majestic

Well, that was the first arc of Crystal. Or the first season, however you want to call that. IC, you should NOT read this. I mean, not until you're done with the first season. You don't have much left anyway. Phew. So what do you think, is the next arc going to be as awesome? Not entirely sure, but they do have a new director and a new writer for the third season (and the new movies from this year, and any perhaps coming adaptations for Stars). The animation looks completely different too, might as well be a completely new show. 4K difference video, I hope that one isn't locked in the US as well: Still don't really like the way it looks, but it certainly is a major improvement nonetheless. Final thoughts:

it's worth the experience for me. I feel like writing George Lucas a three hundred page apology letter for all the mean things I said about his Star Wars prequels. However! Apparently they fired everyone for the third season and redesigned the animation and used different writers. There's a chance that Crystal's version of S is going to be good. Or, at least, not 50 Shades of Grey level terrible.

Uhm, girls, you forgot to take your Legendary Sacred Sword with you. Hey, uhm. I don't think Luna and Artemis can carry that on their own. No, nope. They just teleported to the moon and left it lying there. Okay. Humm, humm, ho humm. It's starting to brainwash me too. This is great stuff. In the same way the Masters of the Universe movie was great. edit: Ah, it's okay. The Legendary Sacred Sword teleports itself into Sailor Venus' hand when she needs it. This is fine. She doesn't even need to pull it out of the Sorting Hat. edit 2: HOLY COW. Sailor Moon survived running herself through with the Legendary Sacred Sword which was shown two or so episodes ago to destroy even the hardest materials possible at the barest touch because it was deflected by Crystal's version of the Star Locket - Mamoru's moon phase pocket watch. edit 3: Oh look, Prince Endymion survived being slashed in half by the sword too, because that blow was deflected by four crystals pieces made of jadeite, zoisite, kunzite and, yeah, you guessed it, nephrite. Wow. Such awesome. Hey maybe SuperS wasn't that bad. Fly on the wings of love!

Everything looks terrible, but you're not supposed to look up spoilers for the parts where you aren't yet. I mean... not that it really matters for Sailor Moon, but still. Clearly so much better than the original anime version. Cleary. Because that's what Sailor Moon needed, a murder-suicide over love. People in the comments talking about Romeo and Juliet is somewhat strange too. No evil energy being corrupted Romeo, and they both commited suicide. And yes, the girls barely interact with each other.

Okay, so I'm going to leave this here and try to get some sleep. Oh and yes, also, straight up from the manga, I just checked that chapter to make sure.

The more I hear about JoJo's Bizarre Adventure the more bizarre it becomes. Also, I'll just quote the Sailor Moon Wiki here for something that just happened in Crystal: You go girl, you go. I think I'll skip the manga for the time being, because that is really... directly taken from it. Holy crap.

Sailor Moon Crystal: Rei's psychic powers in Sailor Moon Crystal is as useless as Deanna Troi's empathy in Star Trek: The Next Generation. It could be an interesting trait for her to have, but all she does is say "I have a bad feeling." whenever something is obviously wrong or "what immense evil energy!" when the girls are being blasted by Evil <insert color> Energy Blasts of Doom(tm). Usagi runs out of the Crown Arcade being noticably upset and super creeped out about something. Makoto and Ami are seeing her and go like: "Poor Usagi, I hope everything is all right." Yeah sure, does she look all right to you? They're screwed without Rei there to tell her that she's got a really baaaaaaaaaad feeling about this. No need to spoiler this seeing how IC already met Sailor Jupiter. How can anyone prefer this to the original anime?

I need to correct that statement a little. I don't mean it is noticably different insofar as it does anything with the formula. That is still very much in effect and it is by far the most derivative of all the seasons. Nothing original happens, but the character interaction is a good deal different. Or at least it feels different (maybe different enough). It is noticable that they're now in high school, if that makes any sense. Makoto is the original Marie Kondo.

Oi, you mean like there never were any Star Wars prequels (or sequels to the first trilogy, or first two movies, depending on whom you ask) or only one Matrix film. Yeah, maybe. I'd still like to read your take on the season that does not exist. Don't get me wrong, it is as close to a universal truth of the internet that you can come that in almost every poll SuperS is ranked below every other Sailor Moon season, but that usually has pacing issues cited as the main problem. Not everyone behaving like alien shapeshifters replaced them or the creepy things the antagonists do combined with this childlike dream-state vibe the season gives off. Minor spoilerish fun fact for Sailor Stars relating to SuperS, because the writers appaently agreed with your sentiment there: This is actually more accurate than you might think. It might be a good idea to think of Sailor Moon Sailor Stars as a high-school spin off of the original Sailor Moon that ran for four three seasons. I love Sailor Stars, but it is different...

Warning, complex math spoiler ahead:

Also, enjoy the show while it lasts. Serious mode is about to launch soon. Tick... tock...

Got a complaint today that an order has not been billed correctly, and we should check what went wrong. So I did. Turns out the customer's set to a monthly billing period and the order was finalized last week. Last. Week. Monthly period. Get it? This was my reply: Because screw that, I'm done. From now on I'm just going to reply in memes.

Currently stuck in the worst online meeting ever. It's hilarious.

Spoilers ahead for IC and KP anyway, click at your own discretion:

There are some mild differences in many of the versions. The original english dub for instance reduced the breast contours during the transformations (and made the bathwater intransparent in various scenes). The heaviest editing happend in South Korea where an entire sub-plot was dropped from the fourth season. Although, to be fair, nothing of value was lost. That's the low point of Sailor Moon. Attack on Titan is definitely on my to-watch list, but I'm getting more and more lazy when it comes to spending actual effort to watch something. Netflix had two seasons of Attack on Titan and I figured I'll just wait for the whole thing to drop, and now it's gone altogether. Stupid licencing, no wonder the word contains lice. Parasites, all of them. Time to get the one thing that can stay spoiler free out of the way: The formula is here to stay, except for storyline episodes or some exceptions that don't follow the usual format. Outside of a very few exceptions (one coming up in S03E15) it will also always take Sailor Moon to defeat the Monster of the Week, and in 99% of all cases she will be told "Now, Sailor Moon!" because... honestly, I don't know why. The only explanation I have is because it was supposed to be a show for kids, and repetition helps them retain interest in something. There's a reason why kids want to watch Frozen every day, right? And the reason why the Teletubbies are what they are. But why this was kept even during S and Sailor Stars is another issue entirely. SuperS was clearly an attempt to go back to being mainly a show for little girls. Now to the other things... sort of. I'm not going to re-type my entire post about that Mako or Ami episode, anyway.

Watched two more episodes of Steven Universe. More food. Food. I should not watch that at night. Where would I even get a cheeseburger now? I already had Sailor Moon themed dreams recently, but they were actually nice. I do have recurring nightmares, but they usually revolve around more mundane things, like showing up to exams unprepared (which I always did, so how's that a nightmare and leaves me feel uneasy?) or living the life of a complete stranger. Those tend to be the most disturbing dreams I have, because I actually wake up thinking I am someone else. Eh, and making SuperS look good would really take some doing, but Crystal is so far trying really hard.

That I'm going to do anyway.

See guys, that's the sort of thing the 90ies anime just dropped, obviously very much to the detriment of it. Amirite? Snort. Should I continue posting this stuff, by the way? edit: I am, however, beginning to see how the classic anime adaptation left manga fans dissatisfied with the storyline adaptation. You can almost imagine the meetings in the writing room where they go through the manga and go like: "Well, no, that's crap, let's just do our own thing."

Have you ever tried M+KB in Tie Fighter? That kills your desk, and your mouse. And once you're done running through both your fingers too if you don't stop. For the one time in ten years I feel the urge to go back to Tie Fighter? Nah. I could try to play with a gamepad, but I'm not sure that would work out too well. The game has ten thousand different keyboard shortcuts you ideally use and getting them all mapped on a pad is, uhm, not sure, let's say potentially a challenge.

Ideally one that's playable without flight stick. That would probably change the feeling of the game for the worse, but at least I could play it again.

Speaking of electronic rock crap, have you head the opening theme of Crystal? Also don't take my take on the music as gospel, you know, my tastes in music are, let's say, strange, but I found it really distracting and strange - but I know for instance that Mr. Unicorn the reviewer liked the music a lot. On the other hand he's also one of the people who hated giving Rei an actual personality over her manga counterpart, so what does he know? *shrug* The most problematic thing about Crystal is untangling it from what came before. By all means the characters in Crystal are absolutely lifeless and underdeveloped, and that they all have the body proportions of alien anthropomorphized giraffes makes it all the more off-putting. The question is, would I watch this if it wasn't Sailor Moon? The answer is no, I guess. But how bad is that actually if you'd know nothing about Sailor Moon? I honestly don't know. The worst part about Crystal is it takes all the fun that was present in the manga (and that is a whole lot less than there was in the original anime) and removes most of it. What's left is pure drama. And speaking of Steven Universe, yeah, the show experimenting is okay with me at that point. I feel like a broken record at this point, but I don't let season one unevenness bother me. If I did, I would most likely have missed several shows that I really ended up loving. I've got to be honest though, I'm not really digging the animation at the moment, but at least I dont hate it, which is more than enough for now (and probably for its entire run). Like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., or... Stargate SG1 (dear god, the first few episodes of SG1 were terribad).

Sailor Moon Crystal continues to be a fine showcase of why show, don't tell is usually a good approach. Also, dear god, the music. Wow. This... no. Really. The first anime had such an amazing soundtrack (for the most part), but this is, wow. Every time something awesome happens on the screen it is underscored by this upbeat fanfare. It's the Sailor Moon Crystal version of a laugh track, to let you know this was supposed to be awesome. Or something. There's also a choral piece for emotional scenes. I guess this will show up every time the star locket version of Moonlight Densetsu would have been used in the first anime. I also watched another Steven Universe episode. That one was less fun but had some needed backstory. I like the idea of having the episodes only be 10 minutes, that makes it easier to watch one here and there, e.g. during lunch break. Still have no idea where the show is going and how it can possibly have a story arc, but yeah, so far it does have the typical "season one" feel to it. Another edit: It looks like Crystal doesn't save me from reading the manga. It stops being overly faithful pretty early in its run.

We can't answer your last question without spoiling too much. Come back one the team is complete and the official identity reveal happened, but then you also already know the answer. But click if you area really curious: Regarding the girls, they always get naked in their transformation scenes. Unless your dub is censored in some way. The anime just switches their regular skin colour out so you really notice when they're supposed to be naked (it happens every now and then). I don't know how much you read from the earlier discussions, but (non-sexual) nudity has cultural meaning of purity and cleansing in Japan, so that's why it happens during transformation. They purify themselves in order to become the guardians of love and justice. That's what's supposed to happen whenever actual nudity is on screen. The fanservice parts of the show are the gratuitous panty shots (and that relates to how underwear was introduced to Japan, but that's a story for another time, yes?).