majestic

I wonder if that has anything to do with the manga only having 10 issues instead of the 13 or 14 that Naoko Takeuchi usually did. Maybe they thought they'd be getting more episodes, because it's strange that only Minako got an episode where she is the clear focus that also deals with her ongoing problems of being a school girl, wanting to be an idol and having to save the world. Ami spending time with the professor who found a comet wasn't a very good focus piece (and not a great episode either - not bad, just not great). It's also possible that the writers didn't really know what to do with the girls and therefore only gave Minako a S-Style episode. I'm almost glad they just made Makoto be nervous on TV, which makes sense for her, and didn't use her as punching bag or have her yell at people that have done nothing wrong. The last handful of episodes... KP hated them for reasons I don't entirely understand yet, because I'm like six episodes into NGE now, and while Shinji is a little whingy at times, so far he hasn't really been grating or problematic. The largest issue is pacing. There's only enough content in the final six episodes for maybe three. So there's some downtime in between the action, and then everything is crammed into the final episode. It would really have been nice to have an episode or two after the final confrontation, like in S. And finally the animation, well, there are bits and pieces that look pretty good, and others are consistently bad. Haruka for instance, I don't think there's any shot of her where she doesn't look like a bug eyed alien. I think almost the entire animation team left Toei after SuperS (Ikuko Ito certianly did, as well as any animators that left to do Revolutionary Girl Utena), so they probably hastily slapped a team together. I'd have to go back and check the comments, but it's possible. It's just that there's a lot of animated TV on air here that's anime without looking like modern era anime. There's the obvious stuff, of course, like Naruto, Pokemon, Dragonball or the two football shows that I never really liked. One of the biggest staples of German children's TV ever since the 70ies is Maya the Bee. It's so ubiquitous you could easily claim that anyone who grew up with German TV watched that show in one form or the other. Long before Sailor Moon. I was more thinking that they don't know any better because anime equals funny Japanese names and big eyes. I'm pretty sure The Flying House ran here too, but I've never seen much of it. I got lucky and was left alone to watch what I wanted. Within reason, of course, I didn't see Nightmare on Elm Street befor 13 or so. Utena... the character designs really do take some getting used to. Concerning Cardcaptor Sakura, I understand that. It does look the way it does and the English dub is terrible.

Th Führer would be proud of you.

I'm hard pressed to come up with any anime I've watched that could compare to Sailor Moon, and certainly not when it comes to the combination of art style, tone and tropes. Not very surprising either. When it came out it was something new born out of old genres. There's been plenty of super sentai anime and magical girl stuff, but a combination of the two that transcended the limitations of either genre and that doesn't happen too often. In the end, even though really popular entertainment is often overrated, in this particular case there's a reason why many fans attribute liking anime at all to having seen Sailor Moon. When I watch German clips of Sailor Moon, the YT commenters often state "This was the first anime I watched!" which is patently 100% untrue unless it was literally the first animated show you've seen on TV in Germany. The others usually don't follow such a distinctly anime animation style (even if Sailor Moon itself looks different, what with the budget and all), but were animes regardless. I'm not entirely sure where Cardcaptor Sakura is going (if anywhere at all). There's an early episode where she's stuck at home on a Sunday because she traded household chores with her brother, and like two thirds of the episode are spent on Sakura cleaning with the help of her friend, and the monster of the week is a completely non-threatening tree that just happens to grow out of the basement. That does sound boring, for some reason it isn't. It's completely adorable. The issue here is... the English dub is... oh boy. Bad. So bad. Then there's revolutionary girl Utena on which, as you already know, a lot of people invovled with Sailor Moon worked on. But that's decidedly less fun. There are still fun scenes, but it's made to make you think, not roll on the floor laughing or having your brain melt by way of fremdschämen (great German word for what you call second hand embarrassment, literally "foreign shame" i.e. the shame you feel when someone else does or experiences something incredibly embarrassing). Said it before, it bears repeating I guess, I know what you mean. If you had shown me screencaps of Steven Universe I wouldn't have watched it without an endorsement. Madoka proper - that is, the show made movies, is a total of four hours, i.e. 12 episodes with a net runtime of roughly 20 minutes each. The third movie came later (haven't seen it yet). The visuals, yes, initially at least, everything about the first two episodes (almost) is meant to set up this typical magica girl anime setting. Except for the one fight scene that is there where Mami scares off a bunch of, uhm, magical things. That look like this: If nothing else, Madoka has a great antagonist that's being consistently voted into the top 10 anime villains of all time - and that's from a show that came out in 2011. It's also one of the few times - if not the only - where the antaganoist is both the most vile thing imaginable but completely free of malice or even evil intent (the actions arguably are, the intent, however, isn't). Indeed, that's fine. It's pretty much all any entertainment can hope for if consumed outside of formative times. 's the nature of things. Obviously I agree. Even the supporting cast is usually great, unless they're (ab)used by the writers to carry the idiot ball for some forced conflict. Yes, looking at you Haruka. The most amazing thing is how the writers were able to occasionally make this both silly and meaningful at the same time. Hmmm. Time to watch episode 192 again.

What do you mean you're not rooting for Dracula?

SuperS or the show as a whole?

Sure thing, I wasn't entirely serious when I posted that, outside of actually liking the small bits from McD's more than their regular sized fries. That Steven's bits would be really terrible in real life is something else. Most of his food would probably be. Yeah, fittingly, IC's speed was the most... insane. He even blew through SuperS as if it wasn't terrible and sucks out all your motivation to watch. I never thought I would have this much fun revisiting Sailor Moon, even with SuperS factored in. Not trying to rain on your parade here, but Ami's First Love is also a special that ran concurrently with the SuperS movie. But there's no Pegasus. Wholeheartedly agee about the group coming to an end being sad. I'm sure there will be something else to watch and talk about, but... Sailor Moon was a pretty fun topic to discuss. Plus that anime will always be special for me of course. That's because Lindsay's a professional and knows what she's talking about. It's for the same reason I watch RLM's videos, but almost no other reviewers. They're all so full of... manure, and the more popular they become the worse it gets. I mean I get a laugh out of How It Should Have Ended or Honest Trailers for sure, but when I think of the people Lindsay Ellis used to make content with (or for) - Channel Awesome, dear god... there's a Nostalgia Critic episode where he talks to his reproduction organ which forces him to watch Sailor Moon because he's pretending to be 14 again and turned on by the transformation scenes. Ha ha, such funny. It's the same for video games, the only guy whose videos I watch is Joseph Anderson. Well, and the speedrun documentaries by Summoning Salt, but that's something else entirely. SU spoilers:

It by far and large is. We don't have to tell him about SuperS, that might put him off. edit: Wouldn't eat wedges on their own. Or fries for that matter. Or anything that's only potatoes. Except baked potatoes with a nice sauce. Hmmm. We used to make those in my parent's wood stove when we were kids. There are also streetfood stands in winter time offering these. Usually. Not this year. Meh.

This topic sure is going places. Sure he's got a point. Still, whenever I'm at McD's or anything like it, the little fry bits that are at the bottom of the paper bag are always my favorite. They're crunchy but usually not burnt black. I just realized that you only have like the video game con episode with Ami's horrible custome, Minako's focus episode and the last nice interaction episode before the storyline kicks off left. It'll be over really soon. I'm not sure how, but we really need to rope someone else into watching Sailor Moon. Any takers? edit: Fun fact, I never understood why people watch reaction videos on YouTube, but this thread is essentially a reaction "text" for Sailor Moon, and it's been an absolute blast reading your thoughts. Heh. Guess I understand that now. edit 2: Watching bits and pieces of the video con episode I realized that the costume isn't that bad, just that its skirt is super short and there's an extended shot of Ami's underwear. Sigh.

The Bits are at least greasy and crunchy and a fun experience to much. So... yeah.

For me that's mushrooms. People love the things, but I absolutely hate biting down on them. It's disgusting. The taste would be fine in most cases - there are some mushrooms that are better than others, of course, but it's the experience of eating them that turns me off. Ugh. Like potatoes in all variants though, even if they're just boiled in salt water and have some butter on top. Sigh. Now I'm hungry. No, that's a lie, I was hungry for a while now and it's just gotten worse. Still better than regular fries. Don't kill potatoes, fry them at least in wedge sized chunks!

Turn on english subtitles. Get them from the internet if whatever you watch doesn't come with any. It's a twofer deal, you learn more of English's at times truly inane spelling and you get more easily used to the accents when you know what it's supposed to mean.

Steven's onto something there though, isn't he? "The Bits" are clearly better than fries.

Feeling a little shaken right now. In the past two weeks we've lost as many colleagues at work. One to COVID-19, and one to an aortic dissection. Both in their mid 30ies and otherwise perfectly healthy, and some of the nicest and most competent colleagues I've had the pleasure of working with.

Watched a bit more of the first Madoka "film". The animation and sound quality are really much better - or that is because this has a bluray source and the anime I watched on Netflix. The scenes are obviously more detailed - see the pictures I posted before - but maybe the quality issue is also from using a streaming service. The material itself works just as well as it did the first time around. While you could say that the initial watch is full of surprises, a second watch doesn't fall short. The emotional impact doesn't rely on surprise at all, if anything, knowing what is going to happen makes certain parts... There's one thing that can be a little irritating, I suppose, in case you would really look at this as a film instead of six 20 minute episodes shown as one. The structure doesn't really adhere to any conventional film wisdom, of course. How could it, that was meant to work as six discrete episodes. Minor things, at any rate.

To be honest actually reading the manga, or at least parts of it so far was a major wakeup call. More than watching Crystal was. I don't think I've ever run into a deeper gulf between what seems to have been the creator intention, her statements (some which were probably made in anger while utterly stressed out) and the fanbase misunderstanding and misrepresenting everything while being incredibly militant about it. Plus an immense amount of people taking these fan statements at face value and perpetuating them even into professional reviews. In almost every review of the first Crystal season the reviewers state how much better, loving and "healthier" Mamoru's relationship with Usagi is, compared to the 90ies anime, because Mamoru spent a longer time being mean to Usagi in that one - and dated Rei for a while (which in itself is a subplot that I find a bit bewildering - what's Rei doing there, annoying Usagi or does she really like Mamoru? Going by Sailor Stars it really seems to be the latter. Poor Rei, nothing really goes well for her either, does it?). Did they even watch the show they were reviewing? Kissing a passed out Usagi? Yes, that's certainly healthy. Jumping through her open window? Oh boy, yes, please do more of that. Telling her to transform in front of him? Wohooooo. And the final kicker, abducting her when she falls unconscious after reviving Toyko and then creepily holding her back at the shoulder and sniffing her hair while giving back her bag. How romantic. Nothing screams healthy relationship more than being a creepy obsessive stalker, after all. And let's not at all get into the murder-suicide or what happens during Black Moon. Mamoru's and Usagi's relationship becomes actually nice and good and... yes, healthy, in the third arc. They love and talk to each other like real people would. By that time Mamoru and Usagi have a normal relationship in the anime as well. Just a lot less of it, because it's probably the least interesting part of Sailor Moon. We could examine what happens in the season that shall not be named, but the manga equivalent there has some of the worst things ever in it, so that's not entirely fair either. The manga fanboys are just cherry picking here and conveniently forgetting that the anime and the manga ran concurrently. Mamoru being mean to Usagi for a while was because he was distant and initially a bit mean to her in the manga (what with her test scores) and it was not at all clear if he was an ally or an enemy up until the second half. Yeah. For fun I just googled Sailor Tin Nyanko and came across a cosplay costume. So that's actually one thing I would like to ask Naoko Takeuchi should I ever get the chance. When she complained about the anime being made by men (even though some of the most prominent animators working on it were women) and her characters too sexualized, that was before she made the Dream and Stars arc, obviously. I wonder if she still feels that way when you look at all the characters - including the Amazoness Quartet, or if that statement was purely meant for the heroines, or if she stopped bothering after the third arc and just went with it.

I have rewatched that episode and more or less made my peace with the scene. It is funny, until it suddenly isn't any more - specifically when Makoto changes her expression after a while, because then it turns from everyone is embarrassed to be stuck in this situation to Makoto looking like something embarrassing is underneath Ami's skirt. Which feels weird to me, within the context of the girls transforming next to each other like they usually do. Makoto's embarrassment here is for the benefit of the audience, not because it's something that makes sense for her in this scene, if that makes sense? That part of the scene will always bother me, but that's just me. Everything else, especially the stupid fandom, no longer seems as relevant as it did before I read Naoko Takeuchi's statements about her own work. Shipping, well... oh boy. You're saying you don't like Pearlmethyst or Amedot? Seriously? Hahaha. Yeah. I started out being online at the time when the Ur-Ship sailed (surfed?) the depths of the nascent world wide web. Shippers are the worst. It's doubly bad because I still think Chris Carter caved to the fandom when they actually wrote Mulder and Scully into an actual relationship, instead of a professional relationship that turned into a deep friendship. Character reading and subtext depends a bit on the context. There's the scene in the couple cruise episode where Rei invites Ami and says they don't need boys to have fun. Oh lord, has the fandom read things into this one, while in context, the only thing Rei did there was to annoy Usagi who wanted to go more than Ami did, and the girls had just met each other too. Homosexual subtext doesn't need to be read into Sailor Moon because it's openly lived anyway. And there certainly isn't any unresolved sexual tension between Ami and Makoto, for crying out loud. Or anything. Do the two even talk to each other alone at some point, outside of Ami offering to dance with Makoto because nobody else danced with them? There's not much one on one time for the girls without Usagi in general, I think. It's almost always Usagi and one of them, or they're in a group. Well they can't all be fun like Fish-Eye. Absolutely, yes. Which is why I really liked the scene, regardless of the contrivance necessary to make it work. I don't know, Tin Nyanko screams bondage fetish in a way that Aluminum Siren didn't, but yes, the Starlights are... worse. Still sad that we missed out on Sailor Heavy Metal Papillon. Just imagine what the animators could have done with her:

One of the more beatiful things Sailor Stars does is to clear up what's going on with the two. I mean, beyond adding some subtext in the storyline episodes at the end that I immediately disregarded because Sailor Moon doesn't need homosexual subtext, and never needed it right from the start with Kunzite and Zoisite or Haruka and Michiru. There are parts of the fandom who spun an entire relationship between Ami and Makoto out of Ami asking Makoto to dance with her (and the scene in the first season where Ami fell over and Makoto stared under her skirt for a while). But seriously, if anything were going on between any of the Guardians, I doubt the showrunners would have been coy and subtexty about it. There's subtext, allegory and interpretations for other things, for instance Usagi and Unazuki talking about kissing in S which probably was Sailor Moon appropriate talk about sex (given Usagi's reaction to it, which otherwise makes no sense even within Japanese social norms, for which Usagi has no regard whatsoever anyway, just look at how the Sailor Moon R movie begins. Smoooooch me in public, Mamo-chan!) or how awakening as Guardians stood for the onset of puberty for the five, and possibly for coming out for Michiru and Haruka. It's not like they were given a chance to be a match for Nezu, were they? It's pretty clear that the writers, even while Iron Mouse was still around, simply abandoned trying to come up with interesting fight scenes, or any meaningful scenes with the villains. If nothing else, I liked Aluminum Siren's polite manner when talking to the people she was going to attack, and Lead Crow's irritation at it (and the constant eating). So, how did you like Sailor Tin Nyanko's outfit? Suddenly Aluminum Siren doesn't seem so bad any more, right?

Gothic emo lyrics and glam rockish sound. Consider me sold.

I can imagine Sailor V being a better read than the Sailor Moon manga, if only simply because it features wacky Minako hijinks. When it comes to weekly releases that's one part nostalgia for me, because that's the only thing we had for a while. It conjures up memories of a time when we'd gather the family to watch a TV show in the evening, then talk about it in school, and one part having external pacing. I specifically mentioned not doing anything new until I'm done with everything I started (which as for right now is NGE, Steven Universe, more Sailor Moon, JoJo's bizarre adventure, Cardcaptor Sakura, Revolutionary Girl Utena and a handful of live action TV that I used to follow but had no time for during crunch time last year) unless it's weekly releases because that way the additional time investment on my end limits ifself. Because it there's something I'm really bad at it's setting limits or goals for myself. If those don't come in from the outside, well... I either go on uncontrollable binges (hello watching three seasons of Steven Universe over the Easter weekend) or simply don't continue at all, even if I like or even love something. That and the fact that our government keeps on extending the school lockdowns and my nephew has started living here, because there's no way his parents can go through what he needs to learn with him - and with nothing else to do, the only time I can get to the TV is... when he's asleep. I have my own Usagi/Rei relationship with my brother, and he's the Usagi in it when it comes to school.

SPOILZ

To be honest I'm looking forward to being done with everything I've started watching. Then I'll just... finish my Lord of the Rings re-read (it's a different translation, so "re"-read is a bit of a stretch). I'll also probably try not to get entangled in watching 6 shows at once, or only if they have weekly releases and are currently running. Still haven't caught up on a lot of things I wanted to watch last year, like Westworld, Agents of SHIELD, and some other stuff. Sigh. I've thought about mailing my Sailor Moon manga PDFs to my Kindle so I can read somewhere else than on my PC. If that looks halfway acceptable that would be something. Since they're mostly uncolored nothing much would be lost in the process. Hm. Could make a case that R+ Minako is her default mode, and the first season and talking about her past helped her move on and get back to how she was supposed to be. In that case helping Minako move on was one of the nicest things Usagi ever did for her. Hmmm. That's probably not how that was intended, but it works for me.

Wait. So I was right, yes?

Nah. I've started too many things now and had too much going on at work, and checking out the Madoka movies made everything worse because... I originally only planend to check out the beginning of the first film and then go do something else (manga, Steven Univere Future, JoJo's or... work, I really should stop procrastinating) but I'm completely hooked again. The surrealist pieces look amazing.