majestic

DVDs, it's not really running anywhere (SIXX cancelled it after the first season) and it isn't available for streaming. Thought about getting the blu-rays regardless, but they gone and messed up Sailor Moon R. Audio quality is terrible and the final episodes is missing, instead it has episode 87 twice. Yay... I hope they fix the problems. Eh.

It is, actually, and I'd enjoy it a lot more of it wouldn't rub me as out of character more than it makes me laugh.

Hahahaha. That gave me almost as good a laugh as the epsiode of SuperS I just watched, even if that season still irks me for its unevenness. I'll put an example in the spoilers, it's probably not going to mean much to KP or Sarex at this point, but fair is fair. And no, I have no such list so far. Maybe I'll make one when I'm done with the rewatch. Even then it's probably better to do a top 5 by season, rather than an overall. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, and I'm not going to expect my list to be similar with anyone else's. I've noticed a long time ago that no matter what (music, tv, cinema, etc) my lists are different. Heh. To give you an example, I think Men in Tights is Mel Brooks' best film. Or, uhm, at least his funniest, I mean, we could split between serious film and parody piece here, but anyway, it serves well enough as an illustration.

In my opinion: Yes, it is. The first season takes a couple of episodes to find its footing, but after that it is, if nothing else, great entertainment. You could watch the first episode, then 8 and 10 to gather the early team (the rest shows up way later) then skip to 13 and continue normally. This skips most of any early awkwardness, takes the first and arguably most boring of the antagonists out of the picture and begins the arc were the show really starts to shine in its very unique way. But the episodes are short enough, more so if you actively skip stock footage, and given the show's shoestring budget and time constraints so skipping 10 out of the first 13 episodes isn't much of a timesaver. You just see a lot less of Usagi crying. The first anime (Sailor Moon Crystal is the new one, and more closely based on the manga) and the manga are supposedly somewhat different. Legend has it that some of the showrunners and Naoko Takeuchi hated each other's guts (she particularily hated them turning Rei into somewhat of a mild tsundere). I have never read the manga, so I don't know, but I do plan on watching Sailor Moon Crystal, even though I really don't like the way it looks. Sailor Moon S (third season) is, I think, the show's absolute high point. It's not just the high point of Sailor Moon, but up there with 90ies anime in general - just don't expect any Evangelion level commentary on human existence. All that is, of course, with two "minor" caveats: First, it's silly. By far and large, it is mostly silly. There's drama, action, some social commentary, it is occasionally heartbreaking (to be honest, the first time I saw that season one finale I cried. Sure didn't tell that to my friends at school, but eh, yeah), but at the end of the day it is... silly. Assuming you can appreciate the abject silliness of the show you'll get a lot of laughts out of it. Second, and that also needs to be said, it also is a magical girl sentai shojo anime. One of the first of its kind, I think. To quote Mike Stoklasa here: It broke new GRROOOOOOOOOOOOUND! I mean it unironically though, and there's a reason why it became popular beyond all the wildest dreams of its creators. Even though it was made for young girls, the only people I know that watched Sailor Moon were guys, and we were mostly in our mid to late teens at the time. Huh. Oh, and has a really minimalistic artstyle that I think is super gorgeous, but it was noticably different from other anime at the time. edit: Wow, forum software just ate my precious edit. @Bartimaeus I agree with your theory.

If Sailor Moon S has a weakness it's that there's not enough screen time for everyone. I'm not sure why it got "only" 38 episodes, it could have done with a couple more. That's why SuperS has a reduced cast size. I'll say this for SuperS, they made sure the girls have more time to be girls in the fourth season. I'd also like to use this post to give some appreciation to the Death Busters. The Professor is just awesome. Eh, and completely insane. edit: The scene from the original English dub about the "Cousins" (boy is that bad, so glad our dub was way better) where Makoto rides with Haruka and Michiru is from episode seven of S. It's probably the best Makoto-focused episode in the entire run of the show. It usually doesn't show up in any of the "best episodes" guides because it's mostly filler*, i.e. there's no dramatic foward momentum or even any impetus for the main story line that seems to define what great episodes are for people who vote on such things (e.g. looking at IMDB's user ratings), but I think it should be way up there. It has everything and more that you could hope for in an episode of Sailor Moon (and Makoto is great, as always...). *

I'm beginning to wonder if it wasn't actually just Sailor Moon SuperS that made me hate Chibi-Usa. Oh boy. edit: It's not all bad, and there are episodes in between where Usagi and Chibi-Usa aren't trying out Out-Usagi Season 1 Usagi together. Those are actually fun. edit 2: Oh boy, creepyness alert.

Guess instead of being beaten at their own game they'd prefer to bring back #eattherich? I wouldn't mind. Break out the pitchforks and the guillotine like it was meant to be.

It's been a while since I saw Soylent Green, but wasn't only Green made of people? There was Soylent Yellow and Red too, I think. What color is it?

Look at you guys listing all the reasons why The Expendables was awesome.

Wow, that's... disturbing. And I thought this German ad was weird:

I've seen them only once and they were aired after Sailor Stars finished its run, so it's hard to say. The safest bet would be after their respective seasons. IIRC they're all just standalone episodes and have only a tenuous connection to the story arcs of the show at the best of times. I think the only thing in the movies that sticks in the show - and I'm not going to put this in spoilers because with only two cats on the show how could it be any different - is Luna's and Artemis' romance. Which is a wee bit thin for three hours of animation, but hey, erm... yeah. edit: However, I just looked at the German Sailor Moon Wiki (which seems to be in much better shape than the English one) the R movie does play after the R final episode even if it heavily references the Doom Tree arc while the S movie should probably be viewed before the final six episodes of S, and the SuperS movie... is set in a completely separate continuity (explained in spoilers because spoilers).

I remember it being better, but a bit rehashy, if that makes sense. Sailor Moon SuperS fought with dropping ratings for a bit and for the final season they replaced a good deal of the creative team, wrote Chibi-Usa out (although something Chibi came back in too) and made a season that tried to go back to where the show was during Sailor Moon S. It worked out all right, I guess. You can just skip Sailor Moon SuperS. I'd argue that it would be okay to give it a chance (the show gets better animations, and the design of everything isn't bad), the first two episodes are good showcases of what will be going on, and if you don't like what you see you can just drop them and go directly to Sailor Stars. The loose coupling of SuperS to the Manga storyline means that you probably won't miss much, if anything at all. What I am not certain of is how binge watching affects the overall impression of Sailor Stars being something of a S remake in order to recapture old fans/fix ratings. Sailor Stars, like SuperS, aired in '98 back here almost a full year after the end of S. I liked watching SuperS then more than I do it now also simply because it was more Sailor Moon (and because I much younger and the rape allegory was nowhere near as clear for me back then than it is now). It was a year in between, there were new episodes, life was good again, all that. Much of the contrast between S and SuperS is lost when you wait a year. It's pretty noticable if you just put in the next disc - or in your case, click play on the next file. So, I'm not sure if Sailor Stars being something of a remake of S, where the show tried to recapture its past audience that dwindled away a bit with SuperS, is detrimental to the enjoyment of the season when binged. It was not with a year of waiting in between, but it might be with no pause. But given the rate I'm running through the content I'll know soon enough. Of course there are also the fans who argue that SuperS is peak Sailor Moon and not nearly as bad as people make it out to be (also "bad" in context of Sailor Moon means something different, I mean, you've said that yourself - one or two not so great episodes out of almost 100 is so good that you can't possibly keep it up indefinitely), so take my complaining with a grain of salt or two. The "worst" part of SuperS is that it has moments narrated by Chibi-Usa. I mean it makes sense to try and tell a story through her eyes if you want to go back to a younger audience, but her character was never strong enough for that. One could give credit for trying something different, I guess. I... don't really. Heh.

Well, since I'm really bad at following my own advice I of course started with Sailor moon SuperS. Like I posted before, I remembered the season being noticably worse than Sailor Moon S, and having some creepy sexual abuse subtext. My memory of that was clearly dead wrong. This isn't simply subtext, it's an allegory so thinly veiled that one might argue it has no business being in a kid's show, even if kids will simply take it for what it appears to be, i.e. bad guys being bad and trying to find this season's MacGuffin. The other part, well, that's still up for debate, but Sailor Moon SuperS tried something that ended up not working too well: Pressing the soft-reboot button and going back to how it was during the first season. It's more comedic (not that R and S weren't, mind, but they were different from the first season), has more of a focus on Chibi-Usa (ugh, way to go making me dislike her again, writers), who while a nice character in moderation, lacks something compelling as a focal point, and ramped Usagi's somewhat less ridiculous antics of the previous seaons back up. From what I've read, the manga at this point did nothing of the sort, Naoko Takeuchi simply let Sailor Moon naturally "grow up" with its audience without losing what made is special in the first place, similar to what J.K. Rowling did with Harry Potter. Here's an example: And here's an example of the creepy stuff they added:

This microchipping through vaccination is only a smoke screen by Gates himself to hide the fact that he wants to sterilize half the world's population. Or more.

Yes, exactly. This was such a great choice to not have Tuxedo Kamen come out of nowhere and defeat the illusions for the girls. They had to deal with it themselves, and they both do it in a way that perfectly fits their character. Usagi is just being Usagi and Ami initially tried to run away from the problem, but when cornered and pushed, figures out that something's wrong and knows that her friends would never betray her like that. This is one of the things that I was initially talking about in the way too long post earlier before I deleted half of it. It is similar to the main spoiler-hidden plot point about Sailor Moon S insofar as you know that in the end Ami isn't going to attack the others. You don't need to subvert expectations here. There's no need for Arya to do what Jon was supposed to do all along just because it's unexpected, or to be ridiculous about it like the the writers of Westworld who actually reshot certain episodes of season 2 because someone on reddit figured out the plot twist for the season too early (and as someone who has watched season 2 of Westworld and didn't like it, I would argue they reshot the episodes much to the detriment of the show's quality). I'll spoiler-tag the discussion of the themes present in S. I don't think it's too spoilerish because these things are obvious themes after the first handful of episodes, but look at your own peril (the second spoiler in the spoiler tag is an actual spoiler for the end of Sailor Moon S).

I finished watching Sailor Moon S (also known as Season 3). Prior to this rewatch I thought I began watching Sailor Moon in the summer of '97 when it moved away from a TV station that I barely paid attention to and changed from a weekly to a daily schedule, and that it was Sailor Moon R's Doom Tree arc that got me started. Turns out that was wrong, I'm pretty sure I started watching Sailor Moon some time after Sailor Mars joined, not with the Doom Tree arc. I'm not sure if the team was complete already. It might have been after episode 24, i.e. after Jupiter joins, but before Venus. Not that it really matters. What does matter though is that the TV station aired Sailor Moon, R and S in one go, with daily showings and an immediate re-run afterwards, and Sailor Moon Super S, which I'm about to start soon coming a year later then. So there was a major time gap in between seasons. What also matters in this context is that Sailor Moon S is, by far and large, the best of the seasons, and to make matters worse, the follow up Super S is easily the weakest. Now this doesn't say much because even in re-watching the show, having seen it all and being done with 127 (in words: one hundred and twenty seven) episodes the worst you get is an episode that's complete filler where a Chibi-Usa befriends a pliosaur, or one where she befriends a boy, or tries to, at least. Even those aren't bad. They're fun to watch and unlike, say, an episode of Deep Space Nine like Move Along Home or Let He Who Is Without Sin... or any Star Trek TNG episode where Wesley shows up they never tempt one to simply skip them. Even when its bad Sailor Moon just ends up being less good. Assuming one can get over it being anime. I know people who can't, and I get it. I tried a golly lot of times to actually get into South Park, but even though I find it generally amusing, I can't get over that art style. Or maybe the art style is just an excuse to not enjoy something that on a more rational level I know I should like but simply don't. I watched the entirety of BoJack Horseman in spite of loathing how it looks. However Sailor Moon can be an anime that even viewers who generally don't like anime can enjoy (exhibit A, our very own Bartimaeus here). The way the people are drawn is of course typical for Japanese animation, but the art style, directions and the characters involved are noticably different, at least from other animes of the time. Presumably that was in part a reason why the show became so popular later on, a fact that 15 year old me both hated and enjoyed with a passion. It meant losing a part of nerd counter culture to mainstream, but it also meant being able to interact with fans world wide online. Something Sailor Moon shared with X-Files, another mainstay of my adolescence. But I remember Super S having a few questionable story lines / beats. Main TL;DR from the wall of text here: I'm not sure I should immediately jump into Super S. I'll probably ignore my own advice and just go for it, but it would probably be better to let it rest for a while. On the other hand now that I've done almost a 180 on Chibi-Usa maybe... just maybe. *pulls out discs* Anyway, there are many reason why I think S is the best season, but mostly it was just really well written and directed, and I don't mean well written for an anime show about junior high girls in sailor suits fighting monsters. It's well written... period. Even more so when you think about how the writing team of what amounts to a low budget and mostly ridiculous anime adaptation in the 90ies managed to do here, create a plot driven by characters where actions take place and things happen because the characters involved are what they are, not what the plot dictates them to be. Yes, I'm looking at you Game of Thrones and Star Trek Picard... Plus the new Sailor Senshi get awesome theme songs:

Potentially, but usually only if it's far out of the way and would result in other lost deliveries. See, here's the thing, while I can't speak for the situation in the US, I know a bit about the CEE area. Parcel delivery drivers don't get paid at all for failed deliveries, and for succesful ones only a ridiculous amount, like .5 € per package. They're all self-employed to circumvent labor protection laws and have to bring their own delivery vehicle that they need to brand out of their own pocket. Consequently, each driver takes on as many packages as they can cram into their trucks and there's barely any time for the delivery guy to wait and see if someone opens the door. That's why they sometimes throw packages over the fence, and if they don't show up at all then that's mostly because your delivery would cost more time than it's worth. Fail one package but retain enough time to deliver four or five more, possibly to locations that usually work out all right, i.e. drop one private customer in Bumf*ck, Idaho in favor of five guaranteed paid package deliveries to companies? Getting an idea yet why all these parcel distribution services are terrible for you as regular online shop user and nothing ever changes? That's by design.

At the end of the day the reason why I liked Dragonfall more than Hong Kong was the real time stealh matrix weirdness in HK, but you're right. HK would have been improved by an editing pass or two to reduce the word count. That was verbose for the sake of having a lot of text at times.

It is, the show only lets others defeat the enemies for dramatic effect. That happens a veritable... handful of times.

Boy are you going to have fun with seasons 6 and 7... especially 7. That one's often bad, even for fans of the show.

Yeah, I just edited that in. Figured it out myself just a couple of minutes ago. The, uhm, stock footage thing is going to get worse. Where I'm right now (at the end of the third season) Sailor Moon has to go through two seperate transformation sequences and a 30 second attack move to defeat enemies. But to be honest they're so ridiculous that they're fun to watch regardless. I'll just put that in spoilers because, eh... 's not much of a spoiler (except for the really obvious), but it makes the post unneccesarily large.

You managed to miss the only two competent companions then. Heh. Okay, that's a gross oversimplification, but Alchemists are broken OP and Ekun had a ton of bugs that made him one-shot trolls in my game. I'm kind of guessing that no longer works.

The one where one of the great seven Youma is inside the fat cat that's been hitting on Luna (because the other evil pet episode is near the end of Sailor Moon R, and wowsers that would be a quick binge on your part)? edit: No, it's not. I just realized you mean the one near the beginning where everyone buys these weird little pet things that turn them miserable and jealous. One of the best things about Sailor Moon is how you can pick out any number of scenes, talk about them and people who have never seen the anime are left to wonder what the hell is going on and how anyone could even being to enjoy this, yet it still makes perfect sense in-universe because the show's just like that and never stops or, heaven forbid, apologizes for it. Glorious, just glorious. And yet, even amongst all this bedlam it still finds time for character development and the odd commentary on 90ies Japan or broader issues here and there.

That depends on what you would call good. If you mean seriously good, not schlock* that's fun to watch like The Expendables then that probably really was True Lies. Escape Plan got trashed by critics but I liked it well enough, it didn't feel like I've wasted two hours of my life. Unlike, say, watching Terminator Genisys or Last Stand. * I'd say The 6th Day and Eraser were fun schlock too, but what do I know about film. edit: You're also not alone with your love affair with True Lies. Way back at that age, at the time, I could have watched Jamie Lee Curtis in anything and liked it. But even without that the film still really fun mix of comedy, action and silly one lines. Perfect entertainment in my book. You're fired.