Moon Prism Power makeover!
What They Say:
Episode #1 “Usagi – Sailor Moon”
Preface:
A few years shy of twenty years ago I came home from school one day, kicked off my shoes, and flipped on the TV. I idly channel surfed while waiting for whatever cartoon started at 2:30, and found myself stopping on three girls in short skirts running from an airplane.
“Holy crap, what is this is stupid animated Power Rangers with girls thing…”
I went to make some nachos.
The next day I found myself back on the same channel, watching the end of the same show. A few weeks later I’m witnessing the death of one of the baddies with another character wailing in grief over his dying body.
“Maybe there’s something to this show after all.”
Thus began a journey which ended me up here, nearly twenty years later, using my free time to write about manga and anime.
Sailor Moon was many people’s gateway drug into the expansive world of anime. When it first aired on US TV in 1995 it was a syndicated anomaly. Now it has recognition as a classic franchise whose storied history of it’s licensing woes, it’s adaptations, and it’s fandom have spanned the entire industry and contracted back upon itself. Once upon a time it was hard to find anyone into anime or manga who wasn’t familiar with the story of Sailor Moon.
Time moves on, and there are more than a few people now who have never read the manga or seen any of the adaptations of it which have been created. Legally speaking, much of the franchise was simply out of print in the US for almost ten years. That’s a generation of fans who have never heard “Moon Prism Power” or met a talking cat named Luna.
Well, that’s all about to change once again.
The hype that has surrounded this release means that it’s being held under a microscope by nearly the entire anime watching populace. No matter what Toei animation does, someone is bound to be disappointed by some aspect of the show. The original adaptation was not immune from such criticism, although time and nostalgia might have clouded the memory of those complaints.
Going into this new vision of Sailor Moon I really only had two expectations, that the animation will be cleaner and the shorter running schedule means it will be a tighter story. The creators, most of whom are Toei veterans who have worked on the Precure series, have stated that this adaptation would stick closer to the manga. With Naoko Takeuchi having more of a say in the animation this time that was expected. Considering how much the original series deviated from that it meant that there would probably be less monster of the week episodes, a good thing. However, it also means less time for character development, which is my greatest concern.
So, with all of that out of the way, on with the show!
Kate O'Neil
http://www.fandompost.com/author/sonicbug/
Kate has a long history of leaving pieces of herself all over the internet, alighting upon fandom after fandom to briefly taste of its nectar before flitting away. She has accrued a collection of manga so large she believes her home may now have structural integrity issues. She also watches anime, plays video games, and occasionally writes and draws. You can also listen to her on the Fandom Post Radio podcast, available wherever fine podcasts are streamed.