It’s been a long time since I watched Sailor Moon Super S the very first time and I am not at all surprised to find that I consider it as unwatchable and excruciating as I felt the first time! It’s got just about everything I don’t like all crammed into a very thin plot (Chibi-Usa, Pegasus, creepy Amazon Trio ripping women’s dreams from their chest while they beg them not to….shudder…) , and while I – like all good fans – have rewritten and retconned it in my own head to be a valuable piece of the mythology, in reality it’s really pretty eh, unless you genuinely enjoy Chibi-Usa and Usagi screaming at each other for a lot of episodes.
That said, there are actually a couple of really interesting plot needles among the rest of the plot hay. So, I’m basically ignoring the story of SuperS for all of those. You know the rule – it’s 25 years old, there can be no spoilers.
The first interesting plot element is that the Amazon Trio are all male (do not try to make sense of the name, therefore) but Fish Eye is the second gay male character who crossdresses in the series. With all the women who pass as men in the spotlight of ‘S’ and “Stars”, its sometimes easy to forget Zoisite and Fish Eye who provide the queer quotient in the first season and “SuperS.”
The animation suffered significantly for this season. Remastering could only work so far when the original just wasn’t that great to begin with. The sound quality was surprisingly good, but as the music was mostly on automatic, it adds little to the overall experience. Even the end theme “Baby Baby Love” is not one of the strongest in the pantheon of Sailor Moon music. Especially when you consider the end theme of Stars, which is weep-messy-tears worthy.
I hope you will forgive me for otherwise ignoring much of what happens in this season. I would probably not even be reviewing it but for the most amazing thing being included on Disk 1. The Sailor Moon SuperS Special consists of 2 short stories both of which are basically the only reason this whole season has for existing. This is the first official release of this special in English and you must run out and watch this immediately if not sooner.
Part 1 of the SuperS Special follows Haruka and Michiru as they encounter the Dead Moon Circus at a resort hotel. Haruka is sick in bed and flirting with the maid who is taking care of her, forcing Sailor Neptune to fight the Dead Moon Circus alone. The punchline of this episode is Michiru’s line – which is the one of the three best lines in all of Sailor Moon – “There seems to be a misunderstanding. It’s not worth saving a world without Haruka.”
Part 2 is the only Chibi-Usa story I can tolerate and is one of the chapters from “Chibi-Usa’s Picture Diary” from the manga.
Ratings:
Art – 6
Story – 2 Ask me how much I care about Chibi-Usa and Helios. Have a seat. It’s gonna take a while.
Characters – 3 Hawk’s Eye and Tiger’s Eye did not age well as character designs or concepts, but we’ll get more Inners, later.
Service – More BDSM creepiness than I’m comfortable with, frankly.
Yuri – 10 A whole episode of Michiru and Haruka being so very, very gay.
Overall – 9 for the Special, 6 for the rest of the season
The SuperS Special and the SuperS movie are good. The rest of the season can go hang. ^_^
SuperS is not great BUT when I re-watched it I was astonished at how blatantly its a critique of rape culture. It has some genuinely fantastic moments of demolishing terrible beliefs about sexual assault and the violence wrought against women in modern societies. But, yeah, I can’t really claim its an enjoyable thing to watch, exactly.
The problem here is that it wasn’t critiquing rape culture, it was fridging the women to force a reaction, not giving a nuanced, thoughtful critique. It’s a cartoon for children. “Bad guys= tentacles and violation of your body, but you can’t do anything about it unless someone saves you, oh well” is not really a valuable lesson.
In our country, SM was not divided into seasons, so I wanted to ask, could you at least briefly name the arcs that S covers?
Sailor Moon S covered the Death Busters storyline, with the Witches 5, Mistress 9 and Pharaoh 90.
Thank you for your help!
By the way, an update of the original series with a new dub is planned in Russia soon, so it is possible that Sailor Moon will become a pioneer in the field of positive representation of same-sex relationships on Russian TV. The point is more in the popularity of the series itself than in the growth of progressive views among the industry, but I hope that the rerun of the show will have a positive effect.
That would be nice. You will have to tell us how it is!