Anime: Emotions on a Rollercoaster

[majestic]

42 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Also:

  Reveal hidden contents

Why did she kiss Usagi? Did Michiru find out? And if it happened in the episode Michiru fell on the waterfall, did Haruka forgot about her that fast?

 

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?

[majestic]

5 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

It seems as though I accidentally skipped an episode - what I thought was episode 149 was actually 150, whoops! I was wondering what the hell happened to the three creeps, since they just completely disappeared. This season would be confused enough before you even add my out of order and missing episodes in, and that's certainly not helping.

But seriously, the hell?

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.

[InsaneCommander]

21 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Episode 148:

  Hide contents

Great, another Fish's Eye episode - hopefully it's better than the disaster that was the last one. Gosh, this guy makes me mad and skeeves me out whenever it's one of his episodes - he's probably the funniest one when he's just chit-chatting with the other two, but then it's actually his turn and the episode can't end quickly enough.

I'm excited to meet these mid-level girl minions. I've seen some clips of them on the Sailor Moon Says channel and they seem like they could be more fun. They're probably going to do the same kind of crap, but at least...well, not to be sexist, but at least they're women and hopefully it'll be a little less predatory and distasteful.

Whoa, hold on, what is Fish Eye...oh. Hm. I actually...feel a little bad for these three. Then again, I felt bad for Donald Trump when I saw that video of him visibly struggling to breathe after getting coronavirus, and I want Donald Trump to die of a heart attack in the most hilarious and embarrassing fashion possible, like while sitting on the toilet or something, so let's just call it an overactive sense of empathy readily complicated by my equally overactive sense of hatred and contempt. What's weird is...they haven't really failed, like, even a single time? These targets are being assigned to them by Zirconia, and they're successfully searching their dreams - how's it their fault if Pegasus isn't in them? Kind of a dumb plot.

Episode 149:

  Hide contents

...Hold on, wait a second. The person with Pegasus in their dreams will have a golden mirror? So...they never needed to check their dreams to start with? SO ALL OF THAT CRAP WAS FOR NOTHING?

Yes.

Btw, while we are relieved the creeps are gone, Zirconia will certainly have a different opinion...

Spoiler

The girls are lazy and have no respect for her. It is actually really funny to see how much effort she has to get even one of them to work.

 

[Bartimaeus]

I'm retiring the spoiler tags for SuperS, screw this.

Uh...honestly, they were a little underwhelming. I expected their big introduction to be wackier and more over-the-top, but instead they kind of just stood around and didn't do much. Well, I guess their big introduction was probably the previous episode? I'll have to watch that and find out. Or not - does it matter? ...I guess I should, just so I've """completely""" watched the season, once I also watch the first...four, was it, episodes that I missed, and also ignore that I've skipped several minutes of most episodes. This is just not a good season. I think I'll write a little more on the three creeps once I actually watch episode 149.

@InsaneCommander Yeah, I'm reminded a little of Mimette. Actually, I thought I HEARD Mimette's voice actress for one of them in this English dub, but I wasn't entirely sure because it's obviously a different voice and they didn't speak too much...

Edited March 20, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

7 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I'm retiring the spoiler tags for SuperS, screw this.

Uh...honestly, they were a little underwhelming. I expected their big introduction to be wackier and more over-the-top, but instead they kind of just stood around and didn't do much. Well, I guess their big introduction was probably the previous episode? I'll have to watch that and find out. Or not - does it matter? ...I guess I should, just so I've """completely""" watched the season, once I also watch the first...four, was it, episodes that I missed, and also ignore that I've skipped several minutes of most episodes. This is just not a good season. I think I'll write a little more on the three creeps once I actually watch episode 149.

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!

Spoiler

Nothing in this season matters. The filler arc of Sailor Stars is for SuperS what the extended cut is for the Mass Effect 3 ending. Unless you want to see Usagi dream raped and then saved by Fish-Eye's pleading for her life you can just skip that episode.

 

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.

Edited March 20, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

Somehow, I'm more annoyed by Pegasus when he shows up than the three creeps - it's just that the three creeps showed up a lot more often and actually did bad things to characters we care about. I think it's because at least...they're supposed to be villains, and I guess they're basically brainless animals that were cursed to be horrible by Zirconia? While Helios is just a weirdo creep that we're not supposed to find a weirdo creep, but he most certainly is. You know, if they had given Helios a nice, not pedophile-sounding girl voice actress with some less weird-sounding dialogue, Pegasus probably would've automatically been a vastly improved character. Of course, then he would've been a different character entirely.

Honestly, I am really truly conflicted in regards to how I feel about the creeps...as CHARACTERS. In regards to how the show handled them and what the writers forced them to do, they're the worst - for sure. But as characters and the sorry lots in life they were given...I have a small amount of empathy for them, messed up as that is. And maybe the fact that they were so absolutely screwed over by the show and its writers - in a kind of meta sense, I guess, because there's no reason that they had to be this horrible when you look at the history of other Sailor Moon low-level villains, and the fact that new information made all of their crimes completely pointless IMMEDIATELY after they were to be replaced. There were...funny and likable (villain) characters buried somewhere deep inside of them - we saw hints of it occasionally - that just weren't allowed to shine, while they got saddled with the dirtiest work possible. It's a shame.

(e): Just saw your edit - glad you watched it, I thought it was pretty good. I didn't remember her basically calling Crystal crap, but then again, I didn't really know much about Crystal except that I didn't like the animation style when I watched it a few months back, so I probably didn't pay much attention to what she said about it. I liked hers, Rei's, and Minako's interviews best. Rei's was funny because she's basically the complete opposite of her character, while Minako...seemed like she was basically her character personified as well, .

Edited March 20, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Somehow, I'm more annoyed by Pegasus when he shows up than the three creeps - it's just that the three creeps showed up a lot more often and actually did bad things to characters we care about. I think it's because at least...they're supposed to be villains, and I guess they're basically brainless animals that were cursed to be horrible by Zirconia? While Helios is just a weirdo creep that we're not supposed to find a weirdo creep, but he most certainly is. You know, if they had given Helios a nice, not pedophile-sounding girl voice actress with some less weird-sounding dialogue, Pegasus probably would've automatically been a vastly improved character. Of course, then he would've been a different character entirely.

Honestly, I am really truly conflicted in regards to how I feel about the creeps...as CHARACTERS. In regards to how the show handled them and what the writers forced them to do, they're the worst - for sure. But as characters and the sorry lots in life they were given...I have a small amount of empathy for them, messed up as that is. And maybe the fact that they were so absolutely screwed over by the show and its writers - in a kind of meta sense, I guess, because there's no reason that they had to be this horrible when you look at the history of other Sailor Moon low-level villains, and the fact that new information made all of their crimes completely pointless IMMEDIATELY after they were to be replaced. There were...funny and likable characters buried somewhere deep inside of them - we saw hints of it occasionally - that just weren't allowed to shine, while they got saddled with the dirtiest work possible. It's a shame.

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.

 

Edited March 20, 2021 by majestic
Random typoes from restructured sentences.

[Bartimaeus]

No, I haven't watched it yet - I've been watching like a dozen SU episodes because I'm a crack addict and can't stop watching. I'll probably do that tomorrow.

Thanks for putting some words into my feelings, because all of what you just said is how I felt even if I didn't know exactly how to describe it: their stories are really messed up and it feels like they got screwed at every turn, both in and out of universe. This shouldn't have been how all of this went down - it feels grossly tragic on multiple levels, for literally everyone (ourselves, the villains, our heroes, and every other random character sullied with this sorry affair). Well, I'm gonna keep doing what I've been doing and blame Naoko Takeuchi for this mess, . If I ever re-watch SuperS (...doubtful?), I may try to take a slightly kinder eye towards this first half of the season...but it still wouldn't make it any less painful, I think.

[InsaneCommander]

Episode 157:

 

Spoiler

 

Pedosus used the old tactic of disappearing when someone starts asking questions.

 

Also, some strange behaviors:

 

- Someone finally expressed some concern about Chibiusa being outside alone.

- Chibusa realized that Mamoru and Usagi are more than friends.

- Usagi freaked out when she thought Chibusa was on the phone with Mamoru, on a “love call”. But when she sees then alone outside, she is ok.

 

 

Episode 158:

 

Spoiler

 

PallaPalla shows that she has absolutely no idea why people didn’t understand her story. Everyone died but they also lived happily ever after.

 

 

And once again she attacks a group, making at least 23 victims. That is more than all the other girls together or the three creeps had in their entire run. And if you add her victims in her previous episode, she exceeds both groups together. By far.

 

Later she gets at least 30 more! She will probably end being responsible for more than 50% of all victims in the whole series. Considering how easier it is to deal with her, Zirconia should simply ignore the other girls and give all targets to PallaPalla. Offer some dolls with detachable heads and PallaPalla would do it. And Nehelenia should buy her all the dolls she wants to behead after this.

 

One more thing, her Lemures was the most dangerous of the season up to now. It literally sent the girls running away.

 

The rest requires a double spoiler tag:

 

Spoiler

PallaPalla changes Chibusa and Usagi’s age. And then Pedosus won’t appear. It can’t be because he is only interested in little girls, right? I hoped it was because Chibiusa’s dream came true and then he couldn’t stay in her dreams anymore. It kind of was, but he also seemed disappointed until she changed back.

 

They go to Mamoru’s house and the other girls don’t give him a heads up on the situation…

 

And… they kissed.

 

I don’t know what is his age, but even if he is a teenager and she is 900 years old, it doesn’t seem right. She has the mind and body of a child and he seems very mature, even if not in appearance. Who wants to kiss a child, like that??? Boys of his age (whatever it is) would either not be interested in girls yet or be attracted to teenagers or older women.

 

Not to mention he was in his horse form.

 

 

Edited March 20, 2021 by InsaneCommander

[majestic]

18 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Episode 158:

 

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

[InsaneCommander]

Episode 159:

 

Spoiler

 

Zirconia is dumb. She should have thrown some cold water to wake up the Amazon girls.

 

Everybody trying to make Chibiusa talk about her senpai was hilarious. Rei is patient, Makoto goes straight to the point, Ami is the only one to have some degree of success and Minako tells Chibiusa she can’t go out with two boys at the same time. Yes, Minako. And when Chibiusa is having a “date” with Mamoru, Usagi is seething with jealousness, especially because it’s an expensive restaurant that he never took her.

 

Considering nobody had any problem with the adult they thought was Chibiusa’s boyfriend, then Pedosus don’t need to worry about revealing his relationship with Chibiusa to the girls. Although Mamoru may have a problem. And he also acknowledged his age difference with Usagi.

 

 

Episode 160:

 

Spoiler

 

Why did they force Usagi to help in the event? For once she was not interested in another guy. And they even wanted her to risk her life.

 

And the cats came back after a while. What were they up to? They actually thought the Amazon girls were not suspicious?

 

And… Pallapalla breaks her record, attacking HUNDREDS of people this time. I estimated it at 528. The series has about 200 episodes. She will probably have made more victims in the end than all the other minions together. Imagine if she was smarter.

 

Btw, nobody paid attention in the battles against Pallapalla, who was constantly saying her name. So they didn’t recognize her.

 

 

[majestic]

16 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

(e): Just saw your edit - glad you watched it, I thought it was pretty good. I didn't remember her basically calling Crystal crap, but then again, I didn't really know much about Crystal except that I didn't like the animation style when I watched it a few months back, so I probably didn't pay much attention to what she said about it. I liked hers, Rei's, and Minako's interviews best. Rei's was funny because she's basically the complete opposite of her character, while Minako...seemed like she was basically her character personified as well, .

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.

Spoiler

But he was totally talking about Patrick Stewart.

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."

Edited March 21, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

@majestic

They were in-studio introductions, solo interviews, and group interviews done by Viz itself (...I'm fairly certain), they were extras included in the new physical releases. I believe the one where Amanda Miller was talking about being Makoto was a group interview where all of them were asked "what's your relation if any to Sailor Moon, had you heard of it before becoming part of the cast?", and Amanda sort of just took over a big chunk of it because she was very obviously the Sailor Moon turbonerd of the group (although again, if I'm recalling correctly, Rei and Minako were also fans - Amanda was very passionate about it, though). I actually did a search of YouTube for these Viz interviews, but sadly, I didn't see any online.

Episode 149: It was pretty whatever. The creeps are no more - at least until I have to go back and watch those first four episodes.

Episode 151:

Spoiler

Did Ami's hair suddenly get a lot longer, or did I just fail to notice it being longer the entire season? MINAKO, don't say the quiet part out loud!

Oh gosh, I'm feeling so much second-hand embarrassment for Ami right now with this whole dream/lyrics thing...it's a little too real.

Man, I'm glad people aren't getting dream-raped anymore. Wait, how did we get into a computer, and what the hell is this dream sequence?

Sailor Mercury gets a power-up, but then they don't even play her full transformation theme song - what a scam. Not a particularly funny episode, but good quality even so - if you're going to have a Serious episode (albeit not a Serious Story episode), this was well-constructed and had a good balance.

(e): Some VAs definitely take it as just a job. As someone who's been watching cartoons my entire life, I tend to have appreciation for the VAs who are "close" to their characters as well being down-to-earth (speaking of, the SU VAs are another one of my favorite sets of casts, and I've watched a lot of silly stuff with/about them - Rebecca Sugar very specifically picked them for their personalities in addition to their voices).

Edited March 21, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

Ah, okay, then I stumbled across an interview on YouTube with very similar content by virtue of a happy accident. Heh. Guess I could go look for the extras of course, at some point.

5 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Not a particularly funny episode, but good quality even so - if you're going to have a Serious episode (albeit not a Serious Story episode), this was well-constructed and had a good balance.

Came pretty much out of nowhere this season, right? It's really too bad that Makoto and Minako get the short end of the stick in theirs, but you'll see that when you come across that episode.
 

Spoiler

 

This is one of the episodes that made me love Ami as much as I did when I was younger and watching it for the first time. My identification with her went instantly perked up a LOT, even more than being the smart outsider nerd did. Being online, doing this stuff nobody else had heard about, other people (though not friends, you know, they all were nerds just as well) asking what the hell is going on. The only thing that was missing was Ami's mother picking up the phone and disconnecting her from the BBS she was using.

I'm assuming she used a BBS in this episode. It's where the fun was at the time, online forums only really came up a bit later, but not much later. I remember getting into my very first flame wars in html based, utterly confusing and disorganized forums way back in '96 or so (or close enough, might a couple months further ahead). I don't know if any of you remember, but the ones where each post was a separate link in a thread of links, and you had to click around to read through.

Being how I am I initially hated forums that were built like the Black Isle one (and later Interplay, now this one) when the phpBB forum software first got some traction, but it's really better this way. Heh. Reddit's hybrid model drives me nuts whenever I have to look something up on reddit.

Never wrote lyrics, but attempted to come up with a couple of short stories, including some forumite-based slash fiction. I have a couple of them lying around still, anyone interested? Not gonna lie, there's a reason why I stopped creative writing.

 

 

[Bartimaeus]

It's hard not to notice that a lot of the not-Usagi/Chibi-Usa Sailor Guardian-centric episodes have tended to be highlights of their respective seasons. It's kind of a shame they didn't have more of them - I could've done with more Ami, Makoto, Minako, and Rei episodes, even episodes that aren't necessarily strictly about some of their biggest personality quirks (as much fun as it is for Minako to keep upping how how crazy she is, my favorite episode of hers is still the more serious "I'm getting screwed by life AND I'm a screw-up and I don't like it BUT ALSO I'm not going to do anything about it!" one she had near the beginning of S).

Too young to have experienced the bulletin board systems of olde, though I've seen enough of them to know that I think I'm glad for forum-based software instead - it's the new social media systems geared at hosting a trillion different sub-conversations for massive amounts of comments and participants that grind my gears...but I stay off of those anyways, so it works out.

39 minutes ago, majestic said:

Never wrote lyrics, but attempted to come up with a couple of short stories, including some forumite-based slash fiction. I have a couple of them lying around still, anyone interested? Not gonna lie, there's a reason why I stopped creative writing.

*googles "define slash fiction"*

Well guys, it was fun watching Sailor Moon with you all, but I have to find another forum. Sayonara!

[Bartimaeus]

Episode 152:

Spoiler

Hey...another decent episode. Maybe not quite as good as the previous because too much of it was more about some rando with than Rei, but it was also funnier, so that kind of makes up for it. Man, uh...kind of feels like the show is suddenly a different show compared to the first half of the season. Maybe...maybe you shouldn't have had a whole big ongoing mind-rape plot going on, writers? Maybe, just maybe?

"What, this is just awful! A girl with no dreams is a loser!" lmao I'm beginning to like Ves; pretty good fight too, that minion was pretty messed up especially when it just piled on the little girl who was already down for the count

Episode 153, this is a legitimately great episode:

Spoiler

This Nehellenia lady stinks, she's somehow even more pathetic than Queen Beryl so far, although her and this weird plot in this episode is reminding me a lot of season 1. Palla also reminds me of Bubblegum from the Power Puff Girls, uh, wait, except that she just decapitated a toy's head while I was writing this, so never mind I guess.

lmao Usagi hitting us with the "OH MY GOD!!" over having to go to the dentist, this is a fantastic episode

Hah, Mamoru getting jealous for a change, and deservedly so: Usagi being a wanna-be womanizer isn't new to us, but she doesn't usually do it in front of him! Also, I never knew until now that I wanted to hear Mamoru talk and emote to himself like this!

holy crap Palla just has a room full of bodies lmao...and all she wants is a friend to play with 

Hey! Hey, the crying ability from like the first episode of the first season, Usagi (and Chibi-Usa) still has it! Wow...and it's their strongest power-up yet! They should probably use that more.

This is a picture of Usagi Tsukino:

what an episode

 

Edited March 21, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

It's hard not to notice that a lot of the not-Usagi/Chibi-Usa Sailor Guardian-centric episodes have tended to be highlights of their respective seasons. It's kind of a shame they didn't have more of them - I could've done with more Ami, Makoto, Minako, and Rei episodes, even episodes that aren't necessarily strictly about some of their biggest personality quirks (as much fun as it is for Minako to keep upping how how crazy she is, my favorite episode of hers is still the more serious "I'm getting screwed by life AND I'm a screw-up and I don't like it BUT ALSO I'm not going to do anything about it!" one she had near the beginning of S).

Too young to have experienced the bulletin board systems of olde, though I've seen enough of them to know that I think I'm glad for forum-based software instead - it's the new social media systems geared at hosting a trillion different sub-conversations for massive amounts of comments and participants that grind my gears...but I stay off of those anyways, so it works out.

I don't use those either. YouTube comments, Facebook comments, Twitter, all that stuff, I mostly don't even look at it (beyond what's being linked in this forum, and sometimes YT comments under Sailor Moon videos). Joining a Discord server is as far as I'm willing to go, but also really only because I already had a Discord user because we switched from Team Speak to Discord for raiding purposes.

If I had to name my most favorite Sailor Moon episodes of all time then most - if not all of them - would probably come from S. Certainly none from SuperS (as funny as that dentist episode is).

There are couple of things for Minako to do in Sailor Stars that you might like. She's the only one getting a focus episode worth a damn in the final season (Rei gets a couple of really nice things to do that show just how much she really cares, which is great).

Plus this was one of the funniest sequences in all of Sailor Moon for me:

Spoiler

 

Minor caveat, I'm not sure how fun that is without the context, but it cracks me up every time I see it. The girl with the black braids is Sailor Tin Nyanko's in civilian form.

 

That Ami episode is one of the manga chapters in Dreams, adapted to work within SuperS (in the manga Fish-Eye attacks her). These chapters are the first time ever beyond their introduction episodes that the girls get any sort of extended character development in the manga. If Crystal had been any smarter it could have adapted them and moved them to somewhere earlier. Even in the old anime I think it's the first time we get some more information on her family and about her father, beyond "I live with my mother and she's a doctor" - but that's probably because Naoko Takeuchi didn't come up with the idea earlier.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

*googles "define slash fiction"*

Well guys, it was fun watching Sailor Moon with you all, but I have to find another forum. Sayonara!

Heh. In my "defense*" it was for an Ashford City (it was one of the forums we Interplay people migrated to after Interplay shut down, next to this one and Winterwind, but Winterwind and AC are gone by now) fan fiction contest that the other guys badgered me into writing a short story for, so I figured I might as well take it to the logical extreme and attempt to do the worst possible fan fiction possible.

*I don't really think I need to defend myself here, anyway, hence the quotes. It was a fun thing to do, to be honest, particularily because I decided to pair off the forum admin with the most homophobic southern gentleman poster on the board at the time.

Edited March 21, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

Those scenes are gonna be so much better with the English voice cast, I can already tell! I can already imagine Minako's ridiculous voice as she's yelling at random passerbys that they're actually assassins or whatever.

It was weird to hear Ami talk about her father and his apparent inability to communicate like a normal human being and absence from home. Didn't feel like something you'd just suddenly bring up out of the blue in the fourth season of a five season show, .

Nice. Well, in that case, at least it was for a good cause: do Skarpen and Bruce next, .

Edited March 21, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

29 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Nice. Well, in that case, at least it was for a good cause: do Skarpen and Bruce next, .

I'll leave the answer in the form of the memes we had that were actually modified forum code for back at Black Isle:

Spoiler

 

I miss using memes with simple tags. This one was [BISIMG]No[/BISIMG], I think... Come to think of it, were they even called memes back then? Ah, this thread is making me ride the nostalgia train, thinking back to old friends, posters we've lost (both in real life and online contacts), funny things that happened. I remember back when I was an Interplay moderator, posters like Gromnir, Gfted or Amentep might remember too, when the Fallout section posters were accusing the moderator team of being Nazis, so we all ended up using photographs of actual high ranking Nazis as avatars for a while.

Guess if the moderators here did that they'd find themselves replaced over night. I still have that picture of Hermann Göring I used somewhere on my external backup hard disk(s). The only rule was that nobody was allowed to use a picture of Adolf.

Well, that's enough of me being off-topic now.

Edited March 21, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

That Nazi thing sounds hilarious, although I'd probably be tempted to photoshop a character into being a Nazi rather than use an actual real life one. I could probably turn Lisa Simpson or Pearl or somebody else into a Nazi. ...Although, uh, why do it yourself when somebody apparently already has for you? Apparently many of my favorite cartoon characters are actually white supremacist symbols deep into the darkest places on the internet - who knew?

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

150 and 151

I feel asleep during the first one. The new henchmen are boring but at least they aren't sexual predators. Kinda funny to see them just now recognize a giant circus tent.

151 is weird. Ami once again has self-esteem issues and fixes them by giving herself a hug. So even the supporting characters are repeating their arcs

[Bartimaeus]

Spoiler

I didn't see it as being strictly self-esteem issues - related to it, but more like...more like she suddenly realized that she was way out of both her depth and her comfort zone, and likely about to embarrass herself by putting herself out there too quickly when she didn't have enough experience. I thought it was a decent twist on the idea (although I wasn't too keen on her actually being apparently GREAT at writing - I think the better lesson would've been that doing something new great takes time and work, but it's okay and normal for it to take time, and you should always keep good friends around that will support you)...and it was like the first time in a while that an episode really felt like proper Sailor Moon to me. YMMV, though.

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Well, in that case, at least it was for a good cause: do Skarpen and Bruce next

OH MY GOD!

5 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

  Reveal hidden contents

I didn't see it as being strictly self-esteem issues - related to it, but more like...more like she suddenly realized that she was way out of both her depth and her comfort zone, and likely about to embarrass herself by putting herself out there too quickly when she didn't have enough experience. I thought it was a decent twist on the idea (although I wasn't too keen on her actually being apparently GREAT at writing - I think the better lesson would've been that doing something new great takes time and work, but it's okay and normal for it to take time, and you should always keep good friends around that will support you)...and it was like the first time in a while that an episode really felt like proper Sailor Moon to me. YMMV, though.

 

I dunno, whatever you call it Ami losing all confidence seems repetitive. Like most of Super S is. Blasting out of a computer with a water harp is an interesting choice.

[Bartimaeus]

That's fair - the basic elements were indeed very similar. Relative to the first half of the season, though, it was a masterpiece, .

Edited March 21, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

19 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Relative to the first half of the season, though, it was a masterpiece, .

Damming with faint praise.