I stand corrected. Man, that's normally my job, being right about minor details.
People to this day still comment about how romantic Chibi-Usa and Pegasus were on YouTube videos. There are videos out there who rate them highly amongst the best power couples, so no, it is not just back then.
By all accounts, Ikuhara and company made Pegasus worse than he was in the manga. Previously, they filed off the rough edges, like changing the Black Lady/Prince Endymion kiss into an illusion and removed the implied rape, dropping Usagi's suicide attempt from the first arc, making the Sailor Guardians less of a blood thirsty band of murderers, and instead introduced a bunch of other stuff, like actual character development. They also had the good sense to remove Tuxedo Mask's super creepy early behaviour (kissing a drunk and passed out Usagi, watching her transform after urging her to lose no time, stalking her and simply showing up at her open window) and Mamoru's 'romantic' reaction to Usagi showing up and basically accusing him of desiring Chibi-Usa 'like a woman' which was to kiss her and pacify the hysterical woman by giving her his love rod, showing her what he really desires. Usagi is all happy, glowing and fine with Chibi-Usa the next day, only to go back to being jealous a bit later.
Typing this out makes me look like I engange in hyperbole, but I really do not. I wish I was. I also wish I would have never watched Crystal and Eternal, and never read any of the manga chapters, but here we are. However, credit needs to be given where it is due, the manga was still really progressive for Japan in 1992. It is just that the anime was better in every regard, unless for some reason one prefers the storyline and dislikes the 'slow moving' filler episodes or dislikes that the stoic and man-hating Rei was changed into a fiery, passionate and boy crazy girl that likes to yell at Usagi but still would do anything for her.
I went looking for a Rei hug gif, and found only madness.
There's an entire Shipping wiki, and endless material dedicated to UsaRei. The anime fandom is in dire need of a cleansing.
Back to the Dream Arc / SuperS: the Amazan Trio, for instance, does not get 22 episodes of raping innocent women, men and - to make that even worse - children. They attack the Guardians and simply get taken out. Their assaults are also not as overtly sexual, they're 'just' trying to seduce the girls with their own insecurities - insecurities that looked an awful lot like Ms. Takeuchi adapted them from Sailor Moon S, but that might just be coincidence. The Pegasus romance is still creepy simply by virtue of him being a horse most of the time and the age difference between him and Chibi-Usa, but he also makes clear that he's more like a thirteen year old boy stuck in this form, and there is none of the pedophile grooming behaviour he exhibits in the anime, but that is partially also because these issues are all really short and there is just no time for anything in the manga.
It is hard to see all of that and not think it intentional. Ikuhara and company were fed up with Toei's interference in their work, but how they got what they wrote and animated past quality control or TV censorsphip, I have no idea. That might also be due to the production schedule, they just had to air what they made, in the first few episodes they did not even have all of the stock footage yet, as evidenced by reusing Chibi-Usa's film transformation scene and the curious lack of their combined transformations.
Pulling the plug on an episode would have meant not airing an episode of their cash cow franchise, so we got what we have with SuperS. Rape allegories and a pedophile horse, in what Toei wanted to be aimed at younger children than Sailor Moon R and Sailor Moon S were. No wonder almost the entire creative team was changed afterwards. What is really interesting to note is that Toei just managed to find a team that then proceeded to make Sailor Stars.
Stars took a hit in character design, but everything else was pretty good. Some of the show's best episodes are in that season. The only story arc worth a damn is there, and half the basis for Steven Universe.