If I was to ask you to name an anime you watched as a kid growing up that you remember off the top of your head, what would you answer with? Dragon Ball? Cowboy Bebop? Pokemon? To a lot of people, they might say Sailor Moon, born from a manga of the same name and one of the defining choices in terms of the Magical Girl story structure, about a group of ever growing friends destined to come together to stop evil threats that lurk in the night and shadows. For it's time it was popular, enough to still be going to this day. Time, however, is a fickle thing and is harsher to some ideas than others. So, how kind was time to Sailor Moon? Ignore the fact that I'm clearly not the target demographic for this and let's find out! Welcome, to the Sailor Moon Marathon starting with the original show.
Starting with the plot of the show, as hard as it is to get through the exposition dump, I will get back to that later, the plot is somewhat simplistic. What was once a kingdom on our moon has been destroyed, its culture lost to time thanks to Queen Beryl and the Nega Force. In a desperate attempt to save what she can of her people and her daughter, Queen Serenity used the power of the Imperium Silver Crystal to transport the population to Earth, wiping their memories in the process. Before she fell, Serenity asked two cats (no really) Luna and Artimus to find her daughter on Earth, and protect her from Queen Beryl. For the record, this is all the exposition for the show, this isn't even the show.
On earth, 1000 years later, Queen Beryl is trying to return once again now that the Moon Kindom is gone, along with (to her knowledge) and potential threat to her rise to power and taking over the universe... why she couldn't do that in the 999 years between the Moon Kingdom and now is beyond me. Clearly, she failed villain school, or she's a moron, but not alone in that either. On earth, Luna discovers one of the lost "Children of the Moon", Serena Tsukino (QUIET! I told you I was reviewing the DiC Dub. I will get back to it at the end of September!). Luna gives Serena a pendant that grants her the ability to "transform" into Sailor Moon and the ability to fight Beryl's forces. Serena is then tasked to reunite with the four missing Sailor Scouts, and then eventually take on the demon queen as she is eventually revealed to be Serenity's daughter and the Princess of the Moon Kingdom. The show's monster of the week structure is fine for what it is, nothing spectacular, though it all has a theme of negativity in some form, a lot of it coming down to the "corruption of beauty". Put it this way, the first villain Serena fights is someone using jewellery at 90% off the marked price to collect the greed of women to feed the Nega Force. That should give you a hint as to the kinds of characters in Sailor Moon's Rogues Gallery.
Putting that here as there aren't a lot of images to break up the paragraphs. Sorry for that, I already know these paragraphs go on long enough as is.
Now then... the character designs... I am not a fan of these designs, I personally think they look out of place. I have no issue with the characters more casual attire, including their uniforms when they're at school. It's the Sailor Scout uniforms I'm not a fan of. I am personally not a fan of the "the sexier they look, the more powerful they are" trope for character design, be it for either gender but let's be honest with ourselves gents, which gender is that put onto the most? The reason I am personally not a fan of it is that a lot of the time, it feels forced on, done for the sake of creating a more sexually explicit character visually.
To me, a character's looks should be inspired by their personality (along with every other part about them but that's beside the point). Considering what the girls wear as casual attire, it makes the Scout uniforms look out of place (especially when you consider most of them are 14!). From what I've seen, if the characters could choose what their uniforms looked like, I'm pretty sure they'd have something a bit more functional then what they have now. Should the trope not be used? No, it has its place in character design, and can be done well (one example coming to mind for me being, of all things, Bayonetta, but that's because her personality matches the attire she uses in combat (in all its forms...). Is this a problem for everyone? No, for any number of reasons, it's just something that I'm not a fan of. To me at least, blatant sexualization for the sake of it comes off as a bit condescending to me. I prefer to think with what's in my head, not what's in my pants. Is this the worst case of the trope? No, to my knowledge that goes to Kill La Kill, which explicitly states the more you reveal, the more powerful you get. Granted, Sailor Moon was aimed more at girls then it was at boys (yes I am aware of people who don't identify as either of those genders, it's faster on my end to just refer to the two main one), and still is aimed at girls, but the character designs and some of the challenges the team face makes it feel even worse at times.
As for the personalities, while I do like the character development Serena gets, she's one of the worst heroes I've seen for this site. The fear is reasonable for a while, but there comes a point where it goes from reasonable to annoying. With the exception of her and Tuxedo Mask (who trust me, not a fan of his look either, though it does a better job at hiding his real identity at least), the rest of the cast is fine, and all of them do work off each other rather well. One complaint though I have with not only Beryl but Luna and Artimus as well is that all three seem to have been morons before the events of the main show due to that time gap. What was going on in that 1000 years? What would the cats have done if the girls and Tuxedo Mask didn't appear all at once? I do not recall if there is any reason why it took 1000 years for the team to show up on Earth, it might have been in the Manga, I could have missed it entirely, but to my knowledge, there is nothing here explaining it. I know I'm harping on this but it's honestly the one big problem I have with the show (aside from the visual designs of the characters).
The rest of the art style and the soundtrack is quite good overall. Dated when compared to modern animation styles? Yes, but it hasn't aged badly. It still looks good to this day, though there are some clear cracks in it, such as Melvin's walk into the frame in the first episode coming off as something similar to the Trumpet Boy meme going around at the moment in terms of how stiff it is. Even when Toei's doing something more sup par by their standards, there's still a lot of effort going into it. In terms of the soundtrack, nothing really stood out in a bad way, this isn't "Hey Digimon" levels of bad, but there was only one song in the soundtrack that's memorable, that being the theme song itself. It's a good theme, and I'm surprised they kept the original instrumental and tried to actually localize the song when most shows in the localization phase just replace it completely (look no further then Pokemon if you want some examples of that, for better or worse).
Sailor Moon as a show has held up pretty well. Flawless? No, there are some points that love to remind you when this show was made and are dated now, but still solid. There are some other views I have on it, in terms of the cast, but those are views best saved for another time. For now, we depart as the sun begins to rise, and next, we meet here, we delve into the world of more filler, time travel, and a somewhat confusing mother/ daughter relationship, with Sailor Moon R. As for what's next on the Toybox? That'll honestly depend on if I can find what I'm looking for in time to review it, stay tuned for that one.
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