Sailor Moon Eternal Parent Guide

After a solar eclipse, a mysterious group called the Dead Moon Circus appears in Juban, the home of the Sailor Guardians. With the Circus comes darkness that spreads over the city, as well as intense nightmares for all Guardians. Guided by a mysterious Pegasus named Helios (Yoshitsugu Matsuoka), Usagi (Kotono Mitsuishi), Chibiusa (Misato Fukuen), and their friends must gather the rest of the Sailor Guardians and fight against the forces of darkness.

Sailor Moon Eternal is a direct continuation of the Sailor Moon Crystal anime series and is meant to serve as a fourth season of that show. I have fond memories of watching the Sailor Moon series that was produced in the 90s, but in preparation for this review I learned that Sailor Moon Crystal is a 2010s reboot of the series that is based more closely on the manga. Because I haven’t seen the preceding 3 seasons, I was pretty lost as far as the lore and plot goes. There were a lot of terms and names being thrown around that had no meaning to me. If you haven’t watched the TV show, I can’t imagine that you’ll be able to follow this movie. This was not created to be a stand-alone film for general audiences, so I can’t fault it too hard for that.

That said, Sailor Moon Eternal is a feast for the eyes. The visuals are stunning, and the action sequences are well done. If you’re a general anime fan you might enjoy the film for the classic style and engaging animation. I primarily watched the movie in English and the dubs were well acted and believable. I did switch to Japanese for comparisons sake and the Japanese voice acting was fantastic as well, so either option should be satisfying, depending on your personal preference.

Netflix has rated this production TV-14 and I concur with that rating. There are multiple magical battles throughout the story, and characters get injured and are knocked unconscious almost constantly. Some of the costuming choices are relatively risqué, and there’s a small amount of swearing, as well as some teen romance. And at over 2 and a half hours I can’t imagine most young children would want to sit through this regardless of content concerns anyway. But teen anime fans an adults with a bad case of nostalgia might enjoy sailing away on this extended cinematic voyage.