Anime - coasting on emotion rollers

[Amentep]

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33 minutes ago, majestic said:

Was Usagi in the finale really as bad as Shinji sounds, or is that NGE trauma and Usagi-hate by proxy?

 

31 minutes ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

Yes.

 

 

[Bartimaeus]

but the old one was better

32 minutes ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

Yes.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second there, pal.

Spoiler

Aren't we forgetting a little incident in the hospital? Last I heard, Usagi didn't join the Amazon Trio.

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

21 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

but the old one was better

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second there, pal.

  Reveal hidden contents

Aren't we forgetting a little incident in the hospital? Last I heard, Usagi didn't join the Amazon Trio.

 

You'll just have to wait and see, but when the last few episodes came I immediately thought of Shinji based on how she acted.

It doesn't get anywhere near the hospital scene though. Usagi is just useless, not creepy.

[InsaneCommander]

Puella Magi Madoka Magica episodes 1-2:

Spoiler

 

Madoka and Sayaka talking about Homura telepatically, but can Homura listen to them?

Is Kyubey spying on their thoughts or memories?

 

Hitomi seems to have known Madoka and Sayaka for a while, so I guess it is too late to claim they are cousins?

 

Kyubey seems to be enjoying the hostility between the girls.

Yes, I'm sure there is nothing wrong here.

 

Is the Witch the illegitimate daughter of Cthulhu and a butterfly?

 

 

[HoonDing]

a lot of stuff i don't remember, guess those Frenchie episodes were heavily censored maybe

[majestic]

@Bartimaeus more talk about Steven Moon S - The musical.

Quote

Spoiler

Okay, in my defense for calling it "like a Sailor Moon movie", there are some things that specifically reminded me of a Sailor Moon movie. Revolves around a character that hitherto was never mentioned or seen, check. Plot...has nothing much to do with the original series, not really, check. It does *resume* the continuity of the original series at least, albeit after a bit of a timeskip, which the SM movies didn't, so I'll give it that. Introduces some crap that begs some SERIOUS questions like the scythe gem resetter thing - why would you ever shatter a gem when you could just reset them and turn them back into loyal soldiers? Like...what? Worse, Bismuth specifically says they were around the time of the Gem War, whereas if she had kept her mouth shut, at least you could say "well, Homeworld probably invented it in the thousands of years since the Gem War!". I know it's just...details, but details that big kind of matter! Or, as you said, Spinel getting the injector out of nowhere in literally like an hour, or the fact that just ONE INJECTOR is enough to apparently destroy an entire planet? wot. And that's another thing - the plot for this is yet another one of those very rushed "THE WORLD IS GONNA END" movie plots that are so incredibly typical of TV movies like this.

There's also the fact that I really, really struggled to like this movie upon the first watch - and while the other person I watched the show with first loved it, the other two people I watched it with in my rewatch *hated* it, so I was kind of intentionally attempting to lower your expectations in case it fell flat with you. I felt more confident that you'd be the type to like it more, because you already love other stuff like this, but just in case... For me, the fact that it was a musical was extremely off-putting (while I always loved the original sung music in the show, it was greatly helped by it not happening that often AND the fact that songs almost always came about extremely organically - mostly not the case for The Movie outside of the songs at Sadie's concert), the fact that it so quickly went through character developments that used to take many episodes made it feel very rushed while not having enough room to breathe, doing some weird overexplaining stuff that felt super out of place given the fact that the movie already felt like it was too dense and had no time to do anything...and the other problems I mentioned above and some others I'm not remembering right now. It was only upon a rewatch that I was able to appreciate it a lot more.

In regards to Spinel herself, she was widely adored by the fanbase, and this little incident just made everyone hate RQ even more. But as you said, RQ's actions, while utterly regrettable, make sense in the context of who she was at that time and the oh so little universe that she was occupying. I think it's now a common fan theory that...uh, wait a second...never mind! I think for a lot of fans, the fact that we see RQ's tale in complete reverse over the series (starts off as this perfect space goddess and gradually becomes more and more gray until you finally see her character at its lowest point - multiple times even!) makes it difficult for people to appreciate that she had good points too! It's just...been a long time since we saw them, that's all!

Also, thanks re: grandma - she's having blood clotting problems right now but is still hanging of for the time being...we'll see what happens.

 

 

Spoiler

 

Heh, when I think about it, then yes, this really does resemble the Sailor Moon movies. But that's a general issue with TV-shows made into feature length films. The easiest way to make an engaging film that is interesting for people who don't watch the show is to introduce a new character as antagonist that has no bearing on the regular plot - assuming the show had one. Sailor Moon had seasonal story arcs, so that would have been even harder to pull off, especially in the middle of a season.

Also because I think the films were written, produced and animated while the anime itself ran in tandem, which from what I've read about the Steven Universe movie is a problem it also had, because CN "uncancelled" the show and gave it more episodes to wrap up the storyline. So the movie had to be about something else.

Coincidentally, my favorite MCU stuff - namely Agents of SHIELD which I like because I could watch Clark Gregg and Ming-Na Wen in anything and probably still enjoy it - initially struggled with being tied ot the MCU too. There's pre-Winter Soldier and post-Winter Soldier Agents of SHIELD (for... obvious reasons, I guess).

And, yeah... it was a musical. I find musicals strange. I don't dislike them, but I don't care much for them, especially because I find music combined with visuals to not be a storytelling medium that I care for over a feature length time. I'm not sure why, but I find paying attention to lyrics much more demanding than listening to regular dialogue.

's not that I don't like songs that tell a story or funny music where the lyrics are great, like with Weird Al or that hilarious EAV video I linked that is impossible to understand without know German, but it's the whole experience that simply isn't for me, I guess.

I liked Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog. But... only because a friend recommended it to me and it has Neil Patrick Harris, Nathon Fillion and Felicia Day in it.

The Rejuvenator, well, that can at least be explained, what good is pushing the reset button on a gem when singing at it restores its memories? No doubt the Diamonds decided shoot first, ask questions later after losing Earth. They bubbled the entire Rose Quartz gem line too. But... that is also making excuses for a scythe sized plot hole on a stick. Also, what's with the ending? The entire injector contents was supposed to be enough to destroy all life on Earth, but they wouldn't remove it for fear of it exploding, and at the end it does just that, but with no negative side effects?

Wasn't that long for me regarding Rose. I kinda breezed through the show once I got over the first 25 or so first season episodes that mostly went nowhere but were still fun.

I read that the movie had a troubled development after I finished watching the regular show, so I guess appropriate expectatins made me like it in spite of its flaws. Knowing it's a musical also helped. The plot holes... yeah, they're there, but the character stuff is good, so I don't really mind.

 

 

1 hour ago, InsaneCommander said:

Puella Magi Madoka Magica episodes 1-2:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Madoka and Sayaka talking about Homura telepatically, but can Homura listen to them?

Is Kyubey spying on their thoughts or memories?

 

Hitomi seems to have known Madoka and Sayaka for a while, so I guess it is too late to claim they are cousins?

 

Kyubey seems to be enjoying the hostility between the girls.

Yes, I'm sure there is nothing wrong here.

 

Is the Witch the illegitimate daughter of Cthulhu and a butterfly?

 

 

 

 

 

I'm confused why you guys all believe that the fuzzy cute animal that doesn't move its mouth when it talks and has unblinking red eyes could possibly be up to no good. Mindboggling!  

 

[InsaneCommander]

38 minutes ago, majestic said:

I'm confused why you guys all believe that the fuzzy cute animal that doesn't move its mouth when it talks and has unblinking red eyes could possibly be up to no good. Mindboggling!

I know, right?

Spoiler

Just two episodes in, but despite the suicide attempt, Butterfly Cthulhu seemed pretty peacful until it was attacked.

 

Edited April 13, 2021 by InsaneCommander

[majestic]

Ah, just reading the part in the manga where they go to Ami's place and whack a diamond with the LEGENDARY SACRED SWORD. Minako actually stratches Ami's marble floor. Not bad. Ami says not to worry about either the scratch in her marble floor or the diamond they just destroyed because her mother has "loads" of them anyway.

Gee, a diamond that size... talking about at least a high five figure value here, if not six figures. Not bad, I mean, I guess being a doctor rakes in some sweet cash, but if you can be that blase about trashing a ring that valuable then Ami's mother probably also has a private jet around. Why is Ami going to a public school again?

Hey, perhaps that's who Haruka's and Michiru's mystery sponsor is.

Edited April 13, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

21 minutes ago, majestic said:

whack a diamond with the LEGENDARY SACRED SWORD.

I don't remember that. Is it more powerful than the Sword of Luck and Pluck?

[majestic]

14 minutes ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

I don't remember that. Is it more powerful than the Sword of Luck and Pluck?

It's so powerful it breaks diamonds at the merest touch, but is also super poisonous but Minako can just handle it with her bare hands, holding the unsheathed edge. So, beats me if it beats the punny sword from JoJo's. Probably not.

Also, no wonder you don't remember it, it only shows up in the manga and in Crystal. The sword Princess Serenity stabbed herself with. Twice.

This manga issue had a little note from Naoko Takeuchi at the end where she said she had, at times, to draw 40+ pages in three days to meet deadlines, and sometimes couldn't even remember drawing the panels she later read in the monthly manga magazine Sailor Moon was published in.

In other words, this thing doesn't just read like a rough first draft - it is one.

Makes the anime even more impressive, and no wonder it deviates from the manga storyline so much. That was probably not even by design, if all you have to work with are storyboards and a hastily slapped together final issue that you can't even ask questions about because she doesn't remember drawing them.

If she really was this overworked and still had to make time for interviews and cons and what not, yeah, no wonder she was cranky all the time and complained about everything. 

 

Edited April 13, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

20 minutes ago, majestic said:

This manga issue had a little note from Naoko Takeuchi at the end where she said she had, at times, to draw 40+ pages in three days to meet deadlines, and sometimes couldn't even remember drawing the panels she later read in the monthly manga magazine Sailor Moon was published in.

Holy ****, that's a lot of work even by manganka standards. I'm surprised she was even able to do what she did.

Have you met the gang of ancient fitness gods in JoJo yet?

[Bartimaeus]

Okay, in that case, I don't think she can be held responsible for what she wrote if that's how it went down. I've written some pretty weird stuff when I've been utterly exhausted too (...though admtitedly never anything on the level of horse-human romance with the intent of it being adapted for children's TV - she might have some deep-seated problems there that she may or may not have intended to bring out in her writing, idk). No wonder the manga doesn't have much fun filler stuff - she didn't have enough time or energy to do the main story, much less extras!

Episode 11:

Spoiler

THE EARLY BIRD IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD!

Minako has the best running gags, though Makoto is right up there with her. Speak of the devil, there she goes again with the one that broke her heart.

Since we were on the topic of Rei and Usagi, there was a moment in this episode where Usagi hoped that she and Mamoru would discover a new comet...and be able to name it the incredibly original "Usagi and Mamoru's Comet". The Japanese subs say Rei replies with a dispirited/annoyed "Whatever..."; the Viz English dub had her reply with an exasperated but also kind of playful "SURE, Usagi!" - like "yeah, okay, in your dreams, girl!". I'm not an expert with Japanese tones/inflections, so it's possible I'm misreading the Japanese line...but the English one seemed a lot cuter and friendlier to me.

The second half of this episode's writing was a bit...too on the nose for my tastes, especially since S did it better, but okay, sure, Taiki gets a little character development and Ami gets to repeat what was essentially "studying and cold logic isn't all there is to life" moment again.

@majestic SU:

Spoiler

re RQ: Yeah, but the show started in late 2013, and The Movie aired in late 2019 - six entire years for viewers who started from the beginning, .

re ending of The Movie: Yeah, that was a common complaint. What I theorize is that it's because it had to be properly injected deep into the Earth - what happens instead is that it's more...ejected and kind of just splashes all over near Beach City. Only problem is Peridot et al. specifically tell Steven not to mess with it because it'll just make it inject faster (...............which, by the way, also makes no kind of physical sense, but okay, sure, whatever). Hey Peridot, if the options are actually "destroy Beach City" (which happens anyways, by the way) or "destroy the Earth", that's kind of a big distinction and I'm thinking we should prooooobably go with destroy Beach City, right?

 

Edited April 14, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Okay, in that case, I don't think she can be held responsible for what she wrote if that's how it went down. I've written some pretty weird stuff when I've been utterly exhausted too (...though admtitedly never anything on the level of horse-human romance with the intent of it being adapted for children's TV - she might have some deep-seated problems there that she may or may not have intended to bring out in her writing, idk). No wonder the manga doesn't have much fun filler stuff - she didn't have enough time or energy to do the main story, much less extras!

It does excuse/explain the disjointed nature of the manga, and the strange flip flopping between the dialogue and the actions (like Haruka goes from sexually assaulting Usagi to "we always wanted to fight with you" in the span of an act), and the mood whiplash in the panels, but it doesn't do so for the plot points. BodySwitch!Usagi trying to seduce Mamoru, Chibi-Usa musing how she wants to be sexually attractive to Mamoru and later an alicorn, or how Mamoru abducts her, or... the aforementioned assault by Haruka, man, the list just goes on.

It does explain why it takes three entire arcs before the girls got a backstory, or why that backstory is sometimes in a separate manga issue / side story.
Here are the two pages, the small text is a bit hard to read, but, eh... zoom in a bit, it's workable. Post spoilered, no actual spoilers and stuff, but... not sure if babbling on an online forum falls under fair use of excerpts (again, top to bottom, right to left, in that order, 14 years old refers to when she started drawing, not when she made Sailor Moon, or else there's an error in the translation... who knows).

Spoiler

 

 

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Episode 11:

  Reveal hidden contents

THE EARLY BIRD IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD!

Minako has the best running gags, though Makoto is right up there with her. Speak of the devil, there she goes again with the one that broke her heart.

Since we were on the topic of Rei and Usagi, there was a moment in this episode where Usagi hoped that she and Mamoru would discover a new comet...and be able to name it the incredibly original "Usagi and Mamoru's Comet". The Japanese subs say Rei replies with a dispirited/annoyed "Whatever..."; the Viz English dub had her reply with an exasperated but also kind of playful "SURE, Usagi!" - like "yeah, okay, in your dreams, girl!". I'm not an expert with Japanese tones/inflections, so it's possible I'm misreading the Japanese line...but the English one seemed a lot cuter and friendlier to me.

The second half of this episode's writing was a bit...too on the nose for my tastes, especially since S did it better, but okay, sure, Taiki gets a little character development and Ami gets to repeat what was essentially "studying and cold logic isn't all there is to life" moment again.

 

That's one of the episodes I didn't really like all too much, outside of giving some more insights into Taiki. However, I think this is as "bad" as any episode in Sailor Stars gets, outside of the final story mode episodes.

Minor spoilerish question:

Spoiler

Has there been some fun meta stuff in the fights yet? I.e. Iron Mouse just leaving a baffled Sailor Moon behind because she's supposed to listen to her speech but doesn't? Thanks to super binging this season I don't even know if that's something Iron Mouse does, or if that comes up later.

's all for now, I'll reply some more later I guess (also re: JoJo and stuff)

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Finished The Great Pretender Singapore Skies

It's a fun anime that is not only broken up into seasons, but parts as well that end up being roughly the length as a movie. I had this hanging because I started Sailor Moon and Puella Magi Madoka Magica turned out to be hugely engaging, but I'm glad I got to get back into it. It follows a gang of swindlers who cheat bad people with extravagant schemes and for the most part ends up being a fun ride. Since it is broken up into small parts, I'd recommend watching each as a movie and taking a break if you want a change of pace.

6 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I've written some pretty weird stuff when I've been utterly exhausted too (...though admtitedly never anything on the level of horse-human romance with the intent of it being adapted for children's TV - she might have some deep-seated problems there that she may or may not have intended to bring out in her writing, idk).

I may have exceeded that level once or twice. I had....strange thoughts when I wasn't sleeping.

[Bartimaeus]

@majestic

Wow, thanks for the images - they literally give so much context for the madness, and some much needed perspective on the part of Ms. Takeuchi herself. I think back to her comments about how she didn't approve of some stuff in the original show, like Black Lady getting too sexualized, and then us laughing about how messed up some of the things SHE wrote in the actual manga were. It sounds like it's literally possible she didn't remember what the heck she wrote at parts in the original manga, and it doesn't seem like she liked her own art or writing much at all to begin with, particularly not as rushed as she was. And with those kinds of deadlines, who can possibly pause for time to think about what they're writing, how well it's written, what's actually coming through vs. what was intended, how specific points were framed, etc. Goes a long way towards forgiving the rough patches around the Sailor Moon franchise as a whole...except Crystal - what the hell is your excuse, Crystal?

Iron Mouse: I don't think so? I like Iron Mouse in general, though, so she doesn't even need to be doing anything "meta", really (also, it wouldn't be the first time villains have interrupted Sailor Moon's speech...although if she actually DOES something during her speech, I think that'd be new!).

Yeah, that episode was not very good. The first half was good enough, but the second half was pretty lacklustre compared to everything of this season I've seen so far, which has genuinely been very good so far, even if a little rehashy.

@ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP

The most I've ever gone without sleeping was 80 hours, and I all got out of it was hallucinations where the walls were wiggling and writing was spontaneously appearing and disappearing on them. I've been cheated!

Edited April 14, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

32 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

The most I've ever gone without sleeping was 80 hours, and I all got out of it was hallucinations where the walls were wiggling and writing was spontaneously appearing and disappearing on them. I've been cheated!

The longest I've ever gone is 50 hours, but I frequently had stretches were I would sleep maybe two hours a night over 10-15 days and the sleep deprivation hit harder then than just not sleeping, maybe it was because of slow burn. I would hear stuff, see things out of the corner of my eye, and bright patches of color would routinely pop up in my field of vision. It's hard to say what the weirdest thing I've written was from those days is, and what you guys would consider weird. Like I think the weirdest was a short story featuring a sociopathic unreliable narrator who was recounting how monsters had infiltrated a mental ward he was confined in. But others think it was a script for a girl who had been raped and coped with it by believing it was an immaculate conception and ended up starting a cult in East Texas.

[majestic]

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Iron Mouse: I don't think so? I like Iron Mouse in general, though, so she doesn't even need to be doing anything "meta", really (also, it wouldn't be the first time villains have interrupted Sailor Moon's speech...although if she actually DOES something during her speech, I think that'd be new!).

Super quick update before I go back to... work, yay!

Spoiler

I'm not even sure it is really intentional meta-fun, but I had the feeling that some episodes do make fun of the formula. Not 100% sure it was Sailor Iron Mouse but at some point one of the villains tells Sailor Moon (or the fictional camera, man, I should not have binged the season) that they don't have time and just get into their TARDIS and take off while she's doing her speech.

 

19 hours ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

Have you met the gang of ancient fitness gods in JoJo yet?

Yes, if you mean Wamuu, Esidisi and Kars. I've also seen JoJo's balls and he got married to two of the gym gods, but he already divorced one of them. I'm pretty sure I don't need to put that into a spoiler because that makes absolutely NO sense out of context. You were right about things getting very weird.

Edited April 14, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

24 minutes ago, majestic said:

Super quick update before I go back to... work, yay!

  Reveal hidden contents

I'm not even sure it is really intentional meta-fun, but I had the feeling that some episodes do make fun of the formula. Not 100% sure it was Sailor Iron Mouse but at some point one of the villains tells Sailor Moon (or the fictional camera, man, I should not have binged the season) that they don't have time and just get into their TARDIS and take off while she's doing her speech.

 

Yes, if you mean Wamuu, Esidisi and Kars. I've also seen JoJo's balls and he got married to two of the gym gods, but he already divorced one of them. I'm pretty sure I don't need to put that into a spoiler because that makes absolutely NO sense out of context. You were right about things getting very weird.

[Bartimaeus]

Episode 12:

Spoiler

Well, *I* thought your traveling band act was funny, Minako...but I guess I would, wouldn't I?

Loved it when Usagi misinterpreted the love letter as being for her - in her defense, the random girl literally asked for specifically her, Usagi Tsukino, so I actually don't think that's Usagi's fault.  While Minako and Makoto make fun of Usagi for it, I went back and checked their reactions to the girl first appearing and I'm preeetty sure they initially thought it was for Usagi, too. Also, it was funny to turn on the Japanese subtitles and see it say "it's better to fall in love with a boy" - the Viz dub wrote that one right out.

Rei should really be here - Ami is smart, but she's too easily overpowered by the Three Stooges here.

Okay, after this little stunt and the SuperS movie, Luna can just shut it if she ever feels like trying to lecture the girls about staying on task or whatever. Good lord, this Noriko lady talks in the third person and literally just punched her cat in the face. And I thought Minako was bad!

Yeah guys, I don't know if I want to watch this anymore. Last season we had horse-human relations going on, now we're having cat-human relations, I just don't know if I can do this anymore...

Whoa...uh, it's pretty unusual for the villain to not appear at all in the episode right up until the moment of their attack - Iron Mouse's sudden appearance here genuinely caught me off-guard. And...she was so good during this entire sequence, too - just peaces out from Usagi's speech with a "whatever".

All these girls/boys/cats are so freaking dense about figuring out who is whom...but I guess that in of itself is a running gag at this point.

Episode 13:

Spoiler

Haruka and Michiru out of nowhere. I'm always confused as to whether they're actually on Earth or not. ...Uh, Haruka looks like a freaking alien in this terrible art style.

What's wrong with your face? Oh, how I miss the days of <=S - it's not right that Sailor Moon to be reduced to looking like this sorry mess! . ...On the other hand:

Kind of freaky-looking hands, but check them eyes! HEY, nice - Mako got in the Cooking Club after all! ...I almost posted a screenshot of Galaxia to illustrate how bad this art style is again, but I suppose I'm kicking a dead horse here - it's inconsistent and bad and ugly and there's nothing I can do about it. At least the episodes and characters are fun and make sense again!

OH CRAP! I genuinely hope nothing bad happens to Iron Mouse, I kind of love her. Standalone villains like her almost always bite it, though...and we're already seeing silhouettes of what are presumably the next batch of villains - crap, crap, crap! Iron Mouse hasn't even hurt anybody - well, not with Sailor Moon's help anyways! Heck, all of the phages she's created have been almost completely harmless (e: although this last one nearly cut Usagi's head in half...). The Starlights have gotten closer to genuinely hurting somebody than she has! You gotta redeem her, Usagi...plus, she's a Sailor Guardian - a really weird one, but a Sailor Guardian nevertheless! You should've heard the VA for her's voice trembling while trying to answer Galaxia here...and Galaxia just blasted her. Well, Galaxia, you've just made an enemy for life! Defect, Iron Mouse - it's happened before, you can do it! Some of the defectors in the past even got away with it, like the Amazon Quartet and the Spectre Sisters...but not Nephrite, or Demande, or Saphir. That's the problem here - the groups tend to get redeemed, the one-offs almost always get axed. I don't like this.

Oh my gosh, Usagi...I can't watch this. This is so awful. This is an unmitigated disaster. I can't watch this. OH DEAR LORD, the entire studio exploded while I had my eyes covered. Well...uh, I called it? That actually somehow went even worse than I expected.

One thing I miss constantly from The Movies are the individual transformation themes. These episodes don't have enough time for their full themes, just the one generic theme while they splice in multiple Guardians transforming...when they bother at all anymore. Those individual themes are good.

 

Edited April 14, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

I can calm you down, that's the only episode where Luna and Yaten are a, uhm, thing. And it's not even really a thing thing.

Spoiler

Artemis gets annoyed in the finale when Luna says goodbye to Yaten, but that's about all.

edit:

That cooking episode was a riot. I mean, aside from the drawings of Haruka and Michiru being really weird, and the hands being strange. Oh, by the way, Galaxia looks bad just the entire season, with the exception of her in civilian form, those are truly nice. But they come up once. Guess the interns did her other appearances.

I can't help but loving how Usagi just self-inserts into the cooking show, hogging the spotlight, essentially making an ass out of herself on national TV just because Makoto is so nervous that she drops the eggs for the cake.

Or at least that was how I saw it, and Makoto probably too, otherwise she'd have been annoyed at Usagi, right?

edit 2:

Spoiler for the next episode, as a warning of sorts:

Spoiler

The next episode kicks off the forced conflict between Seiya and Haruka. Looking forward to what you think of it, because I hated that. I get why it is there, but I don't like it, at all.

 

Edited April 14, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

Oh, no, I was totally joking about that. It was fine, . I could tell it wasn't going to go anywhere when we didn't have a weird, ultra-serious dream sequence setup where the characters meet under really bizarre circumstances and tell each other sweet nothings while pining for one another over an entire season and...uh, you know, let's not re-visit SuperS, actually. Basically, in other words, the framing of the episode correctly and efficiently informed me that it wasn't anything to worry about, .

(e): Also, I regret writing "kicking a dead horse" in the previous post when I clearly should've said pegasus instead. Whoops!

Edited April 14, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

20 minutes ago, majestic said:

That cooking episode was a riot. I mean, aside from the drawings of Haruka and Michiru being really weird, and the hands being strange. Oh, by the way, Galaxia looks bad just the entire season, with the exception of her in civilian form, those are truly nice. But they come up once. Guess the interns did her other appearances.

I can't help but loving how Usagi just self-inserts into the cooking show, hogging the spotlight, essentially making an ass out of herself on national TV just because Makoto is so nervous that she drops the eggs for the cake.

Or at least that was how I saw it, and Makoto probably too, otherwise she'd have been annoyed at Usagi, right?

edit 2:

Spoiler for the next episode, as a warning of sorts:

  Hide contents

The next episode kicks off the forced conflict between Seiya and Haruka. Looking forward to what you think of it, because I hated that. I get why it is there, but I don't like it, at all.

 

Yeah, it was hilarious, but also, I was utterly shriveling up and dying - my secondhand embarrassment activated super strongly during that sequence, I had to cover my eyes for some of it. But that's okay - that's what it was supposed to elicit! And yep, it was made so much better because Usagi only inserted herself because she was genuinely trying to help Makoto out, not simply trying to steal the spotlight. If this were written in SuperS, you just know it would've been the other way around... Sailor Stars Usagi has been so awesome in comparison to SuperS Usagi, thankfully.

Haruka? She only just showed up this past episode, and she's already being put into another forced conflict? The poor woman, it seems to be what she's made for...at the hands of these cruel writers, anyways.

Edited April 14, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

  

  

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Wow, thanks for the images - they literally give so much context for the madness, and some much needed perspective on the part of Ms. Takeuchi herself. I think back to her comments about how she didn't approve of some stuff in the original show, like Black Lady getting too sexualized, and then us laughing about how messed up some of the things SHE wrote in the actual manga were. It sounds like it's literally possible she didn't remember what the heck she wrote at parts in the original manga, and it doesn't seem like she liked her own art or writing much at all to begin with, particularly not as rushed as she was. And with those kinds of deadlines, who can possibly pause for time to think about what they're writing, how well it's written, what's actually coming through vs. what was intended, how specific points were framed, etc. Goes a long way towards forgiving the rough patches around the Sailor Moon franchise as a whole...except Crystal - what the hell is your excuse, Crystal?

So, longer answer time. @Bartimaeus I made some more edits to the post above, about stuff and stuff.

Reading the two pages made me feel a bit bad about the mean things I - well, we - posted about her in these threads. I'll also admit that I let the fandom parroting what she said colour my perception of her statements, because over the course of the anime rewatch, researching reviews and gathering information for the essay style posts, I grew to despise the manga fanboys, for various reasons, but by far and large for claiming how superior the source material is, which, let's face it, is simply not true except for the more detailed costumes the girls are wearing in the manga (which caused Ms. Takeuchi some problems when drawing and forgetting them, so perhaps the anime had the better idea anyway).

It also helps understanding some of the statements she made regarding changes in the anime. For instance, assuming she truly likes manga Rei and considers it one of the good things in it - perhaps not even in the way she actually is or comes across in the manga, but the way she wanted her to be -  and the anime turns her into something else entirely, for various reasons, then of course she'd be annoyed by that. I also once read that she wanted to do certain things that happened in the anime but wasn't allowed to by her editor, for instance the girls not dying by giving their energy to Princess Serenity but going out with a bang.

There's also a panel that was cut for Crystal where the hologram of Usagi's mother tells her that the source of her strength is not only her heart, love and sense of justice, but also being a girl, and  that she should never forget that. In light of that panel, her being annoyed by the Sailor Starlights turning out to be transgender and actually male in civilian live is understandable, even if the change, in my opinion, still was a good idea. We already had a great homosexual relationship, so why not go even further.

It would be different if she had complained about the three being actual boys because it diminishes her point about how much easier it was for boybands to sing about love and princesses while being taken seriously (more or less, anyway) in the mid 90ies. But it wasn't, the complaint was specifically about her believing that only women can be actual Sailor Guardians because being women was a source of strength for them, and while Mamoru is a Sailor Earth standin, he's just that. He's not Sailor Earth.

The parts where she wrote nigh unadaptable material and I thought she might have done that intentionally out of spite, yeah, no, that was definitely wrong too. Also no wonder she made Saturn's attack sequence go for four pages. That's 10% off the workload.

I doubt that she reads this forum, but: Dear Stephenie Meyer Dear Ms. Takeuchi, I'm sorry for the mean things I said about you. Especially the ones where I called you (or implied you to be) an entitled, pretentious artist who got annoyed by the adaptation turning out to be a superior product. Seems like you weren't happy with the manga too. It also can't be easy to have what you consider "shoddy work" and "a rough first draft" to be the one thing that blew up into a billion dollar world wide phenomenon.

Hell, you might even feel like I did, that the success of your manga was based more on the anime being such a smash hit than for its own merits.

Not sorry about calling Crystal crap. Because it is.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

17 minutes ago, majestic said:

I grew to despise the manga fanboys

It's time to fight Unicorn of War to the death.

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, that about sums up how I feel as well. Another one of those cases where it's important to let the actual author speak for themselves instead of letting the fanidiots do it for them. Hell, that's literally exactly why I forgive Steven Universe for some of its more uneven bits as well - I've heard Rebecca Sugar herself talk about it and how difficult it is to get everything right while always having to work within so many constraints and making so many compromises under so many deadlines, it's tough to do everything just how you ideally envisioned it while also getting a product out at all and not being cancelled altogether (and boy, Cartoon Network was *so* ready to cancel SU).

But yeah, what the heck, Crystal? You completely dropped the ball when you should've had everything going for you that neither the manga or anime did 20 years after the franchise became a mega-hit. Who's responsible for this disaster?