Did Ail and An Ever Work for Queen Beryl?

Queen Beryl. An earthling who teamed up with the demonic Queen Metalia, mutated, and then wiped out both the Moon and Earth kingdoms before being sealed away temporarily by Queen Serenity. She later returned, waging war on the Sailor Guardians while also stealing energy from humans via her minions, and using that stolen energy to feed Queen Metalia.

Ail and An. A pair of teenage aliens from a long-destroyed planet who steal energy from humans in an attempt to heal their shriveling mother-tree while also contemplating turning Earth into their own personal oasis.

On paper, this sounds like a dream team. Both Beryl and the teenagers steal precious life energy from unsuspecting humans - mostly minors - so they can feed a "bigger bad" behind the scenes while plotting against Earth's best interests and of course, while also planning Sailor Moon's untimely demise. If not a full season, it at least sounds like it would make a good premise for a movie, so did this team-up every really happen?

If you watched the subtitled or Viz dubbed versions of Sailor Moon R, then you know the answer is a solid "NO" with no plausible workaround, seeing as how Queen Beryl had been dead for two full months by the time Ail and An crash landed on Earth in episode 47, Moon Returns: The Mysterious Aliens Appear. (Though it had only been a week for viewers of the anime when it was new, and a couple of weeks for most DiC dub fans, unless they watched the Fox pilot, but more on that below.) Debuting on March 6, 1993, (Sailor Neptune's birthday) the original episode makes little mention of Beryl beyond Luna, Artemis and eventually Usagi acknowledging Beryl's death. The Viz dub and most international dubs follow.

But the DiC version of Sailor Moon had other plans.

When Sailor Moon initially hit North America in September of 1995, there were alternate versions. Many syndicated packages aired the severely edited episodes in the correct order, with censored-out episodes just being skipped. In 1997, Cartoon Network would also air the episodes in the correct order on Toonami. But on Fox affiliates, a totally different mix of episodes aired. Episode 47 was played instead of episode 1, and would re-air on November 22nd. Some Fox affiliates would choose to correct the episode numbers and start airing them in the right order within the first two weeks, while other Fox and some WB stations elected to mix up all of the original 65 episode run of Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon R. Because of this, episodes running out of order alongside each other muddied the story, making it seem as though Ail and An were naturally a part of the Dark Kingdom.

Even worse? This was by design.

DiC wanted the series to make a big splash, so they pushed for many of the affiliates to run episode 47 (41 when you consider all the skipped episodes) as the official "Sailor Moon pilot". Some small stations even sandwiched this episode with two others to create a makeshift "movie" which was a standard way to introduce new audiences to shows on shaky ground. Power Rangers Time Force, Toxic Crusaders and Thunder In Paradise with late wrestler Hulk Hogan also had made-up "movies" that were just select episodes played in a mini-marathon.

Back to Ail and An, DiC solidified their newfound part of Team Beryl with some big changes. Aside from letting the stations play the episode out of order, they also dubbed in a line from Ail (now named Alan) where he states "Queen Beryl was right about this place". This implies that at some point, Queen Beryl called Ail and An (now named Alan and Anne in the DiC dub) shortly before being moondusted alive at D Point.

He also makes comments about Beryl having recently been "banished to the Negaverse" which creates multiple continuity problems. For one, the "Negaverse" is the name of the Dark Kingdom. This implies she was just banished to the exact same place she had been for all of season one. It's a lateral move. It would be like being banished to the cubicle you already work at and doing the same work but your boss acting like this is a "punishment" when it's not. And of course, the bigger problem is that Beryl wasn't banished anywhere. Unlike the Inner Sailor Guardians whose blatant deaths were poorly masked by DiC as them "being captured" by the DD Girls/Doom and Gloom Girls and hidden via censorship, Beryl was killed. She was roasted alive in front of everyone. So her being banished would imply that she found a way to un-cremate herself, which she never figures out.

The episode also alludes to "The Negaforce" having sent the teenagers, which also cannot be, seeing as how "The Negaforce" was just Queen Metalia, and she died along with Beryl after fusing with her, becoming Super Beryl and once again, being zap fried by Princess Serenity and the souls of her temporarily dead friends.

Not all markets aired DiC Sailor Moon's episode 40, which was spliced together from episodes 45 and 46 of the original series. Even though the episode had been heavily censored, some markets skipped it due to the excessive violence. So some plucky Sailor Moon fans had to rely on the Buena Vista VHS tape Sailor Moon: Good Queen, Bad Queen in order to see Super Beryl meet her maker. But eventually, the episode did air, and once the show was moved to USA and then Cartoon Network and Program Exchange joined DiC in releasing the last episodes of Sailor Moon R, you'd think that they'd ease up on the Negaverse/Negaforce bit and start sticking to the original scripts, right?

Of course not. Even Wiseman found himself tangled up in all things Nega, which is fine if you read the end of the manga or watched Sailor Moon Cosmos Part 2 where Wiseman and Metalia were revealed to be siblings, but if you were a mid-90s Sailor Moon fan, you likely didn't have an easy time getting the manga without help from the internet, and Cosmos didn't exist yet. And if you at least knew about the subtitled version via internet fan sites and occasional Chinatown and comic book store bootlegs, then you knew Wiseman and Beryl don't belong in the same conversation. But the Nega train didn't derail until Cloverway picked up Sailor Moon S. Had DiC kept the license, Hotaru's house would have been mortgaged by The Negaforce.

Ail/Alan pushed the narrative of he, An/Anne and the Doom Tree/Hell Tree being a part of the Negaverse, but all references to the Negaverse for the remainder of the aliens' time on Sailor Moon R gets whittled down to just Luna and Artemis blaming the Negaverse for every bad thing they see, with the Negaverse not being presented as a real part of the story again until after Chibiusa/Rini debuts. The anime quickly shifts attention onto Alan and Anne with the teens never fearing having to answer to anyone in the Negaforce.

And yet Alan and Anne's link to the Negaverse is picked up in the backs of a few DiC era trading cards and in Scholastic's 2000 book Sailor Moon: The Return Of Sailor Moon, where once again, Alan states that Queen Beryl gave him a heads up about Earth before their arrival.

As far as the merchandise was concerned, this was a no-brainer. But would this team-up have actually worked?

On the surface, Beryl would likely be amused by Ail and An's ability to snatch big groups of human energy in a far shorter amount of time than Jadeite. With the size of the Dark Kingdom, finding a spot for the Hell Tree would be a simple task, and it's likely that Queen Metalia would have found a way to use the tree for herself.

But could it have lasted? Absolutely not.

An is incredibly immature and selfish, often acting on impulse. She has a worse temper than Zoisite and isn't the best at taking orders. Add to it the fact that she and Beryl would both be competing for Tuxedo Mask's affections, and you have the recipe for a showdown.

Ail would fair better with his even temperament and patience, but he too can be a little impulsive. Just like Zoisite, the temptation of doing something deadly to Tuxedo Mask would be too much for him to resist.

While the two could benefit Beryl in a few ways, their lack of maturity would ultimately get them killed. It's to their benefit that they were stand-alone villains in the subtitled version and not really part of the Dark Kingdom.

Did they work for Queen Beryl? Only in the DiC version, and even there, only loosely. In all other versions, the aliens worked alone, and that's likely why they survived.