"Food Fetish"- episode #49 (Japanese: Is Seijuro the Moon Shadow Knight? Mako-chan Firing Up! -episode #55)
THE PLOT: Sitting alone with Ami at lunchtime, Lita is daydreaming about Moonlight Knight. "Moonlight Knight, you can rescue me anytime..." In the schoolyard, Melvin is trying once more to court Molly with a homemade lunch; unfortunately, she's refusing to eat. Ami notes that everyone seems to be making lunch for each other nowadays, and Lita despairs over the fact that she doesn't have a boyfriend to eat her lunch with. Serena, unfortunately, has forgotten her lunch; she wanders out to the schoolyard, where Melvin is still trying unsuccessfully to feed Molly, and decides she'll ask Lita to share lunch with her.
Before Serena can find them, however, Lita and Ami are struck by the haunting tunes of Alan's flute music, and after gushing over how romantic it is, Lita realizes that Alan transferred to the school at about the same time the Moonlight Knight started showing up. She and Ami discuss the prospect: "Could he be..." Lita goes off to see if she can get any information out of him, and share her lunch in the bargain; unfortunately, she has the competition of ten or twelve other girls crowded around Alan.
When Alan finishes his song, the heart-bedecked girls start mobbing him, offering their lunches. "Sorry, but I don't do lunch. Ever!" Alan informs them, and pushes his way through the crowd, then begins walking away, pursued by a stampede of his groupies. "What's that guy got that we haven't got, huh?" the other boys despair as Alan makes his way rigidly across the schoolyard. Turning a corner, he pauses a minute, then jumps about twenty or so feet onto the school roof, leaving the chasing girls to run safely beneath him. Eventually, Lita wanders around the corner and notices Alan seated on the fence surrounding the rooftop.
"How'd he get up there?" Shrugging, she decides to offer her lunch to him anyway, now that her competition is eliminated.
Back inside the school building, Ami is eating lunch and typing on her computer(she types REALLY fast with one hand ^_-). She concludes that the chances of Alan being the Moonlight Knight are .02 percent; at that moment, a very hungry Serena wanders into the room, notices Ami's empty lunchbox and begins wailing over the fact that there isn't any food left for her.
Up on the roof, Lita is displaying a piece of squid-on-a-stick to a very reluctant Alan. "I don't know if I can eat anything that's staring at me." Nervously, he sticks it in his mouth, makes a few attempts at chewing and finally swallows it, much to Lita's surprise, before concluding, "It's good! Can I have another one?" However, Ann has manages to make her way onto the roof too, and is busy eavesdropping on her "brother." Alan asks Lita what food has to do with being in love. She tells him that it's a way of expressing affection, and tells him about her dream of opening a restaraunt. At that moment, Ann steps out from around a corner, and tells Alan not to put that junk into his body: "It could make you sick!" Lita and Ann engage in a contest of insults before the untimely interruption of Alan, who accidentally swallowed something spicy. (The expression on his face is REALLY funny.)
Meanwhile, irked by Serena's disruptive stomach growling, Miss Haruna sends her home to eat lunch. As she trudges weakly along the sidewalk, Ami and Luna show up with her her lunchbag. Alan and Ann are heading home too, but on decidedly less friendly terms. "I know we're supposed to act like these stupid humans, but eating their food?!" Ann demands, refusing Alan's apology. Lita, who happens to be passing by as well, asks Alan if he wants to go to the park with her. "Don't say no on my behalf. I don't care anymore," Ann informs him before walking off alone.
In the park, as the sun goes down, Lita asks Alan if he ever likes running around in a white sheet and a turban. He tells her no, but then stops, thinking to himself: "Wait- that sounds like the Moonlight Knight." Alan asks Lita how food can mean love, then inquires if making food is the best thing to do for someone you care about. Lita tells him it can be, if it's made with feeling; Alan inquires what kind. Ann watches from the bushes, growing progressively angrier: "I don't believe it. He's actually giggling!!" As Serena and Ami walk by the park, Ami mentions that Lita was going with Alan to the park. Infuriated that she chases all the "cool guys," Serena charges off to the park herself. Alan tells Lita that he could never give his love away to complete strangers: it's too special to give to just anyone.
As he finishes talking, Ann(in
her
alien form) jumps out from the bushes and informs them, "Kitchen's
closed!"
She then proceeds to step on Lita's "cute little lunchbag," then blasts
both
Lita and Alan when they try to stop her. Serena, who has just arrived on
the
scene, begins freaking out before Luna tells her to transform.
Sailor Moon leaps onto the playground, where the others are, and begins a
speech about how destroying good food is unforgivable. As Ann tells her,
"Go
preach somewhere else, loudmouthed twerp! This fight doesn't concern
you!"
Alan transforms into his alien form and traps Sailor Moon, Sailor
Mercury,
and Lita in columns of dark energy.
Grudgingly Ann insists that she didn't need his help; Alan turns to her
and
tells her, "You do- you do need me." In what is easily one of the cutest
scenes in SM history, Alan lifts up her chin and kisses her, causing her
to
blush. 
Ann then chooses the
CotD(Cardian of the Day), Mophead, and Alan releases Lita and the Scouts.
Mophead growls a few threats, then jumps onto a piece of playground
equipment
and blows it up. Lita transforms into Sailor Jupiter, but before she can
attack the monster, it ties up Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury, and herself.
Mophead binds Moon and Mercury into what looks like a big ball of yarn,
then
throws them into the fountain(they float).
As Jupiter struggles to get free, Moonlight Knight's rose releases her
from
her bonds. He blabs about believing in yourself; Jupiter summons the
power
of her guardian planet and blasts Mophead with her new attack, Jupiter
Thunder Dragon. Mars and Venus somehow manage to show up at this point;
Venus aims her attack at Alan and Ann, who teleport away before it hits
them.
Mars uses her fire attack to free Moon and Mercury, who fall down into
the
fountain with charred and frizzled hair. "Thanks a lot, pyro!" Sailor
Moon
declares.
As Mophead, weakened by the attack, struggles to its feet, Sailor Moon
uses
her wand attack to destroy the Cardian. Alan and Ann teleport home;
Moonlight Knight blabs a little more and then vanishes.
Jupiter decides Moonlight Knight's too romantic to be Alan, and sighs, "He's just like my old boyfriend..." The rest of the Scouts fall down in exasperation.
Meanwhile, back at Alan and Ann's apartment, Alan shows off his gift of
love
to Ann: a plate of food. Ann is delighted, and snuggles up to Alan
before
surveying the food and inquiring suspiciously, "Er, what're those big
ugly
brown things?" "I don't know. You try them..."
CHANGED AND CUT SCENES: Unlike most of the other Doom Tree episodes, a lot of the dialogue in this was rewritten. However, I maintain that it actually turned out funnier than the original, largely because of the dialogue. For example, when Lita first showed him the squid-on-a-stick, Alan's line in Japanese was, "It appears to be a marine animal of this planet, but the composition doesn't match. What is the significance of configuring it to resemble the shape?" Ann originally told him, "Big Brother, I wish you'd stop ingesting objects of unknown composition." In other words, I liked the dub lines better. :) Lita originally asked Alan if he liked dressing up in turbans right after she shared lunch with him on the roof. When Alan asked her what food had to do with love, she told him, "Girls try to show their affection by doing what they do the best." He also told Lita, "Love has to be stolen and held by force. To give it away would be incomprehensible." This is more of a nitpick than a change, but in this episode and the next, the wrong music is used for Sailor Moon's wand attack. Ann called Lita and Serena "ignorant Earth human scums" after she attacked them at the park(although I like "loudmouthed twerp" better). The one line I do wish had been kept was Ann's comment at the end: "I'm so happy. But what do I do with it?"
MY COMMENTS: OK, OK, I know DiC did a cruddy job of translating most of the episodes. But in a few cases, such as this episode, I think the translated product was actually funnier. I'm sorry, but the NA Alan and Ann are just SO much cooler than the original versions- they have some of the best lines in the entire dub. (Most of Alan and Ann's lines make the Scouts' look rather inane by comparison. ^_^) There's been considerable debate about what the "squid-on-a-stick" Lita offers to Alan actually is. The conclusion reached by the alt.fan.sailor-moon newsgroup is that it's a hot dog cut up to look like squid. If this episode doesn't make Alan and Ann's identities painfully clear to the Scouts, I don't know what does. When they summon the Cardian in the park, in plain view of Sailor Moon, Alan plays the exact same music- on the exact same flute- which he was playing at school. I think either this episode or the next is my favorite of the Doom Tree series. It gives Alan and Ann a rare chance to be silly, and has some great funny faces to boot.