majestic

Yep, that's the one. I don't mean you need to say positive things about the episode itself. I'm not sure I like it myself. It's... complicated.

Oh, and by the way, since you guys are coming dangerously close to episode 20 here, if you watch this and have anything to say that I don't like to read you should totally be prepared to have a whole essay about it thrown at you. Just, you know. Fair word of warning.

I know that answer too. Not because I looked it up, but because it would be totally bad writing if they included all the hints for no reason. The one thing that's left is seeing how long it takes for the reveal to happen. This feels like way back when I first read A Game of Thrones and went online to see if people came to the same conclusions I did (namely R + L = J) only to find fans were actually debating about this back and forth. Huh. Good thing the show cleared that up.

Managed to get a Steven Universe episode in. Should probably not have spent 5 hours typing up something about Sailor Stars. Alas, well... edit: Oh, and @Bartimaeus, here's my observation from way back about the episode you found offensive:

lol

When I get annoyed enough I write confusing e-mails to the people involved at work so they stop messaging me. A while back when someone asked me how it's possible that situation X happened in the system even though I had just tried to explain twice that a user simply confirmed both packages as received even though only one was delivered I wrote them that my working theory is that there's been a macro level quantum entanglement event that automatically caused the status of the second package to switch in the moment the first one was scanned, and the second package also has the status received now, even though it's not even here yet, and that I fully expect to receive the nobel prize for finding a macro entanglement phenomenon. The only reply I got was "You sure you got the right job?" Yesterday I got an e-mail where someone told me that our status messaging to another system isn't working properly. I took a quick look at it and noticed it was simple user error, which... well, let's just say this was really obvious and everyone with half a brain would have figured out why it happened if they had looked at it instead of just asking right off the bat. This was the fourth or fifth time I've been asked about this. My reply was: "I'm sorry but this appears to be a persistent problem in the computational network of the wetware involved. It crashes at random intervals and resets to its default values, causing all sorts of problems in the system, and I have yet to find a way around that. It's one of two really weird issues that keep coming up, the other one is a random space time warp problem where packages teleport themselves into the goods-in area for long enough to be posted as received only to disappear immediately afterwards." Much to my surprise the reply I got was: "You mean user error, right?" Heh.

I honestly don't know, and I don't think the manga has any explanation either, but I will keep you guys posted if I come across something. Yes, pretty much. The manga ends with Usagi pregnant, although she does fight the final ultimate evil of the universe and everything (tm) for an indeterminate time before there's a little timeskip ahead. Given the timeframe and the fact that they call the future we see the 30th century, Chibi-Usa's birth is most likely in the early 2000s.

No, not really, because:

ONEGAI PEGASUS! TWINKLE... ELL. Like Sam Carter once said to Rodney McKay: Go suck a lemon, Chibi-Usa. (Joke explanation for everyone who hasn't seen Stargate SG1, in addition to it's original meaning, Rodney McKay is allergic to lemons and says he'd probably die from the lemon chicken offered in the cantina, and later when he's being annoying to Carter she tells him to go suck a lemon ) Edit: Because you asked, IC: Chibi-Usa is 903 years old at the beginning of Dreams.

edit: I just realized I spoilered that there'd be no payoff to this bullsh*t that's going on in SuperS. Sorry! I'll add a spoiler tag now! Yes, the edit description gives it away too. It's supposed to be funny, because nothing else about this season really is.

I'd still say it is. Except for an episode here or there where the intern was in charge of the animation. Oh, and your other point, yes, the stock footage clearly wasn't ready when the season first began to air. The first two episodes have cobbled together attack versions, with no voiceovers at times, Chibi-Usa uses her Sailor Moon S movie transformation scene once because the new one wasn't ready, and... while the girls get their upgrades in *checks* episode 16, they don't use any upgraded attacks or their new transformation sequences until episode 24 (and even then it is limited to Ami). Rei uses hers in 25, then there's a complete weirdo filler episode (one of the ones that looks a bit off) and only in 27 do we see Makoto and Minako doing their new stuff. I'd say +1 to the theory that a lot of the things made in the season's pre-production were scrapped after Toei decided to retool the show.

Sailor Moon Sailor Starts Final thoughts, part 2. edit: The linked images on the SM wiki are really small, you can enlarge them by clicking on them. Crappy forum software gonna crappy soft...ware. I guess. The first part ended rather abruptly in the issues and storyline block. It was getting late and I already kind of stream of consciousness'ed myself way away from where I initially wanted to go. So let's talk some more (or rather, I'll type, you'll read, and maybe comment), about the themes, the problems present and that ending. I hope someone at least reads this, I've spent over three four five hours on this now. Holy crap. The Idiot Ball, also known as Forced Conflict Strikes Back A token that transforms its holders into morons. Ideally not in your writing, alas, it is present in this season. The Heavy And Light Metal Group, or How To Be Boring Girl Power Screen Time The Finale, Thematic Exploration Part One I'm not entirely certain that this needs its own paragraph. The imagery used in the final confrontation speaks for itself. To call it heavy handed and on the nose is an insult to all heavy handed and on the nose imagery. You have to be completely blind to not notice it. So why was there a part one? Because a part two is incoming. The Finale, Thematic Exploration Part Two: Intention or Applicability, Feminist Theory? Well here we are. For all its failings and Sailor Moon SuperS, Sailor Moon was - and still is - a milestone. It shows us the power of teamwork, how to have courage in the face of overwhelming odds, what it could potentially mean when you need to grow up much faster than you're meant to. It shows, without explicitly mentioning it, that girls can do everything that boys can. It has a lesbian relationship that's leaps and bounds ahead of what our current "inclusivity checkbox" media can come up with. It has a tomboyish character that just wants to be a traditional woman but can't. It has what essentially amounts to a really masculine woman in a lesbian relationship who is completely fine with who she is. It has the most Anti-Disney-Princess character as the titular heroine. Someone who wants to be her own kind of princess, as she says. Afraid, often crying and initially not accepting the role she was given by circumstances outside of her agency, she grows, little by little, until it culimantes in the finale of the show (and yes, let's not talk about her character regression in SuperS please). But most importantly, during the run of the show, the characters become our friends. They're not just people on the screen. We laugh with them, we're happy for them and sometimes we sit here with misty eyes because it hurts. Everything about it is so heartfelt that it exceeds most other live action TV shows in terms of immersion and relatability. And yes, that is even though it is essentially a superhero show with super repetitive elements. And Just Beause I Feel Like Insulting Someone Again! Because why the hell not?

I'm beginning to see a pattern here. But yes, I complained copiously about this episode. I'd say its nice to see that you're bothered by the same stuff as I was. Validation is nice and all, but I really wish SuperS was better. The worst part is if you strike out Chibi-Usa and transport this to one season one it would maybe have been really funny, especially in light of Rei's not that distant relationship with Mamoru. Here it is just completely misplaced. It would still be even if there wasn't an episode before where the two main characters behave in the exact opposite way, making this even more awkward than it should be. This was written by a writer that's been on board since season one. She really should've known better. Or used an alias if that crap really came from studio interference.

I have no idea what gave you the impression that the next good episode is going to be 20. The next good episode is 23. Everything before that is bearable at best, Makoto torture porn or at least in parts hilarious but still stupid. I said 20 is good because I like the way the girls are trying to support their friend and are considerate of her feelings and her self-esteem issues instead of just telling her how completely ridiculous she is behaving. I also have no idea how that episode happened in this mess of a season. Maybe the writers got drunk enough so the body snatchers couldn't work their magic. Like Londo in the dark future version of Babylon 5 where his Drakh keeper could be supressed by getting sh*tfaced enough. Like there's one semi-funny episode coming up where the girls all suck at dancing, but are shown to be top dancers two episodes later. The hang on summoned trapezes in one no problems, have vertigo in the next. It's maddening.

I added a Stars spoiler clip in an edit to my previous post, by the way. At any rate, yes, that's Makoto in a nutshell. I don't think she'd ever berate a friend of hers like that, not even if it would be the right thing to do, especially not with her having self-esteem issues herself. Her being like that to someone she cares about (regardless of how much that someone comes out of the blue) feels like it invalidates her Sailor Moon S focus episodes. If anything, post Sailor Moon S Makoto should resolve this by being understanding and supportive in a non-aggressive manner. When you look through comments on the 'net about Sailor Moon, many of them are like that (random YouTube comment incoming): It's not something I thought about when I first watched it (I was 16 and had my own share of problems), but this is, I guess, more relevant than ever nowadays. Sailor Moon has a group of superhero girls that are, in the end, girls, not characters adapted to survive in a male dominated genre by out-testosteroning them. Yes, I'm looking at you, Captain Marvel film.

Fair word of warning, the next episode is the one where the STOP CHIBI-MOON clip is from.

Funny coincidence though. Episodes 5, 6 and 7 are probably the only really good/decent ones out of the first 20. Try to get to episode 8 as soon as possible, it's where the season turns to compete shice.

Are you sure you want to miss out on the first four episodes?

No host of dudes there. Only one you haven't met yet, but hopefully will (I hope you'd rather skip parts of SuperS than drop the show entirely), and Ali/Ail isn't even canonical in the strictest sense. Manga!Usagi could maybe be a man-hater under different circumstances, but Anime!Usagi? Never. She just loves everyone. Out of order episodes... The funny thing: Mamoru is hugely popular.

Oh, I forgot to comment on this. Minor Stars spoiler:

And how did it ever become popular - the manga, not the original anime? The two questions I've been wondering about ever since reading through a bit of the manga and watching Sailor Moon Crystal. SMC aired to terrible ratings and bad reviews, very much deservedly so, I'd say. Some of SMCs problems are related to adaptation that feels not very thought out, but most of it relates to the source material. The one point where the first season deviates from the manga, namely giving the Four Heavenly Kings (word filter here censors the original Japanese name because it begins with an expletive for manure) an expanded role is one of the more interesting things that happened. In the framework of SMC, however, it was a complete waste to give the girls past romances akin to Mamoru. They get two scenes where they talk about it, then die. Poof. Gone. Like Slughorn's wee little fish Francis from the Potter movies (I was surprised that this doesn't happen in the book) when Lily Potter died. It looks more and more like a complete freak accident of history. At some point somehow the anime adaptation of a manga that wasn't really good, nor a success of its own because it was a brand new sequel to a popular manga nobody actually asked for, blew up into a beloved billion dollar franchise. My working theory is that since they both came out concurrently people watched and read both, and it formed a single whole in their minds, with the anime padding out what's not shown in the manga, i.e. the girls being friends and being normal girls. That explains Japan, and by extrapolation everything else too, because the manga wasn't readily available in the rest of the world. You can read the manga and keep the characterization of the anime in mind, and some of it makes more sense and the pacing doesn't seem to be completely sloped towards the breakneck zero character development style it actually has. Either that or all the other (maho) shojo manga of the time was even worse. So bad in fact that Sailor Moon was good by comparison. That's a scary thought. Going back a bit to the adaptation as it is in SMC. The most annoying thing is everyone narrating what we can see on the screen. Interestingly, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure does something similar. However, in these scenes, nothing is completely animated out. There are still-frame shots that are animated as a whole, like moving manga panels, with the narration running. That's a stylistic choice that you can appreciate - or not, depending on your tastes and preferances, but it is intentional and a creative choice of the team behind the anime. Whereas the one in SMC just looks like they didn't know at all what they were doing. That's not by choice, but by blind adherance to the source material. Being cynical for a bit, I wonder how much of a wakeup call SMC's initial "success" was for Ms. Takeuchi. She finally got her faithful(ler) adaptation, and it was trashed by fans and critics alike (and the fans still like the manga, and make excuses for it, like SMC isn't totally faithful, that's why it sucks).

Oh, I forgot. Some spoilers: The SuperS movie draws heavily from European fairy tales and was for me the least interesting of the bunch. I'm sure that was interesting for a Japanese audience, but eh. 's kinda like Indian food isn't exotic in India, right?

That's the part I'm not 100% certain of. Like I said, me liking Sailor Stars that much with everything that's going on in it and how it is going on rings an alarm bell at the back of my mind. The episodes are certainly better and more entertaining than most of SuperS at least. Well that was a close call. Phew. But I understand you there. I don't like them either most of the time, but probably for different reasons. Funny, huh? I've read fans comment about her comments, some of her comments about a lot of things, but nothing... nothing about SuperS. Wouldn't be surprised if she was fine, if a bit annoyed, with SuperS turning Pegasus into an even more glaring pedophile than he is in the manga. My, am I feeling acerbic today. So let's look a bit. In SuperS, producer Toshihiko Arisako was given a more influencial role after Iriya Azuma stepped down. There's also a Q & A with two topics he's talking about. I've omitted some things for brevity. 1: The depiction of daily life is what appeals to fans (editor's note: Gee, you think?) A lot of people refer to Sailor Moon as an all-girl sentai team, but I think the series’ real appeal is how it depicts their normal, day-to-day lives. Sentai teams are brought together to fight, but that’s not who Usagi and the rest are. They just face threats whenever they happen to arise. They eat delicious food, get excited gossiping about love, and live lives that are remarkably similar to those led by real girls. Sometimes they have to do battle and get to engage in somewhat extraordinary lives, which can also be appealing to those who also wish they could transform. The manga does an impeccable job at striking a balance between the ordinary and the extraordinary, which I think is what has led to the series’ popularity. The anime is similar in how it strikes this balance. Italics added by me. This guy is clearly insane, unless he was being really obscure about something. The wording of this IS bit open to interpretation, however... who knows without access to the original and enough knowledge of Japanese to properly read between the lines. However, second one: 2: More emphasis on input from the creator Lately female manga artists have been much more direct in providing input in how they want the anime [based on their work] to be. I think it’s thanks to that input that we’ve seen a boom in the creation of more anime that meets female sensibilities. Huh. Yeah. Figures. That does hint at more input from her, but who knows at this point. Truth still is, considering that the creative team took their hat and went to do something else after SuperS, is that the Toei messed it up. Hard. Oh by the way, something I haven't talked about. By the time the anime began airing they didn't even have the stock footage ready for it. The new transformations by Sailor Moon and Sailor Chibi-Moon and their new attack was... only partially on screen for the first two episodes. If that doesn't give any more credence to the troubled production theory, then what does?

Final thoughts on Sailor Moon Sailor Stars. As per usual, I'll mark spoilers where necessary. I initially wasn't sure if I should do this one, but YouTube just suggested a Sailor Moon AMV to me that made me type this up. I normally don't watch AMVs, like at all. I might be biased, but we had a colleague at work who constantly watched AMVs. Or rather, he listened to music with his YouTube playlists and those were full of AMVs, and they all were stupid power fantasy cuts of popular animes. Now that doesn't mean that all AMVs are stupid power fantasy supercuts. Just that all of them that he was watching are. Sailor Moon AMVs, as I have now noticed, usually aren't, unless they're from Crystal (gee, wonder why it is easier to make a power fantasy supercut out of MURDER-DEATH-KILL Usagi than from the original love and peace Hippie-Jesus Usagi). Anyway, here's the video. It contains a couple of funny and sad scenes from Sailor Stars and is a bit spoilerish in that regard, although I don't think they'll hurt given the complete lack of context. The song is, uhm, yeah, 2010 style German trash, but it's quite catchy. *shrug* Before I go into any more details, I'll go out and state it. I love this season, in spite of, or perhaps just because of, its many issues. In fact I plowed through watching it in record time, even quicker than Sailor Moon S. My personal season ranking would be: Sailor Moon S > Sailor Moon Sailor Stars > Sailor Moon R = Sailor Moon >> Sailor Moon SuperS. Prior to my rewatch I would have ranked R better, not the same as the first season. R was what really got me into Sailor Moon way back, but it wasn't as good as I remembered it to be - or no, let's rephrase that, it wasn't better than the first season. Not that I don't consider Sailor Moon to be one of my favorite animes. Out of its 200 episode run, only a few are real stinkers, and almost all of them are concentrated in Sailor Moon SuperS. In the end, the show is something like 90% good to great, and 10% terrible, a ratio that even the most sucessful smash hit shows with a lot less episodes can only dream of reaching. Animation I've talked about this before. Presuming you'll watch the video above at least once, you'll see what I mean. The animation of the characters is noticably different from the other seasons. For all its other faults, I think the anime looked best during SuperS. Except for that one episode with Naru that looked like aliens made a fan episode. That's not to say that this looks bad, not at all. I love the animation in Sailor Stars. The girls are 16 and in high school now, so a bit of an age up was a good idea. Soundtrack Oh. The first thing you'll notice, unless you already know, is that the opening theme is different. Moonlight Densetsu only comes up once in the ending credits of the very last Sailor Moon episode. That was actually a really nice decision, and it really drives the point home that you're no longer getting any Sailor Moon. Or at least, no more Sailor Moon that isn't a total waste of your time. Here's the Sailor Stars Theme: I stated last time that the German opening was always the same song, except for reruns where they introduced other songs. The theme song was initially weird for me, but at some point it began to grow on me, and in the end I was looking forward to the opening credits. It's also the opening season where I watched it in full every time, I just love the opening scenes with the girls. True to form the opening theme also gets a slower, orchestral version to underscore emotional scenes. It's bloody fantastic (but that's the Sailor Moon soundtrack in general). But... but. With a large part of the season being about a boy group at the height of their popularity, the sound track also included some of their songs, and they're... not good. Well, one could argue that boy groups were never good. Anyway, I don't really like Search For Your Love, but your milage may vary. The storyline, the episodes, and the issues The good thing first. Naoko Takeuchi hated the sweeping alterations this season made to her storyline. Which we by now know means that Sailor Stars is better than what she came up with. Much like in R, her manga chapter structure and storyline proved to be barely adaptable. If you don't leave your animation team even a bit of something to work with, then please don't complain about the alterations necessary. Especially not when they're all better writers than you are. It may actually pay off to read the manga just to properly appreciate how much of a mad dash to make everything work the production of this show must have been. The storylines of Sailor Moon have consistently been nothing special, but the ones in the manga were downright terrible at times. What does that mean in the context of Sailor Stars? Warning, MASSIVE spoilers ahead.