In many ways the 90s Anime version of Sailor Moon is closer then The Manga to what the Magical Girl Warrior Genre would become. Not so much because the Manga was unknown, in Japan Manga is more widely consumed then Anime. It's more because for awhile almsot every other Anime in this sub-genre had overlapping creative staff with the 90s Sailor Moon Anime, either writers or directors or both.
However there is one area where even the most blatant 90s Anime imitators will follow the Manga structurally. And that is how when it's a 3-5 person team, that team will be fully assembled by episode 5 or 6. Wedding Peach, every PreCure season about a team rather then a Duo, and even the other time Sailor Moon's Dark Kingdom Arc was given a massively expanded adaptation, the Live Action show commonly referred to as PGSM.
I imagine the more individualist perspective of many western fans think there should be a decent time period of the title character working alone, especially since the title of this show is of an individual protagonist not the name of a team like Pretty Cure. But what makes Usagi Tsukino a character worth building a 200 episode saga around is how good of a Friend she is.
Now the Sailor Moon 90s Anime didn't make this decision because of any western individualist values, but because the Anime was being made concurrent with the Manga, and the Manga makes one episode a month instead of 4 or 5 (if this was a YT video a certain Gintama clip would be used as B roll here). The irony is Takeuchi made Sailor Moon a team based story rather then the Solo Heroine Codename Sailor V was because Toei wanted a team to sell more toys. But once that decision was made she kind of built the entire Lore of Sailor Moon around her being a Heroine who has helpers.
Still in-spite of everything these solo adventures aren't entirely bad. Of the 6 episodes in question 3 I consider above average must watch episodes, and there's only one I kind of hate. I don't want to talk about the one I hate (it's the Fat shamey one), but I shall briefly discus the 3 I recommend.
First is the 3rd episode of the show overall, but second episode of the DiC Dub which gave it the more memorable name of Talk Radio (the other two are oddly enough both episodes DiC skipped). And it's also the first episode written by Katsuyuki Sumisawa as well as the first directed by Takenouchi Kazuhisa.
Sumisawa is my favorite writer of the Sailor Moon Anime, and why starts with him getting the best first impression here with this episode being way better then either of the two that came before it. It is arguably the episode where the 90s Anime first finds the formula that is going to work for it, and I think this writer and director are perhaps both responsible for that. This director is one of the two who leaves after the Doom Tree Saga and I think that loss did permanently effect the show's overall quality.
Next would be the Chanela episode which was episode 5. Things happen that make it arguably not filler, but either way it's a lot of fun and quite hilarious, perhaps topping Talk Radio to be the best episode up to this point. I also kind of recommend it to anyone who enjoys The Trouble with Tribbles.
The final one is Episode 6, the Smooth Jazz episode. The second episode written by Katsuyuki Sumisawa and the first directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara, and thus their first time working together. Ikuhara as episode director and Sumisawa as writer are similar in that they've done a lot of my all time favorites and none of the worst episodes. In total half the Ikuhara episodes of season 1 would be written by Sumisawa, they make a pretty good team. Their last episode together would be the one that properly introduces HaruMi in Sailor Moon S.
This episode is plenty enjoyable even to watch without those meta motives, it was the most unique episode so far. But for fans of Ikuhara's distinctive style you can definitely see hints of it already forming here.
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