Sailor Moon

Note: This review encompasses the entire series, rather than just the first season. Keep that in mind while reading. Thanks!! When anime fans start talking about shows that began their interest in japanese animation, many people point to the fact that their first experience with anime (whether they knew it or not at the time) is Sailor Moon. It's one of those anime shows that people fondly remember as the basis of "how to do anime right" for future shows of its kind. Even when comparing it with today's new trends, plots, characters and animation, it is easy to notice why SailorMoon is fondly accepted into the hearts of anime fans around the world. In my eyes, you could not have picked a better anime to become immersed into the anime world than with Sailor Moon. And a big reason for that is the intricate and well-developed plot, arguably the strongest feature Sailor Moon presents. At the surface, you can say that it's your typical "children rising up to save the world" theme. However, this magic girl anime show presented unbelievable twists to the plot that included five different main story arcs with amazing depth to each of them and somehow, it always able to weave itself flawlessly back to the central theme that encompassed Sailor Moon. To top it all of, when you watched Sailor Moon, it was able to emotionally draw you into the show with ease, where you undoubtedly had your favorite sailor scouts and actually cared about each and every character and what happened to them. Very few anime shows back in the day (early 90's) were able to do that, and though we see it more often nowadays, its still a special skill that is needed. Again, because of its 1992 creation, the art obviiously seems old-fashioned and not as crisp as what you watch nowadays. But if you really think about, each character was drawn well, each given different physical characteristics that separated each one from another and the backdrops used were well detailed to an extent. Sure, there were a ton of repeated frames (namely during transformation), but what anime nowadays doesn't have them? In all, it still holds up very well, even in today's times. Depending on what version (English or Japanese) you are most familiar with and most vividly remember, the sound preference of the show could go either way. While I personally did not have a problem with the English cast, the Japanese cast also voiced each character pretty well. The voices of each character gave of enough feeling and emotion, which helped draw the viewer into the show even further. The music was so good that there have been hundreds of performances, many musicals and an ample amount of released soundtracks that have been much appreciated by the public. Again, one can also argue that the strongest point in Sailor Moon was the plethora of characters they introduced, each one of them having a significant part in the grand scheme of things. As I stated before, everyone picks their favorite sailor scout, and to me, each scout's character personality seemed to fit their represented planet quite well. They took their time with introductions of characters and the development was amazing, with new powers, techniques and relationships acquired throughout the entire series. The one downside people may bring up is that they may have been *too* many characters and with that, the focus is turned away from the main ones. On rare occasions did that occur in Sailor Moon. Weaving all of this together, Sailor Moon is easily one of the more enjoyable "old-school" anime shows out there. Almost every episode had some kind of meaning towards the overall plot and a lot of the battles can't be called anything short of epic. However, a big question mark on whether or not people enjoyed Sailor Moon was their views towards romance. Love was one of the bigger themes of this show, seen strongly epitomized between the characters of Usagi (Serena) and Mamoru (Damien). If that was something you loved, chances are you favored this series more so than people who didn't find that factor appealing. All in all, Sailor Moon is one of the shows that started the anime trend outside of Japan and they could not have picked a better show to showcase than the Sailor Moon franchise. With a great cast of characters, a lengthy, emotional series involving epic clashes between good vs. evil and a highly well-developed plot, Sailor Moon is a show that if any younger anime fans out there haven't seen, or if the older ones thought was too "mushy," you should give it another try. Who knows, it just may be right up your alley.

Season One of Sailor Moon encompasses the best and worst of the entire Sailor Moon franchise. Sailor Moon introduces us to Usagi at her most comedic: she is not only the heroine but the comic relief of her own show. Over the course of the season we are introduced to Luna, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter and finally Sailor Venus and Artemis. As others have mentioned, it is the characters, their relationships with one another which really holds the show together. Other shoujo such as Card Captor Sakura, handled the monster of the week nature in a more fun and varied way, but few animehave handled girls in all their complexities and silliness as well as Sailor Moon has, before or since. Sailor Moon is about girl power and while the anime emphasis may not be as strong as the manga, it's definitely still there. The girls have complex characters; it's not about defining them by one characteristic, the dumb blond or the tough tomboy (as American cartoons often do) but by letting the girls be multi-faceted, even paradoxical; the tomboy who is boy crazy and romantic, the dumb blond who is athletic and dedicated to her mission. Sailor Moon saves Tuxedo Kamen's butt for every time he saves her, more so as the season goes on. And all of the girls change and grow through the challenges they face. With such a large amount of characters and cool-looking villains, Sailor Moon is also one of the most lastingly popular series for fanart and fanfiction. Someone or some relationship is bound to catch your interest and play you right along. Which is all part of the fun. Planets, stones, mythology, past lives, romances. This series has so much to play with and it all adds to the appeal. The monster of the week aspect forms the larger part of the series, which is hit and miss. Some episodes delve into character development, exploring the girls' past and seeing why they are who they are. Others are primarily comedic in nature, such as the episode with the cat who falls in love with Luna, mocking Tuxedo Mask's and Sailor Moon's relationship (everyone has made fun of Tuxedo Mask, but Sailor Moon did it first). Others are boring, silly and a bother to sit through. The best episodes are the first handful and the second half of the anime, I think. Once the Nephrite arc ends, the series picks up. Kunzite and Zoicite are threatening, the monster of the week format is shaken up and things get serious. At this point, even the filler episodes can be grim. And, of course, as with any season of Sailor Moon, the finale delivers in big ways. There's no doubt the budget for this anime was less than to be desired; being a shoujo, that was its inevitable fate. Thus the animation and sound effects are sub-par. However, the voice acting it strong and a lot of heart went into this show. And following seasons pick up, the animation improves and the soundtrack simply gets better and better. I think the main question is whether Sailor Moon is riding entirely on nostalgia, or if it still holds up today. Not having watched Sailor Moon as a child and watching the first season for the first time in my life at 23, my opinion is that, while flawed, it is still a worthy watch. There's history in the making in this show. Skip the filler if you want and watch the core plot episodes. They're worth it.

Back in the 1990s, Sailor Moon was the queen bee of popular shoujo titles by helping to popularize the magical girl genre to international fans and being the first series within the genre to feature a magical girl fighting against the forces of evil instead of using her magic to do fun and mundane things that older titles like Creamy Mami did. I was a sucker for the series when I was a kid during that period as I watched the butchered American syndicated version of the series released by Dic during the mid-90s. Our heroine of focus here is klutzy and book-dumb middle schoolerUsagi Tsukino, who is tasked by a talking cat named Luna to become the magical girl known as Sailor Moon to thwart the evil activity of the witch Queen Beryl and her forces among the Dark Kingdom. Along the way, Usagi gains several additional allies to assist her with four other middle school girls who can become Sailor Senshi and a mysterious tuxedo-clad man named Tuxedo Mask who often pops up as a walking plot device to save Usagi whenever she gets in trouble against the "monster of the day". Taking off the nostalgia goggles of watching this baby nearly 20 years later, I'd hate to say that Sailor Moon hasn't really aged all that well. All the character types and plot tropes that were milked by Sailor Moon during its heyday are a common part of many modern magical girl titles, many of whom offering more fleshing out of their plot and character elements than Sailor Moon does. Here, many of the characters are rather lacking in depth and have one-dimensional personalities with the good guys fighting for "love and justice" to save the world and the bad guys being evil for the sake of being evil. As a lead character, Usagi was rather obnoxious at many points in the series with her being ridiculously clueless, clumsy and crying incessantly if she ran into some sort of problem, which makes it kind of questionable why this would make her a character relateable to younger female audiences. Even with the romance Sailor Moon dabbles into at points, the relationship developments are either not convincing or are too underdeveloped to get seriously invested in thanks to the rather shallow character depth. The plot mostly follows a "monster of the day" format that takes up much of the show's run with Usagi stumbling upon the monster's plot, transforming to combat them, often getting herself in trouble, having Tuxedo Mask save her in the nick of time and then uses her powers to finish off the monster. Later episodes do slightly pick up in quality when revelations concerning the origins of Usagi and her friends come to light and the stakes are raised with Beryl trying to further her plans. But the series still resorts to monster of the day plots for many of its episodes and milks enough deus ex machina in thwarting perilous situations that Usagi and the other Sailor Senshi get themselves into. Pretty much, the series is very predictable with its plot developments if you've seen your fair share of anime. Visually, Toei was obviously running Sailor Moon on a limited budget with the reused animated frames, underwhelming action scenes, minimal detail on scenery and plain-looking character designs. The soundtrack isn't much better as much of it consists of bland and low-key tracks that don't do too well at effectively capturing the mood and tension within Sailor Moon's key scenes. I might get quite a bit of flak for this from purists, but I much preferred DIC's soundtrack to Sailor Moon since it at least attempted to capture some sort of mood during key scenes in spite of how cheesy it is nowadays. Overall, I suppose I don't get what makes Sailor Moon all that popular with fans. Sure it popularized magical girl titles. But the character archetypes and storytelling tropes within it haven't aged well and are a common occurrence in many modern magical girl titles, a number of whom offering better fleshing out of their premise and characters than Sailor Moon, like Cardcaptor Sakura and Princess Tutu. I would sooner recommend those titles and a number of other modern magical girl titles than Sailor Moon and I don't feel pressed to dig into the later seasons of the franchise anytime soon.

Last month, I rewatched Evangelion for the first time in over 15 years and wrote a new review. Now, I'm writing a new review of Sailor Moon. Specifically season 1. The first time I watched this, I was 11 years old and knew absolutely nothing about Japanese anime, visual directing, animation, etc. At first, I just dismissed it as "that girl show that came on before DBZ". I eventually found myself enjoying it, but I didn't like the 2nd season, Sailor Moon R, and stopped watching. Flash forward to 2021 and my girlfriend convinced me to watch seasons 2-5. I really enjoyed them as anolder anime viewer who has gained an appreciation for the medium and the amount of work that goes into it. Over the last month, I finally decided to re-watch season 1 and I'm happy to say it holds up really well! Sailor Moon is a famous anime that if you have a MAL account you've probably heard of before. However, many younger fans haven't seen it yet. So, what is it about? Thousands of years ago, there was a magical, utopian kingdom on the moon. However, an evil sorceress named Beryl summoned a demonic entity from beyond space in order to gain its dark powers and tried to conquer both the Earth and Moon kingdoms. The queen of the moon was able to seal away evil, but only at the cost of her own life. Thanks to the queen's final sacrifice, the citizens of the Moon Kingdom including her daughter the princess were then reincarnated millennia later in Earth's largest city. Now Beryl has returned to terrorize 1992 Japan and only Princess Usagi can stop her. At least, that's what the manga is about. The anime mostly consists of filler episodes in which a team of goofball villains cook up the dumbest schemes imaginable, often rivaling the Juralians from Chargeman Ken! Prepare yourself for such brilliant plans as "evil hair salon", "evil skating rink", "evil ski resort" and "evil weight loss gym". There is an episode of Sailor Moon in which the villains realize that all they know about Usagi is that she's clumsy, kind of dumb, and is really good at throwing her tiara. So, they create an evil women's finishing school and look for the student who is bad at literally everything except for throwing a frisbee. The Sailor Moon anime is so silly compared to its overly serious manga counterpart that it often feels more like a spoof than an adaptation. For most of the episodes, the anime staff took the manga less seriously than DBZ abridged took DBZ. Yet somehow, Sailor Moon still works. It's low key one of the funnier anime of all time and somehow still has some very powerful and tear-jerking scenes. So how on Earth did Sailor Moon end up being so good? Look no farther than the anime's credits. This was an absolute all-star production team. The lead director was Junichi Sato, who also directed Princess Tutu, Kaleido Star, Doremi, and every season of Aria. The assistant director and episode director for many of the big episodes was Kunihiko Ikuhara, who later went on to direct Revolutionary Girl Utena, Penguindrum, and of course Lesbian Bear Storm. Another episode director was Kenosuke Uda, who directed the first 300 episodes of One Piece. As a result of its dream team staff, Sailor Moon has some truly outstanding visuals. Especially for a Toei anime of the early 1990s that was made on a budget under a tight schedule. In fact, several of Sailor Moon's shots were visually referenced in Neon Genesis Evangelion since Hideaki Anno is a big fan of Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon's directing is so good that it was basically impossible to ruin. In the 1990s, Sailor Moon was adapted for North American audiences by a company called Dic. In terms of goofy Americanization, questionable edits, and extreme censorship, they were probably even worse than 4kids. Yet even the Dic versions of Nephrite's big scene, Zoisite's big scene, and the climactic battle with Beryl all still hit hard and remain beautiful scenes. That's just a testament to Sailor Moon's level of quality. I've already mentioned the excellent directing and visual comedy, but the heart and soul of the Sailor Moon anime is its characters. While the manga's characters were kind of bland and interchangeable, all 5 girls in the anime have very distinct personalities and watching them interact is always a joy. It's the secret that allows the filler episodes to be just as good and sometimes better than the plot focused episodes. An episode of Sailor Moon in which the girls go to a donut shop would still be entertaining! Allow me to give an example. In the manga, the character of Rei Hino is a shrine maiden who is very dutiful, kind, polite, and serves the princess with utmost loyalty. Her most unique character trait is that she has a phobia of men. Anime Rei Hino on the other hand, is a different story. Rei is a brash, proud, hot-headed friend who relentlessly teases Usagi and is perhaps the biggest bitch in the Greater Tokyo Metropolitan Area. It can actually be argued that Rei was the first modern "tsundere". There were hotheaded female characters as far back as the 1970s who had traits we now consider tsundere. Lum from Urusei Yatsura is another example of an early, proto-tsundere. The archetype absolutely exploded in popularity thanks to Asuka from 1995's Evangelion. After 1995, every single dating sim, VN, battle shonen, and harem comedy needed at least one tsundere. According to Hideaki Anno, Asuka's personality was partially based on Rei from Sailor Moon. In fact, he was going to name Asuka "Rei", but instead gave that name to a different character to be less obvious. My favorite character of the 5 is Makoto AKA Sailor Jupiter. The original concept for the character was for her to be a "Sukeban", which was a sub-culture of delinquent bad girls who smoked, drank, wore long skirts, and carried weapons. This sub-culture started in the late 1960s and peaked in popularity during the 1980s. However, this idea was largely abandoned besides Makoto's trademark long skirt. In the manga, Makoto is basically just the muscles of the group. However, she isn't all that interesting. Anime Makoto introduces herself by beating the shit out of 3 thugs who are attacking Usagi. Then she fights one of the Dark Kingdom's generals before even getting her powers and just punches him in the face! She doesn't even need magic to kick ass! However, they didn't just stop by making her "the tough chick". They decided to make her a fleshed-out character who in addition to practicing karate and being strong is also someone who has always had to take care of herself since her mother died when she was young. She learned to love cooking and cleaning because she wants to help take care of others. She's also the mushiest romantic of all 5 girls. They could have taken the shortcut and just made her "the masculine one", but they didn't. People are complex and don't fit into neat archetypes, so typically good characters aren't easy to classify either. I know some people aren't fond of paragraphs that deal with real world politics, but it would be hard to talk about Sailor Moon without bringing up its sexual diversity. Sailor Moon in 1992 was to my knowledge the first mainstream anime airing on Japanese television to prominently feature a gay couple. Sure, in Rose of Versailles you had Rosalie, who had some feelings for Oscar. However, both Rosalie and Oscar end up happily in heterosexual relationships and it was only a little tease. Zoisite and Kunzite are just straight up gay. Period. They're important characters and there is no hiding it. Well, unless you're the Dic dub, which tried to make Zoisite female. Then in season 3, Ikuhara introduced us to the first openly lesbian couple in a mainstream TV anime who are main characters and are in a happy, stable relationship. The first US dub made them "cousins", which was particularly hilarious since it did little to hide their affection for one another. Then season 4 introduces an early example of a transgender woman in anime. The US dub of course just made her cisgender female, which worked until she tears off her shirt in one episode and you now have a shirtless woman with visible nipples in a kid's show. Finally, season 5 introduces 3 new characters that change between male and female and are non-binary. Incidentally, season 5 wasn't brought over to America until 2019 because it was simply too gay for American audiences to handle. In summary, Sailor Moon just might be the most LGBTQ franchise in the history of anime. While Sailor Moon has many positives, the first season does probably drag on a little too long. Some of the filler episodes are better than others with episode 42 being particularly bad. The anime also recycles animation A LOT, which means nearly 1/4th of every episode is recycled footage you don't even have to watch. Sure, this makes Sailor Moon an easy anime to watch while doing something else. However, it doesn't add points to its MAL score. The anime also makes some unusual decisions such as aging up Usagi's love interest Mamoru. Given, it is utterly hilarious to see a 19-year-old college student act like a complete jerk to a 14-year-old 8th grader and make her cry in nearly every episode. However, it also romanticizes a relationship that would be problematic (not to mention very illegal) in real life. Lastly, there is the uncomfortable fact that the male dominated staff of the anime inserted WAY too many panty shots in a show that was supposed to be aimed at young girls. The manga was created by a woman and the nude silhouettes when the Sailor Senshi transform is faithful to the original work. What isn't faithful is the anime's obsession with upskirting one of the girls seemingly every time the opportunity presents itself. Did I mention they're all 14? Some of the animation team at Toei were apparently VERY horny while making this show. Overall, Sailor Moon is an anime that for the most part has aged far better than most people realize. Well besides the VERY pastel colored 90s fashion and whatever wardrobe abomination Mamoru wears in any given episode. It has some blemishes, but this is definitely a must watch series for any anime fan of any age. It is one of the all-time classics. If this review inspires anyone to check it out, I would personally recommend the Viz dub. It stays largely faithful to the Japanese script, but also adds some humor of its own that works very well. However, if you're in the mood for some vintage dubbing and often unintentional hilarity, the Dic dub is also there for you! Note: Kunzite and Zoisite were actually the 2nd gay couple to appear in a Japanese TV anime. The first were from a 1982 shoujo called Patalliro. I only just learned of this since it wasn't released in my country, although English fansubs do exist as of 2022.