#This is likely not an ordinary review
While I watched Sailor Moon crystal I took a lot of notes on what I noticed. Some of it is quite important and other notes are just things I notiec or wanted to mention personally. So what I am first going to do is List the things I wrote down that I think are important to mention chronologicaly (Or at least as chronological as it can get as I wrote down all of that just WHEN I noticed it so something I mention might have happened an episode or 2 earlier already)
Also:
(-) = neutral aspect (doesn't affect rating)
(x) = negative aspect
Sailor Moon R = SMR
Sailor Moon S = SMS
Sailor Moon Super S = SMSS
Sailor Moon Stars = SM5
Sailor Moon Crystal Season 1 and 2 = SMC
Sailor Moon Crystal Season 3 = SMC3
(this will just spare me a lot of typing even tho most of these won't even be mentioned)
with all that out of the way we can now start I suppose
Episode 1
The first thing I noticed was the intro. In the beginning it was a very slow and sad sounding intro with Usagi sitting on the floor seemingly crying. After a few seconds of that it turns into a rather generic anime opening. There is not a lot to compare to SMS, because SMS only had a remake of the original SM and SMR opening. But compared to the action of the SMC opening the SMC3 opening sounded almost lame. (-)
The first thing I noticed about the actual series I think is worth mentioning is a little change in the character of Rei. In all of the original Sailor Moon the 5 girls constantly picked on eachother which is pretty realistic for a friendship and in SMC they seemingly never did that. In SMC3 however they decided to have them pick on eachother again which I first noticed in Rei because just as in the original she did it the most in SMC3. A very positive point imo because it brings the series closer to it's original (+)
The second thing I noticed was during the fight in this episode. In the original sailor moon series fights were a little onesided because each ot the girls had only 1 or 2 abilities. Despite SMC and SMC3 being a lot shorter they all now have multiple abilities and combine them more often which is very refreshing. (+)
The ending/outro is almost more "exciting" than the opening/intro to me which is a little weird (-)
Episode 2
They replaced the witches 5 office with a church inside of the acedemy and made the deathbusters seem more like a cult. Nothing to hate or love, just worth mentioning I think. (-)
What I enjoyed a lot was the fact that unlike in SM, SMR and SMS they are still using gadgets from SMC in SMC3. This was something that disturbed me very much in the original as the gadgets they HAD were just not used anymore despite them being very helpful in that situation. (+)
Episode 3
-
Episode 4
It is to be expected that the fights are a lot better than in the original SM series but they also seem a lot better than in SMC. (+)
Episode 5
I don't want to say bad but it was a weird choice to change the outro/ending every 4 episodes.
Episode 6
-
Episode 7
-
Episode 8
Episode 8 is where I realised that the Sailor Team can actually fly now? I'm sure they already did it in SMC but I just now actually like really realized it. (-)
I loved the way they intoduced Misstress 9 into SMC3 (+)
Episode 9
I love the new outro/ending. (-)
Episode 10
Now this is where things get a little weird but I don't want to put that into the notes so I'll just put: I liked the original story of Dr. Tomoe better. (x)
Episode 11
Other than Tomoe I like Hotarus backstory a lot more than her original one actually (+)
The design of Mistress 9's final form is insanely cool (+)
Episode 12
Queen Metalia, Nemesis and Master Pharao 90 now all had one thing in common which was their "lazy" design. They are all only just a pair of eyes. I get the idea of keeping them as ominous beeings or being something the human mind could not comprehend but it just seems a little lazy to me to have them all just be a ball or a mass with creepy eyes (x)
Episode 13
They now used the 1st outro/ending from SMC3 again instead of making a new one every 4 episodes like they did before (-)
It's weird that they ended the series on some kind of cliffhanger tbh (-)
As you can see up there, there are almost exclusively positive points. with all those I would actually consider it to be a near perfect remake of SMS. The felt like they were still the same. The story idea is the same. The ending is kind of the same but I have 2 major critic points which made me come up with the title:
Sailor Moon Crystal Season 3 is a great anime that failed to be a remake of Sailor Moon S.
The first one is the following: A tiny thing I realized around episode 10 turned out to be something very big which might be the main reason why I think it feels a lot different from the original. Because each of the 5 seasons of about 40 episodes either got a 13 episode remake or just a movie as a remake you "get to know" a lot less about the unique characters themselves. All these "filler" episodes the original sailor moon had is what defined it a little and maybe that only doesn't bother me because I saw all those episodes in the original and already know all that about, Rei, Makoto and the others. Maybe if I didn't watch the originals first that'd be something I'd be annoyed about because in each and every season of SM Crystal so far all 4 of the girls only got 1 episode for themselves.
I know that it's supposed to be a lot shorter but it just feels like a lot of depth was taken out of a lot of the characters in order to make the anime shorter
The second one is the following: It's the story. In its main characteristics SMC3 is too different from SMS to be considered an actual remake of imo. if somebody told me something got remade I would expext it to be able to serve as a replacement for the original but this is what I think SMC3 fails do. I know it's not a remaster, where they just copied everything and only made it prettier but this remake in particular is just too different. If you compare SMS to SMC3 it feels like 2 people were given the same base concept and made their own thing out of it. I'm only just glad both those seperate things turned out amazing. SMS is my favorite Sailor Moon season over all and SMC3 is doing everything SMC did wrong just a little better. Therefor my conclusion is:
An amazing anime that failed to serve it's purpose.
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