As I wrap up watching Sailor Moon Crystal, Season 3, I find that there is indeed a lot to talk about in this final disk of Crystal so far.

First, let us speak of the actual story, in which a very few tweaks to the plot turn a messy confusion into a rather horrific arc.

The Outer Senshi tell us that when they are gathered together and their Talismans resonate with one another, Sailor Saturn appears with the sole mission to destroy everything.

Sestuna says that it was unlikely for them to all have been reborn at all, and for them to be born together is even odder. And we’re told by Haruka and Michiru that they were used to being alone on their planets. They imply that being along was by design to keep their Talismans from being together, and resonating.

We know that as the Senshi awaken in this world, they have imperfect recollection of their past lives. We saw it with all the Inners and Haruka and Michiru. (Not Setsuna, because she is a particularly strange case. PLUTO appears in ‘R’, but we know that to be the Pluto of the future, because for her to be reborn on Earth, the Pluto of the second season had to die and Meioh Setsuna had to be born as a human some years before Tsukino Usagi was born.)

All of this is why I want all anime with magical girls to have an adult, rather than a toy or animal, as a companion.

The story is told wrong because it’s told by people who don’t have all the information and no one told them any different. 

They believe that, when the Talismans all gather and resonate, Sailor Saturn is caused to be reborn, but it’s pretty obvious that the Talisman resonate because Sailor Saturn is being reborn. Ami really drops the ball on the whole genius thing here.

So what we have are three young woman who are practically unsocialized in their interaction with other Senshi, lacking a guide with the ability to say, “Kids, this is not on you. Saturn will appear when she appears and when she does, your Talismans resonate.”  And we have to assume that their memories of the past are imperfect when they say Saturn destroyed everything, because she explicitly does no such thing, even as we watch her attack Pharoah 90. It’s easy enough to imagine that she never destroyed the Silver Millenium.  Saturn’s use of the word”invader” reminds us that she, too, is an Outer Senshi, tasked with defending the Solar System from invaders. Duh, right?

So I propose that Pluto, Uranus and Neptune remembered what happened the wrong way ’round. The Silver Millenium was attacked and invaded, but not from the outside, from within, so the Outers could do nothing until it was too late. When they arrived, they saw Saturn destroying what was left in order to keep the future safe, because she too has ties to Chronos, aka, Saturn.  Their Talismans resonated as they saw her, but when they were reborn it all got mixed up in their heads, because they are fricking’ children. Haruka and Michiru are 16 years old and this Setsuna is 20, she says she’s a first-year in college.

All of this is to say, I got very little work done today. ^_^

I think Sailor Moon Crystal Season 3 is brilliant, and if I wrote fanfic anymore, I’d write one, because there is a terrific story in there.

The music is good, the writing actually works better here than in the original anime (and the idiotic final confrontation of Outers and Sailor Moon that made no sense is disappeared appropriately.) Professor Tomoe comes off looking much worse, by having any desperation or desire to save his daughter stripped and, as a result, Hotaru’s story is darker and more moving.

Director Kon’s touches of visual homage to the original anime are on point. 

In conclusion, I liked Sailor Moon Crystal, Season 3. It was good.

Ratings: 

Art – 9
Story – 10
Characters – 10
Yuri – 0 really
Service – Not really…unless you are quite desperate

Overall – 10

I hope that the fourth season has been postponed until after the 25th anniversary celebrations are complete. Ideally, they have been working on it all this time, so as a theatrical release it will look amazing. Knowing Toei, they have done nothing and will cheap out and rush the whole thing if the project gets revived.  

Why yes, I am finally getting around to watching Sailor Moon Crystal, Season 3 just so I can put it on this year’s Top Yuri Anime list. Come at me, I don’t care. ^_^

There were many legit complaints about the animation in the first two seasons of Sailor Moon Crystal, but when Kon Chiaki took the helm, it was much less an issue of animation badly done, than personal opinion about the manga versus the original anime designs. It will probably be no surprise that I came to really like the Crystal iteration of the Senshi because I am whole-heartedly in love with them in every version and cannot be convinced that any version is better or worse than any other. In fact, it was an actual delight to see the manga brought to life in the exact way the creator had initially designed it.

I said in my review of the season when it initially aired, Minagawa Junko and Ohara Sayaka did a bang-up job as Haruka and Michiru and I grinned like a loon the first time through. Well, here it is during my second viewing and here I am grinning like a loon. I really loved this disk. 

We get to see a Haruka and Michiru who are way more confident than the emotionally tortured teens of the original anime, but equally as convinced that their way is the only right way for everyone. Haruka’s seductive behavior feels far more like manipulation; trying to keep Usagi off-balance so she doesn’t take charge. And her non-apology for “confusing” Usagi would be enraging if we had time to process it.  But we don’t, because our attention is split between so many things – Chibi-Usa and Usagi’s growths, Hotaru’s story, the appearance of the Outer Senshi and the many mysteries that lay obscured behind them – some few of which will be made plain in the next half of the series. And,of course, the main plot.

The one genuinely weak part of this series is, shockingly, the translation. Several times on this disk Chibi-Usa’s name is translated as “Small Usagi” which is questionable even if that was not being used as a name.  I was yet again disappointed to note that this translation team still doesn’t get the reference to Ribon no Kishi and hacked the bit about Haruka having the heart of a man and woman to death, then stomped on it. I was not happy at this shameless display of ignorance and crappy translation. Heart of a man and a woman, goddamn it. HEART OF. Get the fucking reference right.

/wipes spittle off mouth/

Other than that, I still cheered when Setsuna returned and saved us all with Dead Scream, I felt terrible for poor, tragic Hotaru, and thrilled at Sailor Moon’s transformation at the end of the disk into Super Sailor Moon. 

The whole thing actually looked excellent in Blu-Ray, so I don’t for a secon regret getting it.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters – 10
Yuri – 4, mostly Haruka and Usagi, but then that scene between Haruka and Michiru brings it to 7.
Service – 2 some slight moments with the Witches 5 costumes and camera work being a tad linger-y.

Overall – 10

I am actually hoping that we get the 4th season movie as planned, because the Inner Senshi have really lovely power-up story /sequence in the Dream arc. I’d really like to see that animated.