Is Tuxedo Mask friend or foe? Is the mysterious Sailor V the "princess" that Luna and the others have been looking for? Will Jadeite and Nephrite and Queen Beryl unashamedly continue to make utterly silly monsters that can never seem to last for more than a few hours, and that immediately wilt in the face of a concerted Sailor Soldier attack? These questions are on everybody's lips all throughout the seventh episode of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, but none are satisfactorily answered by the end of the show. Well, except for the one about Queen Beryl. Rest assured, the Queen and her cave-dwelling posse aren't through with the dumb monsters yet.





In fact, the episode begins with a dumb monster, being chased by Sailor Moon through some darkened mall or something -- this one's perhaps best described as a ninja scarecrow. It's an interesting way to begin an episode: instead of having to sit through twenty minutes of plotting and foreshadowing before we finally start seeing Sailor Moon toss her tiara around, we get it right at the beginning. I kinda liked it; opening the episode in this manner makes it seem like this whole youma-hunting thing is starting to become a matter of course for our heroine, which is a pretty cool touch. I mean, for this show, anyway.

The ninja scarecrow puts up a pretty good fight; Sailor Moon ends up having to be saved by Tuxedo Mask yet again, and during the scuffle the scarecrow manages to escape. His work done, TM takes off as well, leaving Sailor Moon suddenly alone with everyone's favorite "ally of justice", Sailor V, who tells her that Tuxedo Mask should be considered an enemy and that she should stay away from him. Just who Sailor V is to tell Sailor Moon what to do is not clarified at this point; what has she done, after all, to earn Sailor Moon's trust? Tuxedo Mask has only saved her life like six times now; Sailor V hasn't even saved her once, and persists in acting even more deliberately vague and mysterious than he does. I know Usagi isn't very bright, but does the possibility that Sailor V might be an agent of Queen Beryl, engaged in some elaborate deception, never even occur to her? When the fate of the world is at stake, it seems to me that no possibility, no matter how strange, should be left unexamined.





Anyway, Usagi frets about this advice: she thinks that Sailor V is a credible source and that she should probably listen to her, but she also can't help but think that Tuxedo Mask is a good guy, what with all the rescuing he's been doing. (That she has a huge crush on him complicates matters further. Sigh. This is why the fate of the world should not be in the hands of a capricious teenage girl).

Meanwhile, Queen Beryl and her little squadron are plotting more mayhem. Zoisite, a white-haired, piano-playing weirdo, has arrived on the scene to complement the Queen's forces, and Nephrite and Jadeite aren't too happy about it: Zoisite, it seems, doesn't even report directly to Queen Beryl as they do. I don't know why they're worried. Zoisite does very little besides sit in a big room with flowing white curtains and play moody piano music (a giant magical fungus appears to be growing on the room's ceiling, incidentally; sadly, unless I missed something, we never learn too much about just what the hell it is).

Later, at Crown, Usagi spots the manager with a damaged tuxedo, one that looks very similar to you-know-who's, and decides that he must be Tuxedo Mask. She strikes up a conversation, learns his name is Motoki, and later on, gives him some turtle food (the guy has a pet turtle that he's obsessed with). Motoki, in turn, invites Usagi and two friends to an amusement park, where they'll meet up with two of his friends for a kind of triple-date.

One of Motoki's friends is Mamoru, of course--the real Tuxedo Mask (Motoki was just fixing his tuxedo at Crown). The other is a guy named Takae, a fellow "turtle lover" according to Motoki. Rei gets set up with him, and Makoto gets set up Mamoru, so Usagi and Motoki (whom she thinks is Tuxedo Mask, remember) can have a date. Rei gets the worst of the three: the nerdy Takae gets the hiccups around girls and can hardly hold a conversation.





(You'll remember that Rei declared liking boys to be a "waste of time" in the previous episode. I'm guessing she's probably not going to be changing her mind any time soon, based on this experience).

Usagi and Motoki go roller coastering and boating and ride all the fun rides, but Usagi senses something amiss during their time together: she's not feeling that special Tuxedo Mask spark around Motoki. Regardless, she presses on with the date, dragging him to a funhouse maze with Mamoru and Makoto. They end up separating, stranding Usagi in the maze with Mamoru...and it's with him, predictably, that she suddenly starts feeling the spark.

But, before she can stop to think too much about it, she gets a call from Rei: apparently the scarecrow ninja has been spotted in the park. Usagi ditches Mamoru and turns into Sailor Moon, but is unaware that -- thanks to the maze's crazy mirrors -- Mamoru has witnessed her entire transformation sequence and thus deduced her secret identity.

The scarecrow ninja possesses the luckless Takae and uses him to suck up human energy, taking Rei out of commission before backup can arrive. Long story short: Usagi beats the scarecrow ninja with Makoto's help, is introduced to Jadeite and saved from his magical attack by the dashing Tuxedo Mask (with whom she manages to snag another brief romantic moment), gets another reprimand from Sailor V (who once again does not stick around to explain just why TM is such bad news), and realizes that Motoki isn't Tuxedo Mask after all (he got horribly claustrophobic in the maze and had to be saved by Makoto).





It's a pretty good episode, I guess. Rei's plight is especially funny, and there's lots of romantic foreshadowing (with more than one couple). Compared to a lot of other episodes, this one's really structurally clever, too, starting and ending as it does with the scarecrow ninja and with Tuxedo Mask's timely interventions (he happened to have his costume handy at the park, cause Motoki returned it to him there; details like that aren't often this show's hallmark). And Motoki is a likable loser. (Much more likable than Mamoru, in fact, who comes across, more often than not, as a bit rude in these early episodes). Not bad.

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