Sailor Moon 90s Anime differences

 After reading this check out my Semi Filler Free Guide to Season 1 of the 90s Anime.
https://jaredmithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/p/smf.html

My understanding of the perspective of people who prefer the Manga and Crystal versions of Sailor Moon even for the Dark Kingdom arc has improved quite a bit lately.  Largely from listening to episodes of the, seemingly now defunct, loveandjusticepodcast.

The fact is the Manga was made for women by women while the 90s Anime was made by men to appeal to a much broader audience.  This podcast in particular gets really upset by what the 90s Anime seems to think of teenage girls when talking about it's episode 16 in the Podcast on episode 5 of Crystal, and episode 36 in the podcast on episode 11 of Crystal.

I've also noticed that specifically the Ikuhara directed episodes seem more likely to have Panty Shots.  The Manga and Crystal go full Magic Skirt trope.  And I realize that can be seen as a fetishization in itself, but in the context of Sailor Moon where the original version made by a woman for women didn't want us seeing under the skirts but then an adaptation made by men goes "but Panty Shots are realistic" it really comes off as creepy.

To me the 90s Anime will always have the advantage precisely because it has so much filler, I want to spend time with these characters and I really feel like we don't actually in the Manga and Crystal.  And in this genre especially I prefer redemption narratives for the villains.  But there are a lot of issues.  Vrai is also someone who was very dismissive of Lindsay Elis's Stephanie Meyer video because they think "we need to hold both boys and girls media to a higher standard" which is bull#h!t.

Two people who have gone all in on saying every 90s Anime change was for the better are Zeria in and Vraikaiser.  Zeria is a Lesbian Trans woman of color and Vrai is Non-Binary.  So they are more marginalized then Cis-Women.  But I think their preference for 90s Anime Sailor Moon largely comes down to being Ikuhara fanatics.  Like Zeria has literally only talked about Sailor Moon in the Ikuhara video she made.  Utena was nearly perfect, but it seems a lot of people don't want to face that Ikuhara is still a cis-het male who isn't exactly perfect.  I like a lot of whiningaboutyuri's old critiques of Penguindrum, YuriKuma and the Utena movie. 

In particular both are pretty all in on the idea that Mamoru was an inherently problematic character and Ikuhara fixed him.  Zeria says this in the Ikuhara video, Vrai said it in a comment on one of Josienextdoor's Sailor Moon blog posts.  And this area is in particular one where the loveandjusticepodcast disagrees, they see the Manga and Crystal as a beautiful gender inversion of how romances usually go in Superhero stories, and 90s Anime Mamoru as a complete jerk and also a pretty bad father.  And I have to conclude that they're right, precisely because of the complexity in my history as a Cis-Het Male viewer of Sailor Moon.  Because in the 90s Anime he is at his most likable when he's being treated as an audience surrogate for whatever male viewers the show has.  Like in episode 6 of SuperS where only he actually listens to Artemis, that episode is entirely a depiction of what a lot of dudes think women are like, and it's rather odd to see a Shoujo show seemingly vindicate it.

Every version of Sailor Moon has Yuri, but only the 90s Anime ever gave us any remotely canonical Yaoi.  Thing is the gay male representation on that show was always villains, sympathetic villains but still villains.  It's clear that Zoisite and Kunzite's relationship is what is good about them and not tied to being evil.  But at the end of the day the only Shitennou redeemed was the one most interested in women.

In the Manga and Crystal it is highly implied that Haruka may be Non-Binary, Bi-Gender or Fluid or something and not simply a very Butch Cis-Woman.  Some people are hostile to that, as if it would make HaruMi less Gay or something, but it really doesn't.

So I've kind of changed my mind a little bit on what I've said before about the Infinity Arc.  The core story is absolutely better in Crystal, but S is still valuable for the additional time spent with the characters, even if some of that is kind of counter productive.

[Update July2020: most of what I said below about Rei I kind of regret now]



Many of the characters are significantly changed, but the most controversial one is usually Rei.

Rei Hino's personality in the Manga is....... nothing, there is none.  And some people like her being all stoic and silent but it's not a good personality type for who's supposed to be the Lancer.  And Manga Rei was written to be this very Japanese notion of an ideal woman, so her lack of interest in men is NOT because of some western feminist value in having female characters who don't need men, it's very much about Japan's purity fixation which is also why none of the Senshi ever lose their virginity in the present narrative and only Usagi does in the future.  And this purity fixation has often been viewed as problem for this genre as a whole.  I value Asexual and Queer representation but I also feel it's precisely the hyper spiritual women who need to be allowed to lose their virginity.

Rei in the 90s Anime is written inconsistently, 90s Anime Rei is really two characters.

Rei-A who's a nerdy yet responsible young woman and is a Tsundere to Usagi because someone writing this show seems to ship them.

Rei-B who's boy crazy and selfish and a vindictive B!tch to Usagi because she wants to bone Mamoru.

Rei-A is who I'm a fan of, who I think the Sailor Moon lore needed.   Rei-B is very annoying, and unfortunately seems to be the only one of these two the loveandjusticepodcast ever sees when watching the show.

Now you can say those are pretty naturally different interpretations of the same character.  Romantic rivals are constantly shipped together by the slash fans, and every Tsundere is accused of being a mentally unstable b!tch by whoever isn't a fan of that character.

For me there are Tsunderes I like, like Kagami Hiragi, Rin Tosaka, Taiga Aisaka, and interestingly many main characters of 90s Shoujo stuff I've watched.  And then there are ones I think are horrible like Misty/Kasumi, Asuka Langley and 90s Anime Mamoru.  Rei in the 90s Anime has this strange ability to both kinds of Tsundere.

I'm not even inherently opposed to the idea of Rei dating Mamoru briefly, again the prophetess is the last character I have any investment in keeping chaste, and if Tuxedo Mask is supposed to be the ideal male specimen in this universe then clearly Usagi wouldn't be the only Senshi to take an interest.

I'm pretty harsh on the last two seasons of Pretty Little Liars sometimes, but season 6b and 7a had this story-line of a brief romance happening between Spencer and Caleb but then inevitably brings Caleb and Hanna back together and it was sooo good.  It shows you can have a love triangle between two female friends without it becoming dumb cattiness.  But that isn't how this Rei and Mamoru story-line plays out.

The old DiC dub often leaned towards Rei-B in situations where the Japanese and Viz don't nearly as much.  That being many people's first impression of the show I think has had an unfortunate lingering effect on how people perceive Rei.  This is most clear in "Fractious Friends"/"Usagi Abandoned: The Falling-Out of the Sailor Guardians" where originally Rei was entrusted with the Moon Stick by Usagi but DiC had her steal it.  But ironically enough in episode 35(31 in DiC order) Rei is much better in the DiC.  First off early on she seems to just accept Darrien being destined to be with Serena, not much of a hint of jealously at all, I like moments like that.  And then there is the context of the Slap (which they tried to remove but it's basically still there), in the DiC Dub it's what that scene should have been instead of the Japanese and the Viz Dub where it mostly seems like she's just upset over losing Mamoru.  Now in fairness to Viz I think Christina Vee was trying to play it like what she's saying is not what she means, but this is one moment where no one would have been upset if they just used the DiC script.  I actually teared up a little re-watching the DiC version of this scene for this post.

Now I'm gonna get really speculative and say that I think Rei-B is mostly Junichi Sato's doing and Rei-A is Ikuhara. Now I know Ikuhara directed episode 26 where Rei does one of the most evil things ever, and there is no Rei-B type character in Hugtto.  But from what I recall (I still haven't watched most of the Black Moon and Dream arcs) Rei-B seems to be completely absent from the R Movie and pretty rare in Sailor Moon S, where Ikuhara had the most creative control.

One last thing I want to say about the loveandjusticepodcast is that I am annoyed at the hypocrisy of constantly bringing up the age gap issue when they're hating on Nephrite/Naru but being pretty enthusiastically for Nephrite/Makoto, Mako and Naru are literally the exact same age.  When it's a cartoon I never care about the age gap issue, it's all fantasy and for many both boys and girls being swept off our feet by an older person is our top fantasy.  Of course this hypocrasy manifests the other way as well when people bring up the age gap to hate on Senshi/Shitennou shipping yet most of the time those haters are really just motivated by liking the Shitennou's romantic story-lines in the 90s Anime.

If only people cared about Wedding Peach enough to spend hours podcasting about the differences between that Anime and Manga.