Well, in that episode, Nephrite was kind of preoccupied with getting Naru's energy. So he could've been distracted by/focusing on that.
But that's not the main point I want to make. Sailor V is kind of on track. I also want to point out something about the previous episode - the one involving Shingo, and Mika Kayama's beautiful dolls. Remember in that episode when the youma was already jumping at Sailor Moon as Mercury and Mars were running up to her? This youma was clearly less than one meter away from kicking Sailor Moon's head when Mercury started her Bubble Spray - which is merely a fog to 'blind' enemies. But even though the youma's trajectory should have continued to take it into Sailor Moon, Mercury's Bubble Spray worked to save her from that.
This gets into the magic around the senshi's transformations and attacks. Years ago, I found a web site called A Nitpicker's Guide to the Sailor Moon Universe. One of the many pages on that web site went into the point that even though each attack takes several seconds of the episode, when an enemy should be able to prepare a counter to the attack being called out, the enemy is never able to do anything more than a quick instinctual reaction to the attack being launched at it. The author of that web site theorized that the transformation and attack sequences we see are just eye candy, and never take more than one or two seconds to enact from the characters' perspective.
Come to think of it, there's another related point. You know how each senshi's face and hairstyle look
exactly the same as their human/civilian counterparts? Well, the author of A Nitpicker's Guide to the Sailor Moon Universe theorized that the only reason enemies, as well as innocent victims like Naru, are
not able to figure out the connection is some sort of magic surrounding the senshis' appearances that prevents anyone else from putting two and two together - even those who have seen both forms of one of the senshi.
Unfortunately, I can no longer give you the address of A Nitpicker's Guide to the Sailor Moon Universe, because it's not on the web any more (it's in bit bucket heaven
). But the exploring of this web site that I did back when it
was up makes me pretty sure that if someone (like Sailor Saturn) were to point out this distance fact to him (distance between the transforming senshi and anyone else), he would theorize that a similar magic must muffle or otherwise disguise the voice of the girl shouting out her transformation phrase.
Does that make sense and explain it well?