THIS IS LONG, I KNOW, BUT LOOK HOW MANY FEELINGS ARE PACKED INTO THIS SCENE.
This is another one of those moments where I’m really, really glad for SMC, to have these scenes animated, because we get all these lines in the manga, but you only see a closeup of him holding her hand, a panel with just text in it, a close-up of her face, a close-up of him putting a hand on her head.
But getting to see it animated adds so much more–we see him walking along with her, outside the Palace. We see that they’re out there for quite some time, enough for the afternoon to turn into evening. We see that it’s not just a quick conversation, but that Endymion has clearly made a lot of time for her, there’s no rush in any of their interactions.
This is exactly how I imagined Chibi-Usa’s childhood–she gets teased and bullied by the other kids (and adults make terrible comments, too), but her parents are patient and loving and there for her. Every time we see Endymion talking about her or interacting with her, he’s encouraging and believes in her.
There often seems to be this idea that Mamoru and Usagi neglected her as a child and I just don’t see that. I see evidence that she was greatly loved, if her parents being kinda busy. I see a little girl who got caught up in her own fears and doubts, because her innate magic held her arrested at that age, in a way that many kids would naturally outgrow, because they would keep growing.
I see a young girl who utterly trusts and loves both her Papa and her Mama, I see parents who have no idea what she is (Endymion even explicitly says she’s the first of her kind, they don’t know how her aging is supposed to work), but who love her and believe in her regardless. I see a child who is constantly thinking of how comforting her parents are (she wants her Mama back so badly, because nobody can defeat her Mama, she thinks of her Mama’s hugs, she thinks of her Papa’s hand holding hers, she thinks of the time they spent talking and it’s clear he loves her), I see a family pulled a bit out of time, but one who love each other more than anything.