The Sailor Moon and Wedding Peach Anime are connected.

Kazuko Tadano is a Character Designer I'm a fan of.

I still prefer the basic character designs of the Sailor Senshi in the 90s Anime over the Manga and Crystal, and she was the Character Designer for the first two seasons and the R Movie.  I was relived to learn this Character Designer was a woman, I would feel quite uncomfortable with preferring how men changed the designs of a female Mangaka. You could still argue she was designing them to fit the tastes of Sato and Ikuhara, which is an interesting issue to think about given how one of the episodes she also helped animate was Episode 21 - Protect the Dreams of Children! The Friendship Bound in Anime.

None of her replacements as the Sailor Moon character designer had the job as long as she did.  They were probably all hired to mainly follow the lead she set, which is a job I'm sure no artist wanted to do long term.  But they were good at it so I give them all props.

I have a long history of saying the only Magical Girl Warriors who look even better then the Sailor Scouts (I still call them that sometimes, fight me) are the Love Angels of Wedding Peach.  And guess what, the Character Designer for that Anime was also Kazuko Tadano (Sayuri Ichishi shares that credit for the OVAs but not the main series).  Now I currently have no idea what the Wedding Peach Manga looked like and so can't express an opinion on if these Anime designs are also better then the Manga.  But the point remains that she's made all of my favorite Magical Girl Warrior Character Designs.

This wasn't the only staff the Sailor Moon and Wedding Peach Anime had in common.  Hisashi Kagawa for example worked on both of them and Pokemon.  Does knowing about this common staff help or hurt the desire to argue that Wedding Peach can stand on it's own and isn't just a knock off?  I don't know, but it certainly should help in convincing people who like Sailor Moon to give Wedding Peach a chance.

Digibro likes to argue that you should care more about common creative staff then who has the official branding.  Does that mean Wedding Peach is better Sailor Moon then the actual Sailor Moon airing at the same time?  It mainly aired concurrent with SuperS the often least highly regarded season of Sailor Moon.  Ikuhara was still series director but he had less actual control then he did for S and the R Movie and his frustration with that is why he quickly left to go get started on Utena.

I sometimes wonder if for both Hollywood Movies and Anime we often give too much credit to the Director and not enough to the Writer of the Script/Screenplay.  I mention this here because the main Director of Wedding Peach wasn't a Sailor Moon alumni (instead he'd go on to do Pokemon) but at least one of the head writers was, Sukehiro Tomita.

Sukehiro wrote the Scripts for 15 episodes of season one, 13 episodes of R, 7 episodes of S and the Screenplays for both the R and S movies.  The generally least liked movie is the only one he didn't write, I have some fondness for Black Dream Hole but it is the weakest.  The R movie was the best under Ikuhara, but it seems the Director changing didn't cause as much of a quality drop as the writer changing.

I don't currently know if anyone else can be said to have written more episodes of season one.  But I made a Semi-Filler Free guide to Season 1 of Sailor Moon and only two of his episodes didn't make it and only one is among those that barely qualified.  He wrote 12 episodes that are almost impossible to justify skipping including the first and last episodes.   So if you're someone who outright prefers the 90s Anime over the Manga and Crystal (I used to at least for season one but I've become more balanced on the issue) he may deserve just as much credit for that adaptation work as Sato and Ikuhara.  Still he didn't write all of the non filler, you will miss stuff watching only what he wrote.

He also wrote plenty of stuff that at least follows the formula of a Sailor Moon filler episode, including some of what set that formula.  So if you like the 90s Sailor Moon Anime mainly for the filler with no counterpart to anything in the Manga (like me) then he also likely wrote something you enjoyed.  One of my personal all time favorite Sailor Moon episodes is Episode 26 - Bring a Smile to Naru's Face! Usagi's Friendship which is also one Ikuhara directed.  In fact I want the Viz Dub of that episode played at my funeral instead of any religious sermon, just play this and read 1 Corinthians 15.

During the Doom Tree Saga he wrote three episodes, the best of which is the Snow White one, the one who's localization would create one of my favorite Memes.  He wrote 10 episodes for the Black Moon saga, which seem to include most of the most watchable ones (I'm not big on that arc in any version).  He wrote only 7 for S but they include some major stand outs, like the one where Minako goes nuts donating blood.

He scripted 16 episodes of Wedding Peach including the first two and the last two.  But he's also credited with the "original story" which I'm not sure what that means in a Manga adaptation.  Did he also help write the Manga?  Or come up with the basic outline of how it was changed for the Anime?  I don't know enough about how this stuff works.

Most major Wedding Peach creative minds not connected to Sailor Moon would go on to be heavily involved in Pokemon, so if you're nostalgic for 90s and early 2000s kid's Anime they all probably made something more well known you like.

I have a fondness for Wedding Peach that long predates my knowing about any of these connections it has to Sailor Moon and Pokémon.  Even if it is a rare occasion of an Anime I like where I can't recommend or even much defend the Dub.  And also in-spite of it having less Yuri then any other Magical Girl show I've watched which I'd expect to bother me more then it does.

As far as comparing it to Sailor Moon goes it's only really fair to compare it to single "seasons" not the whole show since Wedding Peach didn't get equivalent sequels, not in Anime form at least, just a fun 4 episode OVA epilogue which is if anything most like the Doom Tree Saga as filler material.

I would easily pick Wedding Peach over R and SuperS and maybe even Stars.  But S is definitely a better product, while comparing it to season 1 is the really tough comparison.  Sailor Moon's greatest strength is that it has some single episodes that by far top anything else I've seen in Pre-Pokémon TV Anime.  However Sailor Moon does have some hard to defend episodes that are arguably worse then Wedding Peach's worst episodes.  And I say that as someone hesitant to call any episode of Sailor Moon completely irredeemable.

I wonder if Wedding Peach had an overlooked influence on the future of the genre?  It predates PreCure in having Pink be the main color of the MC.  I could maybe think of other things that make it proto-PreCure. 

Tomita would go on to return to Toei for Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, where he did Series Composition and Scripted 13 episodes.



Update December 1st 2019: Post Script

I have discovered that Tomita wasn't the only Sailor Moon script writer to leave after S, though the others didn't join him in going to Wedding Peach.

Katsuyuki Sumisawa went on to be the main writer of Gundam Wing while Tomita was doing Wedding Peach.  I've noticed some western fans find it a mystery why that of all Gundam Shows seems to particularly appeal to girls.  Well it was written by a Shoujo Alumni.  Interestingly enough he then returned to Toei to script 9 episodes of Cutey Honey Flash which took over Sailor Moon's time-slot.

Shigeru Yanagawa also left after S, it doesn't look like he was involved with anything too interesting in 95.  What's most interesting about Yanagawa is he was perhaps the most important writer for the Doom Tree Saga if you're a fan of it.  He's tied with Sumisawa in writing the most episodes for it, but he wrote the first episode, the last 2 episodes and the one Ikuhara directed, so basically the beginning middle and end.

Megumi Sugihara was the only writer of the first two seasons left during SuperS and even she was gone for Stars.  Yoji Enokido was a new writer brought in for S who stuck around for SuperS (he also wrote the SuperS movie's Screenplay) but he too was gone for Stars having joined Ikuhara to start work on Utena.  I'm surprised Megumi didn't also go to Utena, I'd expect everyone who left the same time Ikuhara did were people he was taking to do Utena, but as far as ANN is aware she had no involvement with Utena.

But I don't wanna trash the people who did write the last two seasons, many factors went into them being weaker (like some arcs being not liked as much even in the Manga) and Sailor Moon was never truly Bad in my opinion, I'm actually quite fond of the SuperS movie and I possibly like Stars more then the main story-line of R.  But it's notable how much important writing talent had left, while the directorial talent was largely the same.

If this drastic change in writing staff is a big factor in why the latter seasons of Sailor Moon are weaker, it's less because those writers were less talented and more that they weren't as experienced as who they took over for.  I've found that some of them did some pretty good work later on, including some Pretty Cure material.