As I write this, it is negative one degree outside and about 13 degrees in my bedroom. The previous episode was ski-themed; this episode is based around ice skating, so I can certainly say I'm in the appropriate mood for it. I was meant to go ice skating with someone recently, but we spent all day sitting on a beetle instead, which I think was better as I probably would have broken my wrist. Anyway, in round 2 of the focus episode this is Mako's focus episode! It even says so in the title!
To start off, the episode's preview mentions two olympic figure skaters[1], Katarina Witt (two-time olympic champion, 1984 and 1988) and Midori Ito (who had recently won a silver medal at the 1992 winter olympics). Last week we got some solid 90s anime art design, and this week we get some solidly 90s figure skating references. I don't know anything about figure skating at all, so I figured I'd put this there for my audience.
It turns out that figure skating was one of the most popular sports on the Moon, actually! I love the logical reasoning jump that Kunzite gives - if he targets figure skating, the post popular (?) sport among young girls, he'll be sure to lure out the true identity of Sailor Moon! Now, you can't argue it doesn't work - it obviously will! - but that's purely through dumb luck rather than any sinister or cunning plot. A lot of the villain plots in this show are thwarted through dumb luck with the Senshis just happening to show up where they're trying to target, but actually relying on the Mahou Shoujo anime rules is a very risky gamble. Mamoru quite rightly points it out that it's a stupid and cowardly idea, even.
Nevertheless, this is Sailor Moon, so this plan is obviously going to work. The show even lampshades it a bit by stating how suspicious it is that they give free admission to groups of five (like... the five Senshis?). Oh, did you remember Mako has this weird unresolved thing about this mysterious past dude? That's a plot thread this episode again and I still hate it. The animation here ranges from completely dull and lifeless - for example, Ami/Minako/Rei skating is just their cels moving away from the background, and some of Mako's skating is her cel moving in various poses across a stock footage background - to surprisingly vivid, including Usagi's attempt at walking onto the ice and Usagi's failed attempt at skating.
A small nit I have about the show's aesthetics is really exemplified in this episode. See, the colour palette for a lot of the episodes leans on using turquoises, pale blues, and purples everywhere. This works in a lot of places, such as in nighttime scenes and the neon shots of the Juban District as it really makes the scenes pop and come to life. However, it absolutely does not work in "cold" episodes such as this one! The ice rink is coloured in these same blues and turquoises as scenes such as the computer monitor scene which makes everything look like its made out of ice! Maybe it's just the cold environment I'm sitting in but this is really an unfortunate design choice that makes these cold episode look downright ridiculous. There's a few, MUCH worse offences later on, but this is one of the earliest incidents. It doesn't help that the show often changes series in the late winter/early spring so a lot of these cold episodes happen at the pivotal part of the series.
Anyway, something something Jupiter, something something love, something something bad guy. I don't really like or care about Mako's focus episodes that much as they nearly always form the same general arc: Mako finds a new man, she gets flustered, she falls in love, oh no! It's the same story a few times before her arc finishes with a petering out. Maybe it's partially my foreknowledge of how everything plays out with her, or maybe I'm just a misogynist, but I feel like this is a boring character arc and a subpar character trait, especially since Minako fits this role a lot better.
Tuxedo Mask's role in this filler arc is one of the most interesting parts of it, in my opinion. This time, he saves Usagi from the monsters (allegedly because he doesn't like dirty tactics), but it's portrayed unclearly as if he's actually evil or not. This is a consistent theme throughout every filler episode with him, replacing his previous "always intervenes to give Usagi to opening she needs" with an ambiguous will-he-wont-he about his actual moral standing with the Senshis especially with Kunzite double-crossing him every time too.
Aside from Mako's arc that I hate, I like this episode. I give it another 3.5/5 for being just enjoyable and watchable overall.
[1] - If you're watching the Viz English dub, the references to the two skaters were cut. Presumably this is because nobody below the age of about thirty-five would have any idea who you're talking about when it was recorded.
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