Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon

Usagi Tsukino is an average student and crybaby klutz who constantly scores low on her tests. Unexpectedly, her humdrum life is turned upside down when she saves a cat with a crescent moon on its head from danger. The cat, named Luna, later reveals that their meeting was not an accident: Usagi is destined to become Sailor Moon, a planetary guardian with the power to protect the Earth. Given a special brooch that allows her to transform, she must use her new powers to save the city from evil energy-stealing monsters sent by the malevolent Queen Beryl of the Dark Kingdom.

But getting accustomed to her powers and fighting villains are not the only things she has to worry about. She must find the lost princess of the Moon Kingdom, the other Sailor Guardians, and the Legendary Silver Crystal in order to save the planet from destruction.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Tsukino, Usagi Main

Mitsuishi, Kotono Japanese

Hino, Rei Main

Tomizawa, Michie Japanese

Aino, Minako Main

Fukami, Rica Japanese

Kino, Makoto Main

Shinohara, Emi Japanese

Mizuno, Ami Main

Hisakawa, Aya Japanese

Chiba, Mamoru Main

Furuya, Toru Japanese

Luna Main

Han, Keiko Japanese

Artemis Main

Takato, Yasuhiro Japanese

Zoisite ing

Nanba, Keiichi Japanese

Nephrite ing

Mori, Katsuji Japanese

Simone, Jamie Producer

Satou, Junichi Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Endou, Yuuji Sound Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Ikuhara, Kunihiko Episode Director

Reviews

Mar 9, 2009

Skadi

Recommended

It is often true that things experienced in your childhood never seem to live up to the wonderful memories you had of them when experiencing them again as an adult. It was with this state of mind that I entered my viewing of Sailor Moon, mostly from a desire to relive some nostalgia from my youth. I can truly say that it exceeded my expectations and left all those fond memories intact. As with most anime fans my age, Sailor Moon was one of the first series that I watched. It is one of those titles that many people know outside ... the anime fan base. Though it’s probably not the first "magical girl" anime it does in my opinion define the entire genre.

The first thing that is going to come to many people’s attention is going to be the artwork and sound quality. When compared to today’s standards it looks primitive and plain. The music is particularly uninspired and I doubt it was all that interesting when this show was new. The background music and sound effects feel like they are drawn out of a 80s B action movie. This show could really use a complete remastering of the audio. The voice acting though is strong and I felt the actors did a good job in portraying their characters though some of the performances, particularly from the villains are pretty campy.

Animation wise, the colors and styles are typical of what you expect from this era. The colors feel plain and washed out a little and we don’t have a lot of the detail that many modern shows have. This is not to say it’s bad, because it’s really not fair to compare it to newer shows because the technology has changed so much, but I still think it is relevant. I gained an appreciation for it as the series unfolded and I think most people will as well.

The overall story is something Sailor Moon does exceptionally well. From the start we get a sampling of a bigger danger to come and it moves along fairly slowly in the beginning. We get introduced to Usagi right away who quickly becomes Sailor Moon and starts fighting the enemy. Over the course of the first half of the series the other Sailor Warriors start to appear as we learn more about them and their pasts and building the friendships amongst each other. The plot does a great job of telling the origins of the Sailor Warriors and the reasons for the villain’s attacks. The last half in particular was very interesting and exciting. As a romance there is a lot to like about Sailor Moon. It treats the viewer to a serious and realistic feeling relationship that really puts its modern counterparts to shame. I found it to be the most compelling and rewarding part of the show.

The action is something that just isn’t that interesting however. It feels to simplistic and formulaic. The enemies change but after a while they all seem like they are the same. They get defeated in the same ways and the action itself never gets to be that exciting. Most of the shows battles are very short as well and the Sailor Warriors various special abilities take up most of them. They got a little long and boring as well after the 20th time seeing them. Anyone who is expecting or desiring intense magical action and special effects will be disappointed.

It wouldn't be a magical girl show without the famous transformation cut scene. Sailor Moon has plenty of these, and they get to be a bit unwieldy at times as the cast grows. Sailor Moons is the longest but the other Sailor Warriors are pretty short, which is good. Plus while we have to watch Usagi transform every time we often don’t have to watch all of the others or we get a shortened version. This is good because it takes away from the story.

The real shining light of Sailor Moon is the characters. Usagi as the lead is one of my favorite characters in anime. She starts off as a bit annoying with her crying and silliness but she really shines as a comedic character. She manages to grow during the course of the series and become stronger and more courageous. She has several love interests, or crushes would be more accurate. Eventually this grows into a serious relationship which I found very satisfying. Mamoru/Tuxedo Mask is the main love interest and both are completely oblivious of each other’s alter egos. I always found it amusing that he couldn’t tell Usagi was Sailor Moon when they look and act exactly alike.

Of the Sailor Warriors, Ami and Rei get the most screen time since they are brought in pretty early in the series. The conflict between Usagi-Rei was pretty amusing most of the time though it did seem to wear on me over time. My personal favorite of the girls was Makoto/Sailor Jupiter. I liked her the most from my childhood and that continued to today. She is one of the funnier characters, especially when she finds someone new who reminds her of her sempai who broke her heart. Minako is the last of the girls to be brought in and was probably the least interesting. Since she was bought in near the end there wasn’t enough time to really bring out her personality or give us much information on her past. The cast has a number of ing characters which are pretty fun. Usagi's school friends are constantly getting into danger and a nice little side romance develops there. Luna serves as the advisor to the group and serves as the resident cute animal that must accompany magic girls on their adventures.

Overall I can’t recommend this series enough. Every fan of anime should see this show at least once. I would love to give it a 10 rating but the lackluster action and sound bring it down from being perfect.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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May 5, 2015

ggultra2764

Mixed Feelings

Back in the 1990s, Sailor Moon was the queen bee of popular shoujo titles by helping to popularize the magical girl genre to international fans and being the first series within the genre to feature a magical girl fighting against the forces of evil instead of using her magic to do fun and mundane things that older titles like Creamy Mami did. I was a sucker for the series when I was a kid during that period as I watched the butchered American syndicated version of the series released by Dic during the mid-90s. Our heroine of focus here is klutzy and book-dumb middle schooler ... Usagi Tsukino, who is tasked by a talking cat named Luna to become the magical girl known as Sailor Moon to thwart the evil activity of the witch Queen Beryl and her forces among the Dark Kingdom. Along the way, Usagi gains several additional allies to assist her with four other middle school girls who can become Sailor Senshi and a mysterious tuxedo-clad man named Tuxedo Mask who often pops up as a walking plot device to save Usagi whenever she gets in trouble against the "monster of the day".

Taking off the nostalgia goggles of watching this baby nearly 20 years later, I'd hate to say that Sailor Moon hasn't really aged all that well. All the character types and plot tropes that were milked by Sailor Moon during its heyday are a common part of many modern magical girl titles, many of whom offering more fleshing out of their plot and character elements than Sailor Moon does. Here, many of the characters are rather lacking in depth and have one-dimensional personalities with the good guys fighting for "love and justice" to save the world and the bad guys being evil for the sake of being evil. As a lead character, Usagi was rather obnoxious at many points in the series with her being ridiculously clueless, clumsy and crying incessantly if she ran into some sort of problem, which makes it kind of questionable why this would make her a character relateable to younger female audiences. Even with the romance Sailor Moon dabbles into at points, the relationship developments are either not convincing or are too underdeveloped to get seriously invested in thanks to the rather shallow character depth.

The plot mostly follows a "monster of the day" format that takes up much of the show's run with Usagi stumbling upon the monster's plot, transforming to combat them, often getting herself in trouble, having Tuxedo Mask save her in the nick of time and then uses her powers to finish off the monster. Later episodes do slightly pick up in quality when revelations concerning the origins of Usagi and her friends come to light and the stakes are raised with Beryl trying to further her plans. But the series still resorts to monster of the day plots for many of its episodes and milks enough deus ex machina in thwarting perilous situations that Usagi and the other Sailor Senshi get themselves into. Pretty much, the series is very predictable with its plot developments if you've seen your fair share of anime.

Visually, Toei was obviously running Sailor Moon on a limited budget with the reused animated frames, underwhelming action scenes, minimal detail on scenery and plain-looking character designs. The soundtrack isn't much better as much of it consists of bland and low-key tracks that don't do too well at effectively capturing the mood and tension within Sailor Moon's key scenes. I might get quite a bit of flak for this from purists, but I much preferred DIC's soundtrack to Sailor Moon since it at least attempted to capture some sort of mood during key scenes in spite of how cheesy it is nowadays.

Overall, I suppose I don't get what makes Sailor Moon all that popular with fans. Sure it popularized magical girl titles. But the character archetypes and storytelling tropes within it haven't aged well and are a common occurrence in many modern magical girl titles, a number of whom offering better fleshing out of their premise and characters than Sailor Moon, like Cardcaptor Sakura and Princess Tutu. I would sooner recommend those titles and a number of other modern magical girl titles than Sailor Moon and I don't feel pressed to dig into the later seasons of the franchise anytime soon.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Feb 10, 2011

valarclan

Not Recommended

Funny

Sorry, if your affraid to read anything that puts down Sailor moon, don't read my review. Because guess what.... that is what I am doing.

First off the costumes are annoying.
They all look like spoiled rich people pretending to be powerful heros.

I think the reason this is spoofed so much in hentai is because of the horrible campy style the show seems to portray.

Could not complete a episode without the threat of destroying the TV, PC, or projector showing the series out of disgust.

It is clear this was aimed at a younger not as smart audience....
...
Who knows, maybe its trying to be campy kinda like Attack of the Killer tomatos.
Like much in anime I have seen lately it also seems to try and survive off with a 'cute' factor alone. Plastic Little was cuter, and I would even say better drawn, but that is not to say I like Plastic Little either... (Other then the art in that series I did not like it).

Cute does not keep me watching.
Of course the show is dated by todays standards, and maybe that is part of the problem. Maybe if all the anime in the world has been exhausted, and nothing else was around to do, and I was massively drunk/tired/or just tied down some how I might see it..... but I think I would suffer a embolism first before 5 minutes would .... Just to end the torture!

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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