Shelf Life

The Haunting

In fact, well over a decade after the first time I watched Sailor Moon, I realized that there were things I appreciated more the second time around that I hardly noticed the first time. As a young teenager, Sailor Moon appealed to me because the characters were fun. Usagi was clumsy and ditzy, but she had a lot of spunk. She made goofy faces. She wailed every time something didn't go her way. She was a little thunderball of energy, tempered by cool, beautiful, and competent Sailor Guardians who were as badass as they were all different. They always outsmarted the one-trick-pony villains, even if it mostly just meant being in the right place at the right time. (Usagi, for all her crying and pouting, always showed up when it mattered. Like the Cowardly Lion learns, fear is natural; true bravery is facing your fear.)

But there's more than just shooting bubbles at a monster, and throwing a tiara at a spider lady. The villains may have been one-trick in the way they executed their plans, but they (and Naoko Takeuchi) understood human weaknesses and societal problems more than I gave them credit for as a teenager. Our obsession with body image, for instance, which still feeds into our slavish desire to go to the gym. Our broken educational system that pushes more and more students into higher education every year, with no guaranteed return on investment (more relevant now than ever before). Our consumerist culture that drives us to purchase jewels, pets (on credit!), and even luck en masse. Every episode of Sailor Moon peers into the dark cracks of society, and exposes our most vulnerable parts.

It seems so obvious now, but as a teenager, I barely noticed. And as Sailor Moon celebrates its 20th anniversary, it's surprising how well it's made the transition into 2014. With the exception of floppy disks, unitards, and big hair, nothing has really changed. Unlike some childhood favorites that crumble under the test of time, Sailor Moon is still as captivating and entertaining now as it was when we were younger.

That having been said, this Blu-ray release sadly does not do the property justice at all. I'd been hearing whispers across social media of video problems, but I dismissed them. After all, Sailor Moon is 20 years old. Expecting magic would be foolish.

But unfortunately, the problems are not artifacts of time. Something went horribly wrong in the production process, and somewhere along the way, new problems were introduced. Whatever "remastering" was done was done by an algorithm that churned through 530 minutes of video and spit out a flawed product that's inconsistent across the discs. Sure, the final video is largely grain-free, and the colors are smooth, but the color contrast is messed up. High contrast colors like flesh-tone and black survived the process—faces look about as sharp as one can expect. But pinks and reds are overblown, so everyone's school uniforms have smeary bows, and backgrounds have unexpected splotches where texture once was.

And yes, there is ghosting. Not all the time. And not in all the episodes. But there's no reason for it to be there at all.

But the most succinct way to summarize these issues for yourself is simply to look at the opening sequence of any episode, and then watch the clean opening in the extras. The clean opening, which appears to have escaped the remastering process entirely, is vibrant and crisp. The text in the books that Usagi walks across can be clearly read from across the room. The first scene is unambiguously monochrome, in shades of blacks, greys, and whites. The next scene is bright and cheery. When Luna and Usagi's silhouettes are shown against the moon, they're crisp, and the animation is smooth.

In contrast, the opening sequences on the third disc are dark and blue-tinted. The opening shot is shades of dark, murky blue. The next scene is muted and drab, including the logo. The silhouettes have weird static-y ghosts that lurch across the moon. The text on the books is less legible, with the pinks in the first harder to read than the greens in the next. And it seems to be disc-dependent, too. The static-y silhouette shadows are still present in the opening sequences on the first disc, but the brightness of the colors is more akin to that of the clean opening.

It's a shame, because Sailor Moon deserves a fantastic release. And by all accounts, this should've been it. It's easy to see how much love is in this release, but it's dragged down by its video problems.

Everything else about this release is fantastic. The booklet that comes in the boxset is wonderful, and gives concise, helpful summaries of the episodes. The box itself is sturdy and beautiful, and has a pearlescent sheen that reflects the light.

The new dub is wonderful, and Stephanie Sheh is perfect as Usagi. She hits every emotion on the nose, from Usagi's blubbering outbursts, to her more deadpan moments. And my nostalgia for the old dub doesn't prevent me from admitting that Michelle Ruff is a great Luna, who nails the cat's exasperated delivery perfectly.

At the end of the day, this release just isn't what it could be. It's almost there. It's obvious that the people who worked on this release poured their hearts and souls into it, from the box design to the new dub, but the video issues are downright distracting. Something as iconic as Sailor Moon leaping into a beautiful, full moon shouldn't have to be mired with jittery shadows.[TOP]

Going into Ghost in the Shell Arise, I'm not quite sure what I was expecting, but I think I was expecting too much. As a reviewer, I try to go into every show with zero expectations, but of course, it's impossible. Sometimes I get my hopes up too much. I can't articulate why exactly, but I think I was expecting Ghost in the Shell Arise to be a little mind-blowing. I wanted it to be a visual punch in the face, and I wanted the story to be new and surprising, but filled with musings about humans, cyborgs, and our age of information. With some minor differences in character backstories, though, Ghost in the Shell Arise is really just more of the same.

Taking place two years before the events in the first movie, Ghost in the Shell: Arise introduces us to a young(er) Motoko Kusanagi, before her days at Public Security Section 9. She's still a talented hacker, but she's a little more emotionally vulnerable now. When her body and mind start glitching, she's visibly afraid. She's not any less bad-ass—there's a great fight scene where we get a demonstration of just how useful a cyborg body can be—but there's a certain tenderness in her character that works as a subtle indicator of youth. In the first episode, she's hired by Aramaki (who is himself a little less gruff and tough... again, two years really can change a person) to investigate the death of her former supervisor, who was suspected of corruption. Through the events, she meets Togusa, Paz, and Batou, all of whom we're familiar with at this point.

But the series (or at least these first two episodes) doesn't really feel the need to go into unknown terrain. Beyond the interactions with the characters, Arise is less of a prequel than it is just a rehash of old ideas. Things and people get hacked, things and people get counter-hacked, but at the end of the day, it's just another day on the (new) job.

The upside is that it allows Arise to be thematically in-line with the rest of the Ghost in the Shell franchise. There are great scenes scattered amongst these episodes that really let the staff play with the blurred lines between man and machine. Even the aesthetic choice of mobile land mines to be cutesy gymnasts seems like an interesting reflection on our tendency to personify and market-ize everything.

But the episodes don't really feel necessary, especially after all the hype. Sure, it looks cool, but even that is subjective to personal tastes. The backgrounds and visual effects are stunning—the light-rendering is fantastic, and really stands out in night scenes, whether it's floodlights or airport landing strips. The action scenes are a rush to watch, too, and look amazing. But in between high-impact scenes, when characters are just getting from Point A to Point B, it's a little more lack-luster. When the characters aren't fighting, they feel disconnected from its environment. Their bodies look weightless when they're walking, and gravity is only implied because of their proximity to their visual surroundings. If money was skimped somewhere, it was in these scenes. At first I thought maybe it was only because Kusanagi was a cyborg, but it wasn't confined to her.

The first two episodes of Ghost in the Shell: Arise are perfectly serviceable, but they probably won't light anyone's fire. They're a neat addition to the universe, but they don't really add anything new. On principle, I'm interested in seeing the rest of it, but if I don't, I'm not sure I'd remember.[TOP]