Not a formal review but I'd just like to record some thoughts after my first ever watch of Season 1 of Sailor Moon.
For some background, last year I realised that despite having watched dozens of Anime series and movies (and animations in general), I'd not watched a lot of shows aimed mainly at women/girls. I grew up on Dragon Ball Z, Naruto and the rest of it, so a lot of my perception of Japanese animation was heavily skewed towards the Shounen genre (and probably still is). The only really girl-focused/shoujo series I'd watched was Madoka, which despite being my #2 all-time, doesn't give a very good representation of the genre, as it's so clearly a deconstruction of it. So long story short, I decided I needed to watch more girls' cartoons and of course, needed to cover the classics. Naturally, this meant I started with Sailor Moon - the iconic Shoujo series! So I watched the first series of the original run of the anime (1992).
What I noticed when I first started watching the series was that the animation wasn't amazing, from where I stood. Obviously this needs to be considered in context, in terms of the industry and also the physical process of cel animation that would have been required at the time. I give the show some leeway for that but there were clearly other series doing much more impressive animation at the same time (e.g. Gunbuster released 4 years before Sailor Moon's anime). However, the character designs, backgrounds and overall art direction are all really strong, distinct and appealing. It had to be said, it was clear that lots of decisions were made to make the TV series cute and 'girly' and I think that worked to give it its own visual identity. Where the manga would have had backgrounds either blank or in greyscale on the page, the anime was really bold in using pink watercolour washes over everything, as well as giving all the character colours a warm pink tint. It absolutely made it cuter and I think it worked really well, both for making the main cast more sympathetic as our main characters and in terms of creating contrast with all of the visually dark and cold scenes with demons and villains.
The other thing I noticed, which I think is definitely the wider learning point, was that there was so very little focus on combat. The fights with all of the demons were won in a single stroke, by using whatever the relevant superpower was for that respective mini arc. There was no actual fighting, especially not physically. There wasn't even a process of figuring out each Youma's weakness or unlocking a new power level or ability for the soldiers. It was literally just a Moon Tiara Action or Tuxedo Mask's Rose and that was it.
Even beyond that, the Sailor Soldiers don't train to become stronger, don't hone their skills or anything. Their "mission" is very much secondary to them just living their lives.
That really surprised me at first and I felt really dissatisfied with the 'victory' in each episode. But as the series went on, I realised that the fights themselves ultimately don't matter. The good guys are going to win either way, aren't they? So instead, the series focuses on the real story: the characters and relationships.
For me, this was best shown about halfway through the series with the Nephrite and Naru storyline. The sailor soldiers' actual "mission" completely gave way to trying to understand and protect the feelings of Usagi's real-world, human friend. And I say protect her feelings, because if they were solely trying to protect Naru herself, they could have defeated Nephrite and solved the problem. But it was so much more important in the story to try to empathise with her and even leave room for her to pursue her feelings. I didn't personally like the fact that Nephrite started to get crossed wires and have feelings for Naru (mainly because he's clearly way older than her and she's like 14) but it made for a really compelling story! *Spoiler* but Nephrite's death scene was probably my favourite moment of the entire series.
And that kinda links to another broad point about Sailor Moon and its icon status: these stories must have been so relatable to young women and girls at the time! Your friend liking an older boy who's no good to her but the feelings being strong is such a classic high school girl experience (stereotypical but broadly true, I think!). So to have that shown on TV through this cast of strong, intelligent girls must have been amazing. Especially at the time, when the majority of the anime was so geared towards boys punching things to save the world every week. I also really admitted how adamantly Sailor Moon protected the things that are important to girls! Usagi's mission was to defeat the dark kingdom but she was never compelled to fight by the need to save the world; it was to defend young girls' dreams of becoming pop stars, it was to protect the sanctity of love letters or it was to preserve the wonderful feelings of youth! All this stuff sounds like "girly" nonsense but honestly, that's what makes Sailor Moon so cool. She stands for all of this and fights for it and I imagine that's what an entire generation of women anime fans loved about the character and the series.
One last observation that I think is worth noting is around the way the series re-used several animation cuts. There is an element, especially early on, of the episodes being incredibly repetitive, with a literal monster-of-the-week formula. Because of this, they use a lot of the same cuts for Queen Beryl and Jadeite consulting their Crystal Balls (or Nephrite consulting the stars in the later episodes). I think that the recycling of these cuts was purely for cost-saving purposes, since they were unimportant shots for extremely similar story beats. Plus, in Queen Beryl's shots, I'm pretty sure the crystal ball covers her mouth, which seems intentional to allow them to slap any dialogue audio on top of. Which is fair enough, TV is always made on tight budgets and animation is very time-consuming. However, there is another type of re-used shots, which I think has a lot more artistic intent behind it and that's all of the Sailor transformations and finishing moves (fire soul, bubble spray etc.). For these sequences, it feels much more like an eagerly anticipated flourish for viewers to look forward to every week. So in a sense, it's not repetitive; it's familiar.
I think this makes sense, given them time period it came out in, as well as its target audience. It reminds me of a lot of weekly kids programming from the 90s or even older, like Popeye or Transformers or something. You'd specifically tune in to see those same sequences week after week. Plus kids (and adults) had a very different relationship to the screen back then to the one we have now, so things like this were a lot more common. It probably seems odd to me now that I'm used to streaming on demand and stories that are quite a bit more linear. But watching Sailor Moon, I got really into it, especially since the transformation animations are so good.
All that said, I was pleasantly surprised with how the story developed towards the end of the series. The reveal about everyone's lunar origins, Endymion's sick battle armour and the brutal showdown at the north pole were a lot more of what I would look for as a viewer. It did then very disappointingly kinda dash that all away to soft reboot for season 2 (Sailor Moon R?). It was at that point that I decided I'd seen enough of the series to understand its core elements the way I wanted to (i.e. sufficiently to understand deconstructions, parodies and stage shows much better!). So I dropped it there, ultimately feeling very satisfied.
Overall, I'm so glad I took the time to watch the series, as like I said, I learned an awful lot about media aimed at women, as well as a tiny tiny little bit about the experience of growing up as a girl anime fan. Tbh I'd now describe myself as a Sailor Moon fan!
Maybe I'll watch the remaining series one day, maybe I'll watch the movies, maybe Crystal. But at least I have the option now.
Other random thoughts:
-I really loved the dynamics between the group. Especially how Rei and Usagi didn't get along. Really made the viewing experience much more enjoyable
-There were quite a few episodes where they went away on a trip or to an even or something and all of those episodes had the girls in seriously cool outfits. Not even in terms of 'character design', just really cool fits. Cool clothes.
-I enjoyed learning little bits about the Sailor Moon production/distribution history and fandom. Has to be said, it is an absolute disgrace that the English Dub changed Zoisite to be a girl to make his relationship with Kunzite "straight".
-Despite all the tacit acceptance of school girls dating university boys, there were some very cute romances: Ami and the other boffin kid, Rei and the very earnest Temple hand!
-I really loved the episode about the animators! I bet the production team loved making it.
-None of the skirts need to be that short. These are all kids in school. Similarly, the transformation sequences didn't need to focus so much on their bare bodies.
-I loved Sailor Jupiter. So incredibly sincere and maybe a slight dumbass but she was legit ride or die for her friends.
