Sailor Moon

People disliking it doesn't mean it bombed. Plus, online fandoms are very vocal and tend to be the minority.

Say, if each of the nine Solar Sailor Soldiers was a martial artist, what would their overall style be like? I'd imagine to be like this:

• Usagi: As the one who hates violence and hurting others the most, I ping her fighting style as being centered on defense, with the aim being to wear down an attacker into submission with their own attacks rather than actually attacking them.
• Ami: Very technical and efficient style, focusing on disabling the opponent with quick and precise strikes to their weak points, as well as turning their own attacks against them with aikido/judo-style throws, and all sorts of techniques designed for use by small and physically weak fighters to take down much larger and stronger foes. Also, very much on the Boring Yet Practical side in terms of appearance.
• Rei: Aggressive style that seeks to overwhelm the opponent with a relentless barrage of hard-hitting strikes and excruciating holds.
• Makoto: Balance between offense and defense, with a side order of capitalizing on her often having the physical size and strength advantage.
• Minako: Normally very flashy and Awesome, but Impractical in its movements, her style abruptly shifts to a chillingly efficient and merciless mode when pushed too far (say, by threatening Usagi's life).
• Hotaru: Very similar to Usagi, though when push comes to shove in a real fight, she'll radically shift gears and start delivering debilitating attacks to the enemy's vital points and bone-breaking holds.
• Haruka: The most aggressive and brutal of the group. Favors preemptive attacks and a "defense" that almost entirely consists of parries and counterattacks (if an enemy punches, she dodges the blow and then punches the offending arm to hopefully break it), all the better to remain constantly on the offensive.
• Michiru: Her style has the most elegant-looking moves, flowing like streams of water... which belies how deadly efficient her strikes can be. Unlike Haruka, she prefers to let her opponents attack her first, and as soon as they make a mistake she makes them pay for it ten times over.
• Setsuna: Imagine a Jack of All Trades between Ami's analytical approach, Haruka's brutality, and Michiru's elegance, and you get Setsuna. Not better than any of them at their specialty, but only second to them in it, and synergizing them all with each other for a scarily lethal result. Also, she's a hardcore Combat Pragmatist who won't hesitate to use weapons against an unarmed opponent or even deliberately killing moves if it's not a sparring match, tournament or some other kind of fight where the rules forbid such a thing; any cries of unnecessary escalation of force fall upon deaf ears, as her sole concern is to end the battle as quickly as possible. Also, she absolutely loves to freak out her opponent by making it look like she has Combat Clairvoyance.

Thoughts?

Edited by MarqFJA on Jul 4th 2019 at 8:50:36 PM

So... not an expert but gonna say it, Usagi's style as you described it sounds like Aikido and Hotaru's like... well kinda like Bá Gua with its palm strikes.

Anybody weigh in on the others?

Edited by akanesarumara on Jul 4th 2019 at 7:55:35 PM

If it were a Pretty Cure Season, I'm sure they'd have Martial Arts skills.

That was my hope for Crystal was that they would give the Inner senshi hand to hand combat, and let Venus use her sword skills from Sailor V, but nope.

But didn't that show follow the manga?

In terms of pacing and Hotaru's backstory, yes it did. It left out a lot of the stuff that the anime put in, which many complained about because as a lot of that anime only stuff was before the introduction of the outer senshi, which meant that while it was filler in that it didn't drive the plot forward, it fleshed out the inner senshi more due to more time spent on and with them.

I was a huge fan of the original Sailor Moon anime as a girl, don't get me wrong, but when I tried to rewatch it years later I only got about as far as the end of the Shitennou (Jadeite, Nephrite, Zoicite and Kunzite) before the sheer amount of episodes became overwhelming. I liked Crystal though.

I watched it all the way through the Dead Moon Circus arc.

One thing that I always found just a tad awkward even at that age was the age difference between Usagi and Mamoru.

...Actually now that I think about it, everything about Mamoru was just a tad awkward.

Edited by M84 on Jul 5th 2019 at 4:15:10 PM

Sub or Dub? Isn't their age difference only 2-3 years?

It's not a sub or dub issue, it's a manga vs. anime difference. In the original manga and Crystal, Mamoru is in high school, while in the 90's anime, he's a university student. Here is an article that discusses this issue:

https://www.tuxedounmasked.com/why-was-mamoru-changed-to-a-university-student-in-the-anime/

According to this, at least one reason for this change is because the anime attracted a somewhat older viewing audience for whom a college student version of Mamoru would seem more mysterious and impressive than if he was in high school.

Edited by Rainbow on Jul 10th 2019 at 8:42:45 AM

I was also under the impression that at least at the start the anime staff weren't sure and made a guess and it was only after that the decision was locked in the Naoko Takeuchi clarified matters. By which point it was too late.

They really should have asked before hand then.

Though I also thought that was the case myself: they made a call because of how old he looked and turned out to be wrong.

Mamoru being uni aged is one of the very few things about the 90s anime that I think it did worse than the manga. It's just weird for a 17 year old to be hitting on a 14 year old, soulmates or not. I'd say it was 1990s Values Dissonance but Shugo Chara! did it even worse (which is why it's never getting an English dub).

I only saw one volume of the Shugo Chara manga. is it like that there too?

From YMMV.Shugo Chara:

....

Tonight, we riot.

That says it was for the anime. The trope pages are very anime-focused, so I'm unsure what's in what version.

EDIT: Apparently her love interest is someone her own age?

Edited by lalalei2001 on Jul 11th 2019 at 10:57:49 AM

I have only read the manga but it is the same for both. The protag is 10 and her primary love interest is 16/17. She does have another love interest that is around her age but he isn't the one being pushed as her main one which is pretty much official.

Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 11th 2019 at 2:04:09 PM

No, her love interest is the 17 year old. I've never seen the anime but I used to watch a lot of AMVs about it years ago. I always thought he was 13-15 but apparently he's 17. He gets weirdly sexual with her, like licking her cheek iirc. It was something I thought cute as teen but it's totally weird now.

Edited by Pichu-kun on Jul 11th 2019 at 12:46:04 PM

People disliking it doesn't mean it bombed. Plus, online fandoms are very vocal and tend to be the minority.

Pulling up an old article back in 2015, since I did follow Crystal when it originally showed on Niconico, and distinctly remembered news about it bombing.

"In Japan, Crystal was streamed on Nico Nico with the first episode being viewed 1,130,861 times. The second episode had 454,772 views, and the last episode currently has 66,438 views. It’s a steep drop, showing that the ONA (original net animation) lost nearly 70% of its viewership just after the first episode, and continued the dwindle as the anime progressed."

I'd say having a reboot of a mainstream anime struggling to crack 60k views for its Season Finale on a free streaming site does count as bombing.

Edited by Servbot on Jul 12th 2019 at 11:01:52 AM

It could always make it up later, though I'm curious why it bombed.

I know there was a lot of reasons why, but was it predominantly because of the story itself or because of the adaptation being bad? I know a lot of the things people like about the series were anime-only stuff, but the manga itself is still popular so I'm guessing Crystal itself was just mediocre.

Edited by Pichu-kun on Jul 17th 2019 at 8:27:52 AM

I think it was half being a shot-for-shot remake that moved too fast, and half changing stuff that didn't need changing.

An interesting note about the 90s anime, the pacing at the start would have stretched even further. Usagi was planned to go solo until episode 20.

Honestly, I think Crystal (first two arcs at least) would've worked better without the inners at all. Not as senshi at least. They don't add much, so more time to develop the main family that matters in the grand scheme of things.

Naoko Takeuchi just didn't know what to do with a team. She only made Sailor Moon in the first place because she was approached for a Codename Sailor V anime but was asked to throw in a team of girls rather than focusing on just one, and the Sailor Moon manga was the result. Toei's writers presumably knew how to handle an ensemble cast better and needing to fill a whole season of an anime allowed time for "filler" episodes that worked wonders in fleshing out all the girls as individuals and giving them all a chance to shine.

That being said, I think if you cut the team people would have been even angrier. A lot of people have favourites that are not Sailor Moon, Tuxedo Mask, or Chibi Moon.

Imo Crystal's flaws (clear budget cuts in the animation aside) was it had huge boots to fill and adapting the manga story into an anime just ended up broadcasting its weaknesses to a wider audience. Not that the manga is bad, but it's very different than the highly-beloved anime.

Edited by PhiSat on Jul 17th 2019 at 5:29:41 AM

Well, that's the thing. Crystal makes for a convenient target of ire. A lot of the things people point out as problems in Crystal are also problems in the manga.

But I'd say the group is specifically the reason for Sailor Moon's broad appeal. The variety of girls on display with their own fears, strengths, and personalities means that odds are, everyone has a favorite to look up to. Even in the anime Usagi's still the protagonist, but it never failed to show how flawed she is. That a teenage girl who's lazy, a crybaby, a bit of a slob, and is perpetually late for school also has it within herself to be a strong young woman not just in spite of, but because of her flaws is still an important message for kids.