, and figured that since this is an enemy whose heart they must reach, that maybe his command over dreams may help more than firepower would. Sun hugs him, and also Saturn. Saturn says the other senshi are outside and ready to help if needed, but she smiles and says doesn’t think that the three of them will need it. Sailor Sun agrees, and they make their move. Saturn creates a shield around herself, Sailor Sun and Helios as they fly to Phaethon. Once they’re in close, Helios uses his power, and they find themselves in a dream, in the garden on Theia.

Sailor Phaethon’s attack dies away. She looks around at the familiar scenery.

Sailor Sun gets off of Helios and talks to Phaethon, telling her she knows why she’s upset. She tells Phaethon that her world has been gone for a long time, and so has Rhea–but it’s not all over. There is still a world to protect, one that’s beautiful and wonderful. Once she says this, Helios shows Phaethon visions of Earth, of all the cities and nature, its people and animals. Phaethon says it’s beautiful–this is what she and Rhea wanted to build.

Back in the garden, Sailor Sun tells Phaethon that it’s unfair what happened to her and Rhea. But right now, she’s done something unfair too. By putting together her pieces, she took the sailor crystals from her precious friends, who had been born from the broken Phaethon crystal. Phaethon doesn’t know what she means–she doesn’t even remember fighting them all. Helios shows her visions of the Sailor Quartet, and their friendship with Chibi Usa. He shows Phaethon all of the guardians battling her zombified form. Phaethon is shocked that her crystal managed to reincarnate into four different sailors, and then she’s horrified at what she’s done to them. She apologizes. Sailor Saturn tells her that it’s sad to admit when your time has passed, but that death always brings on new life. The end of the Solar Empire allowed for the rise of the Silver Millenium, whose fall then led to the age of humans and Crystal Tokyo. Her fall, too, led to the birth of four wonderful new senshi, four wonderful friends.

Nothing ever goes away forever. It just takes on new forms in time.

Phaethon cries, and Sailor Sun embraces her. Phaethon tells her she’ll go away. She’ll move on, and let the new generation look over the solar system. And maybe, then, she’ll finally see Rhea again.

When she pulls away, it’s Rhea who was holding her. Rhea tells her that yes, now they can finally be together.

Phaethon fades away in Sailor Sun’s arms. The different crystal shards fall to the ground as the dream world fades away. The four sailor crystals reform into the Sailor Quartet, and then the spare shards turn to sparkles and flow into the Quartet, making them feel stronger. They and Sailor Sun do a big group hug, and Ceres notes that she was right–Sun had no problem saving them. Sun looks at Saturn and Helios shyly, saying that well, she did have help.

She meets the other Sailor Senshi nearby, as they’re helping out the archaeologists who had been trapped. We get a montage of her telling them what happened while helping, them reacting, then shots of them taking her back to town and out to celebrate as the various senshi comment on how amazing what she did is, she really shouldn’t be considered a senshi “in training” anymore, and joking about how she’s definitely ready to take over for her mom now. The episode ends on everyone having dinner together, and doing a toast in honor of the hero of the hour: Sailor Sun.