majestic

Not sure it was the same of course, there's a ton of interviews with each of them. One from what's probably every anime convention since 2014, there's Q&A panels, group interviews with all of them, single interviews and... they're all often about the same thing. Do you still remember which interviews they were? Was that a series on the VAs, or from a single convention, or just random videos you came across? Anyway, you can notice that they're really into voicing these characters, and that, at least for Amanda Miller, it was more than just a job. I mentioned that before in other threads, but I have a friend who is pretty active in the Star Wars fan community, and with LucasArts prior and Disney now in particular never saying no to free marketing, they're doing a lot of things you'd expect would be done by professional promoters. The Star Wars section at sci-fi conventions? Yep. That's all fans. At least in Europe. Where was I going with this? Oh, right, voice acting. While doing conventions he ran across all sorts of people, including one David Warner. They talked to him about various things, including the terrible Wing Commander movie, his work on Star Trek and about him voicing Irenicus in Baldur's Gate 2. Turns out he doesn't know anything about the character he voiced. He took a contract, showed up, gave it his best, but in reality he "just" read the lines he was given in the way the director told him to. He figured out the character would be some sort of villain based on what he was saying, but that's all. He also said he's glad that unlike other actors of his age who weren't as prudent with their finances as he was still have to take on contracts to make money while he just does what he wants to do by now. No names mentioned directly, of course. Granted that's probably a little different when you're doing a lot more lines when you redub a 200 episode show, but anyway, I'm guessing for most of them it's just a job. As for others, huh, I expect Jennifer Hale to have no idea in just how many games she showed up so far, or even remember most of it. Or any of it. Like Malcom McDowell who said he can't remember being on the set for like 80% of the movies he was in, not because they were all drunk or coked out all the time, but by sheer volume. Didn't that turn out rambly and off-topic. Huh. Anyway, TL;DR: I think it's pretty unique that the VAs for the Viz dub got to voice characters they loved and have an attachment to beyond "I did this to earn my living."

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

Strange, huh? It's just two episodes with a little more background information and an almost change of heart in Tiger's-Eye treatment of Makoto and suddenly what by all means should be a group of irredeemable bastards can be seen in a slightly different light. They're transformed predators, so no wonder they're predatorial. They're given a job that they can't possibly succeed at through no fault of their own and have absolutely no agency in their life, and the rest of the Dead Moon don't even extend them the courtesy of telling them that they're not truly human. Instead they're left to wonder why they have no beautiful dreams of their own - and Zirconia lies to their face, because they were transformed without Pegasus, so how and why would they need Pegasus to stay transformed? While I didn't really like the two story episodes where Usagi is nice to Fish-Eye (I hated them a lot less than KP did, by the looks of it), the three slowly coming to terms with realizing that their lives are essentially over, nor did their lives ever matter because they're not truly real anyway, does have a tragic element. The episode you have or haven't seen by now (not sure) has Fish-Eye begging Tiger's-Eye to use the last of their transformative magic to save Usagi's life, to which he agrees. If Pegasus had not shown up to turn the puppets into real boys then the tragedy of their existence paired with their ultimate loss in making at least one thing right (i.e. healing Usagi) might have been an acceptable, beautiful ending to what otherwise was a horrible waste of a story setup that by the looks of it got mired in rewrites and retooling. Because the entire dream rape plot is so out of sync with the bubbly, and otherwise at times really childish, dreamlike feel to the rest of the season that it would take a schizophrenic moron to come up with it, and the story development of the season is credited to the same person who made otherwise top rated S episodes (like your Minako favorites): Yoji Enokido. The S episode where the talismans appear is the top rated episode of Sailor Moon on IMDB even (the Japanese original entry, not the DiC dub entry) at a 9,3. Not that user ratings on IMDB say much, Iron Sky has a lame 6.something there last time I checked and deserves an 8+, but still. I'd say this season was planned to be a lot more serious than it turned out, parts were rewritten, things from the pre-production pushed back and forth. Ah, well... here's to hoping you like Stars better.

No, this was their introduction episode all right, you only see them in shadows in the one before. I hinted at it before, but that circus act was more or less directly from the manga. So, no surprise it wasn't that fun. I think it's two episodes until PallaPalla gets something to do, if you don't find that wacky enough than the villains in this season are completely unsalvagable for you. That would be okay. I was just glad to be rid of the creeps in one way or the other, so I might have... wait, I posted that already. Might have overrated the coming episodes based on no creeps and almost on Pegasus. edit: Spoiler! edit: I watched that Amanda Miller interview you mentioned. Or at least one with similar questions asked. Heh. Funny how people always say the same when it comes to Makoto, they liked her because "you can be feminine and still kick ass" - you go Makoto. Also had a hearty laugh at the interviewer asking about the differences in voice acting for the classic anime and Crystal, and Amanda Miller does her best, as she says, to not sound "dumb" when in reality she seems like she doesn't want to go and say the show's crap.

Still, how do you like the four girls? Wasn't the best episode, but that's a more or less direct manga story adaptation, so how could it be.

There's no episode with Michiru falling, or them being locked together. It's just a display of dominance on the part of Haruka. To scare Usagi off. Does that make it better?

No need to put this into spoilers. Yes, it was. For nothing. And they all get to watch Pegasus groom Chibi-Usa by the dream lake. Mako-chan suffered for that. What a way to make an episode worse in hindsight, huh?

SU UUU... Spaaaaaaaaace! So, I have a feeling you're not going to enjoy the SuperS episode nearly as much as I liked the Steven Universe one.

SU:

It could be that the dub fixed a couple of things. The subtitles were rather blunt, I mean, that woman comes out of the garage and Mamoru thanks her for her service. If the English dub made it a bit more subtle than that's pretty good in and of itself. I'm used to dubs being able to smooth over things, for instance, for the longest time I only knew the German dub of the first Dungeons & Dragons movie, and I kept hearing how terrible the dialogue is. The German dub's dialogue isn't bad. It's not great, at any rate, but it's not terrible - the film still sucks because it's bad, but the dialogue was all right. Then I watched the original and oh boy, they literally tell the girl she's just a low level mage. *facepalm* Let me check what the German dub does in that scene. Heh. Mamuro says "thanks!" and she tells him "you're welcome, you can call (on) me any time", then Mamoru offers her to bring her home. Ami busts in and tells him that she's Bunny's (German dub ) friend and she's going to tell her about this. The subtext is definitely there too, just way less clear. It also makes Ami look less stupid for jumping to conclusions. Oh, and going back to that scene from Sailor Stars that I linked earlier (minor spoiler): edit: Speaking of animation teams, yeah, there definitely is an A and a B team at work in Sailor Moon too. And a group of interns that get to do an episode every now and then. Like one of those you missed, with Naru and Umino. There's better fan art out there.

Guys, I'm going to cheer you up. If you think it's bad watching creeps assault your beloved characters, how about watching beloved characters assaulting your beloved characters? Fish-Eye's not so bad, is he, huh?

Giving Windows support is like watching SuperS. It might be something you do for a bit, but you're sure glad when it's over.

It's still interesting to see that you guys (really English, you can't come up with a different pronoun for second person plural?) deal with SuperS a lot better than I was. The reason why I mentioned that joke in particular is because it was like the first time an episode made me laugh out loud since the second one where Minako and Usagi try playing love godess and making everything worse for a bit. I hated every second spent on this season until the creeps were gone. And I mean hated. So much that that Ami episode where she's playing mechanic fell squarely into "meh" territory for me because what the hell, a mechanic, and how does she jump to the conclusion that Mamoru's buying escort services? In reality it was probably a funny episode and cute that she wanted to defend her friend, and Hawk-Eye's scheme was hilariously dumb, still all I saw there was Ami not recognizing a car key. It wasn't even a net negative, was it? The episodes following the creep's removal have less Pegasus in it, and inversely going by IC's comments I might have overrated them a bit (but how can you call an Ami focused episode forgettable? That should be a crime! ) just because the creep factors were gone for a while. I don't know. In SuperS Sailor Moon reached the point where Star Trek Picard and Discovery were almost immediately, the point where even the good bits I make fun of or hate simply because everything else is so bad. Next part spoilered because it gives away some plot "points" KP and IC haven't seen yet. So, the question is now, did I like Sailor Stars so much because it wasn't SuperS? I don't know. I liked Stars better the first time than SuperS too, but what does say, except nothing at all? Might as well say you like having a nose bleed better than contracting ebola. You bleed profusely having either, but one's liable to kill you, and the other one's usually over quickly. So it is an inverse of Sailor Moon then. Heh. Okay. Yes, screw that. I wonder if that was meant to happen way earlier than it did. Because I have a hard time believing that they actually planned to drag out this sexual predator stuff for 22 <expletive removed> episodes only to have it end like that. Not even in Japan, and not even if Naoko Takeuchi was right in criticizing the "male" perspective Sailor Moon was made from (which I found easier to accept before Crystal and reading parts of the manga - she has no right to complain about the underwear ).

I never bothered watching the ending credits of SuperS. Looks like that was a good idea. edit: Okay, I just did. I don't like the song, but the ending credit sequence looks gorgeous. Except for the winged creep at the end. edit 2: Steven Universe

Another Steven Universe episode. edit:

Oh, right, I forgot: Who wants to know why the second set of mooks are called like they are? Click here. Minor spoilers (only their names!)... and a major one for the manga (stuff not in the anime).

Hey, don't stop now, next up is the torture porn episode. And make sure you watch the rape scene in full just to properly hate Tiger's-Eye. Oh, and about your comment: edit: Now that I think of it, you all watched the princess episode and none of you mentioned falling off the chair laughing when Luna is totally defeated by Diana saying that Mamoru likes to skip stuffy ceremonies when he's king. Was that not nearly as funny as I remember it being, or is that just me being weird again?

I don't know guys, they're doing something right. I know it's annoying for us, but honestly... the amount of times I had to fix crewman #6's Windows (either at work or for friends and family) because they accidentially clicked themselves back to the computerized stone age has been approaching zero since Windows 8. Except for ransomware problems. Can't fix people clicking and not paying attention when they see an email with big_boobies.wmv.exe attached. Last thing I need is a simple "click here to disable all the annoying warnings and trash your computer easily" button. #sickandtiredafter30yearsofgivingsupport

Spoiler!

Indeed it is. I mean it's clear, I think, to each of us that real life sexual assault victims are often too embarrassed to talk about it (not only women, but men too, let alone go to the police or any other authority). It's bad not doing that on the show, especially since it is already a vehicle for empowerment. I still don't think an analogy like this works in the framework of Sailor Moon given the target audience of SuperS, at least not with the dream assault scenes, but the behaviour of the three is bad enough on its own to merit discussion and better framing that simply isn't there. Factor into that how it is resolved and it gets even worse. When the characters are random one-offs at least it makes a certain amount of "sense" to not spend more time exploring it, but it happens to every main character except Chibi-Usa (and no, I'm not sorry for spoiling that, she gets at least that lucky, and it should be really obvious that the villains won't be finding Pedosus the Alicorn until the very end of the season). So yes, they should really talk to each other about it, and it should have happened way less often.

Managed to watch one more episode of Cardcaptor Sakura. At this rate, I'll be done with SU, JoJo's and CCS some time in the next decade. Stupid work. I should quit and dedicate my life to the writing of anime essays.

@InsaneCommander

Most likely unable to get through that manga. Theoretically you could try to get through one episode of Crystal (not the first one though, that's too similar to the 90ies anime), then you'd know if you can stomach the manga. I might have been Dak'kon in a prior life. Endure. In enduring, grow strong.