Ooo... happy Fiore... relish the rare occasion ;)

I have this overwhelming affection for Fiore. I'm pretty sure it comes from the fact that the Sailor Moon R movie was the first Japanese Sailor Moon I'd ever seen, and the first subbed anime I'd seen other than Shoujo Kakumei Utena. It's worth mentioning that Fiore has the same voice actor as Mikage Souji from the latter series-- Midorikawa Hikaru. I knew I recognized the voice, but I didn't know who it was until I looked it up. Anyway, his performance in the R movie was the first time I'd heard a male seiyuu do the angst thing, and it made me darn happy. Y'see, in Utena, all of the male seiyuu are really good, but they never go very far that way on the emotion scale. They can be deraged and manipulative and happy and very sexy, but none of the main guys really were very sad. Well, they were, but it never came out in their voices... oh, you know what I mean.

Anyway, Sailor Moon R was the first BSSM movie I'd seen in Japanese, and I was busy being smitten with Mamoru. I was having major deja-vu with Fiore owing to the whole Mikage thing, and once I got over how different Mamo-chan is in the Japanese I discovered the delightful cuteness of Fiore. His bond with Mamoru was just so adorable... Maybe because we never really get any background on poor old Mamo-chan. All he does is get brainwashed and kidnapped and stuff ;)

Fiore was one of those Doom Tree people, like Ail and An from the R season. He was obviously one of the ones who went away from the Tree of Life (or whatever it was called back then... I'm a little fuzzy on that part because I only saw the dub). He wandered around the galaxy for a long, long time, feeling very much alone, until eventually he ended up on Earth. This was right after Mamoru's parents had died in a car accident and he had lost his memory. He was in the hospital and he found Fiore laying out on the ground in the middle of the pouring rain. So like any lonely little boy, he took Fiore back to his hospital room...

Fiore appeared to Mamoru as a little blond-haired boy, who looked pretty human if not for his slightly alien eyes. He looked a lot like Ail's human form, only as a little kid. Anyway, he and Mamoru grew very close, both of them being completely alone in the world, but unfortunately their friendship was to be cut short. Fiore's body couldn't stand the Earth's atmosphere for very long, and eventually he had to leave. When he did leave, a tearful Mamoru-chan gave him a rose as a going-away present... you'll see where he GOT the rose later. Fiore was overwhelmed by the gesture, and promised to bring Mamoru thousands of flowers one day in return.

Fiore did come back, appearing to Mamoru (and the Senshi) at a flower garden. He assures Mamoru that he will keep his promise, even though Mamoru only sort of remembers him. He thought that Fiore had been a figment of his mind, an imaginary friend he had made up to combat the loneliness. Fiore leaves moments after, but not before clashing with the... overprotective Usagi ;)

The Senshi gather later at... I think it was Rei's shrine... to talk about the incident, and discuss a meteor that was approaching Earth and was giving off strange vibes. Ami suggests that maybe Fiore and Mamoru had a more-than-friends relationship. Everyone teased her, of course, but it was a valid idea ;)

Anyway, the next day, as they are going to school, they encounter a bunch of possessed people who are being controlled by plants. After Sailor Moon cleanses the humans, they fight the plant's controller, a surreal-looking woman with odd spidery plant things for legs. Fiore shows up in the middle of the fight and becomes the one and only person in the show to ever realise that Usagi is Sailor Moon the first time they set eyes on her. He is already on bad terms with her, but before he can stab her with his funky fingernail claw things, Tuxedo Kamen appears. Fiore recongnizes him, too, and immediately forgets about his fight with Sailor Moon. Tuxy almost wins Fiore back over to the good side, but he reverts back to hostility. Fiore is being controlled by a little woman (resembling the freaky flower lady) in a flower on his chest. This was the Kisenian flower (as Luna and Artimus later told the girls), an alien blossom that takes over the hearts of weak or unhappy individuals and turns them to it's own evil devices. Wow, reminds me of Akio! Hehe... At any rate, the flower strengthens it's grip on Fiore, and he starts raving about how Usagi is only fooling everyone about how nice and wonderful she is. He thinks that Usagi is stealing Mamoru from him, and so he attacks her with his flying claws.

I bet you can guess what happens now.

Tuxedo Kamen jumps in the way, catching the brunt of the attack and getting pretty much run through. Fiore is understandably upset, and teleports Mamoru into his arms. He then rises into the air and disappears in a swirl of flower petals, leaving the nearly hysterical Usagi behind.

Later, on the meteor where Fiore and the Kisenian flower have their base, Mamoru floats inside a big crystal regeneration chamber thing. He talks to Fiore, trying to get him to understand that he really does care about him, but that he cares about Usagi too. Usagi is his family now, and he tries to tell Fiore what a wonderful, caring person she is.

Meanwhile, the Senshi plan to get Mamoru back. They use Sailor Teleport to get to the meteor and have quite a little scuffle with the thousands of flower-women that Fiore is controlling. Fiore succeeds in getting all of the Senshi except Sailor Moon captured in this vine tower sort of thing, and he threatens to kill them if Sailor Moon does surrender. And even though the others yell at her not to, she lays down her wand, telling Fiore that she doesn't want anyone else to get hurt on her account. The action confuses him beyond reason, and the Kisenian flower's hold on him begins to crumble. For a moment, he flickers... "What are these people...?!" and then the flower grabs him back, taking him over completely. He is transformed into a mixture of himself and the Kisenian blossom, but just as he is about to attack Sailor Moon, the half-healed Mamoru breaks out of the crystal and stabs him in the chest with a thrown rose.

The Kisenian's hold disappates, and Fiore falls to his knees. She yells at him, asking him what the matter is, and he replies that he can't go on because Mamoru threw a flower at him. "Even Mamoru-kun is going to leave me all alone..." Hence the afforementioned heart-wrenching voice acting.

Just when you thought everything was going to be good, the Kisenian sinks its proverbial claws in harder, and Fiore advances on Sailor Moon, who is transforming into her princess dress and is only in ribbons. He grabs the Silver Crystal on her chest, trying to get her to stop.

"It's all right," Usagi says. "I won't leave you alone. I'll be your friend. You'll never be alone again."

Fiore refuses to believe her, again protesting that she's just trying to fool everyone. Suddenly, her Silver Crystal morphs under his hand, and he pulls his fingers away. It has opened into the shape of a flower.

And then Fiore has The Vision.

He sees Mamoru when he was little, sitting in his hospital bed and crying because he knew Fiore was going to leave. Mamoru looks up as someone comes into the room, seeing a little blonde girl with her hair in buns and pigtails. She asks him why he's crying, and he tells her that someone very important to him is going to have to leave. She says that she became a big sister today, and she was bringing flowers to her mother. She picks a rose out of the bouquet and gives it to him. "Here, cheer up."

At this moment, Fiore realizes that Usagi gave Mamoru the rose that Mamoru gave him. Usagi's kindness was the reason for his entire search, for the promise he made Mamoru to bring him lots of flowers. This gesture was the most important symbol of love he had ever known, and now he understood that Usagi was the reason for it. She was the center of everyone's love, and unlike he had previously thought, he wasn't alone.

The Kisenian flower screams at him to snap out of it, but Fiore was released from her grasp. He disolves into sparkles, and the Senshi are left on the asteroid hurtling toward Earth.

To make a long sequence short, Sailor Moon uses the Silver Crystal to veer the asteroid away from Earth. The other Senshi give her their powers, knowing that each of them would be alone now if it weren't for her. And so, they save the Earth. But the same thing happens as it always does when Sailor Moon uses the ginzuishou, it drains her of her life. All looks very dire until a young Fiore shows up in vision to Mamoru, and gives him a flower that he finally deemed worthy to give to his friend. It is the flower of life, and it contains Fiore's life force. Mamoru drinks the nectar from the flower and kisses Usagi, restoring her. Thanking them, Fiore spins away in a little bubble, secure in knowing that he is free.

Yay, happy ending! Isn't it always though, with Sailor Moon? ;) Anyway, other than the fact that he's got one of my favorite seiyuu for a voice actor, Fiore was the first character on Sailor Moon that I really fell in love with. As I said before, all I'd seen up until this movie was the DIC dub, and well, you can't judge the show by that ;) I found Fiore absolutely adorable, and the whole implied yaoi thing didn't hurt *cough* But still, I just wanted to snuggle him to death. It was nice to have a villain who wasn't just after energy or pure hearts or golden crystals or whatever... he wasn't a typical villain. He wanted to protect Mamoru, it was just that he got a little to overzealous about it. And you can't really blame him, after all, he had no social experience whatsoever. That's probably the way anyone would act if they had only had one friend their entire existance and suddenly there was a potential threat to that friendship. And anyway, it was all that damned Kisenian flower's fault ^_^

Since I don't have as much room on my page as I'd like to (and I'm paying anyway, due to Geocities' evil new data transfer policy) I have some links here to pages where they have lots of good pictures. If there's a picture you've seen previously on this page, e-mail me, and I'll try to fish it out of the vast space that is my hard drive ^_^

atruim Oh, yes! Doujinshi scans! XD And lots of pictures.
Dark Side of the Moon

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