Good evening everybody! This is Aifos coming to you alive from THE MOON! I cannot breathe, send help!
Sailor Moon is a show I've wanted to watch for a very long time. I've always been a fan of the magical girl trope, and Sailor Moon is THE magical girl show. Pretty much any magical girl you find is going to be calling back to Sailor Moon in one way or another. Unfortunately, one thing has always gotten in my way. The price. Sailor Moon is honking expensive! To buy the whole series, you'd have to spend a honking $400 money! I was actually willing to bite the bullet, but thankfully, I lucked out, and happened to go to buy it right when a random sale hit, and I was able to buy the entire thing for $60 money instead! (side note, if you want to own Sailor Moon, that sale is still happening last I checked. $60 on iTunes. The movies, and Sailor Moon Crystal are on sale as well)
So, I just finished up the first season, aka Sailor Moon (no subtitle), aka The Dark Kingdom arc. And, I quite enjoyed it! So, let's talk about it, starting with...
[u]The bad[/u]
The show wasn't perfect, obviously, and chief among its problems was probably the fanservice. There was a little bit too much of it for my tastes. Thankfully, though, it was rather tame, and with one notable exception, none of it really made me uncomfortable, it was more of a minor annoyance.
There were also a handful of lines that were either poorly written or poorly translated, which led to a few weird scenes. They all mostly happened in the early parts of the show, and honestly they were more good for a laugh than anything else. My favorite example is when Luna--who is normally very serious about all this superhero saving people business--straight up told Usagi to murder a bunch of elementary school children, which I get the feeling wasn't supposed to be how that scene played out.
There were also a lot of reused animations. I get why this is a thing, animation is expensive, but man, there were [i]a lot[/i]. Fight scenes often felt very samey, because half the fight was stuff you'd literally already seen dozens of times before. However, I always say, if you've got a good story, then the quality of a fight scene doesn't actually matter. What matters is the concept of the fight, and Sailor Moon is a great example of this. Because the fights... Aren't good. But, that's okay, because the rest of the show is good enough, that we end up invested in them anyway.
I can't really take villains who kill their own henchmen seriously. Queen Beryl was probably supposed to be way more intimidating than she was, but her willingness to just kill any of her underlings that disappointed her just made her seem, like, kind of stupid? Like, man, are you seeing the effort the heroes are going through to beat your minions? Maybe instead of killing them when they escape, you can let them continue working for you so they can team up with your other minions later. Honestly.
[u]The good[/u]
My favorite part of Sailor Moon was definitely the Sailor Guardians themselves. They were all really well made characters, and I liked all five of them. Though they definitely followed the broadstrokes of the five man band trope, that trope is a trope for a reason, and the five man band (or five woman band, I guess) works. They had both a fun team dynamic, and were fun characters in their own right.
I'm going to have to go with the boring, default answer and say my favorite character was Usagi, aka Sailor Moon herself. She was the goofy, somewhat inept hero who always managed to pull through and save the day somehow, and it was really fun. She always managed to make me laugh, too. My second favorite character would probably be Mako, aka Sailor Jupiter, who happens to be the resident tough girl, but who's also very caring and sweet. Definitely not a gentle giant, she won't hesitate to beat you up if you get on her bad side, and even when she's nice she's very pushy, but it was fun. Plus, the fact that literally every guy she meets reminds her of her ex is funny.
I will say, I also really liked Naru, who was just Usagi's best friend, who had no super powers. Sadly, she ended up falling out of the plot as things got serious, though.
Another thing I really enjoyed about the show was with a lot of these kind of double life shows, it feels like the slice of life stuff often serves as set dressing for the fights. Sure, the heroes are all trying to research some gorilla or something, but I mean, we're all really here for the big fight that's going to happen at the end, right?
Not so with Sailor Moon! In fact, it kinda felt like the opposite, where the fight scenes mostly acted as a catalyst to cause whatever slice of life stuff was happening in that episode. I really enjoyed this. While a flashy fight scene can be fun, I'm always a believer that character drama is the real heart of any show, and by focusing on it instead of the fights, it made the show a lot better.
One complaint you'll often hear leveled at the original Sailor Moon is that it's very repetitive, and I can't wholly disagree. As a monster of the week show, it does very much follow a formula. The Dark Kingdom makes an evil plan, the Sailor Guardians discover that plan, and thwart it by beating a monster, all the while some slice of life stuff is happening side by side.
But, one thing I really enjoyed about Sailor Moon is it knew just how and just when to mix up the formula. Throughout the first season, the main villains are these dudes known as Four Kings of Heaven, and each one of them goes about things in a very different way. The first one, Jadeite, always tried to siphon off energy from large groups of people, and so his plans always involved trying to gather up large groups of people in a single place, or distribute cursed artifacts to as many people as he could. Then, once you're sick of that, we move onto Nephrite, who placed curses on singular people, causing their emotions to spiral out of control. Then, once you're sick of that, we move onto Zoisite, who threw caution to the wind and just went straight for his targets, plans be darned!
And of course, each of the Four Kings (except Jadeite) all had their own subplots happening alongside them, though they're all rather spoilery, so you can read below to see what I think about those, which is also where I'll explain my opinions on the ending.
Finally, the show was also just really funny. Almost every episode at least got a chuckle out of me. Crucially, however, unlike a lot of modern superhero comedies *cough* the MCU *cough*, Sailor Moon also knew when it was time to stop making jokes, and get serious. Despite being a comedy on a whole, its emotional scenes are completely devoid of humor, and this is a good thing. Not only does it let the scene have its full impact, the impact of the scene is heightened, even, by the sudden tone shift. It's great.
Very good show. I'm glad I finally picked it up.
I don't have anything else to say spoiler-free wise, but I should have a selected answer below with my opinion on specific story arcs!
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Edited by The First Aifos: 7/9/2025 9:39:18 PMSpoiler warning! Now I'll start actually spoiling stuff! Jadeite [spoiler]The Jadeite arc was fine. Jadeite kinda served as the default template for what the Four Kings of Heaven were, and what the formula of the show would be, and as such, there are no real twists and turns. It's definitely the worst part of the show, but it's not bad in any way. It just serves to set the stage, and that's all it really does. I will say, though, Jadeite had a certain air of intimidation around him that the other Four Kings of Heaven really lacked. Part of this probably just came from the fact that he was the first, and we didn't know much about the Dark Kingdom, but also he was the only one of the Four Kings to threaten all of Tokyo, and the only one who challenged the Sailor Guardians. Everyone else always tried to take out the Sailor Guardians with some sort of trickery. If one thing really holds the Jadeite arc back, though, it's that this is where the majority of the bad writing/translation is. Between Luna straight up telling Usagi to murder her brother, the Sailor Guardians just not giving two hoots about Tuxedo Mask's supposed death, and "that fire was only an illusion!", it definitely feels like... The cheapest part of the show, for lack of a better term? Still good, though. I liked it.[/spoiler] Nephrite [spoiler]As I mentioned before, Nephrite's shift in the way he goes about things compared to Jadeite was a really nice contrast, and I like how he had an undercover identity. I think his method of going around cursing individual people, which caused their emotions to spiral out of control was also my favorite of the various ways the Four Kings went about their plans. Of course, the big thing about Nephrite's story arc was his relationship with Naru. It's easy to look at this, and say that this story arc was bad, because this was a very unhealthy relationship, and it was most definitely was a very unhealthy relationship! Nephrite was a bad influence on Naru. He was very manipulative, and didn't actually care for her int the slightest until right at the very end. And the worst part was, Naru understood this, and was okay with it. But, it's important to note that just because something is in a show, doesn't mean the show approves of it, and even though Nephrite's death was treated as a tragedy, I was never under the impression the show said their relationship was a good thing. Quite the opposite, really, it always felt like the show said it was a bad thing, and Naru being so obsessed with Nephrite was unhealthy. And, I liked this plot thread, firstly because it gave Naru more of a role in the story, which she's sorely lacking later on, and it led to a lot of good character drama, to throwing herself in the way of Sailor Moon's attack, to trying to pull the spikes out of Nephrite after he was impaled. And on Nephrite's side of things, he was a person who never knew love, and was being shown it for the first time, and was trying to make sense of it. Though he was indeed a bad person, we saw that he might not have remained that way if he didn't die. And, as kind of hilarious as the chocolate parfait scene is out of context, in context it was genuinely kinda heartbreaking. If you look at the Nephrite arc as a tragic love story, it might feel kinda weird, because the love story in question was a very unhealthy one, but if you look at it instead as a tragic redemption arc, where a bad person saw a chance to grow into someone better but never got the chance, it's really good. I liked it.[/spoiler] Zoisite [spoiler]The best part of the Zoisite arc was definitely Zoisite himself. Out of the Four Kings of Heaven, Zoisite had the most personality of the bunch. He was impatient, and a little whiny, but still also overconfident with the power to match. He also had a bit of a personal rivalry with Tuxedo Mask which was pretty fun. Episodes in this part of the show often had Tuxedo Mask fighting with Zoisite, while the Sailor Guardians dealt with the monster, which I enjoyed. And, the relationship between Tuxedo Mask and the Sailor Guardians was probably at its most interesting at this point in the story, too. Tuxedo Mask was still ostensibly an ally, but he also made it clear he wanted the Rainbow Crystals, and by extension the Silver Crystal, for himself. He would often still try to keep the Sailor Guardians safe, and they both seemed to agree that the Dark Kingdom was the bigger threat, but while they never actually came to blows, the threat that they might was constantly looming of the Sailor Guardians' heads. One missed opportunity with the Zoisite stuff, I think, though, was leaning in more on the fact that Zoisite killed Nephrite, who, of course, Naru was in love with. The show didn't completely ignore this, to be clear, but it only really played with it for one scene. There was some juicy character drama I think they missed out on by not having a bit more with it.[/spoiler] Kunzite [spoiler]Personality wise, Kunzite was a bit too similar to Nephrite, but he kinda had a personal vendetta against the Sailor Guardians, and it was a neat change of pace to see how his plans always revolved around luring her out of hiding. This is probably the biggest moment where I feel it seems like Queen Beryl seemed a little dumb, though, because Kunzite's whole deal was trying to figure out Sailor Moon's real identity, which Jadeite did ages ago. If Beryl wasn't too busy killing all her minions, they would've had this information already. During this arc of the story, Tuxedo Mask is also brainwashed as Beryl's servant, and it was kind of fun to see how he and Kunzite had a rivalry with each other. I do feel like they dropped the ball a little bit, though, because Tuxedo Mask was still kind of up to all his old tricks. He'd still save the Sailor Guardians when needed, only now he'll ask for the Silver Crystal after and then do nothing when they say no. It was kind of weird. I think Kunzite was the only one of the Four Kings of Heaven that the Sailor Guardians killed directly, which was kind of fun. While I have my complaints with how Queen Beryl kills the others (except Nephrite, he was a traitor, so it makes sense), it did kind of help escalate this moment when the Sailor Guardians finally deal the finishing blow themselves.[/spoiler] The ending [spoiler]The ending completely took me by surprise, and it was phenomenal. Even though I was positive they were going to pull some sort of revival trick, them going and killing off all the Sailor Guardians one by one came totally out of left field, and caught me totally off guard. But hot dawg if that isn't the way to ramp up the tensions as you invade the villain's hideout! Usagi never wanted to be a superhero, and this is something we see several times throughout the show. She'll always step up to the plate when needed, but she never wanted this life, and if she could throw in the towel, she would. The best scenes in the show, I think, are the ones that explore this side of her character. Even though their personalities are totally opposite, in a weird way Usagi actually reminds me a lot of Batman. They're both superheroes because they have to be, not because they want to be, and their greatest wish is a world where they're not needed. The big difference between them, however, is that Usagi never really came face to face with death, not with anyone she really cared about anyway. And sometimes, it almost feels like she doesn't really understand the weight of burden she carries. If she fails, people will die. And then, as they go to to assail the Dark Kingdom's lair, someone finally does. And Usagi just completely falls apart as her friends and allies fall around her one after another. Everyone came into this fight ready and willing to do whatever it takes to save the world, even if it meant sacrificing themselves... Except for Usagi. In a way, she's always just been playing superhero, and soon enough she's the only one left. Watching the Sailor Guardians die, seeing the normally bright and cheery Usagi so broken, it was such a sudden tone shift, and I love it. Oh, and of course, the tragedy doesn't end there, because she's forced to fight the brainwashed Tuxedo Mask who dies in her arms right as he turns back to normal. Man, they just really did everything they could to break her down, didn't they? But of course, they end up pulling a resurrection stunt, but honestly, it's one of the better ones I've seen. The Silver Crystal was already established to have the ability to reincarnate people, and when everyone's reincarnated, they didn't retain their memories. In a way, they [i]DID[/i] still die. That version of them is gone. Y'know, probably, I haven't watched Sailor Moon R yet. I was already really enjoying the show, but the ending was on a whole other level of great![/spoiler] But with that, it looks like my work here is done! Farewell! *Aifos jumps out a window, his cape fluttering in the wind*
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We just gonna skip over the part where you can’t breathe, boss? I’m sure the magical power of friendship can fix that.
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Moon is totally allowed as the favorite; she's the namesake afterall. But if we didn't have Venus, Moon might not exist. I think we meet another character in S2 but I'm not going to write anything about them because I forget what's actually spoiler-y relative to said character. Tuxedo Mask.... shows up when they need him. Cool, teamwork, yo. But he's kind of a raging -blam!- sometimes. I find this interesting relative to some of the writers alleged comments about the character.
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Are you a weeboo?