I had heard of it being released just before attending a local convention (Anime North 2004, in Toronto) but hadn't tried to find any information beyond that, so I had no idea what it looked like. I saw on the con program that they were going to show the first two episodes. Naturally, I had to check it out!

I arrived a bit late (it's so easy to lose track of time at a convention when you're young *sigh*) and the room was completely packed! I couldn't believe it! One thing that struck me was how old many of the fans were in the room (late 20’s to early 30’s or so). Naïve as I was, I thought that age group was only into Mecha and hentai series XD.

Anyways, I stood at the door for a bit and watched, just sort of taking it all in. There were no subtitles. It was a scene with Usagi and Naru and my only thought after a few minutes was “...is this really Sailor Moon?” I mean, I could tell Usagi was supposed to be Usagi because of the pigtails, but I didn't know who Naru was supposed to be without the subs. I had tacitly assumed that at least Usagi would be white because of the blonde hair and blue eyes in her character design ^^;;;;;;;;. I'm embarrassed about all these false assumptions I had of course, but c’est la vie! Also, I think since I was still relatively new to Japanese culture in general and certainly the tokusatsu genre, I just wasn't equipped to appreciate it.

Spoiler:

I had never seen a live action scene of Japanese school life before and it was kind of striking to me, but in a good way. It felt calm and clean, like being in my grandmother’s apartment hahaha. No tacky bright coloured posters on the walls, and the girls were cheerful and cute together. I left after those initial few minutes thinking maybe I would watch it sometime when it was available with subtitles… Maybe. Just like my earlier discovery of Myu, it was stored away in the back of my mind as yet another aspect of the world of Sailor Moon that made it that much bigger and mysterious and worth keeping in my life.

I had a few secondary introductions after that before finally diving into the series wholeheartedly, but that was my first!

I saw a few screenshots of it somewhere on the internet and got interested but the only place I could find to watch it was on a bootleg Malaysian dvd. Even though the subs and quality were awful and I giggled every time I saw the plushies, I couldn't stop watching it. There was a certain cheesiness that I found endearing.

Ami!!!! She's honestly never been that interesting to me until PGSM since I couldn't relate to her in the anime and manga versions. She's definitely much more interesting in the live action when you get to learn the various sides of her. The scene where she first transforms always brings tears to my eyes. 

Rei has always been my favorite in the anime and manga. She was my idol growing up. She had a classy uniform and was too cool for all the people who admired her. She worked really hard but came across as effortless to others. However, on my first run of PGSM, I was surprised how different she was. Instead of being popular and elegant, she was a bit more average and was actually bullied by her classmates. I started to like her as the series progressed when her passions and struggles are revealed. During my second time watching PGSM I've decided that she's my favorite.