Sailor Moon is a classic anime/manga series by Naoko Takeuchi. The first manga was published in 1991, and the first anime episode was released in 1992.
This Sailor Moon review is for the original anime/manga…essentially the only thing I’m not covering is Sailor Moon: Crystal. Also I will be using the Japanese character names instead of the English versions.
Sailor Moon was my first introduction to anime. I watched it when I was three and begged my mom to make me Sailor Moon footie pajamas (which she did). I have every doll they made except for Neptune and Tuxedo Mask, and had the entire Death Buster Arc on VHS.
Making this review impartial was difficult, but I’ve done my best.
Sailor Moon is the magical girl series all other magical girl series want to be. Few anime/manga of any genre have ever outperformed it and it has maintained stable popularity as a classic series.
Sailor Moon follows the adventures of Usagi Tsukino and her four friends as they discover that they are magical warriors called “Sailor Scouts”. Each scout has a patron planet that identifies them and serves as a reference point for their powers. (Sailor Jupiter deals with lightning, Sailor Mars with fire, etc.)
Usagi has a love interest in Mamoru Chiba, whose alter-ego is another crime fighting super-human named Tuxedo Mask. The series follows a basic romantic plot-line where Usagi and Mamoru fall in love, with intermittent bursts of magical mayhem to spice up the plot.
The series goes through several villains as it progresses. Each of Sailor Moon’s five story arcs receive their own villain and subsequent additions to the cast. The second arc introduces Sailor Chibi-Moon, Sailor Saturn and Sailor Pluto, while the third focuses on introducing Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune. “Starlights” and additional characters are also added later, as per usual with long series.
As much as I adore Sailor Moon, I have to say that it got weaker as it continued.
The first three arcs are pretty strong, but by the last two arcs the story started to fizzle. The exception to the quality drop being the last arc’s villain, Galaxia.
Galaxia has been my favorite Sailor Moon villain and overall bad guy to date. Sailor Moon has a history of good villains, but Galaxia has packed the most punch. She had the same sparkle and interest that the older Sailor Moon characters had, which helped pull the last arc up. The plot around her, on the other hand, was average at best. The story-line of the fifth arc could have come from any series at any time, nothing marked it as uniquely “Sailor Moon”.
Not to say that Galaxia is the best character Sailor Moon has to offer! The rest of the cast has plenty of really good characters too, but picking just one “favorite” when I’ve watched the show for so long is hard. The characters I related to when I was three are NOT the same ones I relate to now as that I’m in my twenties.
As far as visual quality, I have to say, that the animation and art is dated, and often distracting in its raw corniness. When it’s pretty it’s gorgeous, but when it’s not, it’s just not.
Please watch Sailor Moon, even just a few episodes. It gives you so much insight into how shojo developed into what it is now and it has the BEST transformations of any magical girl series. It is part of the 90’s anime trinity for a reason, it was put beside Dragon Ball and Saint Seiya for a reason.
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