Thoughts - Sailor Moon Crystal

Okay, I am cheating a bit with anime, but I wrote down these thoughts and I thought I would share them. I finished Sailor Moon Crystal. And it was ehhhhhh. I didn't dislike it as much as others on the internet seem to. I think it does end up showing what were the strong points of the original series though.

The art/animation is seriously lacking. I do think I'm a bit more indifferent than most of the fandom was about this. But as I've been watching a ton of anime lately, I can say it doesn't stand up to today's standards. And I think as a big anniversary event, everyone thought they would try and make it look awesome and it looks kind of blah. The old show may not be up to today's standards either but you can see they put a lot of effort into it for its time and what it was.

Characters is where I think Crystal really shows what the strong point in the original series was. Because in Crystal no one but Sailor Moon, Chibi-Usa, and maybe Mamoru get any real character development. The other girls get personalities but almost no screen time to show those personalities off. The original might have a lot of filler but it was used well to expand the characters and make you care about them. (I feel like even the live action Sailor Moon did a much better job with the other characters).

Story is hard for me to judge. I did start re-watching the original a while back but didn't get that far. So, I can't tell if the case is I've gotten older so the story just doesn't hold up as well for me or if Crystal was just that lacking. I do think it is a show that if it had a stronger team working on it, there could have been a much stronger final product.

I will say the one big improvement with this show is Chibi-Usa is actually tolerable and actually pretty likeable by the end. They manage to really tell her story in a way that better explains her back story. Which explains a lot of her behavior. Also in this case, less episodes mean less screen time for her to be obnoxious.