Tokyo. Usagi, a 14-year old girl, is one of the weakest students in her high school. But one day she meets a talking cat, Luna, who gives her the ability to transform into Sailor Moon and fight against the forces of evil; Queen Beryl and her henchmen who drain the people’s powers. Usagi is soon joined by Ami (Sailor Mercury), Rei (Sailor Mars), Makoto (Sailor Jupiter) and Minako (Sailor Venus). She also discovers she was once a princess on the Moon. Together, they destroy Beryl on the North Pole, but die. Yet, they come back to life and continue with their lives, not knowing what happened.
Every critic should be aware of different opinions and be sustained when it comes to rating a movie or an anime – but when someone completely downgrades you favorite anime, the anime of your life, it’s hard to stay calm. The first season of “Sailor Moon” is actually one of the weakest since it was clear that the authors still were not sure how it should look like, but it already pawned a new way for the ‘magical girl’ genre. One of the best ways to describe this anime is to simply state that it’s a liberating fantasy on our rigid world, a pure romantic plot that brings innocence back to your heart and the most beautiful story ever told. It’s frankly a story only for the right, intuitive side of our brain, unlike most movies or animes made for the left side where everything is logical and realistic: it’s motto is: “Don’t think…feel”. The characters, from Ami Mizuno up to Minako Aino, are absolutely irresistibly cute, their facial expressions, looks of their eyes, movements and behaviors are contagiously alive and perfectly sum up every emotion the authors wanted to say, whereas the situations they encounter are magical. Even though few believed such a simple teenage fantasy good vs. evil story will have any success, it actually proved to be one of the most popular animes of the 90s, because at it’s chore it shows that despite all our knowledge, rational explanations and tight scientific analysis of the world we live in that took away every unknown dimension and showed the whole Universe as predictable and calculative, there will always be something in our nature that will draw us to the unexplainable and unknown magical side of our world.
The fascinating thing in Classic season is that it treats the story as pure children’s comedy 90 % of the time, and then it completely unexpectedly turns into it’s opposite, into such a dark and serious adult drama that it takes the ground bellow your feet. The final episodes are among those that shock you since they are so dark it’s black poetry, from the scene where the explosions on the North Pole melt the snow into water, but then freeze instantly leaving ice spikes with the senshi bodies on them up to the moment where Endymion grabs Sailor Moon by her neck. The moment where Zoisite is lying in Kunzite’s arms and his final wish is: “I want to die in beauty” and he creates flowers for that occasion, is real beauty. Also, some episodes are really clever, like no. 31, where Yuuichirou meets Rei in town and tries to ask her out on a date – if you look closely, behind him is a poster of a man, and behind her a poster of a woman, and their facial expressions change so subtly when the camera pans from one to another, it’s a delight. When he asks Rei out, the text on the man’s poster is “Now is your chance. Go for it!”, while Rei is flattered and the text on the woman’s poster is “My perfume…I am beautiful!” But when Yuuichirou gives up and leaves, the the man’s face on the poster seems sad and the text says: “Is it really all right?” Such a sly style is genius and is abundant in “Sailor Moon”. The clumsy teenage girl Usagi broke absolutely every cliché in the superhero book – unlike other superheroes, she is a girl, yet doesn’t wear make up and has different clothes in every episode, and an immature and imperfect but cheerful person, someone so down to Earth that her mischievous little brother even steals her towel in a public spa and leaves her naked. That’s why her rise to a mature woman as Sailor Moon is a fascinating transformation – it shows how even the smallest people are capable of greatest deeds.
Grade:+++
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