Last night I set my alarm for 4:55 am so I could watch Sailor Moon Crystal as soon as it aired on CrunchyRoll. With sleepy and shaking hands I attempted to operate my iPad, which was my viewing method of choice. I hit start episode several times. 16 seconds left. 14. 10. 4. 1. 0. IT DIDN’T PLAY! I panicked, hastily opening up my laptop and navigated to the website. Same problem. No video playback.
Until, thank goodness, with a little patience it started up in about a minute. Before I get into specifics, here is a warning of ***SPOILERS*** to come. Well, kind of. The episode stays incredibly close to the original anime, with the main differences being animation style and some added content.
But the first thing I noticed was the absence of the awesome background music I loved so much about the original series. At one time I owned the boxed set of all Sailor Moon background music and loved to jam out to it (until I had to sell it to make rent after graduating college). Throughout the episode something just felt like it was missing. However, when the awesome choral stuff we fell in love with when the trailer was released finally started playing I was somewhat ameliorated. The end music was sufficiently cheesey and lovey dovey (what the heck is a moonbow? lol). I will be attempting to memorize both the opening and closing song prior to the next episode airing. Don’t lie. You know you will be too!
Ok, so enough complaining about the music; there is a lot to love in this new rendition of セーラームーン.
Let’s start with the opening theme. Several things are revealed to us, but my favorite is Usagi in one of her signature non-schoolgirl non-senshi outfits. Moreover, the Act (episode) title screen and all the transition screens are very lovely with pastels and cutouts of Sailor Moon in black.
On a similar note, a frame of roses appears when new characters are introduced. It was cute at first, but quickly became repetitive. However, given that its the first episode and we are introduced to a bunch of people, this will probably not be the case moving forward.
In the words of twitter, Mamoru’s outfits are a lame as ever.
The baddies (my term for disposable bad monster things) look like they will adhere to the original standard of all being women. Which is AWESOME, and I highly approve of it. One thing to note is that Jadeite’s voice sounded like a woman’s (even though I realize the voice actor is male).
The Sailor V poster is nice. Honestly, the animation overall is such an improvement from the original it’s hard to go wrong. I loved the Sailor V video game, and I am so glad that characters like Motoki, Haruna-sensei, Shingo, Naru, and Umino all look and sound the same.
And with Usagi’s signature attitude, she tells us Motoki “ is sweet and good looking. I’ve got my eye on him” – just in case we didn’t know…
I felt the absence of badass evil music the most.
But the moment we were all truly waiting for was….
MOON PRISM POWER MAKEUP!
When I heard those words I had SO MANY GOOSEBUMPS. The transformation was lovely, and gave us the nostalgic feels we were all looking for. Moon Tiara Action has become Moon Tiara Boomerang in order to adhere to the manga.
All in all, I give the episode an A-/B+. Some will probably disagree with me, but I just can’t get over the loss of the cool background music. That was such a defining feature of the show for me. But I will definitely be watching every episode! Who knows, maybe it will improve (fingers crossed). We are lucky to have so many people try so hard to bring back the show for us. I am definitely grateful!
A whole new generation of Sailor Moon fans is being born as I type this.
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