Moonlight Shines Eternal (The Sailor Moon Post: Part 5)

Previously- Part One: The Crybaby Who Saved The World | Part Two: The Crybaby Heals The Future | Part Three: The Crybaby's Idealism Vs. The Pair's Practicality | Part Four: The Crybaby's Dreams And The Dark Queen's Nightmares

Part Five: The Crybaby's Uncorruptible Eternal True Self

"Things end. That's all. Everything ends, and it's always sad. But everything begins again too, and that's... always happy."

I don't believe it. After months of watching this show, months of thinking about it, and months of trying (and stalling) to put those thoughts into words... we're finally at the end. Sailor Moon Sailor Stars. Once we get these couple of thousand words out there into the air, that's it. I'm finished. Well, almost finished. There's a little surprise that will be lurking at the very end, but we've got a whole show to talk about here. One I've been all but chomping at the bit to talk about. Let's get it all out there, clear as day, like a real thesis statement sort of thing. Sailor Stars is not my favorite season of the show. What it manages to be is both a greatest hits compilation of many elements that made the previous four seasons resonate with me in some way, as well as managing to introduce some concepts with inspirational weight that still remain with me. It all sounds like a recipe for great success, but it just doesn't come together in the end. It's so tantalizingly close to doing it, but at the last second they make a blunder. No, I take that back. A blunder is something akin to stubbing your toe. This is a creative writing decision that utterly betrays the show at the eleventh hour and very nearly murders it before it can ride off into the sunset. In the Sailor Moon R post I made a big show out of Usagi and Mamoru's manufactured relationship "drama" and how goddamn toxic it was. I called it the first of two betrayals the show would pull on me. Sailor Stars has the second. We will get to it, and we do have a way of reading it that still crackles, but by God am I going to be angrily scrawling about that one. I just want to put that out there before I begin. This season was still really engaging and had some amazing concepts to think about, and I'll be singing its praises for the next... oh, 2000 words? Rough estimate? We'll take a lot of sugar with our bitter pill. For now, it's time to begin Sailor Stars.

Moonlight Shines Eternal (The Sailor Moon Post: Part 4)

Previously- Part One: The Crybaby Who Saved The World | Part Two: The Crybaby Heals The Future | Part Three: The Crybaby's Idealism Vs. The Pair's Practicality

Part Four: The Crybaby's Dreams And The Dark Queen's Nightmares

“I am, and always will be, the optimist. The hoper of far-flung hopes, and the dreamer of improbable dreams.”

Well then. Let's push through and continue this wild odyssey. It could be said that Sailor Moon peaked with Sailor Moon S, and everything afterwards was a bit of a decline in quality before leading to the ultimate betrayal. It would be really easy to build to that narrative, but I don't want to. I don't want to because that really isn't how I saw the show, but it does put us in an interesting position. The fourth season, Sailor Moon SuperS (I guess you say it like the plural of the word "super", just for mental pronunciation. Wait, is it like a "super" version of Sailor Moon S? Holy shit.), is a wild deviation from what happens in the equivalent arc of the manga. Now, the 90's anime itself is a wild deviation from the manga in a lot of ways. So many so that my pal Alina, when reading through the previous essay on S, reacted in confusion and surprise and stated something along the lines of "I don't remember ANY of this happening in the manga!". The recommended viewing guide I'd been using to cut out a lot of the monster of the week episodes and shotgun the plot-relevant stuff was a bit more disdainful about SuperS as well, calling it basically a filler season. To say I find this line of thinking incorrect would be putting it mildly. What SuperS lacks in "plot-essentialism", it more than makes up for with strong thematic resonance and personal growth for the characters. If you're already down with the whole utopian idealism thing, what's a bit of so-called filler to get in the way of the characters growing and learning? 

Moonlight Shines Eternal (The Sailor Moon Post: Part 3)

Previously- Part One: The Crybaby Who Saved The World | Part Two: The Crybaby Heals The Future

Part Three: The Crybaby's Idealism Vs. The Pair's Practicality

"Listen. If someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?"

(Copyright claims are a headache and a half in the USA, so if you can't see the above you'll have to make do with this. Same visuals, but it has the dub opening theme to it... which is iconic in its own right. Aaanyway. Sailor Moon S!)

At last, then, we've come to it. Sailor Moon S, the third season of the show and the exact midpoint of this entire experience. I have not-so-subtlely been building this up as the point where everything changes, and that isn't a lie. With overall reflection, I can say that Sailor Moon S was my favorite season of the show to watch. It was the most consistent with its themes and it hits some of the highest highs that the show will ever reach, while avoiding doing anything untoward like betraying my trust in its characters for the sake of a cheap shock. It would be easy to claim that the entire arc of the show's quality creates a parabola, with Sailor Moon S at the top. Easy, but not entirely accurate. There are some aspects where it falters compared to what's come before, and some aspects of what's to come that will resonate better with me. In the broadest strokes, though? Holy shit it's a masterpiece. We've taken our first steps into a bolder world with the show now, and the battle is bigger than just throwing magic powers at space demons. Sailor Moon S wants to tell a story about people, and about a clash of ideologies which cast a shadow on everything that's come before. Hold on tight. Everything's about to change.

Moonlight Shines Eternal (The Sailor Moon Post: Part 2)

Previously- Part One: The Crybaby Who Saved The World

Part Two: The Crybaby Heals The Future

"Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?"

(If the above video is blocked because you're American or otherwise, here's an alternative for you. )

Somewhere between here and now, we basically lost my 2003 experience of watching the show. As I said, I watched from the tail end of the first season right up to the filler arc which opens up the second season, Sailor Moon R, here. There's nothing to comment on, as I remember it being an okay story at the time. The most notable thing about it is that it brings the Sailor Senshi and Tuxedo Mask out of retirement by giving them back their memories, restoring the status quo. Not only that, but Usagi and Mamoru actually become a couple! Isn't that sweet? Maybe I should have revisited the Doom Tree arc to see how it holds up, as it's not really held in high regard. Either way, it doesn't matter. We've finished in 2003, basically. (There will be one small exception in the next part.) I don't know why I stopped back then. It could just have been my summer job keeping me busy, and then college keeping me extremely busy. 2003 has waned now, and we're focused on what I felt and saw in 2018. This leads us to both an inspiration and a problem. The inspiration is our new force of change which literally falls out of the sky to crash into the status quo of Usagi and Mamoru enjoying a date: a mysterious pink-haired little girl also named Usagi, soon dubbed "Chibiusa" to avoid confusion with our heroine. Actually, it's not right to write about her in such a vague fashion. Chibiusa is an incredibly important part of the show whose actions influence the very heart and soul of the narrative. We're still going to be talking about her up until Part Five, believe it or not. She's nowhere near my favorite character, but she's still vital to how the show is going to progress. For the time being, though, she's just sort of a bratty character who hoodwinks her way into living under Usagi's roof as her cousin by hypnotizing her family. It sounds like I'm making this shit up, but I'm not.

Moonlight Shines Eternal (The Sailor Moon Post: Part 1)

(Here it is. The big one. The thing I've been thinking about all year, and been writing about all summer. For the next five days we'll be posting all 20,000+ words of this massive critical analysis/feelings post about Sailor Moon, the 90's anime. One post per season. And dummy me thought I could slip it all into one post, or maybe even two or three. Nope. It ballooned out and took on its own weight. This is easily the most massive single thing I've done for the blog, and I'm really happy you all finally get to read it. I hope you'll join me for the whole ride. Without further delay, let's get into it.

Special thanks to Alina for giving feedback and critique, as well as all the pals who let me yell about this show with them for the past nine months.)


Prologue: The First Transformation


It's April of 2003. There are many things happening in the world, and many hit songs on the radio. We're unconcerned with world history right now. This is personal history. Here and now, at this moment in time, I am a high school student. I am also feeling fucking miserable. I can't recall exactly what I'd come down with. A stomach bug? The flu? It doesn't matter. The point is, I'm not going to high school today. My ass is laying on a couch all day, trying not to die. With nothing better to do, I switch on the television to see what I can watch to take my mind off of things. It's all dull and uninteresting to me from the satellite guide, but then something jumps out at me. On YTV, a Canadian channel that many of you may have nostalgia for, they're showing that old show, Sailor Moon. Yeah. I remember when that was new, just a short eight years ago. Yeah, it had that cool song and the girl with the really long hair who fought monsters. It was like, one of the first anime shows I'd ever laid eyes upon. Yeah, I liked that. Fuck it, it's almost over anyway and I feel like complete death. Let's throw it on. A remote control button press that will live in infamy. On my TV screen, in April of 2003, Sailor Moon is slipping and sliding on an ice rink while a pair of figure skating monsters come after her. It looks like a tricky situation, but she saves the day in the end. Huh. That was interesting. The episode's airing again later in the day and I have nothing else to do, considering that I feel like shit, so why not? So I view the whole episode. I like it. I can't tell you why now, as the particular reasons for this first transformation are lost to time and memory. Maybe it was the camp factor, maybe it was the fever, or maybe I, a teenage boy in 2003, just really liked the cute teenage anime girls.

Coming Soon: Another 31 Days, Another 31 Screams!

Oops. We went dark for five months there. I didn't intend it. I've been working on a grandiose giant series of posts that I've alluded to a lot on Twitter, and... well, I think Douglas Adams must be haunting me because I've become a great big procrastinator about it. Now I'm writing this after five days of PC hardware havoc left me without the ability to write, and I'm going to basically lock myself in the room and finish the finale of the big post this weekend. With luck. You'll see it before the end of September... because that's the great big looming deadline hanging over my head, ain't it? October. The thing I'm announcing here. The third instance of our patented 31 Days, 31 Screams series in which I write short snippets about a bunch of spooky media, once a day, in October. After that is NaNoWriMo which will take all of my writing energy. If I don't want the post to come out in December then I am going to have to buckle down and finish it. I'll get to that right away, but first I want to get this out there.

Yes, as I said, the 31 Screams marathon is making its return! An increasingly desperate me will be looking for 31 pieces of spooky media I've not talked about yet to look at and... well, talk about. It will prove to be a fruitful and productive time on the blog, and this is where you fine folks come in! I always open up the floor to spooky media suggestions around this time, just because my worldview can be a bit limited and I love the idea of pulling from someone else's perceptions to do something I normally wouldn't. So. Here's your chance. Pop a comment down below with any spooky media you think should be covered on the blog in October, and I'll cherry pick the ones that sound neatest and roll with them. Let your horror inspirations be heard! Subject me to some really wild and gonzo shit that will make me go "What the hell do I write about that?". I don't know how many more of these I have in me, so let's go all out. What the hell.

I await whatever you cool kids out there have planned, and in return? Well, with any luck and nothing melting or whatever... next week I'll have something for you. The big one. Oh God almighty help me. Look forward to it... and to the marathon!