Just up front: trust me when I say that no one is madder than me that I hate Sailor Moon Crystal. This wasnt a case of hype killing an experience. Im pretty forgiving. I can look past a lot to enjoy something thats pretty fundamentally flawed but still has some good ideas in it. The problem with Crystal is that its dull. Nothing shines. 1. It Looks Persistently Awful. Every anime that isnt a heavilypolished movie production has the occasional awkward shot and this was a web anime so it would have been unreasonable to expect perfection but man the proof is out there that it could have looked so much better. Seriously LOOK at the Moon Pride music video. Just close your eyes for the 3D models. Ignore that part for now. https://www..com/watch?v=c0Va228UhRs Thats what we could have had And this is what we got: 500https://i.ur.com/SzghXH1.png But doodlemancy they fixed it for the bluray No they did not. 500https://i.ur.com/WYTuGYD.png One major problem with the art is a fundamental misunderstanding of the shape of Usagis head which plagues nearly every scene even in the later seasons with the improved art style. She has this giant topheavy cranium with a tiny face just sort of sliding toward the bottom. The fix above even isnt onmodel. It looks like its in a different animes style. 500https://i.ur.com/AQYIKzQ.png Heres my favorite example of a fix that improves almost nothing. The problem: these sunglasses are sitting on Mamos face like horse blinders. Observe this helpful stock photo man for a moment: 500https://i.ur.com/inCydbq.jpg You can see they redrew a lot of this added shadows and detail they even changed the shape of the sunglasses... but the most glaring error remains. Hes still wearing horse blinders. Heres some more screenshots from the fixed bluray release. These are not just weird inbetweens that you can only catch on a framebyframe they are frames you can see easily with your raw eyeballs while watching. It is roughly this ugly about 95 of the time. 500https://i.ur.com/ihyX2od.png 500https://i.ur.com/nWpdZXu.png 500https://i.ur.com/rfgzAiH.png 500blob:https://ur.com/059157c431174a7997922ce4c92e15af 500https://i.ur.com/XXoQKEl.png That last one is the expression that the senshi wear for like most of the runtime of every episode. I got so so sick of seeing that O.O face on everyone. Its like texting someone who responds to everything you say with the same emoji. Heres a rare nice shot as a treat. Sometimes it does look nice I admit it I wish that more than like 5 of it looked nice 500https://i.ur.com/V2ZA9JK.png Most of the problem honestly is the art style. Its a real Bad Choice Salad. Everyone just looks stringy and unsettling like a bunch of daddy longlegs with big anime eyes copypasted onto them and if you look at the model sheets you can see why its like this. Its built on a foundation of sand. 700https://i.ur.com/O2YPXlI.jpg This is not a person. These are not expressions. Those are not the eyes of a thing that has human thoughts. It looks like something out of a terrible howtodrawthing book your aunt buys you from Michaels because she heard you really like japanimation or mango or whatever it was. Relevant quote from the character designer: I just couldnt achieve the balance of Ms. Takeuchis style. It was hard to notice it myself but I kept drifting towards a more modern anime style so my aim was to figure out how to disrupt that. It took several months but finally I arrived at the best balance to turn Ms. Takeuchis drawings into anime. Yukie Sakohttps://missdream.org/sailormooninterviewsandarticles/sailormooncrystalarticleinanimagejuly2014issue/ It sounds like she was really struggling with these designs which to me indicates that shes just... maybe not the right choice for the job. If you look up her other work her wheelhouse is really Lanky Yaoi Boys which is all well and good and probably explains why Mamoru and the Shitennou look a bit less terrible than the senshi do most of the time. Yukie Sato is not a bad artist shes just terribly misused here and even Crystal fans will admit that the anime started looking way better when they switched character designers a few arcs in. Also the CG henshin sequences use these weird rubbery 3D models of the senshi that look like they belong in a shovelware Wii game. Theyre clunky theyre boring theyre creepy I hate them. Sailor Moons henshin sequences are an icon of the series of the genre and of anime in general. Id wager almost anyone that saw Sailor Moon even if it was ages ago and they havent thought about it since they were a child probably remembers the henshin sequences. If somethings going to be in every episode thats where you put the sakuga But there is no sakuga in Crystal. There is only sadness. In a previous version of this review I said some stuff that was unfair. I said that nobody cared about how this anime looked. Having heard some stuff about the production it sounds like a lot of SMC was outsourced to underpaid exploited animators in the Phillipines As opposed to I guess all the well paid and definitely not exploited animators everywhere else Ha ha ha scream and they were often asked to make tight turnarounds. So I guess Im tapping the fast/cheap/good triangle sign and sighing again. Its a shoddy production but for pretty clear reasons. I dont think the animators should be ashamed of their work. I think that decisionmakers at Toei should be ashamed that for the 20th anniversary of an internationallybeloved franchise they cheaped out. 2. I Do Think Everyone Should Be Ashamed Of The Writing And Direction Though People complained about the filler in the 90s anime but that was where a lot of the fun characterbuilding happened. Sailor Moon Crystal ran too far in the opposite direction deciding to squeeze two story arcs into one 26episode season. Its extremely condensed. The story itself is so excited to get to its next nostalgic plot destination and say Look how we did it THIS time that it forgets the journey and the journey is the most important part. While its true that the manga is pretty fastpaced it has a fairytale feel to it and still manages to be engaging and emotional though its much more expressive artwork. Meanwhile most every character drawn in Crystal has the emotional depth and subtlety of an emoticon. The arts not good enough to make up for the deficiencies in the story and... frankly... as much as I love Naokos work the manga story is pretty unpolished and theres a lot of dream logic nonsense in there that translates even worse to the screen for example theres a scene at the end of the Dark Kingdom arc where Usagi is gallivanting around the Moon Palace postfinalbattle with Mamoru without seemingly a care in the world and then SUDDENLY remembers that all her friends are still missing and maybe dead/dying. It makes her look like a real jerk more on this later. It happens the same way in the manga but because its only across a couple of pages theres not as much time for you to ponder on it and get frustrated with her. The biggest writing problem is that Nobody Is People. Nobody is a believable human being in SMC. Everyone but Usagi is a cardboard standup pared down to their most basic traits. The inner senshi after their introductions are flattened so badly their dialogue becomes interchangeable and by the climax of the first arc they are literally just finishing every sentence together. Its like the writers wrote dialogue for one person and cut it up into little pieces so the poor things would all have lines like a grade school play for a class with too many children. They exist mostly to get thrown around in the background of fights during which they are often made more incompetent than in the manga so that Usagi can look good by comparison. Some of their biggest achievements from the manga like Venus and Jupiter being the ones to actually kill Queen Beryl are still handed off to Usagi the narrative literally takes Venus sword out of her hands and puts them in Usagis. Are you a fan of literally any other senshi other than Usagi? Too bad and/or how dare you eat dirt. Anyone who holds this series up as at least more accurate to the manga has not read the manga there are pointless diversions all over the place. They left out Usagis Disguise Pen transformation into a handsome groom and changed that entire fight. Harunasensei is reduced to just a normal boring teacher background character instead of a human disaster. Naru gets sidelined even harder than usual and they didnt even have the courage to draw EvilMamoru in his cow print vest. The absolute cowards. 500https://i.ur.com/uytm6bb.jpg Because Crystal makes its characters strangers to us drama comes off as melodrama and any moment meant to be meaningful or touching flops. Its an emotional desert. Its so selfserious that even silly expressions from the manga have to be made pretty by uncurling silly eyebrows and plumping up lips and unexaggerating expressions. Yes Im complaining about the visuals again but like this is the problem with the whole thing. The comedy was a huge part of Sailor Moons appeal and they strip most of it out. 500https://i.ur.com/4Mns4tT.png 300https://i.ur.com/Hk3EAq2.png 300https://i.ur.com/A1iNXO7.jpg Its SO concerned with being a pretty mature glitzedup version of the story but it doesnt have the chops to be that either. It barely has the chops to be a story. When the comedy did eventually come back for a brief moment very late in Season 1 I felt like I was hallucinating. 3. Also The Main Character Sucks The Sailor Moon I knew was a ditzy clumsy silly kid with a heart of gold and the capacity for infinite love and bravery. She was childish and a little selfish but she always came through when it mattered and she grew a lot as a person over the 90s anime. CrystalUsagi is by comparison a contemptible little brat who is constantly abandoning her friends in favor of chasing after a guy she hardly knows. She doesnt struggle she doesnt fight she doesnt change she doesnt learn anything. During the Dark Kingdom finale all she really does is cry and scream and try to give up until some sentient rocks the Silver Crystal the Moon some other crystal that was also on the moon step in and grant all her wishes. All she has to say about her supposed friends is that theyre beautiful. The senshi just worship her like a goddess. Theres no friction no banter pretty much no fun character moments between them. Even Rei and Usagis relationship gets sanded down to nothing. In EVERY OTHER Sailor Moon incarnation at the very least Rei is very critical of Usagi for good reason and in Crystal shes just another deadeyed cult member singing Usagis praises and finishing the rest of the senshis sentences. The story and the characters treat Usagi as IF she is the character she is supposed to be a ditzybutcharming presence in their lives a point of light that brings them all together but she just isnt that. All she wants is Mamoru and thats mostly all the story cares about. Incidentally: there is also a romance subplot involving all of the senshi executed poorly of course because Crystal doesnt have the time or the dexterity to handle 8 notUsagi characters subplots. It takes up precious screen time that really should have been spent on something else like I dont know having any character development whatsoever. The main plot itself is ass pull after ass pull after deus ex machina. Admittedly this is a staple of Sailor Moon but with a rushed story cardboard characters downright ugly animation and basically nothing likable or exciting to hold on to its kind of the final nail in the coffin. Theres no charm left to save it. The story itself hasnt aged perfectly it needed some updating that just didnt happen. Imagine Crystal under a different name and you get a shabby imitation of the classic anime and a weak contender in a genre that it revolutionized. Its just sad. 4. Conclusion: Ill Probably Be Mad About This Forever I spent a lot of time being extremely patient and forgiving with this series. I managed to convince myself I was enjoying it for about seven episodes I was in a dark place in 2014 okay?. There are a select few good moments that have made me smile or laugh but its like picking chocolate chips out of a pile of gravel. Its not worth the effort. Mostly Im sad that this shallow lifeless adaptation of the manga is how a lot of people are going to get introduced to Sailor Moon. The original manga story is a gem that could be easily polished but instead the director decided mostly to copy and paste and to make some baffling edits here and there. This series was not given the respect or care that it deserved. Those two years of secrecy and delays were frustrating but not nearly as frustrating as the result: a soulless slapdash mess a totally transparent cash grab. Its the anime equivalent of a cheap bath gift set presented like its luxurious and classy but its just glorified hand soap full of cheap fragrance. Its the McMansion of animes. Its not even one you live in its like a model home. The Bluths live in this anime and its falling apart around them. As a longtime Sailor Moon fan its hard for me to evaluate Crystal without comparing it to other incarnations but as a reboot for such a popular longlived franchise its a massive letdown. Toei churned out some garbage so they could sell us all 1000+ worth of special edition Blurays. I gave up on Crystal for a while after the first arc. I just kind of ignored it until the third season. It does get better but only marginally nobody on the animation staff ever bothers to google what do cats look like Usagi and Chibiusas heads are still misshapen all the time and even the betterwritten scenes ring hollow thanks to the shoddy foundation theyre built on. The series has now been completed with two twopart movies for the last two arcs and to be clear... I do think the movies at least look good and I feel pretty smug that they eventually did go jeez fine well just do the 90s anime style again but the breakneck movie pacing keeps them narratively shallow and unsatisfying. At its worst Sailor Moon Crystal is a crime against the concept of anime. At its best its something pretty to look at while you remember how much you liked the 90s anime. Actually at its best its a few short animated scenes about the outer senshi polycule taking care of their magic daughter. Thats about the only thing in this series I would really bother to go back to. The best I can hope for at this point is that it will lead people to other better versions of Sailor Moon. Sometimes the things you loved were fine the way they were. I didnt spend my days longing for a new Sailor Moon anime before I knew it was happening. And now that it exists I mostly wish it didnt. Maybe its ok for good things to be over. Maybe Im wiser now. Maybe I just spent 15 on a gashapon Cutie Moon Rod. Dont judge me.