In Sailor Moon SuperS, Part 2, Disk 2, we finish up the Inner Senshi’s power up episodes with a shared episode between Makoto and Minako. It’s a fine lover’s quarrel, with some bold fashion choices by Minako, who favors “space idol, Jetson style” and Jun-Jun, who goes in hard for “Pat Benatar Music video couture.” (And if you miss either one or both these references, even after Googling, then just ignore them. They aren’t worth the effort to explain. Just acknowledge the cultural or age gap and move on.)

We then turn our eyes to Chibi-Usa with our full attention.

Have I ever told you how much Araki Kae’s voice grates on me? Well, let me tell you. We were introduced to her as Chibi-Usa, and of course she is meant to be grating, as Usagi is meant to be shrill. This was back in the days when there were Video rental stores and one of our local stores had an extraordinarily decent anime section.* So we were renting nearly everything they had.** One of the anime was Fushigi Yugi, which they had in full, in both dub and some sub. The first volume we watched in dub, but Ruby Marlowe’s voice made us irritated, so we switched to the sub…only to find that Miaka was played by Araki Kae. Clearly Miaka was a whiny grating character and there was nowhere to turn. So, though it’s not her fault, Araki Kae’s voice rubs me raw.

Midway through this disk, I decided this would be an excellent time to listen to the dub. Since I didn’t care what was going to happen, plotwise, I could just put it on and see how it went. I don’t usually choose dubs when I watch home video, not at this point for any reason other than I’m a seiyuu otaku. I’ve got no problem watching them, I sometimes put on Cartoon Network or something and let the dub of a cartoon I don’t care about it run. In fact, I’ve only ever see episodes of Naruto in dub. Dubs are perfectly fine.

This dub was honestly excellent. It took me a while to get the hang of everyone’s voices, but by the last episode of the disk I was able to just appreciate their work. Amusingly I had left subtitles on, so I could see where dialogue was changed. In general the changes worked well and in one or two moments, I actually preferred the English script over the somewhat dated and – if we are to be honest –  sexist, dialogue.

And then, Stephanie Sheh blew me away. There was a scene, possibly all of the Inners and Mamoru, sitting around talking about Chibi-Usa maybe being in love and Sheh said something and I literally stopped what I was doing and stared at the TV. She wasn’t dubbing a cartoon…she was Usagi. At no point did I feel like I was watching a dub…I was just watching Usagi. That was amazing.

I’m actually looking forward to watching some of Stars in dub now. So kudos to the VAs, because that was some damn fine work.

Ratings:

Art – 7 It seems to have settled down again
Story – 3 I just don’t care about Chibi-Usa or Helios
Characters – 5
Service – Makoto and Minako 4ever
Yuri – 0

Overall – 5

*Those were halcyon days as the *two* video rental places in town actually competed to have better anime sections. Then the places outside my town joined in and soon, we could rent a massive amount of anime from the 5 closest rental stores.

**Except – and I remember this clearly – we could never bring ourselves to rent Ping-Pong Club, which looked abysmal, even compared with all the outright anime porn we watched. I mean, when the story looks shitty as compared with Demon City Shinjuku, it is not good.

Sailor Moon SuperS, Part 2, Disk 1 functionally ends my interest in this entire season, with an episode that is supposed to be about Hawk’s Eye seducing Makoto, but ends up being about Ami seducing Makoto and Makoto seducing Hawk’s Eye, which I am fairly certain was the actual intent of the episode. Bad lessons about waiting for someone aside, I have always loved the image of Makoto and Ami dancing.

(When this series is all over, I will draw up the *actual* relationship chart. The Stars pamphlet was not just wrong about Haruka and Michiru. ^_^)

The rest of the disk is given over to the literal humanizing of the Amazon Trio, who learn that they are anthropomorphized animals, but decide that they do have a dream after all…to become human. I find this completely unbelievable. What animal wants to be human? We can’t swim, or fly or run, we can’t smell, we’re feeble compared to animals. But whatever, they get their dream as they are removed from the story, leaving us to wonder can hawks, fish and tigers be genderqueer? This is not, probably, the actual intent of the episode.

We are then introduced to the second set of bad guys whose story is not appropriately told and who desperately need a 21st century rewrite. Not for their sexuality, but for their history which will be dumped over our head at the end of the arc, like Gatorade at the conclusion of a sportsing thing. The Amazoness Quartet are important! Why do they get such a shitty arc?!? Chibi-Usa is the point of this whole forsaken season, you’d think that these being her Senshi might get a fucking mention. But that is definitely not the actual intent of this season, more’s the pity.

Back to this disk. Ami’s power-up episode was so much-better drawn than anything else on the disc, someone really put time and money into her. Rei’s episode was over-colored, like they had fixed it post-broadcast. But in every way Viz had control of, the disk was as good as SuperS can be.

Ratings:

Art – 6 Weirdly inconsistent
Story – 2
Characters – 4
Service – Ami and Makoto dancing is my kind of service
LGBTQ – 4 for Ami and Makoto, 0 for the rest of the season

Overall – 5 This low score is no fault of Viz or the VAs or anyone, I just really dislike this season from here forwards.

I was sort of half-assedly live-tweeting me watching this on Twitter and people were actually following it for some reason. So I’ll probably keep doing that. But the part I want to tell you about was my dream.

I had a dream that I was going to some amusement park where there was going to be a Sailor Moon Store with everything that had ever been sold. When we got there, it was actually some guy’s collection, so we couldn’t buy any of it. BUT – and this is the important part – there was a set of white matte bisque china plates with each Senshi shown in silhouette, half of their face on the plate rendered in their color. No lines, just the color cutout of half their face on the plate. I can see them vividly and thought they were the most beautiful things. I want someone to make them so I can own them. Anyway, that was the dream.

I sat through probably a dozen “Rashiku Ikkimashou” playthroughs of the end credits Saturday and I still don’t hate it. I have no idea why.

Disk 1 gave us the SuperS Special, with it’s Yuri lovefest. Disk 2 turned a little dark, but was deeply queer.  With Sailor Moon SuperS, Part 1, Disk 3, we find ourselves deep into the middle of the 4th season of the original anime, with virtually no more information about the plot than we had in the first disk. Less, because this disk devolved into a a kind of pissing match between Hawk’s Eye and Tiger’s Eye about how many women they can seduce while Fish Eye seeks to seduce men, during which they occasionally remember they have a specific mission to discover Pegasus hiding in a human’s dream.

Because the mission has largely been forgotten, there are a number of things that draw our attention in this season which are problematic. Even setting aside Chibi-Usa’s crush on a talking horse, which reads more “fantasy” than creepy, and some of the earlier, quite creep lolicon, there is the frankly sexually violent way in which the Amazoness Trio immobilize their victims, rip people’s dream mirrors out of their chests, open them, thrust themselves in and out while digging around, as their victims scream. This violent act is horrific on it’s own, but that it keeps being conflated with seduction…I find myself at a loss for words.

This season adds shotacon to the pile of things to be made uncomfortable by, if you’re keeping a record, with Fisheye’s lame attempt as seduction/assault/mirror rape of a young boy and…Shingo and Ami. This is an equal-opportunity fetish series.

As I contemplated writing this review, I struggled with this disk. SuperS is my least favorite season for any number of reasons, the above paragraphs among them. I was considering skipping this disk in fact, as it seemed to me aggressively straight, until I began to really watch it, through the lens of my 21st century understanding. All three of the Amazon Trio are gender non-conforming and Fish Eye is, to my eye, trans. Minako’s “two-timing” episode is a poorly constructed episode that I would rewrite into her being poly and pansexual, except that of course, the Amazons are an alien enemy, not two genderfluid humans. ^_^;

I used to feel sympathetic to the Amazon Trio, but I’m not feeling it this time. I find myself actually looking forward to the theatrical release of the first Sailor Moon Eternal movie (functionally the 4th season of Sailor Moon Crystal) in which we blow through them to get to the Amazoness Quartet (whose story is sadly abbreviated in manga as well as anime and also needs a rewrite.)  The manga also has the much better powerup of the Inner Senshi than the one on this disk, which strips the agency from the Outers and gives it to Pegasus…which was just annoying.

Technically, this disk looks amazing and I only picked up the DVD, not feeling enough love for it to get the BD. While the art is retro as always, the quality of the reproduction and sound is absolutely stellar, as if it had been made for digital. Great job with the remaster and no over-saturation of the color needed. Extras on this disk are trailers only.

SuperS is never going to my favorite season, but my favorite episode of this season is coming up on the next disk, so that’s something to look forward to!

Ratings:

Art – 7 It’s noticeably improved on this disk
Story – 2 So much screaming
Characters – 4
Service – This disk adds shota to the pile.
LGBTQ – 6 For an aggressively heterosexual season, SuperS is really queer

Overall – 6

This disk leaves me with three questions:

1) Where does Mamoru get his money? He doesn’t work, goes to med school, lives in a huge apartment and has a European sports car in late 90’s Japan.

2) Do the Inners get tired of buying clothes in the same colors as their Senshi fuku? Because this season they are all-in on the matching color scheme.

3) What lessons is this season supposed to be teaching us? Because I don’t think those are the ones we’re learning. ^_^