Sailor Moon Review

Lotus Crystal

Okay so here is my rough draftof my review. If you see anything that maybe I could cut or tweak please let me know. OR anything that you think should be reworded or spelling errors, etc. Sorry for the way it looks I just copied and pasted from my word document.

Moonlight Legend

In the name of the moon, I will punish you! That’s the first thing that comes to mind when I think of the Japanese version of Sailor Moon. This show is based off of Naoko Takeuchi’s manga Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon. The show was released in 1992 and continued to be shown until 1997. The first person we see in this show is Usagi Tsukino. She’s a clumsy 14 year old with bad grades. She, with the help of a talking cat named Luna transforms into the Pretty Suited Soldier Sailor Moon. She is tasked with defeating the monsters sent from the evil organization called the Dark Kingdom. She and Luna are trying to find the moon princess and along the way, find the other four soldiers, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, as well as a man who calls himself Tuxedo Kamen. While trying to defeat the Dark Kingdom the soldiers make new friends along the way as well as discover many things about each other and themselves. The pace, believability, animation, music, and story of Sailor Moon has made this anime an amazing one with a still growing fan base.

One of the problems with this show is that it has a slow pace. It takes too long for many things in the story to happen. Sailor Moon takes too long to find the other soldiers because it takes her eight episodes to find any other soldier. In that episode, she finally finds Sailor Mercury. Sailor Mars is found in episode ten, Sailor Jupiter is found in episode twenty five, and finally, they find Sailor Venus in episode thirty three.

The story takes too long to progress with finding out about the soldiers pasts in the Silver Millennium as well as who the princess is. We get glimpses of who the princess might be, but it’s not revealed until the thirty fourth episode. That’s a long time to wait to find out about a major plot point. The past of the scouts in the Silver Millennium, is only slightly shown in episode thirty four, but we finally learn about all of the events in in the Silver Millennium in episode forty four.

The soldiers also take forever to beat the Dark Kingdom. It is true that there are a lot of villains introduced into the series because of the long time it takes. They don’t start their search for the Dark Kingdom’s hideout until episode forty four. However, with this, we start to learn about the villains' pasts and their reasons for trying to take over the Earth.

Even though the pace is slow, we learn about the pasts of the characters in their newer lives. We get to find out about Makoto’s past before she became Sailor Jupiter. We find out about a boy who broke her heart; who she just can’t get out of her head. We learn about Minako’s past before she became Sailor Venus. We find out that she fought against crime as a girl named Sailor V.

Another issue with the show is the believability. Mind you to watch a show like this, people have to have a certain level of suspended
disbelief to even be able to watch it without questioning everything. The show has long transformation sequences that end with the soldiers saying catch phrases as well as long attack sequences. The problem with this is that they take up a lot of time of the episodes. They are beautiful to watch, but after a while I got sick of watching them transform every episode and watching the same attack sequence. In the time that the person transforms, says their catch phrases, and starts their attack, the monster would already have killed its victim and run away or attacked the scout, if he was smart. However, these catch phrases and attack sequences make it easier for people to mimic the characters when they cosplay them. Cosplaying is when someone dresses up as a character from an anime or manga and emulates them.

The characters are too fast to believe in things through the show. They are, first of all, too fast to believe that there is a talking cat. Usagi is the only one who questions the fact that there is a talking cat. She thinks she is dreaming and tries to go back to sleep. The other soldierss believe in the cat, but they are dealing with some really extraordinary circumstances because they are being attacked by a monster and a girl named Sailor Moon is trying to save them. They are fast to believe that they are Sailor Soldiers who are charged with saving the world, but they only believe that after they’ve transformed. The other thing is that the girls instantly trust each other and become friends. However, they have met Usagi before and she’s tried to make friends with them, but they don’t know it’s her. It
takes a lot of trust to work with someone. The other thing is that Usagi and Mamoru instantly fall in love when they find out they were lovers in the past, but they hated each other when they were normal people. But, Sailor Moon was in love with Tuxedo Kamen, who is Mamoru, so it isn’t too much of a stretch, but it still is one to go from hate, to accepting who they are, to love.

Another thing with the believability is the cheesy dialogue in some episodes. This dialogue is usually imagined by the female characters. They imagine having conversations with the guys they fall for, who are substantially older than them, deciding to go out with them for no reason at all. It adds comedy to the series as well as shows that the girls are fourteen years old.

One of the selling points of this show is the animation. The drawing of the show is done really well. For the time period that this show first came out, the animation is done really well, and it’s not drawn in a lazy fashion like some of the anime today. Every character in the show, even the characters that are just in the background, is drawn with great detail. The opening and ending sequences are drawn with great detail, showing the characters and what is almost like a story before the episode begins and after it ends. The transformation sequences are gorgeous. Each soldier has their own transformation background and way of transforming depending on the element that they use when fighting. The first episode compared to the last has a lot more detail in it. The last episode has all of the soldiers in their costumes drawn very lightly to make them look like ghosts. Queen Beryl, the leader of the Dark Kingdom, has a new elaborate costume to draw. The last episode also brings back pieces of the first episode to show the characters beginning a new life with no memories of the past.

This anime also has amazing music. The opening and ending themes of the Japanese version are written well with great lyrics. The opening “Moonlight Legend”, written by DALI, tells the story of two lovers and their miracle romance. The translations of some of the lyrics are, “I count the sparkle of constellations to foretell the future of my love. We were born in the same land a miracle
romance.” This tells the love story of the two main characters. In the first ending song “Heart Moving”, written by Misae Takamatsu, it talks about falling in love. The translations of some of the lyrics are, “But there was a moment when I noticed only you. I want to become prettier right here and now. Something changes when you fall in love.” The background music is well written, not too loud, and flows with the mood of what is happening at that time. The villains all have the same kind of background music and each character has their own specific attack music. The transformation music is good and doesn’t get annoying over time. It is light and flowing with the name of the soldier sung only once.

One of the other selling points for this show is its story. Although there are redundancies in the anime formula, like the soldiers
almost always winning at the end of an episode and the battle formula barely ever changing, this was one of the first of its kind. The formula for this form of Magical Girl anime has been followed in many new magical girl animes. The story is interesting and original. The characters in the story are not just one dimensional they have multiple dimensions. Because of the way the characters are written, people can relate to them. The characters aren’t perfect and go through many different things that we face. The main character fails tests and is always late. We empathize with the characters in either a negative or positive way. Our feelings can even change for a character as we learn more about them. Some points in this show will make people cry, some points will make people laugh, some will make others scream for joy.

Even though Sailor Moon has its problems with pace and some in believability, looking at the main content, animation, music, and
the story, one will find an amazing anime. This show can be loved no matter what age the viewer is and through that the
fan base has grown. Many people, who were young when it was first released and saw it, have passed it down to the
other generation. Many of those people still love the show and still re-watch it from time to time.

Lotus Crystal

I have just updated this with help from people in my class. Please comment if you think anything can be changed or something should be different.

Star Seed

The only thing I can think of, and this is strictly my opinion, would be to possibly change 'scouts' to 'soldiers'. Because, elsewhere, you take names and stuff from the original (i.e. 'Usagi' instead of 'Serena', 'Dark Kingdom' instead of 'Negaverse'), so it seems a bit inconsistent to use 'scouts'. Again, though, that's partly my personal preference/opinion.

Lotus Crystal

Okay. Thank you. Smile

I didn't catch that myself.

Star Seed

Sailor Selene wrote:: Okay. Thank you. I didn't catch that myself.

You're quite welcome. Smile

Aside from that one thing, though, this is a really good review.

Pyramidal Crystal

My review is in progress, but it should be up by tonight.

Lotus Crystal

Okay.

Lotus Crystal

I might end up being a little more critical than previous reviewers and I want to apologize in advance.

Contractions should not be used in a formal essay.

Quote :: She’s a clumsy 14 year old with bad grades

This is a formal essay for school, so your language and diction should be more formal.

If you are reviewing this essay and you do not know exactly when it ended, then it makes it look as if you are not credible and did not do your research. Change this to a more exact statement.

Quote :: The show was released in the early 1990’s and went on for about six years.

Your thesis statement (the last sentence of the introductory paragraph) says good things about the series, but your first paragraph says bad things about the series. It throws the reader for a loop. You do not start really talking about the good things until half-way through the review. It is fine to start with the bad things first, but you should preface your statements, so your reader knows you will be talking about good and bad things about the series.

Do not use "you" to refer to the reader of your essay or the audience. Instead, refer to them as "the audience." (or "the reader" if you are referring to literature, which you aren't in this case).

Although it isn't necessary, if you are writing an essay with a thesis statement, it is a good idea to remind your reader of the thesis statement at the end of each paragraph or every few paragraphs. For example, as the last sentence of your paragraph dealing with animation, "The excellent animation of the anime has contributed to the growing fan base of the series."

Lotus Crystal

Sailor Venus wrote:: Your thesis statement (the last sentence of the introductory paragraph) says good things about the series, but your first paragraph says bad things about the series. It throws the reader for a loop. You do not start really talking about the good things until half-way through the review. It is fine to start with the bad things first, but you should preface your statements, so your reader knows you will be talking about good and bad things about the series.

This is how I was told to do my thesis statement by my professor by listing the criteria that makes a good anime. I do address the good point in each of the problems with the anime to show that things aren't all bad. But I'm not sure how well I could change the thesis since it needs to be one sentence.
It is also not supposed to be a hugely formal paper and I was told before that contractions would be fine. I've been trying to work through the problems with using the word "you" and have been looking for it in my rewriting of parts of the paper. Thanks for the reminder about it though because I tend to forget. I will fix the dates that it came out in the introductory paragraph in my paper. Thank you. Smile

Lotus Crystal

I've made some slight changes to the paper and will be working on it some more.

Lotus Crystal

Oh no, I don't think you need to change your thesis statement. Maybe just add a sentence in the first body paragraph that you will also be discussing the negative and positive aspects of Sailor Moon. Since you hadn't mentioned before that you would be discussing the negative aspects of Sailor Moon, it really through me for a loop. Basically I sat there thinking... Wait, if this is a good anime, then why am I reading only negative stuff about the anime? Maybe just add a sentence in the first paragraph?

Lotus Crystal

Ah that makes sense. Smile

I'll will work that out then. Thank you Venus!

Lotus Crystal

Okay so I have to turn this in tomorrow and I wanted to see if there was anything else I needed to change bofore printing it out. Please let me know. Thank you everyone who has helped me work on this paper. Smile

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