Sailor Moon Crystal Season III Ep 1 [ fangirl flailing – First Impression ]

With Spring comes the newest Season of Sailor Moon Crystal, and I will now proceed to shriek wildly as my favorite childhood show returns in its new iteration. As the person who reviewed Crystal last season I cut it a lot of slack, but I am 20 times more excited to see the transformations in Season 3 as I was before with the other seasons. Season 3 of Sailor Moon Crystal covers Sailor Moon’s S Arc, or the Death Buster Arc, and the studio returns giving it no 3-d animation whatsoever. While the change could be considered small, magical girl animations simply work better with sparkly animated ribbons in 2-d format. I can already attest that in hindsight it will be difficult to watch Sailor Moon Crystal’s earlier seasons if only because it is glaringly obvious how awkward 3-d animations for transformations are now that we have proper ones. That doesn’t change some of the problems that both possessed, such as making Usagi’s limbs look like noodles when she is transforming, but I’m honestly not going to complain too much because so much about this episode was genuinely done better and just. . . right in a way that was not done before.

To talk about the new season of Crystal we have to talk about the old ones: how does this stack up? Well, all of the original content from these seasons has essentially followed what Naoko Takeuchi did in her manga. There were always some general concerns about the manga itself though, scenes that the original anime edited to make a little less weird or expanded on to give us more time with the senshi. Crystal follows the much more compact nature of the manga and this means that people get a lot less screentime before dying or letting us know some serious plot shenanigans are about to happen. I’ll always clearly remember the Death Busters arc of the original for having episodes where Usagi embarrassingly fought a tea ceremony monster and many other hilarious antics, which Death Busters original cannot quite replicate. Crystal has always been faithful to the manga, but it also has a very noodly animation style which led to some unhappiness and critiques. A lot of problems were with budget, something that the series really could not help, but the criticisms were still valid even if they had a good excuse for them.

Now we’re in a point of the story where the awkward and problematic parts of the story are passed as well as a point where the budget has been seemingly raised. So far the new episode of Crystal has led me to believe nothing short of the fact that our patience and continued devotion to the series has paid off, Crystal only gets better and better. A lot of the animation still has awkward points or weird anatomy, but it is also very pretty and extraordinarily shinier. The monsters are well animated, and given how horrifying they can look that is a big deal, but I would still say that the original anime had the benefit of a grungier traditional style to scare us a little more. The original didn’t stay scary for long, however, and Crystal will be a completely different season to you if you only watched the original. While I’m sad that there will be no more heart crystals (an aspect that made the dub title the Death Buster arc ‘The Heart Snatchers’ arc in the original anime) because I found them aesthetically pleasing, I am ecstatic to see that so far there has been a good amount of justice done to the source material.

Aside from animations for the transformations, there are still some epic new animated things we can appreciate. First off, how clearly gay Michiru and Haruka are. There aren’t any cut-aways and they’re very clearly labeled ‘dating’ in this first episode. If you saw the original anime you know the terrifying history of being called cousins when you are dating, and even in the sub it felt as if they cut away from how glaringly clear it was they were together in the beginning. That being said, no denying it now suckers! And if you haven’t yet seen the episode then there is one more treat: the entire ending song is a duet and animated dedication to Haruka and Michiru and their relationship. I’ve never seen something so unapologetically say “Well remember the cousin thing? We’re lesbians. We’re dating. We’re in a relationships that will provide you much happiness this season. Also probably a lot of pain. Enjoy!” other than perhaps Revolutionary Girl Utena, but that ending is probably even more gratuitous than Utena’s opening.

It’s too early to say every problem is definitely fixed and it’s perfection, but part of me wants to say that anyway. It’s hard to criticize something when it feels so right and hits your nostalgia issues. I will say this opening needs time to grow on me because I don’t like the audio as much as Moon Pride, but my only happiness was in how great the visuals in it were, like Hotaru and Chibiusa! I can’t get over some of the new aspects of the show. I’m psyched to see how they handle the new things going on, and I can’t wait until we get into Hotaru, Sailor Uranus, and Sailor Neptune. Overall, I’d rate the new season of Sailor Moon Crystal nothing but an improvement and an awesome start to a new season!

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