majestic

That certainly was something, but not what I expected. I've known that the end of NGE was controversial and somewhat surrealistic, so much that "Gainax Ending" has become the anime synonym for Lynchian endings in movies. However, I expected an ending, to be honest. Something that resolves plot threads in an unexpected way that initially seems to make no sense, like the ending of Mulholland Drive, for instance. But that's not at all what this was. It wasn't an ending to anything, it was a two part episode exploring the character themes present in the anime where Shinji overcomes his own insecurities, levels up and puts some character points into self esteem, what with the metaphorical cracking of the egg (world) at the end and everyone congratulating him, with a prior solipsist detour and an exploration of its varieties (which I won't comment on, because I have a very low opinion of solipsism). And even that is somewhat unfinished, because Rei III and Asuka don't get their second parts (as teased by episode 25), although we can assume they manage too, they're functionally the same as Shinji both in and for this particular character exploration anyway, so a repeat would have been pointless. Level ups for everyone! Yay! Uhm. Great. Here's the real kicker, that was a really good two parter episode, but a complete failure as an ending. F, no points for effort. Time to watch the movies, I guess, even if I can't shake the feeling that they'll just double down on the nonsense and will claim "hey our last two episodes were really intended as the ending, because the Human Instrumentality Project has begun now and that is its result!"

It was. That entire episode wasn't so bad, I mean, except for the obvious problems of SuperS. Usagi being super annoyed about food (that was the lemon pie episode, right?) is even something that's in character for her. Her reaction to it was completely overblown, but what can you do. Not sure what the dub had there as dialogue, but the subs mentioned baby and or very young Usagi pictures specifically. Chibi-Usa should know that all of those would be back home. I mean, in her home time. It's not like she left Tokyo. Nobody leaves Tokyo in Sailor Moon, except for Minako. Or so she claimed, at least. edit: Well, unless when going to strange enemy dimensions or the North Pole, but those don't count, right?

Good thing you looked at Germany. That's at least much larger than Austria... uhm. *blink* Every frame nation is so dense, there's so much going on. Hehehe. But yes, that's true. We're more people in a much smaller area, but nowhere near as bad as certain East Asian countries. Considering how long it took me to realize that Asuka and Shinji have exactly the same problem with diametrically opposed coping mechanisms I'm kind of afraid I'll be left sitting bereft and in bewilderment of what's going on. At least I'll finally know what the memes were all about. I hope. That is one of the weirdest and quite frankly worst non-assault/non-pedophile scene in SuperS. First of all, given all the time Chibi-Usa was around, there should be plenty of pictures of her, then she has the faked pictures (although Luna claims they aren't fake, I think) and Chibi-Usa knows she's from the future and there wouldn't be any baby pictures of her, so why the hell is she wondering why there are none? Why, SuperS, why? Why not make at least one script revision? Seriously. What were you, a 90ies attempt at making Star Trek: Discovery?

Well, that was wrong. On the bright side, I wrestled access to the TV and my Switch away from my nephew, whose school opened as of today. Which means more JoJo to come soon. I hope. I mean, I already saw the Cyborg, that was pretty much as glorious as I expected it to be.

But that is hard and requires effort. I want to unabashedly stan this anime and be as obnoxious as the people who do the same for the manga. Hey, now that you mention it, then we could cut out Black Lady entirely (note for any other readers of this post who have not watched Sailor Moon: "Black Lady" is not what you think it is), and that's a plus in of itself, . I was going to say no at first, but then I realized that Black Lady never really worked in the anime as much as she did in the manga - creepy stuff aside. Following Death Phantom makes sense insofar as Chibi-Usa wants nothing more than to finally grow up, then she blames herself for essentially ruining the world, killing her father and encasing her mother in a crystal sarcophagus. In the anime her age is never talked about, only that she blames herself for the destruction the Black Moon wrought on Earth (or Crystal Tokyo). That's what the writers might even do if they had known where this went beforehand. You could replace the breakup plot with showing that Usagi matured a bit with her confrontation at the end of the first season, remove the (co)dependency issue, make everyone behave nicely to Chibi-Usa in the way they should while ALSO removing all the insane Electra complex stuff that is going on, then just cut Black Lady out and nothing of value would have been lost. Because DEATH PHANTOM works... or doesn't work, that depends a lot on how much you like evil energy beings that want to destroy everything (as I have learned, there are people who find these sort of villains clever and interesting, oh dear me), with or without Black Lady. In the context of an early 90ies Japanese animated series, given the circumstances and sensibilities of the aforementioned times, I'd - personally - find a racist issue to be "less" bad than a 9 year old in a grown up body that dominates the will of her father and turns him into her personal sex slave lover. In the same way I don't mind Uhura answering the space phone in Star Trek and think complaints about it are ridiculous. Especially in light of Star Trek: Enterprise that degraded the black guy on the crew to the token crewmember that's there but often doesn't even get lines to speak. That's not to say that I would have liked it, and I'd probably sit here and complain about it as much as I do with the problems of Haruka sexually assaulting Usagi in the manga. I... hope that's clear. Maybe I am just a racist. SU spoilers, KP click on your own peril. Also contains SM finale spoilers. But indeed, it's good to know that KP sees the similarities too. That makes Rebecca Sugar a fellow liker of Sailor Stars, which is fine by me. Maybe we should really update the Steven Universe wiki to include that. You know what? I'm almost done with Neon Genesis Evangelion (the original anime, that is) and Shinji has finally done something that made me really dislike him: Not even trying to console Misato after Ryoji's death. Because hey, Shinji, you're right that it wouldn't help any, but for the love of god, at least try. That is what matters, you waste of space. I'm also pretty confident that Usagi would never do that. Anyway, why do all these special organisations and secret societies have German names, other than "German sounds ominous"? Wait, I think I just answered my own question. Thanks to the Netflix episode blurbs that I've seen I also expect Asuka will die soon. Why else would the description say that a fifth child will come to take over EVA-02. Good job Netflix. Sometimes the timeframes invovled are really scary. To think that there was a time where I followed Stargate SG-1 for 10 years is insane. On the other hand, the time investment is what keeps me away from watching shows that I think I would like, like Supernatural, which is on like its 200th season by now. Character attachment isn't a factor for me when binging. Keeping the episodes apart is, but that is or isn't an issue. It kind of is when you spoil someone who cares for spoilers. I mentioned it before, I think, but what I miss about weekly releases isn't the weekly release as much as the social component involved, and that's something that kind of died out for me anyway now that the family is scattered about a bit more than it used to be. Gone, just like our evening card games. I miss those too. I wonder about that sometimes. I have really fond memories of certain things I've watched as a kid, but when it comes to anime in particular, these were always daily shows. Because usually they were bought when they had finished their run, dubbed German and then aired with copius reruns for a while. It certainly made the shows look a lot longer than they actually were. Bismark for instance, in my memories that was a sprawling show that took AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGES to finish, and in reality it was like 50 episodes long. It was also the first space western I've seen.

Very quick reply because I need to try and catch some sleep now (more on the other points later): You know what's really funny? If Chibi-Usa turning into Black Lady was some blackface related racist story beat it would have been less bad than what it actually was (at least in the manga/Crystal).

I'm always uncertain if I shoud let how much I am nowadays in awe of how good the anime was in spite of the many issues they must have ran into while adapting the manga factor into talking about the more problematic bits of the show or not. Putting Usagi in a situation where Mamoru breaks up with her because he seemingly doesn't think their past life matters enough to be carried over to the present (which is a perfectly understandable sentiment) so that her almost hate filled jealousy of a nine year old girl that is both suffering from trauma and all alone has at least some basis in reality and doesn't make her completely unlikable like the manga does - was that a good idea now, with the source material in mind, or was that bad because it establishes Usagi's emotional co-dependence on Mamoru? Obviously it's bad insofar as it makes their relationship worse. But was it overall better to have her be more likeable, at least until Toei screwed everything up in SuperS? I'd like to say probably, but I'm really not sure. Looking back at this the best solution would have probably been to make Usagi not behave like that towards Chibi-Usa at all, but how would you then justify the way the season ends? What reason would Chibi-Usa have to follow DEATH PHANTOM and become BRACK RADY if Usagi behaved like she should have towards her? It's even worse when you realize that Usagi treats her enemies better than Chibi-Usa. In the manga, that's not an issue, for anime Usagi it sure would have been. Should I be critical of that, or should I consider it excused as the best possible course of action given the circumstances? I... don't know. It's fine with me too. It's a concept that wasn't truly thought through anyway. Much of this comes from Naoko Takeuchi not expecting to make more than one story arc in Sailor Moon. That Chibi-Usa shows up at the end of the first arc was scribbled in to have a sequel hook. I might not have liked the initial arc of the manga, but it was a complete story that could have stood on its own. Like the first season of the anime. It could have ended the way it did, with the hopeful note of the two cats that they might reestablish their friendships even without their memories. Could have also cut the end a bit to make it needlessly cruel, imagine if the entire anime would have ended directly after Usagi's ending narration without showing that her wish came true. Outer Limits couldn't have done that better. When you look at the episodes that he wrote for SuperS there is one thing that stands out. They're all without the incredibly stupid jealousy Usagi exhibits towards anyone who even looks at Mamoru (although she gets irritated by Fish-Eye the first time she sees him make a move on Mamoru she later just helps him, being confident that he's no match for her - not sure where she got that confidence from in this season, but uhm, yeah). He's also credited with the season development, and I think some parts of Sailor Stars might have been picked up from his story development documents. He wrote that episode and this scene after... making the Fish-Eye episode where he wants the little football player to score a goal inside of him. Who wouldn't be frustrated as hell after having to write that? While I'm not, I can understand the sentiment. I'd still say Sailor Moon holds up regardless, simply because its cast is different from what you'd expect from an anime like that, but I'm pretty sure by now that you'd most likely wouldn't enjoy it in the same way we did. Or I did, at least.

There is a Sailor Moon version like this that came out in 2014 called Sailor Moon Crystal. It's Sailor Moon completely free of all filler parts. It was panned by critics and fans alike. It's bad with a capital B - and that is before we even get to the atrocious looks of the anime. Ugh. What a dumpster fire. I don't know what you would expect from a super sentai / magical girl crossover shojo anime. And no, the scenes are usually a couple of minutes each. Like this one, where the Minako is looking expectantly gif is from: Also, for everyone else, I just realized that this is I think the only shot we get from Makoto's home in the show. See, her liking plants in SuperS isn't totally out of the blue because it was forgotten to be mentioned in R. I mean... they did forget to talk about it, but Makoto's room sure is full of plants.

For real now? There was a proposed sequel that's been stuck in development hell for a while.

I'll address these both in one paragraph, makes it easier and more concise. First of all, let me ask you a question, would you really have liked more focus on Mamoru and Usagi as a couple? Because that is what Crystal does, and you know how that ended. There's a possibility that the original anime writers could have made something out of it, something interesting, but in reality they were barely capable of juggling all the threads and giving all the characters something to do. It's the fundamental limitation of writing an ensemble cast show by the seat of your pants. It's a bit clear that the anime writers dropped the ball on this one. While - and I've said that time and again, like a broken record - the source material isn't free of problems, it does make a few things a lot clearer. Mamoru isn't "mean" to Usagi in the way he is in the anime, not beyond their first meeting, after which he is just mysterious and calls her bun-head when they meet. Usagi is also immediately attracted to him. Mamoru is too, and there are the problematic bits of this, while Usagi tells the reader that ("Why is my heart pounding?"), Mamoru gets to show his affection by being a complete creep. The thing here is, it is kind of excusable for an early 90ies work. The tropes used are still in play today, you just need to read any of the romantic young adult literature that's out there, or worse, adult "romantic" literature. Talking about these would be a book, not just a longer post, in itself. There are apparently still a lot of men and women who think that certain gestures are romantic instead of creepy as long as there's enough attraction between the people involved. Now for the together because they were together. In the manga, the girls also get their memories of their former lifetime back. Presumably that happens in the anime too, but they never really talk about it. Crystal adds a certain non-canon part to this that was Naoko Takeuchi's original intention that never really manifested because the manga's creation was under similar time constraints that the anime was, namely that Endymion's entourage were paired off with Serenity's. In Crystal, at least, the girls not only get their memories back, but also their past feelings with them. In the manga, while that only happens to Mamoru and Usagi because the past romance was left out (and later changed for Rei to always have included a vow of dedication and celibacy to Serenity) it's at least very clear that their feelings for each other simply resume from where they left off in the past. If we take the anime on its own, it's not at all clear. In the end, it looks like they stick together because they're supposed to, especially when you factor SuperS in. Which I would really argue that, beyond what happens in the power up episodes (for character development reasons), we really should not. The scene KP mentioned where Mamoru looks visibly uncomfortable justifying his relationship with Usagi to Fish-Eye were incredibly uncomfortable to watch, because there is no reason at all to deal with Usagi's nonsense in SuperS. I think that the scene, written by Yoji Enokido*, who also worked on Neon Genesis Evangelion and Revolutionary Girl Utena, is also there to make Mamoru his AND the audience's stand in that is left in bewilderment at what they're actually having to write and watch in this season. Mamoru doesn't know why he's in a relationship with Usagi at this point any more than we, the audience, know why we're watching this dumpster fire, Mr. Enokido doesn't know why he's writing this (and ends up quitting at Toei). Who knows, maybe it really is love, but it really also is because it is love carried over from the distant past. *Added for emphasis insofar as that Sailor Moon usually isn't that subtle, unless in episodes written by him. Further explanation (just hidden in spoilers because post long enough, amirite?): When it comes to romance she's in the same boat as Ami, Rei or Minako, but she sure served as a punching bag at times. Minako's story with Alan is perhaps a tad more tragic, but not when viewed through Makoto's issues. Minako has issues too, but they're different. And then there's her SuperS assault episode which is easily the worst of the core cast's. Not the worst episode, but the worst experience any of the five have to go through (even though the trophy for having the most horrific assault scenes goes to Unazuki and Reika, oh boy).

Two paragraphs might not be an essay, but it sure starts like that. You've already thought their relationship through and came to what we could call an abstract. All that's missing is... a more detailed explanation and some citations. The only ones of the core cast that even have a relationship other than Mamoru and Usagi are Haruka and Michiru, and they clearly have a much better relationship than the former two, xenophobic as they are at times. Secondary characters, well, there are Usagi's parents and Naru with her Umino. They seem to be happy, but they are barely around after R. Rei with Mamoru was odd, and it always seemed Mamoru dated her because he had nothing else to do, not because he seemed to be very interested. For a while I thought Rei did that to annoy Usagi, but she seemed to have really cared, with her offering the temple for him to stay at after she ruined his room and being really annoyed at Usagi for her insinuating that she might try something (and also, like everything in this utter waste of a season, Diana goes and makes it SUPER CREEPY by offering to be Mamoru's chaperone, insinuating that she expects Rei to hop on top of him the moment they're alone). That leaves a lot of other side characters that never went anywhere, like Yuichiro, Makoto's Kenji and Ryo. I'm not sure why Ryo was dropped*. He knew Ami was Sailor Mercury, they shared common interests and Ami never expressed anything more for someone else. Except fangirling after composers and the Three Lights. I also just made the mistake of googling a bit for any other side characters I might have missed, and found a list of fan-shipped couples that could have been. I want to scour the Earth of people who think that any of the Inner Senshi in the anime are supposedly coded to be lesbian or have lesbian subtext (there is subtext in the manga for Rei and Minako). They don't and aren't guys, please stop that. Chibi-Usa has two potential relationships, one of which I don't want to talk about, and the other is Hotaru, which requires way too much mind-bending to make it work. I recently came up with an idea for one last examination post, and that's character arcs beyond Usagi. The short gist is that, if we allow the SuperS power up episodes to stand there while ignoring the rest of the season, we can reasonably conclude that almost everyone's arc is kind of closed... except Makoto and her senpai. It would have been really nice to give Makoto an episode in Sailor Stars where she finally frees herself of that. Sure it made for a fun running gag (and I answered one of my earlier questions if Makoto and Ami ever talked to each other alone - yes, they did, in early R when Makoto talks about how Ali/Ail could be the Moonlight Knight and Ami asks if he reminds her of her lost love. Makoto initially says no, but then says both love music, and Ami just falls over in embarrassment). So they do talk to each other, but they fail the Bechdel test in the process. So yes, two actual couples in the core cast, two side couples that don't really show up after R, and lots of "what if?"s. For a show about five girls fighting for love and justice, that's not much, is it? There is a non-canon manga side story where the daughters of Ami, Rei, Makoto and Minako try to befriend Usagi's second child. I'm going with that. Yep. *I mean, in-universe. It's perfectly understandable why the writers dropped that.

That's the clip I saw yesterday that made me comment on Usagi's voice in the DiC dub. Because it sure sounds like there's an age difference here, just between middle age Usagi and her teenage boytoy. Oh, and welcome to the Sailor Moon Essay Club. Here's your membership card, member #2. Shiny and gold, like Ami's. Heh.

But it's only like 60 hours (200 episodes á 24 minutes, net runtime between 18 and 20 minutes). Less if you skip all the stock footage. No, seriously, that's fair, in that case you'd probably really wouldn't enjoy it. The best parts of Sailor Moon are (in)arguably the slice of life parts where you just follow five funny teenage girls doing... a whole bunch of silly things, and sometimes they study, get turned into giant tennis balls, deal with children that (literally) fall from the sky and when they're not busy with anything else they save the world. Heh. Sounds like Puella Magi Madoka Magica could be more your thing, that's technically the same genre as Sailor Moon, just a completely different take - and it's short (12 20 minutes episodes or two 2h runtime films, depending on what you can stream or want to watch - films look better, but are the same thing). Whelp, we tried. Looks like the Sailor Moon club really is coming to an end. Sorry, can't help with that. Future Boy Conan looks like something I could easily have liked, but it never got a German dub, so it's really missing from my "seen in childhood" list of anime (that interestingly enough is really full of Takahata's work, but a lot less Miyazaki for some reason - guess not depressing enough for children? ). Nadia was on TV, but at a time when I was still watching Attack No. 1, so, yeah. Might be a good idea to put them both on the "to watch" list.

True, but we're also kind of trying to convince LC to watch, so psssht!

Just looked it up, she was in her early 30ies. Not bad. Usagi had two different VAs in the German dub. The first season was the same woman that does Lisa Simpson in the German dub, which is really distracting while watching Sailor Moon. Her replacement also sounds like Usagi's age (or should I say Bunny in this case?), a bit softer and less shrill, which was a nice change. First season Usagi also had a little too much of a... uhm, German accent*. I mean, not much, and there are far worse examples (mostly in regular actors though, not in voice actors), but it's there. Pluto had three different VAs (one of which went on to voice Seiya). Ikuko takes the cake though. Five different VAs (three "regular" ones and two that voiced one episode each - not that Ikuko showed up much after R). *Without context that's probably a little strange, right?

The VA was weird after getting used to the Japanese voices by now, but it's okay-ish. I just clicked a bit through the Sailor Says! Channel and dear god, Usagi sounds like a 60 year old woman. But yes, she doesn't really sound like a 14 year old girl. Shinji does, more so, huh? Literally in the Japanese version, what with the voice of Haruka... heh. @LadyCrimson Maybe the Professor will convince you? Hmm? Or maybe not. It's also kind of a fake out because that guy won't show up until you're like 90 episodes in. Hmm. Not helping, am I?

We're trying to sell the anime to someone new, not immediately start with the dub that made it an even bigger meme than it already was to begin with.

The Japanese lady has better pronunciation, but they both really sound like they're just reading words from a paper. That last word... should be "nun" (now, in this instance) I guess, which has a much longer vowel than what she's saying. You need to be careful if you watched English clips, there's the, uhm, old dub that's really... something else, and the new dub that's actually good. It's middle school - Usagi's 14 in the beginning. School is a part of it, but not all. It's beyond silly, utterly hilarious, a complete meme, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes sad... and pretty good! Yes. Except for the fourth season. Don't bother with that. *cough*

You need to put in some more effort if you want to become a Sugarian level Sailor Moon omega nerd there! Heh. Just kidding. It's not like she says a lot in German, but the EVA startup sequence in German was hilarious. It's painfully obvious that her voice actor is just a regular Japanese person who was given a few German words to say, with some pointers on how to try and pronounce them. It wasn't half bad, by the way. She did a good job saying "LCL" even, but it's all rather stilted in the way people sound when they have no actual knowledge of the language. Like the scenes where RLM makes fun of Russian Terminator in one of the Best of the Worst episodes. That's what friends ARE for! It made her switching the EVA to Japanese mode for Shinji's sake hilarious. One of the worst examples was in X-Files when the Cigarette Smoking Man calls someone in German and says - or at least tries to say - "Kennen Sie die MJ-Akten?" which literally translated means "Do you know the MJ files" but is better translated as "Are you familiar with the MJ files?" in the context. I had to go over that scene more than ten times until I figured out what he was trying to say. Gee. There's no way the (supposedly) German guy on the other end of the phone call had any idea what he said.

Also, funny coincidence. Couldn't fall asleep last night so I started thinking about this thread and came up with the idea of maybe asking @LadyCrimson to join watching Sailor Moon, after all she sometimes watches anime and she'd be the first woman I know who watched it (while there's a marked difference between the taget demographic's age and LC, she's closer to being the actual target demographic than we are, right? ). And lo, she shows up a handful of hours after the thought. Jung would say a thing or two about his concept of synchronicity here, which connects this even more to Sailor Moon. In a way. It's destiny, I tells ya all. That one's easy, it is in episode 8 where Ami shows up. Never mind knowing the game mechanics. I watched a bit more NGE. I'm halfway done. Not very surprisingly, Asuka's German is kind of bad for someone supposedly from Germany, and that's factoring in the low standards I have for people from Germany (sorry any Germans that might read this, especially Lexx, not sure where you're from... jest made in good fun, unless you're from around Dresden ). Ahem.

There's no need to run. Stay a while and watch Sailor Moon with us, Bartimaeus is like 8 episodes from being done. (Also, haven't read or seen Slayers )

Yes, Ami usually doesn't play video games. She even says she's never played a fighting game before, which makes this doubly worse. The writers clearly had no idea what they were writing about. Competitive fighting game playing is also really different from the casual fun you'd have in an arcade. Really, really different. While it of course depends on the game, it's often the two players just trying to hit each other with safe moves that can't be hard countered (mostly it is make a mistake and lose). If the game has combos that can be broken, then you won't see combos in high level play. Of course, knowing that in '96 is something else entirely, and then... there's the excuse that Ami, having never played the Sailor V arcade game, won that first try all the way back in the first season, a story beat taken directly from the manga where the arcade game gives out Ami's transformation pen and their communicators and the Sailor V in the game is somtimes actually Minako and talks to the girls through the game before they meet because the Sailor V game was made to be Sailor Guardian training, so best not to talk about that. Ami lacks the experience necessary to win, even if she was the most talented player ever. Makoto also played the arcade game, but little else, Rei I think has a console at home but is never really shown playing (Usagi plays once and ignores what she should be doing, like usual) and Minako might like to play, but win? Eh. Too bad that Firefox ate your first post, but watching Minako twice wasn't that bad, huh? Also really nice callback to how easy it is to get lost in a TV station (that was from waaaaay back when Mamoru's part time job was working at one). Loved the exchange between the girls on the rooftop. Even if the rest of the episode had been terrible, I would have liked it just for that. The audio quality during the singing, hum, I have no idea how well (or even if) Cherami Leigh can sing, so maybe that happened in editing and is the result of making the best of it? I don't know. By the way, you've passed the point of no return. This was the last monster of the week, and even actually the last time Sailor Moon said her piece. No more "in the name of the moon" from here on out.

Rewatched Sailor Moon episode 192.

I'm going to do something that I find rather distasteful, but honestly, I see no other way around that. I have had it with this particular user and the entire branch he's working at for a long while now. I've just received an e-mail demanding billing support (not asking for, demanding) because there are apparently one hundred unrated orders and "ain't nobody got time to check that", therefore we should do their work for them. For fun I've done a cursory glance at a solid sample size and noticed that some of them were confirmed as zero (i.e. someone manually checked the order and confirmed it to be unbillable for whatever reason) and the vast majority were orders from last month that are still open or became billable in April. This is going to be fun. I'm generally really accomodating and often don't bill special support requests to the branches even though we technically should, because I don't see the point of shuffling money around between branches. In this case however, I'll make an exception. I'm taking bets on how quickly he'll find someone who "got" time for that.