Revisiting "Sailor Moon"

Viz Media recently put subtitled versions of several of their popular anime series on Youtube, including all 200 episodes of the original "Sailor Moon."  The show ran for five years in Japan from 1992 to 1997, but I'd only ever managed to see heavily censored versions of the first two seasons on syndicated American television, and later a handful of the unedited first season episodes.  Nevertheless, "Sailor Moon" had a huge impact on my viewing habits.  It was the first anime I counted myself a fan of, and it was my gateway to all kinds of cult and foreign media.

So, now that I had access to all the episodes, including the seasons I'd never seen before, it was time to revisit the Sailor Senshi.  Not having the time to watch everything, I cherry picked my way around the filler episodes, mostly watching the beginnings and endings of the major arcs.  A big chunk of my prior engagement with the series was through fanwork, so I was already pretty familiar with characters like the Outer Senshi and the Starlights, but it was nice to finally see everyone in action.  As I expected, the show doesn't hold up to adult scrutiny - it's aimed at a young audience, has haphazard worldbuilding, and is super repetitive by design -  but it's still fascinating to watch.  

The U.S. localization of the show, handled by DiC in the '90s, changed all the characters' names, added new music, and toned down the violence and darker storylines.  However, they couldn't hide everything.  The entire main cast was systematically killed off at the end of the first season before being magically resurrected, and no amount of editing could remove all the intensity and emotion from those final episodes.  No other kids' program I'd ever seen got that dark, and it's a big reason why the show stuck with me.  Years before the internet, schoolyard gossip clued me in to the fact that DiC had changed two feminine male villains into female ones.  When the third and fourth seasons were dubbed for Cartoon Network's Toonami block in the early 2000s, there was a ton of online chatter about how the lesbian senshi, Uranus and Neptune, were rewritten to be very affectionate cousins. The fifth season, featuring a trio of gender nonconforming senshi in risque battle outfits, never made it to broadcast or cable as far as I can tell.  Even now, the first two seasons of "Sailor Moon" on Youtube are rated TV-PG, but it's TV-14 once the lesbians show up.  At least Uranus and Neptune are finally acknowledged as a couple in the latest Viz dub.      

Watching the original Japanese versions, the show is remarkably blase about these elements.  Girls being in love with other girls and boys transforming into girls when they fight are hardly a big deal when you have Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask's bratty six year-old daughter from the future, Chibi-Usa, come to the past in the second season, join Sailor Moon's household, and constantly fight her future mother for her future father's attention.  Major characters get killed off multiple times, which I guess isn't so bad when they can be reincarnated or resurrected by the power of love, and nearly everyone is destined to live happily ever after in a far-future utopia anyway.   By modern standards, the portrayals of gender identity and sexuality are very rough.  There's a lot of outdated stereotyping and a lot of awkwardness.  And yet, it's tremendously heartening to see the show's wholehearted embrace of inclusivity, pacifism, and girl power.  Sailor Moon may be an overdramatic teenage girl, but her feelings are treated as important, and her capacity for love and empathy are what often save the day.  She makes friends with everyone, including most of her major villains, and accepts them for who they are.

The show was so ahead of its time, it still doesn't feel like the rest of us have quite caught up.  Twenty-five years later, the fifth season of "Sailor Moon" with the transgender senshi may still be too controversial for many modern viewers.  The influence of the show on both Japanese and western animation has been significant.  Pretty much every subsequent magical girl show owes a debt to "Sailor Moon."  On this side of the ocean, the recent crop of LGBT friendly cartoons like "She-Ra," and "Steven Universe," have taken cues from the Sailor Senshi too, with some creators citing it as a direct influence.  Despite the show initially not doing well in the U.S., it attracted a dedicated fan base that helped keep "Sailor Moon" on the air in some markets, and eventually led to the unedited episodes being released on home media.  To this day, I can't think of a female-led anime series that is more widely beloved.  

I haven't had a chance to check out "Sailor Moon Crystal," which is a remake of "Sailor Moon" with different aesthetics but no apparent increase in budget.  Frankly, I'm not impressed by the animation quality and especially not the CGI heavy transformation sequences.  The original series might have been limited by its budget and resources, but it produced some iconic hand-drawn animation over the years.  The OP and ED sequences and all the variations of the transformation sequences have been my favorite parts of this rewatch.  

That, and finally figuring out which senshi had the notorious "Star Gentle Uterus" attack. I love "Sailor Moon," but but I'm not going to ignore that when it was terrible, it was *terrible.*  No matter how things change, "Sailor Moon" is always going to appeal to a niche audience, and that's just fine.  It's good to know the show is still there for those of us who appreciate it.

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