No intro today. We pick up directly from the last episode here with no preview, but a voice over from the inner Senshis about the nature of love. Mars decides that the Makai tree is an intelligent being and that they can't attack it (yet they've been fine with Monster Genocide for the last year anyway). The Makai Tree has a minor case of borderline personality disorder, at first letting the inners into the inner tree sanctum before trying to kill them randomly. The aliens also a bit of BPD too, debating over if they really do love Usagi/Mamoru after it turns out that they love eachother (I guess?). Eventually it turns out that the tree is energised by the aliens love for eachother and that the Moonlight Knight is a manifestation of Mamoru's love for Usagi in his subconscious. Or something related.
The Makai Tree arc is a bad arc with confusing morals and a lot of wasted episodes. The love triangle ultimately leads to the aliens realising that their love for eachother is more important, but it's very stupid that we spent eleven episodes on this will-they-wont-they attitude to eachother and to Usagi/Mamoru. Reverting back to the status quo of classic killed this arc straight at birth, having to revisit and rebuild the relationship between the characters again. The aliens were almost complex characters last episode, but that was killed by them becoming straight-up evil again for a little while after finding out that their side flings never actually liked them.
The filler ranges from mediocre to terrible, and out of the two plot-related episodes one is fine and the second is boring and cliché that just retreads the plot of the last episode of Classic. It definitely fits with the series' theme of "Romance" but it's just boring and annoying to watch instead. This episode has emotional whiplash between the Power of Love subplots and the aliens reverting to being comically evil. The inner Senshis are completely useless other than to get beaten and to stand there monologuing (this fits pretty well for any given Sailor Moon series finale, mind, but it's still stupid). The sentient tree is really stupid, with the whole "yeah turns out love is important but I had to fucking kill a million people to do it". They could've developed this differently, with the tree actually having some restraint or SOMETHING more interesting but instead it is simply evil until suddenly it isn't.
Overall, this arc is a complete waste of time. There's no point watching it as long as you know that the last episode of classic is completely undone at the start; you can jump straight to episode 60/14 with the Black Moon arc instead. This episode is mediocre and tonally all over the place and serves as an especially bad ending to the arc. I give it a 2/5, with the two points being mostly carried by the animation and the previous episode instead.
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