I know it’s been ages since I’ve done one of these Anime/Manga Pick posts, but I’ve decided to do a new one to talk about one of the better anime shows of the past spring season. The show that I speak of is the third season of Sailor Moon Crystal. Now I should probably be honest and tell everyone that at this time I’ve only seen the first four episodes of season one and absolutely none of season two. But I just couldn’t resist watching this season since it covers my all-time favorite story arc of the original Sailor Moon manga, and since the show is based so closely on that manga it wasn’t like I wouldn’t know what the heck was going on in the story. One more thing that I should probably mention is that this review will probably contain a few spoilers, so anyone who hasn’t seen this season of the anime yet might want to stop reading now. Now that I’ve gotten all the disclaimer stuff out of the way, on with the review!
Plot: Life has once again become peaceful for Usagi and her friends after dealing with Black Moon. That peace is soon shattered though when cases of what the media calls “atavism” start popping up all over the city, and Sailor Moon and the gang are forced to do battle with monsters that emerge from the bodies of humans. The team eventually traces the source of these creatures to a school known as Mugen Academy, which turns out to be a front for a new group of enemies known as the Death Busters. At the same time, Usagi and the others also encounter a mysterious new duo of Sailor Guardians known as Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, who prove to be not all that friendly. Meanwhile, Usagi’s daughter from the future, Chibi-Usa befriends a mysterious girl named Hotaru; and it turns out that Hotaru is connected to the team’s newest enemy.
Sailor Moon is one of the most iconic names in the world of anime and manga. It’s first anime version helped turn many young people in the 1990s, myself included, into raging anime fans. So when a major series like this gets a reboot, the expectations for that reboot are extremely high. The first two seasons of Sailor Moon Crystal fell so short of those high expectations that they were bashed upon by fans all over the Internet. In fact, the criticism of the show was so negative that it took away my desire to watch those first two seasons.
Yet I just couldn’t stay away from this third season of Sailor Moon Crystal, as it covered my favorite of the original manga. The Infinity/Death Busters arc of the manga has a lot of things that I really like. It had a mad scientist, parasitic aliens, an evil private school, and so much more. Plus this is also the arc that introduced my favorite character from the series, Hotaru/Sailor Saturn. It also really helped that the reviews for the season’s first episode on the Anime News Network website was extremely positive, so at the first opportunity I got on Crunchyroll and started watching each new episode as it came out.
Pros: One of the major positives for Sailor Moon Crystal’s third season is that it doesn’t have the animation and character design issues that plagued seasons one and two. Also gone are those horrible CGI transformation sequences that looked like they came out of a bad Sailor Moon videogame. Those transformation sequences were a huge problem for me when I watched the first four episodes of season one. These positive changes to season three are largely thanks to the series getting a new director and a new character designer. Of course it would’ve been much better if these new staff members had been running things from the very beginning of the anime, but in this world we just have to be happy with what we get.
Another good thing about this season of Sailor Moon Crystal, and about Sailor Moon Crystal as a whole, is that it uses the story of the original manga. Don’t get me wrong, the 1990s anime version will always have a special place in my heart, but after I had read the original manga I found that it did a lot of things better than the first anime series. In the case of the Death Busters arc, the original manga excels more in the way it portrays the story arc’s villains. In the 90s anime, Dr. Tomoe was just a poor guy who had no choice but to let himself be possessed by an evil alien in order to save his daughter’s life. But in the original manga and in Sailor Moon Crystal, Dr. Tomoe is a true mad scientist whose desire to turn humans into what he calls “super beings” drives him to turn his daughter into a lab experiment and to eagerly serve a race of invading aliens so he can use their eggs to further his work.
Then we have the “monster of the week” creatures that Sailor Moon and her team battle throughout the story arc, the Daimons. In the 1990s anime, the Daimons were a bunch of alien-looking women who wore oddly themed outfits that look like they might’ve come from some odd strip club. Meanwhile in the original manga version, the Diamons are parasitic monsters that burst out of the backs of their hosts and attack everything around them that moves. In Sailor Moon Crystal, we even get to see that the Diamons totally consume the bodies of their host organism thanks to Sailor Mercury’s special computer goggles (Move over, Goggle Glass!). My only complaint about how the Diamons appear in Sailor Moon Crystal is that I wish they were black and red with yellow eyes instead of black and purple with red eyes. That would’ve made them look more grotesque and less like these big shadowy blobs.
Finally we come to portrayal of the main villain in the Death Busters arc, Pharaoh 90. In the 1990s anime, Pharaoh 90 was just this big planet-like thing that only growls and occasionally fired random energy blasts through the portal to Earth, at one point hitting his trusted servant, Mistress 9. We don’t even get to see Sailor Saturn fight Pharaoh 90 in the 90s anime! All that happens is that Saturn jumps back through the portal Pharaoh 90 is flying towards, Super Sailor Moon flies in after her, a few seconds later we see this huge explosion, and then the next thing we see is a beat-up Sailor Moon standing there holding a baby Hotaru in her arms. Meanwhile in the original manga and in Sailor Moon Crystal, Pharaoh 90 is this big hideous blob creature that tries to merge himself with the planet Earth so he could drag it back to his native star system to act as the new home world for his people. And he has dialogue!
Cons: The biggest weakness of this third season of Sailor Moon Crystal, and of the entire anime adaptation in general, is that it’s just a little too faithful to the original manga. Each episode of this season covers an entire chapter of the Death Busters are from the original manga, with a major exception being the first two episodes of the season being the first chapter of the story arc split in half. As a result, a lot of the episodes feel a bit overloaded and few of the battle scenes are even a bit rushed. I will admit that the battles in SM Crystal are done in a much better way than they were in the original manga, but they still could’ve been a whole lot better if they had been given more time. If this season of SM Crystal had been twenty-six or even fifty-two episodes long instead of just a measly thirteen episodes, there would been plenty of time to do the battles properly and do a lot of other things that the show could’ve and should’ve done.
For an example, let’s talk about Sailor Moon’s battle with Dr. Tomoe after he turns into a horrible alien monster. The battle as it’s shown in Crystal is still a whole lot better than the way it was shown in the manga. Dr. Tomoe turns into a monster, and then in the next panel Sailor Moon blows him up with a Rainbow Moon Heartache attack. Even so, the writers could’ve done so much more with that battle if they had split it up into two episodes. For instance, Sailor Moon could’ve tried to reason with Dr. Tomoe during the battle. Her efforts still wouldn’t have done any good, but the resulting conversation would’ve fleshed out the mad scientist’s motives a whole lot more than that little five-minute flashback during the first half of the episode did.
On that note, the ultimate flaw of Sailor Moon Crystal following the original manga so closely is that it picks up the original manga’s biggest weakness. That weakness is a failure to truly develop any character that isn’t named Usagi or Hotaru. Character development is actually an area where the 1990s anime excels, compared to the original manga. As cheesy as the formula of the 90s anime was, a lot of the episodes would rather conveniently tie in with some personal problem that one of the Sailor Guardians might be facing during that week, putting that character in the spotlight for the episode. Then of course we have two of the major stars in the Death Busters arc, Haruka and Muchiru a.k.a. Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune. The 1990s anime version of Sailor Moon gave a lot more depth to their relationship than the manga and SM Crystal ever did. The 90s anime version of the Death Busters are even did an episode that showed how the two first met. Meanwhile in the manga and in SM Crystal, it seems that Haruka and Michiru’s relationship is merely heavily implied.
Even some of the minor villains from the Death Busters arc were given a little more depth in the 1990s anime. I’m sure many of us remember what an airheaded basket case Mimete of the Witches 5 was. The 90s anime also seemed to imply that Kaolinite and all the members of the Witches 5 wanted to get into Dr. Tomoe’s pants, which is something that I could take or leave. My point is that while the Sailor Moon manga had the better story, the 1990s anime had the better level of character development. Sailor Moon Crystal could’ve had that same level of character development too if it had more episodes. The fact is that the writers and producers of this anime adaptation had a golden opportunity to take the original story of manga and make it better, and they totally screwed it up.
Overall: The sad truth of the matter is that Sailor Moon Crystal’s third season is not a perfect adaptation of the original manga. A perfect adaptation would have to be one with the story of the original manga and the level of character development from the 1990s anime. Yet while this season of SM Crystal is not a perfect adaptation, it is still a worthy one. The fact is the series still did a lot of things right and still lived up to many of my own expectations for this season. So I highly recommend that anyone who’s a fan of the original Sailor Moon manga see this season of Sailor Moon Crystal at least once.
Rating: 4.7 out of 5
