majestic

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.

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.