After learning that Tuxedo Mask and Mamoru Chiba are the same person, Usagi faces the difficult decision of whether she should keep his identity secret from her friends. Meanwhile, the Dark Kingdom has set their sights on Sailor Moon and are using mind control to encourage the citizens of Tokyo to search for her.
"Act 7 Mamoru -TUXEDO MASK-" picks up right where the previous episode left off. Usagi finds herself in a strange apartment and soon discovers that Tuxedo Mask is really Mamoru. She learns about his past and why he's so determined to find the Silver Crystal. His tragic background is meant to incite sympathy from the viewer, but Mamoru's actions are still questionable. Aside from his creepy behaviour in a previous episode, his asking Usagi to keep his identity secret is suspicious and places her in a very uncomfortable position. It makes it that much more difficult to sympathize with his character. He has nothing to lose from Luna knowing who he is and it's incredibly odd that he doesn't want to ally himself with the Sailor Guardians, despite his obvious affection for Usagi.
As with many of the previous episodes in Crystal, this entry follows the manga's plot very closely (with some minor alterations). As such, it moves the plot along quite nicely and leads to the introduction of Sailor Venus, which acts as the cliffhanger for this particular story. Even still, this episode still feels a lot like filler and the idea of a DVD rental store being popular doesn't translate well for modern audiences. The overall sense the episode leaves is that the first five minutes and the last five minutes were important, while everything in between was just fluff. Sadly, even the confrontation with Zoisite at the end was poorly executed. The Sailor Guardians are taken out almost immediately and Sailor Moon is held by Zoisite. It makes the Guardians seem incompetent and it makes Sailor Moon seem useless for not being able to break free from Zoisite's grip. Thankfully, Sailor Venus breaks up the nonsense of it all with her handy moon-shaped boomerang.
At seven episodes into the series, Sailor Moon Crystal is entering into a holding pattern. Its adherence to the manga's narrative is admirable, but the execution is starting to get a little wonky. By relying more heavily on Queen Beryl's Generals as primary antagonists in battle than the manga did, the Sailor Guardians are rarely victorious and it's typically a last-minute save that enables them to win. It's an unfortunate formula that doesn't match the pacing of the manga. After all, we can't root for the heroines if we know they're going to be defeated after one round of attacks. Still, Crystal is shaping up a whole lot better than the original anime. After all, it took eight episodes just for them to introduce Sailor Mercury in the original anime.
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