Sailor Moon
From The Encyclopedia of Pointless
Contents |
Overview
This review covers Sailormoon/Sailor Moon/SAIIIYUULA MURUNUNONUUNUNOU Classic, R and a bit of S (roughly 100 episodes). After that, my brain melted and I couldn't take any more. That bit about the melting brains probably isn't true, although judging from the utter crap I spew out in the main chat, I wouldn't be too shocked.
I'm going to start this review with a short anecdote. I intend to have it make a point, but you'll not be missing anything if you skip it. About a year and a half ago at the time of writing, I found a girlfriend who liked anime and, as a matter of fact, broadly introduced me to it. She liked Sailor Moon. A lot. As an advance warning to you all males reading this, girls who like Sailor Moon are probably deranged psychopaths and are bad date material. To all girls reading this, all males who watch Sailor Moon are either:
- Outright homosexual and probably cosplay as the girls from the series at anime expos - tragically, without a hint of irony.
- Straight, and pause the DVD at key moments to see how far they can look up each each character's attire.
- Are being forced to watch it by aforementioned nutso girlfriends.
Regardless, I recall summising to her that I thought Sailor Moon was 'Terrible, but fun, somehow.' Whilst my opinions of my ex have shifted from 'Great' to 'Hideous', my opinion of Sailor Moon has remained unchanged; it's crap, but fun, somehow.
Storyline
Terrible. Next!
Oh, right. CONTENT.
Sailor Moon's plot is based around an incompetent school girl called Usagi in the Japanese, but cunningly renamed to 'Serena' for the American version. One day she finds out that she's a descandant from the Moon Kingdom and has to stop a bunch of headcases from doing bad things like, I dunno, taking over the world. Along the way, she meets other Sailor Senshi/Scouts (JP/US respectively) who are also disguised as school girls. Together, Sailor Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus must save the world from a bunch of nincompoops. Sailor Moon also meets the delightfully pretencious and hopelessly 'romantic' Tuxedo Kamen/Mask, and a couple more Sailor Senshi in the S series, who are lesbians via a series of overly intimate conversations. Therefore, no on-screen kisses, I'm afraid.
Like I've already stated, the storyline to Sailor Moon is BAD. Tracing paper possesses a thicker plot than this, I'm afraid. I've summarised the very basics of the story in the previous paragraph. Occasionally, some enemies are thrown into the mix and change after every couple of weeks in STUNNING battles where Sailor Moon uses her latest attack involving her spinning around wearing sailor uniform with short skirts and nothing of any actual action, which causes the enemy to collapse in stupidity, after realising how idiotic the whole premise is. Plot development in Sailor Moon comes like drops from one of those faulty faucets - every couple of episodes, another piece of the plot will come out and will fail to astound or surprise anyone. I had another metaphor to use there, but I refused to on account of it being far too disgusting.
This anime has two key themes. Firstly, a lot of nonsense about 'love', 'friendship', 'believing in yourself' and all sorts of stuff that's in 99% of J-Pop, and secondly that if you ever want to disguise yourself from your nearest and dearest, just wear a flimsy mask or an ever-so-slightly different costume - no-one will ever know!
Animation
There's been better. Much better. Granted, the animation takes a notable step up as the artists get the hang of this whole 'drawing' lark (the bigger budget clearly has nothing to do with anything), but it's still nothing to write home about. Perhaps, after Sailor Moon S and SS, Sailor Stars has animation that makes our jaws drop. Joke's on the animators though - it never got released outside of Japan. The best animated bits are the transformation sequences, which is just as well, considering that the sequences are an integral part of the Sailor Senshi's battle plan to bore their foes to sleep, as you have to see each sailor transform into their powered-up form EACH AND EVERY EPISODE. I'm sure even the perverse fanboys get fed up sooner or later. I'd say around 15-20% of each episode (in the US version at least) makes use of 'pre-made' material that's been copied and pasted.
Characters
Each of the characters in Sailor Moon have their own distinct personality traits and... quirks. Well, probably, but for the US release, a lot of it gets butchered. Mind you, a lot of it was bizarre in the first place, but I digress.
Sailor Moon
- (REAL NAME: Usagi/Serena) is grossly incompetent. In fact, if you've got a self-esteem problem, Usagi's probably a good source of well-needed ego-boosting. She trips, she fails exams, she runs and hides whilst the other sailor scouts do all the work; luckily, she gets better at the job as the series progresses until she's able to kick butt on her own, but still.
Sailor Mercury
- (Amy/Amy - no bizarre name change for once!) is the brains of the group, who uses her computational wizardry to create devices to get the scouts out of a fix if the writers can't think of a better way to do it.
Sailor Mars
- (Rei/Raye) has an aggressive and fiery attitude - as seen with her arguing for no good reason with Sailor Moon to provide some comic relief, in the mistaken belief that the other elements of the anime would fail to provide this.
Sailor Jupiter
- (Minako/Lita) doesn't do an awful lot apart from cook and act like a manly man. Really!
Sailor Venus
- (Minako/Mina) is a way of introducing people from the Sailor V manga into the whole thing to attempt to cash-in some more. Sailor Neptune and Uranus are lesbians, and did some other stuff, but I never bothered finishing watching the S series - sorry - but I'm sure I've told you the most important details.
Tuxedo Mask
- Supporting the scouts is Tuxedo Mask (Mamoru/Darien), winning the award of being the biggest blockhead in the whole anime by constantly getting mad at Usagi for tripping over, and then proclaiming how the night is prettier than something that my twisted, cynical mind cannot compare to because I'm not some raving idiot.
Luna
- This is the cat that greets Sailor Moon and provides the rather unwilling lass with her powers. You KNOW it's a bad day when you realise someone's pumped pure LSD into your water supply and now a cat with a moon-shaped scar begins TALKING to you. She quickly becomes intensely annoying to both Sailor Moon and EVERYONE WATCHING by nagging about every conceivable thing.
Artemis
- Artemis joins later, with Sailor Venus and helps out by trying to hit on Luna and going "HMMMM YEAH" a lot. I wish I was joking.
This ends the overly lengthy 'listy' summary of the 'good guys'. Now I'll go on to detail the villains.
But WAIT! The villains typically last about 6-8 episodes before they get blasted away to Iolanthe's Fairyland or something equally laughable, so I was only kidding; the villains don't get personality apart from a couple of them loving each other and changing sex for the US version so that they're not gay, but that's all you really need to know. If you can imagine horribly cliched villains, you've got the personality of every nemesis in Sailor Moon under a hat, with like, two exceptions.
Voice Acting
Easily the funniest part of the anime. The original Japanese voices aren't too bad and I would have probably kept the voice acting at 7/10 had someone at DiC not decided, 'Wait, we can create jobs if we get people to just read the lines out whilst the translators look at porn or something! Let's find the first fifteen people outside the office and get them to do these voices!'
No. Sorry, I'm lying again. I hope. Frankly though, the above may as well have happened.
The dub is the most inspired thing that mankind has ever created. Usagi's voice actor changes after six episodes and again for Sailor Moon S, where the somehow found an even WORSE voice actress to take her role who treats her role by going up and down an octave every .5 seconds to win a bet with her friend to see who can get laughed at most by the anime viewing public. I bet Usagi's VO won. I sure HOPE she won, because I can't imagine much worse than that. I usually found myself laughing at the occasional storyline bits as those lines were usually the worst delivered. Whilst Lita seems to be the only decent voice actress, the others all have their individual traits that make them so lovable (read: laughable). Artemis' 'HMMM YEAH's are a cause of laughter on each occasion. Amy appears to have inhaled a large quantity of helium which is released on her saying 'MUHHHHHCURRRRRYYYY BUBBBLLLLEEESSS BLAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSST!!' with a horrible 'blaaaaa' noise on the 'BLAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSST'. One of the villains, Nephlite, should probably have been renamed to 'Constipatiete' for the English version, based off the voice actor. I could go on all day. For your sanity, I won't.
LIKES
So, why oh WHY, would anyone EVER want to watch this? I've slated this off in so many ways, it's most likely inconceivable anyone ever wanting to watch it. Somehow, it's fun. It's formulaic, idiotic fun. A few episodes of this will provide good safe, entertaiment. You can be assured that from one episode to the next, the cast will remain unchanged and you'll have missed little more than one terrible villain being outsted for another (if that). If I could award a fun factor, I'd give Sailor Moon a 6/10 for that alone. Bear in mind, this is in moderation. Beyond a few episodes, you'll be in danger of losing your mind or worse - your money.
DISLIKES
Oh c'mon, what's there to LIKE?! No storyline, laughable characters with terrible voicing and animation equivilant to someone playing with the 'step' function on a VCR, Sailor Moon is something of a flop if you intend to watch some serious, HARDCORE anime (ey up)!
Watch a few episodes if you so wish, but if you shell out money for any DVDs, then - unless you're obscenely rich or perverse - you'll find your money is better spent elsewhere.
REVIEW SCORES: STORYLINE - 2/10 ANIMATION - 4/10 CHARACTERS - 4/10 VOICE ACTING - 3/10 OVERALL: 33%
| -- Johnny Wallbank |
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