It’s impossible to talk about the history of the Magical Girl genre without talking about two shows in particular. One of those two (we’ll get to the other later) is Sailor Moon. The original series is notorious for two things. One is, allegedly, having a truly awe-inspiring sum of filler, both in terms of filler episodes and repeated battle and of course Transformation animations. The other is for transforming the nature of the Magical Girl genre by taking it from a branch of Adventure or even Slice of Life to one of action, blending the preexisting magical girl themes with those of transforming heroes and fighting hero teams. While Cardcaptor Sakura doesn’t show those influences, at least too much, every other Magical Girl show I’ll be reviewing this month has clearly felt, however distantly, the impact that Sailor Moon had.
The astute reader may note, though, that the title of this review does not simply say “Sailor Moon”. There’s a reason for that. I didn’t watch Sailor Moon when it was first coming out in the states, and hadn’t sought it out as part of my early years as an invested anime viewer. Rather, I knew it by reputation and knew that I had to look into it to really understand the Magical Girl genre. The thing is, the classic Sailor Moon had a five-year run and a grand total of two hundred episodes. I could have tried to cover the first season or arc, I suppose, but instead my research into the genre directed me towards a remake called Sailor Moon Crystal.
The pitch for Sailor Moon Crystal is basically that it’s supposed to be Sailor Moon with some of the fat trimmed out. In three arcs (what would be three seasons if the first two weren’t so tightly dovetailed), it fills out 39 episodes, and that’s the whole run. It seems like it doesn’t quite cover all the material the 90’s show did, but it does try to faithfully update what it does cover. Understanding that, I can’t pass judgment on the original series, nor can I really say whether Crystal is better or worse for its slimmed-down nature. But I can analyze Crystal in its own right, and try to work out just what gives the Sailor Moon franchise its powerful draw.
As I mentioned, Sailor Moon Crystal has a strong arc structure. The first story serves as an origin story and is solid in its own right: Usagi is a normal middle-school student until she finds a talking cat, Luna, and is told she has a great destiny as Sailor Moon, the pretty guardian of love and justice. She’s faced with two tasks: finding her allies, the other Sailor Guardians that exist presently as normal people and the Princess who they’re tasked with guarding is one. The other is fighting against the energy-draining monsters of the Dark Kingdom, who are using humans as fuel for the dark master that ages ago brought ruin to the moon kingdom, Silver Millennium, where the past lives of Sailor Moon and her allies lived.
The Dark Kingdom has a pretty intricate power structure that provides new foes and constant escalation. You should get used to that, because all the other arcs mirror its structure to greater or lesser degrees. At the bottom of the food chain are disposable minions, followed by a cadre of minor villains that control them. Then there’s the boss of the minor villains, and finally there is the poorly kept secret of a dark master beyond the boss, controlling everything from the shadows. In the case of the first arc, the actual characters out of that are the Four Kings, Queen Beryl above them, and Queen Metallia at the top.
Also typical for Sailor Moon, it seems, is that these villains spend a lot of tine infiltrating and manipulating humanity. The Dark Kingdom sets up various traps to gain human energy, defeat the Sailor Guardians, or gain the perpetual MacGuffin known as the Legendary Silver Crystal, preying on human desires and foibles.
One by one, Sailor Moon befriends and awakens Sailors Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter, destroying the pawns used by the Four Kings in the process. While this is going on, she also makes an impression on (and has an impression made on her by) Mamoru Chiba, better known as Tuxedo Mask. He’s tall, dark, mysterious, somewhat brooding, and always seems to know exactly when and where Sailor Moon is going to need to be caught from falling or receive a few words of encouragement to devastate her enemies.
Eventually, Sailor Moon also finds and teams up with Sailor V, who has been doing this Sailor Guardian thing longer and even has her own talking cat, Artemis. Initially, the show tries to fake everyone out, claiming that Sailor V may actually be the reincarnated princess… but of course, she’s actually Sailor Venus. Sailor Moon, it turns out, is the princess. Further, the Legendary Silver Crystal was inside her the whole time, Tuxedo Mask is the reincarnation of her past life’s forbidden beloved Endymion, himself the prince of a then-united Earth, the Four Kings of the Dark Kingdom were then his noble and loyal knights and also involved with the Sailor Guardians and their current incarnations are being mind controlled… there is a lot of story thrown out at once. The important notes are Legendary Silver Crystal good, Queen Metallia bad, Legendary Silver Crystal in Queen Metallia’s hands (not that she has hands, she’s more of an interstellar evil smoke cloud) very bad, and everyone human is the reincarnation of someone from the Fall of Silver Millennium. The bad guys also get a depowered Legendary Silver Crystal and mind-controlled Tuxedo Mask for their trouble as we launch into the end run of the arc.
The key word for that end run is escalation. It actually presses on very rapidly, freeing the Four Kings (who Metallia then obliterates), reducing Queen Beryl to dust and then… failing at first for a good long hang time to do anything to stop Queen Metallia. There’s even a surprisingly good fake-out where it looks like Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask follow the fate of their past incarnations, with Sailor Moon dying by her own hand. As a viewer you know absolutely that the main characters can’t die, but it’s given the weight and drama that it needs in order to function as a misdirect before how they live is revealed (spiritual stones from his four knights protecting Tuxedo Mask and a pocket watch from him protecting Sailor Moon). Metallia covers the Earth in possession of the true Legendary Silver Crystal, the Sailor Guardians are left drained and dying, and even the first ultimate attack Sailor Moon makes doesn’t work, leading to a great crescendo as the love she shares with Tuxedo Mask and her feelings for her friends empower Sailor Moon to try again and actually disintegrate Metallia and fix the damage she’d done to the world along the way.
As the denouement for the first arc plays, showing our characters returning to normal(ish) lives, a tender moment between Mamoru and Usagi is interrupted when a pink-haired loli falls out of a portal in the sky and inserts herself into their lives. She’s also named Usagi, but is referred to as Chibi-Usa (or Small Lady, which is also her name, because Sailor Moon is somehow both heartwarming and abstractly cruel) for ease of recognition. Thus begins our second arc.
The first few episodes are somewhat cookie cutter: one of the new lowest level goons (The Specter Sisters) appears, attempting to hypnotize people in favor of the “Black Moon” cult. The Sailor Guardian with similar elemental powers shows up, tries to get fight her, gets put in a bubble, and Sailor Moon appears to dust the enemy. But then Rubeus, one of the next tier of enemies, shows up, nabs the trapped Sailor Guardian, and buggers off. This gets Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter and goes through 90% of the arc for Venus, though she manages to not be a hostage this time around. That’s when the arc takes a sharp turn.
The dark force this time around is the Black Moon – the Specter Sisters act as the grunts, while Prince Demande is the boss of three lieutenants: Esmeraude, Saphir, and Rubeus. Instead of an obvious higher master, Demande is instead at the mercy of a shadowy puppet master who starts out allegedly serving him, called Wiseman. The Black Moon want basically the same thing as Metallia: Get the Legendary Silver Crystal (in Black Moon’s case, to destroy it in favor of their own Malefic Black Crystal) and probably destroy the Sailor Guardians along the way. Their reasoning is different. Make sure you’re sitting down, because like the “everyone is reincarnations” moment there is a lot of story to get out that was covered in not a lot of time.
Black Moon is from the 30th century future. In their timeline, Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask have long ruled the earth as Neo Queen Serenity and King Endymion, ushering in a new Silver Millennium with benefits like absurdly long lives (like unto those that the main couple have been enjoying) for all humanity, peace, harmony, all that jazz. The Black Moon faction doesn’t care for all the niceness, believing that the long lives and idyllic peace crushes the human spirit, or some screed in that vein that they never explain in too much detail, so they want to both tear down Earth of the 30th century, and eliminate that timeline coming to pass through their interference with the 20th (21st?). Fair enough, I’m more than willing to believe those dissidents would exist. In their past, they were also exiled for their terrorism, throwing them to the dark planet of Nemesis, which is where the others found Wiseman and the Malefic Black Crystal that gives them the power to oppose Neo Queen Serenity.
Chibi-Usa is also from the future. She’s the daughter of Neo Queen Serenity and King Endymion, which means she’s been messing with her future mom and dad (sparring with Sailor Moon and having a slightly weird and creepy crush on Tuxedo Mask) this whole time. She’s something like 900 years old but she never shows it since she can’t become an adult without magically awakening and so far she hasn’t been able to do that. Traversing the time streams, we also meet Chibi-Usa’s only friend: Sailor Pluto, who exists outside time and space as the guardian of the forbidden doorway of time and really probably should have been stopping out of control temporal nonsense the likes of which is going on in the story, but we won’t hold that against her.
On arrival, we find 30th century Earth and its main city of Crystal Tokyo devastated by the Malefic Black crystal. The future Sailor Guardians and Neo Queen Serenity are all sealed inside the palace, sleeping in crystals in order to stay not quite dead. King Endymion is too, but he’s mastered the art of astral projection and actually provides some guidance for our heroes (Currently Sailor Moon, Sailor Venus, Chibi-Usa, and Tuxedo Mask. Pluto stays where she’s existed since time immemorial.).
Sailor Moon, though, gets herself captured by Demande, and while she tries to rescue herself, the others struggle to reach her. In this effort, Chibi-Usa gets herself lost in the space outside time and space where Wiseman finds her and preys on her inner doubts and fears to win Chibi-Usa over to his side and convert her into an adult and corrupted form, Black Lady. And just to be creepy she goes and mind controls/abducts Tuxedo Mask, meaning he’s lost when Sailor Moon gets back having rescued the other Sailor Guardians from Nemesis. Point of order here, Black Lady is a horrendously creepy reversed Oedipus through these parts, so try not to think about her too much. At the same time that she’s escaping, Wiseman reveals his true nature, obliterates Rubeus, and seizes direct control of Saphir and Demande. What remains is the showdown at Crystal Tokyo for the fate of all time and space.
In the battle, Black Lady gets the upper hand since Sailor Moon is quite naturally unwilling to fight her own daughter and boyfriend with everything she’s got, allowing her to take Sailor Moon’s Legendary Silver Crystal so that she briefly has both – Sailor Moon’s from the past and her own from the future. Demande manages to get enough free will to snatch the crystals literally right out of Black Lady’s hands and threaten to smash them together, creating a paradox that could wipe out time. Entirely. Forwards and backwards, as the saying goes. In order to stop this craziness, Pluto abandons her vigil and emerges into the real world, stopping time so that Demande can be unceremoniously divested of the Legendary Silver Crystals… an intervention that will also inevitably cost Pluto her life. Pluto’s sacrifice also reaches the part of Black Lady that’s still Chibi-Usa, reverting her to “good kid” and also unlocking her Sailor transformation into Sailor Chibi-Moon. Because it would seem that Sailor Pluto, who’s existence should never have been known and who couldn’t leave the wrong side of a mystical doorway, had better maternal bonding with Chibi-Usa than Neo Queen Serenity managed.
With all the Sailor Guardians (who have been introduced and except poor, dead Pluto) fighting on one side, it’s time to take on the real boss, Wiseman (aka Death Phantom) in his true form as the planet Nemesis itself. Because final bosses in Sailor Moon have to be these big, somewhat formless cosmic entities of absolute evil. To be fair, Ghroth the Harbinger (incidentally also called Nemesis) and Hellstar Remina are pretty darn hardcore places for Sailor Moon of all things to be drawing imagery from. However, once Chibi-Moon is on scene, the mood is triumphant, and the dark planet gets itself obliterated by a cohesive beam of destruction formed out of love and friendship that I think predates the one in Fifth Element.
Sorry about the dense references, but I’ll have something of a point regarding that later on.
We actually wrap up act 2 like it’s the end, rather than dovetailing to the same degree as 2 did on the heels of 1. The future is restored by Neo Queen Serenity’s awakening now that Wiseman/Death Phantom/Nemesis is no longer around with his Malefic Black Crystal ruining everything, Serenity and Sailor Moon risk changing time to see each other and say some kind words to their other temporal selves, Pluto is still dead, the gang returns to their proper place in the timeline… and Chibi-Usa is sent to join the cast and train as a Sailor Guardian under Sailor Moon because her future self could push that off on the past so why not? (or perhaps more accurately for mysterious and wise ways possibly related to Neo Queen Serenity being on a different level and Chibi-Usa having bonded well with her parents’ past selves)
Act three is, properly, Season 3. Technically the first two acts are Seasons 1 and 2 as well but because they’re so smashed together they’re sort of advertised as a package deal. With season 3, there’s been a clear break. The animation is different (having gotten used to it, I’d say better) in a way that’s really easy to notice and even a little jarring coming right off of the first two arcs of Crystal. The plot, however, is the same old Sailor Moon. Once again, a mysterious evil force is infiltrating humanity and mind controlling people, looking to drain human energy in one way or another and also get the Legendary Silver Crystal and destroy the Sailor Guardians. Once again, there are layers upon layers of evil forces to carve upwards, past disposable monsters, into disposable lieutenants, durable lieutenants/bosses, and finally a dark master who’s a big apocalyptic thing that only shows up right for the end.
In this case, the enemy is a group called the Death Busters. At first, the Sailor Guardians fight shadowy monsters known as Daimons, but those are soon supplemented by the Witches Five, who are pretty much copies of the Specter Sisters where each has a unique specialty preying on the interests of a particular Sailor Guardian to engage her in combat. Except where the Specter Sisters typically managed to get their respective Sailor Guardian captured before being obliterated, the Witches Five pretty much die like chumps. Above them are Magus Kaolinite a creepy mad scientist, and their true boss, Master Pharaoh 90. I credit everyone for being able to say “Master Pharaoh 90” without cracking up, but that’s our nebulous blob of evil this time. Naturally, he wants the souls of humans (particularly the Sailor Guardians) and also the Legendary Silver Crystal, because we haven’t seen that conflict before.
There’s more than just the Death Busters running around, though, as we play “Friend or Foe?” with two new Sailor Guardians – Uranus and Neptune – who seem to have Sailor Moon’s best interests in mind but don’t like sticking around to be friends and fight together in super mode. We also get the return of Sailor Pluto, apparently reborn into this time period as a human like all the others (Sure. Time is a pretzel in this show) and rounding out the Outer Guardians trio. It turns out they want to defeat the Death Busters, but are also worried about a second threat to all existence on Earth: Sailor Saturn. Saturn is a mysterious guardian of death and ruin responsible for razing the remains of the old Silver Millennium after Metallia was done with it, and also the deaths of the past incarnations of the Outer Guardians (possibly barring Pluto. It’s unclear if she died at the end of season 2 or from Sailor Saturn to get here, but either way she has memories of both periods. Again, time is a pretzel.). She’s been reborn too, but she hasn’t awakened. If she does, planetary destruction is the outcome the Outer Guardians expect.
This is made more troubling by the fact that we’ve gotten to know the latent Sailor Saturn as Hotaru Tomoe, a sweet girl befriended by Chibi-Usa. Hotaru lives a rather sad, tortured life with her mad scientist father, constant pain, and more than one dark force inside her trying to get out. But she’s also a good person who’s kind to friends and strangers and more lonely than anything else. That makes it very difficult to conscience the Outer Guardians’ plan to prevent the awakening of Sailor Saturn, which would be simply killing Hotaru.
However, things go totally pear shaped fairly quickly. Mistress 9 awakens from inside Hotaru and takes both Chibiusa’s Legendary Silver Crystal and her soul, leading to a conflict that will take the rest of the season as Sailor Moon and the others struggle to storm the Death Busters’ base and get both those precious things back. This ultimately sees Sailor Moon working together with the Outer Guardians as they take on Kaolinite, Hotaru’s mad scientist dad, and finally Mistress 9. Master Pharaoh 90 surges into the world as a literal sea of evil, and Mistress 9 proves a very tough foe to crack.
Helping out the struggle against Mistress 9 is Hotaru, her spirit imperishable (rather than utterly consumed as 9 expected) even if she’s trapped with her body overtaken. She ultimately protects Chibi-Usa’s soul and the pure light of the Legendary Silver Crystal from Mistress 9, until Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter get their souls extracted as well and Hotaru works out that she can return what Mistress 9 stole at the cost of her own existence, reviving the Sailor Guardians and Chibi-Usa, the latter of which joins the fight alongside Tuxedo Mask.
After taking a beating from the Sailor Guardians and Super Sailors Moon and Chibi Moon (yes, Chibi Moon goes super. It’s very pink.), Mistress 9 offers herself to Master Pharaoh 90, who breaks containment and begins to spread over the Earth, absorbing just about everything the Sailor Guardians can throw at him to grow stronger. At the crux of the moment, Sailor Moon takes a swan dive into the darkness, which causes the emergence of Sailor Saturn, presumably from the broken remnants of Mistress 9 also within Master Pharaoh 90. Saturn pretty effortlessly owns Master Pharaoh 90, but she’s still sort of a force of global ruin, so it’s a good thing that Sailor Moon is able to emerge from the darkness and restrict the devastation. Pharaoh tries to flee back to his home world, and Saturn follows him in as Pluto ensures he goes and locks the door behind. Before leaving, Saturn gives Sailor Moon some good words about death leading to rebirth, and in fact Saturn herself seems to be reborn from this incident, appearing as an infant in the aftermath, her spirit called back from the void by Sailor Moon taking on Neo Queen Serenity form. The Outer Guardians decide to raise Saturn/Hotaru, having now seen that she’s pretty far from evil or indiscriminate.
And that’s basically where we end for Sailor Moon Crystal. There’s some denouement and a strange cliffhanger for the next arc in the last minutes of the last episode, but while that story can be found elsewhere, there’s no more Sailor Moon Crystal. So how does it all hold up?
I think, for analyzing Sailor Moon Crystal on its own, the word of the day is “Theatrical”. There are powerful moments that make you feel, and over-the-top goofy moments (especially when it comes to having to say “Master Pharaoh 90”, “Super Sailor Chibi Moon” or several of the attacks that are always shouted when used), but in both cases, while you might feel something for the characters or laugh at the silliness, you’re mostly just carried along because that’s what it feels like Sailor Moon should be. It’s big and impressive, even operatic at times, but like an opera on stage you never ‘forget’ that you’re watching a scripted production. The transformation and attack animations add into this. They’re big and flashy, but while they can be impressive they often don’t feel real. You’re being shown something for the sake of presenting something flashy and entertaining, not because it represents something “real”. This is what I meant when I said I’d have a point about referencing other literature in relation to Sailor Moon: it’s very much like a story, with lots of powerful and enforced tropes, tapping into the deep well of experience with fiction rather than trying to force the viewer out of their comfort zone with the universe.
In my mind, this isn’t a problem. When I say there are powerful moments in this show, I really do mean it. In the second arc, when a mind-controlled Tuxedo Mask is forced to fight Sailor Moon, who can’t bring herself to fight back against someone she loves and could hurt, and he ends up using the magic rod formed at the end of the first arc from their love and connection as a cudgel to literally beat her up with? It hurts. When Hotaru, reduced to a spirit trapped in her own body has to come to terms with the fact that she’s essentially dead and still makes the choice to strive for better with everything she has? It is moving. These aren’t as powerful or moving as they maybe could be in a different context that feels more powerful and real (and the first arc, in particular, is a little lacking in the time needed to let these things – like the discovery that the Four Kings of the Dark Kingdom are really good guys who shared their love with the other Sailor Guardians the way their liege, Endymion, did with Sailor Moon – have the weight they deserve), but they do have their impact. Sailor Moon may not exactly suck the average adult viewer into its scenarios or its world, but for its theatrical fakery and theatrical bombast, there’s still a very good core that usually shines through.
And you know what? I kind of like theater. Not all media has to be wildly immersive, and Sailor Moon sacrifices at least general immersion to tell a grander story. Fair enough. Honestly, I can see why this was originally a much more massive production in terms of time. If the length of the plot summary wasn’t an indication, there is a whole lot of story, especially for something that focuses deeply on emotions and human interactions and simultaneously has to pull action beats. I’m left questioning the secondhand wisdom that the original is “padded” or rife with “filler” – I can see any of these arcs taking at least double the time and still having a good internal pace, as long as they use that extra time for more scenes that flesh out things like the wishes and personalities of the Sailor Guardians or the relationships between the characters.
There’s another element worth noting as well: While Sailor Moon Crystal, for me, ended up resting in the “Good, but not perfect” territory of general appreciation (Earning a B+, a grade I agonized over for some time, wondering if it shouldn’t be higher)… Sailor Moon wasn’t written for me. It’s a story and a show that anyone can appreciate, but the core audience isn’t adult men like myself: it’s teenage girls, who Usagi would really speak to and represent the hopes, dreams, and wishes of.
And as characters meant to be connectable go, Usagi is very good. She’s not just a lifeless shell for viewers to imagine themselves as; she learns, grows, and becomes a better person through her experiences, experiences that the intended audience would vicariously share by watching. The show wants you to understand her struggles, but it uses the dark moments to make the light ones feel even stronger. Usagi gets beaten down, her body and spirit both wounded, and her mettle tested so that when she passes the test and overcomes the obstacles in front of her, she brings the audience along for that moment of glory and inner strength, made even bigger by that theatrical nature that Sailor Moon Crystal keeps to.
That’s not to say that there aren’t wish fulfillment aspects in Sailor Moon. But how they’re handled is interesting to look at on its own.
One thing you hear a lot in literary criticism, and this is something that I tend to avoid talking about for various reasons, is the idea of “____ Fantasy”, most typically in the terms of “Male Fantasy”. That is typically something with a basic appeal to the target demographic by hooking into very core desires and offering the fulfillment of base or basic wishes specific to said demographic. One of the reasons I don’t like this critical approach is that it’s usually wielded in an unbalanced way. If you have an attractive female character who gets a lot of focus, that gets called “Male Fantasy” because it’s providing what the (male) viewer desires. On the other hand, if you have an attractive male character (Conan is a good example), that also gets called “Male Fantasy” because it’s providing what the (male) viewer desires to be. If you ask certain circles what qualifies as “Female Fantasy”, at least in certain circles you’ll get a lot of awkward muttering and deflection. A second reason I avoid this is because it’s too often used to speak to the quality, rather than the qualities of the narrative. I don’t think acknowledging a work’s core demographic or its appeal to its core demographic speaks much to its quality, and certainly having demographic appeal doesn’t mean that something is bad, as often seems to be argued. Rather, Demographic Appeal, or “Whatever Fantasy” is a tool to hook in the intended audience, and the quality comes from how well or poorly that tool is used. Lastly, I avoid slinging such terms overmuch myself because I feel like there is an aspect of overuse. It’s human, not uniquely masculine or feminine, to wish to be desirable and also to wish to have access to a desirable partner. So a work is not going to be inherently gendered because it presents powerful and desirable humans; it’s the presentation more than the content that determines any such skew for the most part.
That said, while the idea needed such a lengthy introduction and while I would normally prefer to not open that particular can of worms, I think it’s important to do so in the context of Sailor Moon, because Sailor Moon is, at its core, a work to which I would apply the “Female Fantasy” title. And by that, I mean that it’s focused to appeal mostly to females, even with elements that an incautious reviewer could attribute to the opposite.
I will take, for my first example, the transformation scenes. In the memetic, rather than actual, history of Sailor Moon, these are often pulled up as being titillating, but I find it hard to believe that’s more than an incidental byproduct of the human aspect I mentioned earlier. The focus in the transformation scenes is not on the “attractive” charm points; rather they attempt to project a sense of both strength and beauty. Attention is paid not primarily to the figure of the character transforming, but to their poses (which serve to highlight their unique character and brand of force), their accessories (things like bangles and earrings that I wouldn’t hesitate to say will, on average, hold more interest to female viewers), and the face (which provides human connection regardless of sex). The transformation scenes also have some powerful symbolic aspects, but those are better discussed in terms of genre conventions even if they do also tie in to demographic appeal.
The focus on relationships is probably also indicative of the intended demographic – men and boys can enjoy stories about romance and friendship, just like women and girls can enjoy action shows (particularly relevant here), but I think it’s safe to say that weight and emphasis placed on social aspects is suggestive of one rather than the other being the core audience. In terms of wish fulfillment, though, you’ve got Tuxedo Mask.
Tuxedo Mask is the gender flip of the pretty, loving, supportive, largely out-of-the-action love interest that’s imagined to be common in media focused on a masculine audience, but that I found to be surprisingly uncommon when trying to pull up examples to cite here. The female version of the character can, and this is something I feel other critics are liable to forget, be written well or poorly independent of her status as a non-action Deredere love interest. On one hand you have Winry Rockbell who, despite not getting all the time in the world and not largely being able to have agency on the level of Alchemists and Soldiers, is a memorable and engaging character in her own right. On the other hand you have Wako who… ugh, if you want to read an angry review, follow the link on her name to my thoughts on Star Driver. Suffice to say I didn’t care for her or her show in the least.
Of the two, Tuxedo Mask is well on the Winry end. He mostly exists to provide love and support to Sailor Moon (or trauma when he’s mind-controlled and evil, but that’s neither here nor there) and not outshine or upstage her when she’s doing awesome things, but he is a character with at least some degree of depth and development. That, while also being a checklist of appeal flags. He’s tall, dark, and brooding, and at first is presented as a mysterious figure who might be threatening, checking off all the “bad boy” tick boxes. But, when he’s with Usagi, he’s uniformly sweet, supportive, considerate, and gentle, ticking off all the positive boxes for the “nice guy” as well. My wife assures me that I’m not barking up the wrong tree when I assess him as essentially being a calculated winner in terms of appeal, an idealized male partner figure.
Consider also the presence of Chibi-Usa, particularly in the third arc: She’s Usagi’s daughter, and comes to Usagi at the perfect (apparent) age to bond with… but Usagi hasn’t had to go through any of the awkward or problematic phases of childbirth and child rearing to get to the point where she has this daughter cognizant and able to interact with her on a junior but still intellectual level.
You can argue until you’re blue in the face whether these fantasies are healthy or appropriate, but suffice to say they exist, and are amply served by Sailor Moon Crystal.
There is no judgment on quality for recognizing Sailor Moon Crystal for what it is. It is not lesser nor greater because it has these elements that indicate a particular target demographic, but I think it’s relevant and interesting to try to acknowledge what a work is or does. I may not typically care for the appeal to “demographic fantasy” as it were, but when the shoe fits, there’s little that can be done.
On a separate topic now, I feel the need to discuss the action in Sailor Moon Crystal. Some weeks ago I was very hard on Star Driver, and some astute readers probably noticed that the Star Driver formula that was so bad is, at times, an interpretation of the Sailor Moon formula for combat and action. However, by in large, I found that the action in Sailor Moon Crystal really worked once you came to accept its theatrical nature. There are a few reasons for this.
One of the big ones is that the episode structure and the nature of the fighting scenes is far more varied. It’s true that a lot of time can be spent on the repeated animation of Transformation Scenes and attacks of the Sailor Guardians, and that the enemies they face usually go down to the first attack they don’t totally no-sell. However, not every episode has a major fight at the same place for the same duration. Even though we usually see some transforming, sometimes the show will keep the Sailors in their outfits for multiple episodes in a row while a major threat is dealt with, and many engagements are more dynamic than a two minute exchange of “Villain acts menacing, gets destroyed in one hit”. In fact, while there are a few (most notably the first couple in the first arc) that run about like that, it’s more that the lowest, least effort-intensive Sailor Moon fights touch the average of Star Driver fights in terms of quality, most are much better.
And, critically, Sailor Moon is entirely different when it comes to investment. Because the show has such a focus on the bonds between the characters, you care whenever someone is imperiled. And because the villains are so theatrically evil, you understand the threat they pose and the destruction they’ll cause, even if it’s not relevant to any sort of human character study or deep psychological deal: Metallia, Wiseman, and Master Pharaoh 90 are blobs of concentrated bad that want to obliterate and/or supplant all life on Earth. It’s not nuanced, but you get it. The long-term and immediate stakes are set well, and serve to keep the audience invested in the fighting. Not overmuch, but enough.
The choreography too has many more hits. It is sometimes lacking, consisting of a stock attack animation followed by a hit or no-sell, rinse repeat, but there are points where the Sailor Guardians will move dynamically around a battlefield and have extended exchanges with their foes. Most especially foes they don’t really want to fight or the nigh-omnipotent arc end bosses, but at least it’s there.
Which brings us to Sailor Moon’s most uniquely notable contribution to the Magical Girl genre, the Action. Focused towards a teen girl audience or no, Sailor Moon crystal is without a doubt an action show, at least as a significant component of its genre DNA. The super-powers of the Sailor Guardians are for fighting the forces of evil, unlike Sakura’s magic that often serves as a tool to help her in daily life. Any mundane challenges the Guardians face (and in Crystal, at least, those are few and far between) they face alone. We have the image, nowadays, of the Magical Girl as someone who combats darkness, often viscerally and with weapons, and research would suggest we largely have Sailor Moon to thank for that.
In more ways, though, Sailor Moon acts as the codifier of the genre. The focus on action was new, but magical girls had battled and suffered before from time to time, even if that wasn’t their purpose. The transformation scenes are legendarily a part of Sailor Moon and while she wasn’t the first magical girl to transform with her magic, her legacy, and the applicability of the motif to the core audience of Magical Girls, ensured that it became a genre staple.
Because, when you get down to it, the transformation of a magical girl is, in essence, a form of wish fulfillment as well (as I alluded to earlier). Here you have a piece of media directed at girls somewhere between the late end of grade school and the early end of high school. Their bodies will be changing into a new form at about the time they make up the core audience of a show like Sailor Moon but in a much more drawn out, awkward, and even painful way. By contrast, a Magical Girl like Usagi or some of the many to follow in her wake can take on a a new form that’s stronger and more beautiful than the one they begin with, but they do it through their transforming magic, gracefully and painlessly entering their superior forms. It’s little wonder that it stuck, seeing as it works both as a metaphor for what viewing teen girls may be going through and also as an excellent excuse to break out budget-saving stock footage. And Sailor Moon certainly provides a triumphant example of its double use.
There are other elements that will be repeated from here on, some of which had older starts and others which may have been largely invented for the original Sailor Moon. The concept of Magical Girls working together in a team, rather than having the Magical Girl be a one-off existence is emphasized in Sailor Moon and is one of the elements it borrowed from outside the nascent genre, and is something that will be seen time and time again. The mascot creature (Luna, for Sailor Moon) is also extremely important: a little cute thing that helps the heroine adapt to her powers, acting as a guide and informational support without having any impressive powers of its own to solve problems alongside the Magical Girl, which would stay strong for quite some time.
All in all, while Sailor Moon Crystal may not be a perfect show, it is a good show. I’ll reiterate my conflicted B+ Assessment. In some ways, there is A material in this show, but it’s largely uninterested in taking what it’s got to the next level. Instead it focuses on being the best theatrical experience it can be, with all the benefits and faults that comes with it. Thanks to some surprisingly deep characters, a willingness to explore the darkness in order to bring out the light, and especially Usagi’s growth as a person over the course of the show, it’s successful in that regard.
If I were to find a particular fault with Crystal, it’s an odd one: the series is very stocked with plot, again if the length of the summary wasn’t an indication. The original may be known for “filler”, but I there’s a degree to which I’d like to know more about these characters, like the Four Kings or the Sailor Guardians, which Crystal just didn’t have the episodes to develop as fully as they could be developed, indicating to me that there remains a chance that the 90’s version may still remain the superior incarnation.
And, while I don’t think Sailor Moon (Crystal) is a must-watch for viewers looking to engage with the Magical Girl genre, I do think it’s absolutely critical to be aware of it if you want to venture deeper and appreciate the genre for its conventions rather than as individual shows in isolation. And I’d say, if you find yourself liking Magical Girl shows, give something Sailor Moon a try. It hasn’t lasted as long and become as famous as it has without having a good heart inside.