majestic

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.

Because it is?

More JoJo too. And more Cardcaptor Sakura.

Got some Steven Universe watched.

No, don't worry... Oh, and...

Look, the hack frauds have a new Star Trek video...

I have a duty to prepare you for any weird shenanigans, I think it's enough if I sat through that without prior knowledge, right?

It's sure better than anything in SuperS.

Damned by faint praise. What did I write in my write up... let's check. Yeah, that seems to fit with your impression.

More Cardcaptor Sakura and JoJo's (Steven Universe updates maybe tomorrow - might get an episode or two in during lunchbreak or some such). CCS: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure I don't entirely mind grimdark or brutal, not in film or TV, animated or not, as long as it makes sense and fits. Therefore the Sansa parts in Game of Thrones that had everyone in a riot* didn't bother me all that much. What did they think Lord Bolton would do? Be nice and gentle? The show did overly rely on rape and violence for nothing but shock value at that point, so some of the criticism is more than justified in general of course. *Not because of the violence or the rape, anyway. About how utterly stupid that plotline was that D&D came up with? Oh, you bet. I just don't think Sailor Moon is the proper vehicle to deal with sexual assault, implied, real or otherwise. Beyond the level of the Prince Demande stuff, anyway.

Haven't seen Berserk, and from the sound of it I might not want to.

By the way, I tried to properly prepare you guys for the fun that is Sailor Moon SuperS, did I succeed? I mean, did you get the impression it would be that bad, or have I failed? I really wanted to make this seem really bad so you could probably feel like I've overstated things. I failed, didn't I?

You need to be careful not to confuse my posts on the manga, Crystal and the 90ies anime you're watching.

Bruce is like Renate from Iron Sky 😄

Oh, by the way, it's hard to properly appreciate the genius of the video I linked unless you're familiar with the topic (and understand German well enough, but that's a different matter). There is very little original video material in it. Most of it is spliced together from various ads and actual apres ski party footage. It's obvious where Jan Böhmermann was greenscreened into the video, it's less obvious that these are actual ads, or in the case of the exploding mountain range some CGI that was used to explain what happened a while back. Because a company just randomly went ahead and blasted part of a mountain off in the middle of a nature preserve to make some more room for slops and a new mountain lift. No safety regulations adhered to, no permission by either local or federal governments, nothing. Guess what happened? You're right. The paperwork was filled out ex post and approved. Part of the lyrics, by the way, refer to the Kaprun disaster where corporate cost cutting killed 155 people and the following lawsuit resulted in zero convictions, because, to quote: God turned off the lights for a moment. Or in other words, nobody is to actually blame if inappropriate equipment fails and catches fire. Because God. Welcome to Austria, where satire ends and reality begins.

As far as I know the golfing hypothesis turned out to be correct. Rich people flying to South Africa to golf in the middle of the second lockdown brought the South African variant to Tyrol, and Schwaz is now undergoing priority Pfizer/Biontech vaccination to field test how effective the vaccine is against the SA variant. You should change your Geroge Bernard Shaw quote in your signature.

Hehe, probably. Cardcaptor Sakura (still no indication of any storyline, limited spoilers therefore): JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:

Huh... Steven Universe spoiler: And with that I think I'll be off hanging out on the couch a bit before dozing off. Gonna check out Netflix, I have a feeling it'll "randomly" play some Cardcaptor Sakura again, or perhaps an episode of JoJo or two. Nightynight!

Sailor Moon Sailor Stars' problems can be mostly ignored. It doesn't reach the greatness of S, and it looks ever so slightly different... and the... everything is... well... that's also why I totally avoid talking about it whenever I can (except for pointing out how stupid the ending of the manga was compared to the already not that great ending of the anime). I love Sailor Stars, but the problem is it has all the telltale signs of a season from other shows that I loved but everyone else I know who watched hated (or at least disliked). Like seasons nine and ten of Stargate SG1. All of my friends hated the Ori. I loved the idea and the episodes dealing with them (less so the constant problems you get when literal gods are involved in the plot). Like a show you really loved at some point that ran too long for a season or two? That's why I brought up How I Met Your Mother, because it feels a bit like the later seasons of that. I posted that before, but the show also had issues there and some really forced stupid sitcommy jokes (much like Sailor Stars has stupid forced conflict), but that's all in the background for me. Not so for others. edit: Also, not gonna lie, where the writers gave the idiot ball to Usagi and Chibi-Usa in SuperS, they handed it over to the Outer Senshi for Sailor Stars.