Official Notice: Sailor Moon Crystal might experience slight delays as Oki is in finals period, but reviews will continue as normal after a two week period.
Sailor Moon’s new season continues as we seriously lampshade the tropes from the original anime when all the Sailor Guardians begin analyzing the fact that the mysterious figures at the scene of the Academy appear to look like their new friends, Haruka and Michiru. I have to say I give a lot of credit to Naoko for having people honestly acknowledge this and getting rid of the concept of magical identity concealing tiaras (which was never stated but the general trope behind it is the same). Still, I love identity revelation tropes so I’m going to be pretty bummed there is no longer cool scenes like that. Not to mention the original anime theme for Uranus and Neptune is legendarily good and I’m hesitant to see if they can recapture the magic of their transformation music. Yes, I put up with the subpar animation, cg transformations, and two weeks between episodes but the one thing I am worried about is if the transformation music won’t be as good. Yes, this is my life and these are my choices.
The focus this episode is on Uranus and Neptune and the three talismans. Now, as someone who saw the original anime this was a concept that is different to me. I have officially stepped into ‘territory I know nothing about from the manga’ so while I used to be able to say, hey Crystal has issues but it faithfully follows the manga, now I’m left going “well this is sure different but it’s good different!” In the original anime what the Death Busters were doing was extracting ‘heart crystals’ from individuals with pure hearts in order to find the crystals that would turn into three talismans. The characters who play a big part in the talismans did not wield special objects as we see in Crystal. From what I know this is from the manga as well. Now, hear me out- the original anime went out of its way to hide what the talismans were, what they would create, and who had them. When the answer finally came to me as a little girl I was like “Oh my God no way!!!” As I mentioned, I love revelations. Now, Crystal. Well.
If you know anything about Sailor Moon then the talismans in the original are objects we see in plain sight consistently in the ending and opening of Crystal. We see the objects in the actual story.
This is true to the source material but there is no real hiding it, so it leaves out a bit of the mystery. You have to ask yourself: in a show aware of itself to the extent the magical girl outfits don’t really hide their identities at all, how is it the characters don’t start thinking ‘Gee I possess this really cool item that does really cool stuff and we’re looking for really cool stuff so maybe this really cool stuff is the stuff we’re looking for.’ Maybe the original anime did that in order to keep a mystery. Anyway, it’s not terribly painfully obvious or anything if you are watching from Crystal only, so I’m not going to explicitly scream it in your face. So unless the talismans are all new objects, I know what they are and I feel like some of the characters should too. You know, the ones who were already looking for them.
What I’m also shocked to see from this anime to the original is the sheer nature of how one offed Eudial is. In the original anime there was no one more genuinely prolific as a villain than Eudial in this arc, sans maybe Kaolinite. The two of them easily shared a spot and it was Eudial who revealed the nature of the shows actual mystery. If she’s really dead that changes pretty much the entire revelation and I have no idea what is going to happen. Magic? Magic! The magic of this adaptation is that I don’t know everything and I don’t want to, it’s truly a pleasure to learn more about a series I hold so dear to me and see such a wonderful new adaptation the likes of Season 3. Furthermore there is a translation thing that a lot of people have taken a different way. I speak (some) Japanese but the way that Uranus says what is translated as “Do you take for granted that a woman can’t beat a man” is really weird. People seem to be taking is progressively but I’m confused, because to me it sounds like a sarcastic play on ‘don’t take for granted that I’m supposed to be stronger than you because you can’t protect anyone that way’ which I think she means to say, don’t just assume I won’t fight at my full capacity or you can’t protect anyone. It’s going to be funny when it’s revealed she is a 
woman because hearing the way she said it, it isn’t the same as it’s actually spoken. I think Makoto will feel like a dunce once she realizes what she actually meant, because if Haruka were actually a man it would sound sexist. However, knowing what I know, it’s progressive. Basically I think the way it was said is meant to be something they think on and only makes full sense if you know Haruka’s non binary identification: simply put, never think anyone will go easy on you no matter who you are or you will never be able to win or protect anything. Really, gender doesn’t matter, but you can’t blame anyone for not pulling punches for you. Darn you idiosyncrasies my English wants me to address the contradictory nature of the translation but my Japanese knows what she meant. LANGUAGE BARRIERS!
Meanwhile, Tomoe Hotaru is perfect and I want to bottle she and ChibiUsa up in a forever time capsule of adorable moe that will never be injured or hurt in anyway.
Oki
I do miss the more defined personalities the villains had in the 90’s anime. The Death Busters were definitely quirkier in that version that in SMC. But oh well; no point in comparing an orange to a grapefruit (ie they’re similar enough but also very different).
The people, looking or the talismans actually now they have them. Basically they are looking or the third one only.