Sailor Moon- First Series
This morning I finished the first season of
Sailor Moon. What follows are my thoughts and impressions upon the series, presented as honestly as I can give them, in as best an effort to organize them as time allows.
There are certain elements I suspect are shared between every story-telling genre. There are sort of flashes of some subconscious story we're all telling again and again, if you will. I'm going to disregard that, though, for the sake of making some comparisons that I found profitable in easing myself into a genre I know basically nothing about.
For starters, I found the general lay out of Sailor Moon to be extremely akin to the lay out of the old Super Robot shows. The villain, Queen Beryl, is subservient to a greater power, and she orders her minions, who in turn dispatch the monster of the week. Her aim is the acquisition of a power source guarded by the heroes. Obviously things like this predate Super Robots, but its my main exposure to them.
Usagi is our average hero, plucked from the masses to wield a greater power as part of a larger destiny. This might come as blasphemy to some, but as the series wore on, I felt that Usagi was almost comparable to Amuro Ray of Mobile Suit Gundam. Kouji Kabuto has a lot in common with her as well, right down to several similar personality flaws, but where they differ is that Kouji's personality flaws didn't play into as grand a punishment as Amuro's did, and Usagi's character is at the root of a good chunk of the show's finale.
Left, Amuro Ray, Right, Kouji Kabuto
Usagi is an interesting character to me because she's presented as a somewhat exaggerated, but fairly acceptable fourteen year old girl. She's got her head wrapped up in fairy tales, has some personality issues stemming from her still being a child and others from her desire to be an adult, and responds with fear rather than exhilaration at the prospect of having to fight monsters on a daily basis. She can be selfish, incompetent, and comically stupid at times. However, what I found most interesting about her was that underneath this veneer of a dopey teenage girl was a well of unexpected strength and sobriety.
As the show draws to a close, this real Usagi is slowly made more and more apparent. She cares about the people around her, to the point that she wants to defend them from the Dark Kingdom by surrendering to them. One by one Usagi's foolish antics get the other Sailor Scouts killed off, until she's left with a hollow look on her face.
Honestly I liked this angle. This is why she reminds me so much of Amuro. As the war with the Dark Kingdom wears on, Usagi loses more and more people until it breaks her. She musters the last of her strength to defeat her foe, and in the end it leaves her broken in body and spirit. As the show draws to a close, we hear her wish one last time that she had been given a boring, mundane life instead of being drawn into this war. At that point, everything goes dark, and for a moment the audience is left to ponder the harsh fate of a girl forced into war, who watched her friends die because she wasn't able to protect them.
I liked this ending. It was harsh, it was cold, but it was also unflinching in its consequences. Usagi and her friends had been forced to pay the ultimate price to bring peace to the world. It was bittersweet and decidedly so for a show I assume was aimed at young girls, dreaming themselves of being a princess like Usagi.
But the show didn't end there. Instead it all comes back and its all been reset and everyone is okay and happy as if the show had never happened at all. And I'll be honest: I really don't like those kinds of endings much at all. It feels to me as if the show undid everything it had accomplished in the final episodes of its run. I see
why it ended that way, and I understand that a sequel dictated that the Scouts survive and that everything carry on, but I think I would've preferred it to end on that melancholy note, leaving the retcon for the beginning of next season, since we have to retread some old ground next season now anyway.
Moving on, Sailor Jupiter was easily my favorite of the scouts. Her humorous flaw, her terrible taste in men, helped provide a romantic and foolish side to a character who was otherwise incredibly athletic and sensible. It balanced her out. I really liked how active she was, though. It kinda made me think of hot blooded protagonists, and I'm a sucker for those.
Also I mostly just felt that Supreme Thunder was the coolest move any of the Scouts had in their arsenals.
Anyway, I had a good time with this show, and I'll be carrying on with the series. I know there are some movies coming up, but beyond R being the next series I don't know what the order of things I'm supposed to watch is.
