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R was so much better in Crystal for me. I know some people like the Ayakashi sister being redeemed, but they still spent most of the season being mean to each other and chasing over Rubeus (who was a jerk). I appreciate a female villain that's straight-forward and just gets roasted, honestly. x'); (And Rubeus wasn't horrible to them.)

I think part of Crystal's problem is the manga works but it is too short; it works way better for R, but a lot still happens all at once. But there were scenes here that were never animated before that I so loved. And being able to enjoy more of Pluto's role, plus hers and Chibiusa's relationship does so much. (And Diana is so cute~!)

Even though I've watch Crystal S2 like, three times now, knowing the DVD is out, I'll probably try and watch it again~.

I have added this to my collection, the box and printed extras look good.

I have less issues than most with Crystal, and it definitely improved in the most recent season not yet released here in the US on Blu-Ray/DVD.

My biggest issue is the interminably long time Viz is taking to get all of this out. I realize they probably want to get Crystal out while still fresh, but I don't want them to delay further the re-release of the original. At their current pace, it will be years before I finish my collection! Evil or Very Mad

I completely neglected to mention it in the review (there wasn't a good place, really), but the dub script makes the conscious choice to refer to the Guardians as "women" not "girls." That's not always a semantic difference I get hung up about, but in this case I definitely liked it.

@manapear

That's how I feel as well. Especially love the expanded stuff for Pluto and the pink demon being more tolerable. Very much enjoyed that season.

I can see myself adding part 3 to my collection, the difference i the show after the top staff was left go was extremely noticeable. Sadly, this arc, while improved, is still frighteningly bad.

It was in this cour that there were improvements. Frankly, fi the staff that worked on season 3 could re-remake the first two I could consider buying those.

I have season 2 to thank for renewing my interest in Crystal. A strict manga adaptation may not be ideal, but it's a lot more enjoyable when they don't make Act 12 level changes. The overall animation quality felt like a step-up too. Some truly gorgeous episodes there, even if they don't happen as frequently as I'd like.

I think the biggest thing holding it back was the quality of the manga arc itself. It's better than the Dark Kingdom arc, but not as good as latter arcs like Infinity and Dream. I did find the arc more enjoyable than Sailor Moon R overall, however.

Except for the animation issues, the main problem of Crystal is the rush aspect.
Naoko Takeuchi doesn't show everything, the rythm of her manga is very very fast. The anime should have been slower. Part 1 should have been 18 episodes, and part 2 too.

Quote:

Most of the other characters are sadly underdeveloped

That, sadly, sums up the worst problem with Crystal overall. We're now thirty nine episodes in and we know practically nothing about the characters. Sometimes it feels like we're watching a 'condensed' version of the series with everything that isn't action or directly plot related exposition trimmed out.

Except for the animation issues, the main problem of Crystal is the rush aspect.
Naoko Takeuchi doesn't show everything, the rythm of her manga is very very fast. The anime should have been slower. Part 1 should have been 18 episodes, and part 2 too.

Can you really call what Chibi Usa/Black Lady feels for Mamoru an Electra complex? I ask that because Chibi Usa's true child form has a normal father-daughter type relationship with his, as well as normal feelings. It's only when she became Black Lady that these feelings were warped into romantic type feelings (but what else can you expect from a warped character such as Black Lady than warped feelings lmao).

Tldr: These feelings are Black Lady's and not Chibi Usa's.

Anyway, I never cared for this arc in the original anime, but here it struck my interest. Idk why, but I've always thought this arc and the Dead Moon arc (the 4th arc) were done better in the manga. And it's too bad Crystal's art wasn't well received. I took a liking to it (the parts that weren't wonky). I do agree that the characters weren't fleshed out that much. But if Crystal continues following the manga, that changes in the forth arc. That's where the inners really get their characterization.

its not just the art being poorly received. It was a poor effort being given to one of the greatest franchises in Anime. While things got better overtime, we had delays and delays and they couldn't even manage a normal broadcast schedule once it finally aired. By the 3rd season they cleared most of it up,like from the episode when Ami goes to Mugen. From then on there are only a handful of questionable pieces of visuals. In the first season it was almost every scene.

The future looks much better for further Crystal extensions, defending the first cour is nearly impossible. This 2nd season in the review doesn't do enough good to warrant the poor aspects.

Last edited by Sailor Sedna on Thu Mar 16, 2017 10:09 pm; edited 1 time in total

Good review, Rebecca. I have to agree in parts, but I have to disagree in others. I apologize if this is too long, but I feel like I need to speak my honest thoughts here.

Sorry to start off bluntly, but I'd give the story of this arc an F or at least a D. Frankly the only great thing about this arc in my eyes was Sailor Pluto's role, she did a much better job and played more importance than in R, and the voice acting was good (though I do not care for Misato's Chibi-Usa/Black Lady nor Wiseman's voice, that's too goofy). Everything else to me was unfortunately terrible and the Black Moon arc in the manga unfortunately aged as well as cheese. These were all the issues I have with this arc, which was just as bad as season 1's adaptation (spoilers alert):

1. Sailors Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus are still useless as ever in this arc, mostly just being useless, and what was even the point of giving them Star Power wands when three of them are captured and Venus does nothing afterwards? It also did not make Venus look like a believable leader of the Sailors. I mean, think about it. We could have had the opportunity to have Venus lead her team in battles, but then most of them get captured and Venus has no team to lead. They couldn't even defeat an illusion of Wiseman. In R they at least were not useless and still had their own focus episodes that still developed their characters.

2. The characterization is still terrible, the four Inners still have no personality or character and their supposed focus episodes don't really add anything nor develop them unlike R and could be cut from the story altogether, Chibi-Usa is just boring (her brattieness in R really added a whole lot to her character) and I don't feel sympathy for her (I'll explain in a bit), the villains mostly are not interesting, with Demande and Saphir not being sympathetic at all, Saphir says Sailor Moon didn't do anything wrong but then tried to kill her? How am I supposed to feel sorry for him? Mamoru got turned into a creep again, as it looked like he tried to force a kiss on Usagi, and Usagi, oh boy. Her whole jealousy thing with Chibi-Usa and still frequent obession with Mamoru was terribly done and contrived, with her thinking the little girl who's lost and lonely is going to take away her boyfriend, her just dumping Mamoru in jealousy (frankly if I were Mamoru I'd have broken up with her there), her getting all mad just because the little girl was having fun at the arcade, and her thinking Chibi-Usa was "another woman" to Mamoru made her dumber there than in the entirety of the original anime. She still once cowered and didn't transform until Tuxedo Mask showed up, she still acts like a Mary Sue who can do no wrong and it gets worse when I get to #4.
And is it sad/foolish of me that I actually find the minor character Anasuma much more interesting and as an actual character than Jupiter and any of the Sailor Soldiers?

3. I have to disagree about Tuxedo Mask, he didn't really do much of anything in this arc except use his Tuxedo la Smoking Bomber twice, and then he got captured and turned evil again, which frankly to me was just a dumb recycling of the first manga arc, why did he need to get turned evil again?

In R, I'm actually one of the few Sailor Moon fans who wasn't bothered by that whole break up arc thing. Yes, I know it was stupid of him to do that and I know why people hate it, but at least it was showing he wasn't perfect, he had good intentions despite his actions (I agree with this anime character Maria said, "before judging a person, I think it's important to find out the reason behind their actions"), and it showed that he was just human, he still makes stupid mistakes, like we all do at times. And at least he was there to help protect Moon afterwards instead of just being a perfect Gary Stu and getting turned evil again.

Then again, I've heard Mamoru isn't really meant to stand out...

4. The backstory we find out with Chibi-Usa would have been good if not for one terrible thing: Neo Queen Serenity and King Endymion, Chibi-Usa's parents, basically neglected her for over 900 years and it didn't seem like they cared anything about it, and once again it looked like future Usagi only cared about Mamoru! I mean, what the heck? It just makes that whole story with her being mocked by others for not having any power look really unnecessarily cruel and really mean spirited, in a terrible way. And what's worse is Neo Queen Serenity, once again, is supposed to be looked up to like she can do no wrong, like with how Usagi acted like in Crystal's first arc, ignoring and neglecting her friends whilst focusing on her love. Not even the Four Soldiers were seen with Chibi-Usa unlike R (when they planned for a surprise birthday), so they might have acted like that too! It's just, I think Naoko was relying too much on the whole "she's been treated terribly! Feel bad for her!" thing I've seen some fictions rely on.

5. That disgusting incestuous kiss with Black Lady and Mamoru. Need I say any more (except that I'm glad it was just Wiseman messing with Usagi's mind in the original) except that now I'm questioning Naoko? Evil or Very Mad

6. The finale also had more terrible writing when Moon and Chibi Moon destroyed Nemesis. All of the Inners and Moon couldn't destroy the illusion of Nemesis, but Moon and Chibi Moon could with only their scepters and no use of their Silver Crystals? That's just terrible writing for two reasons, and not just because of bad pacing (12/13 episodes to build up and being defeated in 30 seconds?): not only does it, once again, prove how useless the Inners are and how they're not needed, but it is like a Goddess Mode for Moon and Chibi Moon, going to show, what was even the point of having the Crystals at all if they didn't need them, and not only does it make Moon out as an even bigger Mary Sue, it even makes Chibi Moon look like one too! Plus the Inners get power ups too? They once again did NOTHING!! Heck, at least in R's final battle they lent their power to Moon and Chibi Moon to destroy Nemesis, but here, they might as well have been killed off again and nothing would matter, it's just so frustrating, once again, what is the point of having characters and not doing anything with them (but then again most of the characters here to me were just bad, so that makes it worse to me)? Anime hyper

Also, for the art and animation, the C rating is far, far too generous (along with the B- rating in season one to me), it's still horrible looking to me, choppy, jerky, poorly drawn with terrible proportions and faces... I agree though, it really suffered, was not fixed that well on the Blu-Ray, and some episodes like 15, 20 and 24 were so poorly done, I can't even believe that Toei animators worked on it. The transformations were also lazy, still using the bad CGI, and all they did was replace the brooch/pens with the Crystal brooch and horrible Star Power pens, changing nothing else, to try to fool the viewer into thinking it was a different transformation.

Frankly Masami Obari could have designed and animated it better, and that's saying something (I'd also frankly rather watch some of his works like Virus Buster Serge and Voogie's Angel)! Certain scenes the way they were animated also fell flat, like spoiler[when Jupiter gets captured, why not show the three signs of her, Mercury and Mars fading in? Just having them there like that (probably to save money so they wouldn't have to animate anything like that) makes it look dull and doesn't give the scene the emotional impact it deserves ].

And the less said about the Moon Stick error the better. Only good thing I'd say about the art was the backgrounds minus the apocalyptic Crystal Tokyo, Black Moon prison, and rainy Tokyo city, those backgrounds were just dull, flatly colored and uninteresting.

This is why to me, Season 2 of Sailor Moon Crystal was horrible and the whole "1 chapter per episode" thing was a terrible idea (it was also my biggest fear which sadly was realized), I never even realized how terribly flawed and poorly written the Black Moon arc was and it's frustrating to see all of its flaws be faithfully adapted, Crystal doesn't even attempt to fix the flaws the manga had, and that's why in my opinion Sailor Moon R was far superior and a huge improvement, it treated its characters better, the art/animation were better, plus it also was the fastest paced out of all the seasons besides S. Heck, give me Sailor Moon SuperS any day over this.

Even Season III has some of the same problems with that adaptation format which is why to me it really sucks compared to S, but that's for another day.

Keep in mind I'm not trying to be all biased towards R or such, these are actually my honest thoughts on both versions now that I look back on both of them.

What you do think, agree/disagree? If you disagree, that's fine and I respect your opinion.

(And on a side note, Chibi-Usa in the manga/Crystal could be mean and bratty to Usagi too, in the arcade game machine, Chibi-Usa told Usagi "You suck!" when she messed up, and made her angry/crying)

@manapear

That's how sisters tend to act, they banter and spar with each other even if they love each other very much. Plus they didn't care about Rubeus afterwards.[/i]

@Sailor Sedna

I really do appreciate that you always take the time to fully outline your thoughts. I may have been too generous in a few respects, but I do see the series taking some (baby) steps towards improving. The hardest part is always to evaluate this as its own show, rather than a remake of Classic or the manga, because if I fall down that rabbit hole, I may never make it out!

I feel like what I was really hoping for was for a new anime version of Sailor Moon that didn't just adapt the manga, but improved on the issues both it and Classic had - more faithful to Takeuchi's ideas, but also fixing her problems. (Like that Black Lady/Tuxedo Mask thing. I keep thinking of how Kaori Yuki in the afterward of one volume of Angel Sanctuary said that she couldn't understand why her friends with brothers were so grossed out by the incest plot...) This isn't that version, but I don't think I can say that it's totally bad even if it isn't what I was anticipating.

But I am 100% with you on the parenting thing! Poor kid never had a chance, did she? On a random-but-related note, as I was rewatching this, it suddenly occurred to me that there's no reason why Chibi-Usa shouldn't have pink hair when her maternal grandmother has lavender...

Thanks.

It's just, ever since Crystal aired I've been very disappointed again and again and combine how (with my experience, not talking about anyone here at all) I saw rabid fans just attacking and being horrible to me and others, it got to the point to where Sailor Moon wasn't even fun to watch anymore Sad

Sadly, all Crystal has proven is it cannot stand on its own as a show considering the manga needs to provide life insurance for it, and the manga (unlike the original anime) hasn't aged well at all. Frankly now, I don't think I even care for the manga anymore, to where if it got banned in America, I wouldn't care at all. Sad

I think the series is taking baby steps to improve also, season 3 is still fairly decent, but I'd still only recommend it for a rental (if that's still done), and I still say nothing's being missed if it's skipped (same thing with seasons 1-2). I'm also worried whilst season 4 might be great, season 5 might not be good at all...I still can't even recommend Crystal overall, 2 horrible seasons followed by a decent third one only gets a 5/10 from me.

I dunno why Chibi-Usa has pink hair also, but then again I didn't design this series... Razz

Sailor Sedna wrote:

These are all the issues I have with this work...

words

Pretty much agreed with this entire post except I didn't find #5 to be that stomach-turning. Didn't even realize #4 either until the Crystal talkback thread here around the time it was airing pointed that out.

Also, regarding #1, I almost burst out laughing when spoiler[Mercury/Venus/Jupiter/Mars wanted to join the final battle but Neo Queen Serenity basically said "lol no" to them.]

But this:

Quote:

...Chibi-Usa is just boring (her brattiness in R really added a whole lot to her character) and I don't feel sympathy for her...

I still did kinda like her development here (mostly because damn, anyone getting focus other than Usagi and Mamoru in the show is good), but hearing people say they like her better in Crystal than in R is like, damn dude, are there really people that hate R's Chibiusa that much to prefer what is essentially a bland, generic "older than she looks" loli almost completely devoid of a personality, over someone who was actually fun/ny and interesting to watch grow on screen?

Toei and Viz would honestly have to pay me to watch Crystal seasons 1 and 2 again, but seeing season 3 in dubbed form should be interesting. For one, I think it was both Steph and Robbie who said their favorite parts of doing VA work for Sailor Moon related stuff was the comedic parts, and S3 has those in spades.

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