So I Watched All Of Sailor Moon

I watched the entirety of Sailor Moon. Let’s talk about it. This is straight up going to be a ramble about all my thoughts on Sailor Moon and I DOUBT it will be entertaining.

Sailor Moon was one of those shows that was very important to me as a kid. I was a huge fan, grew up watching it, but I hadn’t watched it basically since I was 6. But every time I TRIED watching it I bounced off it. I finally got to watch all of it, because of my community! We decided to get together every Thursday to watch anime for 5 hours. This anime club actually started last year, with us watching the first three seasons. We put off watching season 4 and 5 until the past two months, because we’d heard bad things. But now, finally, a year later, we’ve seen everything. And I wanna talk about it. Just my general thoughts.

For the most part, Sailor Moon is… okay. Honestly on average, it’s mid to not great, but there are flashes of brilliance, and some seasons are real good. But it’s never AMAZING, and there was always something in a season that annoyed me.

Let’s talk season 1 to start. Season 1 is, IMO, the 2nd best season, and a good starting point. But it’s VERY slow to start, and very episodic. That’s the main thing about Sailor Moon, it’s chock full of filler that’s basically the following: Current incompetent general to big bad guy harasses some Humans, Sailor Moon and her cohort are there, the general summons a monster of the week that’s themed around the theme, and then runs away as Sailor Moon and the girls can’t beat the monster, then Tuxedo Mask shows up and they beat the monster. That is, without any exaggeration, 80% of Sailor Moon.

But the main thing about season 1 is it introduces our characters. Now, who the best Sailor Senshi are is an age old debate. And I will wade right into that debate. It’s Ami, and it’s not even close. Sailor Mercury is the best, and my favorite. Followed by one from season 3, and then followed by Sailor Jupiter who is also amazing and is sadly sidelined. That’s one of the issues with this series too, it often just sidelines characters cause there are so many. But that won’t be an issue until season 4, where it becomes VERY obvious.

Anyways season 1 is fine. Season 2 comes out! First we have an entirely filler arc about an evil tree. It’s bad! Like, actually bad. I really did not like it. But after that’s done its never mentioned again so it’s fine. But that means season 2 is basically half the length, and even then, it’s not very great, though it has its moments. The main problem I have with season 2 is how it handles Mamoru. Mamoru is Tuxedo Mask, btw. So season 1 has him showing up and it’s a big will they won’t they moment with him and Sailor Moon, and then they get together and it’s fine. Season 2 has Mamoru like, have a dream he misinterprets, and he thinks he has to be a shithead to Usagi. It was NOT pleasant.

Season 2 DOES introduce the Black Moon Clan though, which were my 2nd favorite evil cast of the entire group. I liked season 1’s enough, but I liked these guys’ ending. It was fun. (the SNES game completely shit on this conclusion which I hated) the anime does this thing a lot where it changes the fates of characters, usually saving them or killing them in a different way. These guys are the poster childs to me, though shout outs to Nephrite from season 1.

Oh also Season 2 introduces Chibi-Moon. She’s Sailor Moon’s future daughter sent back in time by Sailor Pluto, the badass guardian of time, basically on vacation. She’s kind of hated in some fandom circles but I like her. Not a LOT, but I like her. She’s just like, a goofy 7 year old comic relief character. I love when she powers up to do her attack and it’s a little thing that just annoys people, it’s funny.

So season 3 comes out, and it’s actually very good! This is, in my opinion, the best Sailor Moon gets. But it’s not perfect. Let’s introduce the Outer Senshi! I was REALLY excited for this season, because of two reasons. One, my second favorite senshi is, and has been for a long time, Sailor Saturn. I love her story, her design, her character, everything. And the season was THE COUSINS! So we watched the modern translation, they were NOT cousins, but I find that whole situation so fucking funny. If you somehow don’t know, this season introduces Uranus and Neptune, who are lesbians, but they re-wrote them as cousins in the original English localization. So you have these two cousins staring longingly into each others eyes and grasping each others hands and it’s so so SO MUCH WORSE than it would have been if they had just left it the fuck alone.

But unfortunately, this is my #1 worst thing about season 3… Sailor Uranus. So I really wanted to like her. She’s the princely lesbian character, super fun, but uh, her and Neptune have this thing in this season where they refuse to work with Sailor Moon and the others because they’re so certain that they need to kill people, even though Sailor Moon keeps proving that no, we can save them, over and over. This made us theorize that Uranus and Neptune just really, REALLY want to kill people. Season 5 did not help this outlook. At all. I’ll get to it.

Season 3 also has the best villains, the Death Busters. Eudial is the closest to being competent, and Mimete’s death was SO JARRING that we talked about it for a LONG time afterwards. She’s in hell. It’s nuts.

Okay we have to talk about the bad now.

So far, it’s 3 > 1 > 2, with 2 quite a ways behind 1. Surely 4 won’t be- ohhhh no.

I like how this cover has the outer senshi here, because they are not in this season. Sailor Saturn is literally a baby at this point.

Season 4 is no longer Sailor Moon. It’s Sailor Chibi Moon. Watching this season, I had some idea why Chibi Moon was hated. Like, I still didn’t hate her. She’s honestly fine in this season. But she’s now the main character, and has subsumed most of the plot. Usagi is basically just here, it’s now the Chibi-Usa show, and I like her, but I don’t like her THAT MUCH.

Season 4 has I think the worst villain cast, the Dead Moon Circus, starting with the Amazon Trio. Three animals turned humanoid. They need to find someone with a bright dream that holds a Pegasus so they can capture the Pegasus. They do this by going after people they find hot and trying to seduce them. When that doesn’t work, they just take their dream mirror anyway. The flirting and seducing is superfluous and unneccesary, and often very VERY uncomfortable. There’s three and they all have different targets. One is gay, he’s the best tbh, though he still has some VERY bad moments (though only the villains ever call him icky for being gay, the Senshi never really even point at it). There’s one who’s into older women. And theeeen there’s one who’s into… younger women. VERY young. Yeah. It’s EXTREMELY unpleasant to watch. This alone would make Season 4 bad, but the final episodes with the actual villain were just a bunch of nonsense that were not handled well.

Okay so that was Season 4. Surely season 5 won’t be worse than- OH NO.

Season 5 actually starts very well! It basically takes the ending to season 4 and goes “whoops ignore that”, resets it, and then does it better. All the outer senshi return! Including Sailor Saturn, which I was SO hype for. Some days Saturn is my favorite of the cast, though today it’s Ami. Anyways, I love her. So yes, the first six episodes were actually very good! It was tense and exciting and a good battle! And then it just…. jump cuts to a completely different thing. It’s like there’s a mini season at the start, it’s VERY jarring.

The rest of season 5 is…. whoo boy. Okay so, they kill off Mamoru. Like literally, his plane is hit. No one even learns of this, because apparently a plane disappearing and everyone dying on it isn’t national fucking news. But if that plot hole was the biggest problem this season would be amazing. So yeah, Mamoru is gone. We instead get the Sailor Starlights.

I really wanted to like these three. And I like one of them! The Sailor Starlights are men who turn into women during their super form. It’s kinda interesting but they never really get into it much, so it’s basically just a thing that happens. The lead of them is Seiya, who is basically replacement Mamoru. He crushes on Usagi and you know what? I like it. I like it more than Usagi x Mamoru. Call it sacriledge, but I never liked their relationship that much. THis would work really well… If Mamoru didn’t already exist. But he did so you know it’ll just go nowhere.

The other two are possibly the worst characters in the entire series. They are important and in every episode, and they are basically Saturn Uranus and Neptune from season 3 taken to 11. You know how they had a murder boner and refuse to work with the Sailor Senshi for no reason? These two are like that, but even worse! It is ACTIVELY unpleasant to watch, and I hated it a lot. The best part about them though is that one of them has an attack that’s like “SUPER STAR UTERUS” or some shit. Every time it happened we’d chant “UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS!” in chat.

And then the ending… jesus fucking Christ.

The ending has so many bludners that, frankly, 5 is probably the worst season. Even with that good start, and the mostly mid middle, the ending is absolute dogshit. They kill off ALL the characters like 4 or 5 episodes before the end, so no Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, or Venus for the final 5 episodes. Instead, more Sailor Starlights! Oh and Uranus and Neptune BETRAY EVERYONE in the most fucking STUPID plan they’ve EVER had. They accept the villain’s power and straight up murder Saturn and Pluto. For the record, Saturn and Pluto are the strongest Senshi in the entire show. Saturn is literally a walking Nuke, she can explode and fix every problem, everyone just keeps stopping her from doing it because it’ll also kill her. But she gets fucking killed in a backstab that doesn’t even work. So yeah, there goes ANY enjoyment I have of these two characters. Even them being gay is ruined.

Sailor Moon is… a lot of things. It really cemented a genre. It’s got a beloved cast of characters. But it’s so easy to forget that there are so many things about it that are extremely unpleasant and unlikable. Should you watch it? Maybe watch season 1, the second half of 2, and 3. Ignore the rest.

Or maybe watch Crystal. I’ll get to it eventually but I do NOT want to watch more Sailor Moon right now.

Oh one more thing. I need to gush about yuri.

So obviously Sailor Moon was pro-gay. It had multiple gay characters. One of its directors went on to make Utena. It’s got a lot of yuri energy. And Jupiter is literally canonically bisexual, there’s an episode with her crushing on Uranus. But Mercury is…. very, VERY gay. Like, the biggest things proving this, IMO, is season 4, and it’s my favorite stuff in season 4. In season 4 Ami started doing this thing where any time the character of the week showed up and all the girls fawned over him, she’d like, not be interesting, staring off at something else. She wore these EXTREMELY butch outfits. And then there’s the scene where she dances with Makoto. Ohhhh, be still my beating heart.

I do in fact ship these two. It’s canon, fuck you.