Katsuyuki Sumisawa is my favorite Sailor Moon Anime Writer

For the 90s Anime I consider him being the writer a more reliable predictor of quality even then Ikuhara being the director.  

That should not be taken as an insult to the other writers, each of the other 4 to write for the first 3 seasons have some episodes I consider great and I haven’t memorized who wrote what as much for SuperS and Stars, but Youji Enokido I can confidently say also never wrote a bad episode.

Sumisawa didn’t only write for Sailor Moon of course and so I will mention some notable facts about what else he wrote when chronologically appropriate, but by no means everything.  Beginning with that he was already working before Sailor Moon, but mostly on shows now forgotten or that the West never got in the first place.

NG Knight Ramune & 40, one of the shows Snake Eye Dreams talked about in their 1990: A Year in Anime video has Sumisawa on the staff. As did a few of the late 80s/early 90s shows on TV Asahi that this wordpress blog post has documented.

https://animetics.net/2014/09/03/timeslot-history-anime-on-tv-asahi-1994-2000/

But one notable show among those he worked on was Dragon Ball Z, he wrote a lot of DBZ episodes, many of them seem to be Anime Original “Filler” episodes including most of the Garlic JR Arc.  

The first Sumisawa episode of Sailor Moon is the 3rd episode, but second in the DiC Localization where it was named Talk Radio, (I use a lot of DiC’s episode titles as shorthand even though that’s usually not the version of the show I’m actually thinking of).  And honestly I would say it's the first good episode of the show, it’s pilot I already reviewed as a weak adaptation of the first Act of the Manga. It's really better to just watch Crystal if you want an Anime version of Usagi’s origin story.  And the second episode really hasn’t aged well.  Talk Radio however feels like the first episode that has much of what 90s Anime Apologists love about the show.  Really there is no reason not to just start with this episode.

The second Sumisawa episode is also the first Ikuhara episode, and one of the episodes DiC didn’t include, so my shorthand name for it is the Smooth Jazz Episode (I didn’t invent calling it something like that though, the Sailor Business Podcast did).  A lot of what’s memorable about this episode is its visual presentation but its script is also solid.

Third is the 9th episode of the show and 6th of the DiC dub where it’s titled Time Bomb.  The gimmick of this episode makes it very fast paced and fun.  And as the only episode that both begins and ends with our Magical Girl team as a Duo it’s in hindsight kind of unintentionally proto-Pretty Cure, especially given how often the Blue PreCures are clearly modeled after Ami Mizuno.

In Japan Ami/Sailor Mercury was always the most popular Senshi as documented by polls in Japanese Anime Magazines.  Why that is I think starts with how Naoko Takeuchi seemingly based Ami on herself more than any of the others.  But as far as the 90s Anime goes I find it notable that while it often Flanderizes her character she does also have some stand out moments and during this early period those often come from Katsuyuki Sumisawa episodes.  And that starts with him writing our second impression of Ami in this episode after episode 8 was again a weak adaptation of its Manga/Crystal counterpart.

Next is Cruise Blues the penultimate episode of the Jadite arc and what happens in it is arguably why the next episode was his last.  Overall this is actually the episode I have the least thoughts on so far, but it is good. 

He only wrote two episodes during the Nephrite Arc, which are coincidentally also the two episodes Ikuhara directed during that arc.  An Unnatural Phenomena is neat in how you can call it a plot that could've been used for Poison Ivy, and it’s DiC version was adapted to an Audio Cassette which is oddly fun to listen to. 

But An Animated Mess is the big one off stand out of this arc. Its Yuri subtext is thick which is amusing given these guest characters are essentially based on actual women on Sailor Moon’s animation staff, were Sumisawa and Ikuhara shipping their co-workers?   Returning to an earlier point both these episodes have what I think are Ami’s most stand out moments from the Nephrite arc, including her standing on Nephrite’s car in this one.

Sumisawa’s first contribution to the Rainbow Crystal Arc is Mercury’s Mental Match, perhaps the first real Ami spotlight episode since her introduction.  The two episodes featuring “Greg” are among the few I’ve never watched the VizDub versions of due to who voiced “Greg”.  But that was a decision I made back when I underestimated how many performances from that frustrating individual I was already a fan of.  But regardless of how you choose to watch it it’s a good episode.

Kitty Chaos is the last Sumisawa and Ikuhara collaboration until Sailor Moon S.  It’s in general one of the most memorable and talked about episodes, and perhaps oddly influential given how I can’t help but wonder if Rhett Butler inspired aspects of The Cat Returns?

Sumisawa also wrote for Yu Yu Hakushu starting with episode 5 which aired the same day in Japan as Kitty Chaos, November 7th 1992, Yu Yu Hakushu aired at 18:30 JST and Sailor Moon at 19:00 JST, but not on the same channel it seems.  They also share Sukehiro Tomita as a writer.  Their Manga Authors being married makes this sharing of writers even more interesting, were they invited to the wedding?

A Crystal Clear Destiny and A Reluctant Princess are a two parter and the first time Sumisaya is writing episodes that definitely can’t be considered Filler by any metric.  They are equivalent to Acts 8 and 9 of the Manga and Crystal but how things play out are dramatically different.  And both are great, both of these versions of this point in the story can coexist as equally valid.

And one of my arguments against the concept of Continuity LockOut is that I know from the Sailor Business Podcast that the first of these was the first episode of the show watched by one fan and she loved it.  It’s an episode that at face value doesn’t seem like a good jumping on point but it didn’t matter, it was Good and that’s what mattered.

Ski Bunny Blues is the first of these episodes that I barely remember, as bad as that sounds I have no bad memories of it, I probably just haven’t rewatched it recently enough, I often skip Rei centric episodes.  I do think this brief sub era of the show is the weakest of the first series, returning to an episodic format after the big climatic reveals of the last two episodes was pretty awkward since the Manga is already setting up the finale, but Gems were still produced here, not all of them being Sumisawa ones, (the two episodes directed by Kazuisa Takenouchi are also standouts).

Tuxedo Unmasked is the other “Greg” episode and it too is great both as a time to shine for Ami and the first time the 90s Anime’s take on Evil Endymion really worked.  And it’s Sumisawa’s last episode for the original series.

For the Makai Tree Arc of which I am a notable apologist, Shigeru Yanagawa was the main writer of its main plot, but perhaps the second most important writer of the Arc is Sumisawa.  First he wrote the second episode which restores the memories of the Inner Senshi and helps set the new Status Quo quite well.    Then he wrote the Venus and Rei centric episodes where they awaken new powers,  Kindergarten Chaos is one of my personal favorite episodes, this is when the 90s Anime finally finds its footing with its take on Minako.  And then Detention Doldrums is very good at both being fairly stand alone and setting up that the following two episodes will finish the Arc.

The Black Moon Saga I love in Crystal and mostly hate in the 90s Anime, this is where my sympathy for Manga Purists is at its strongest.  Thing is, all the episodes of this saga I do consider good in-spite of how the main plot was messed up are the ones Sumisawa wrote. The two Ikuhara directed are very watchable and I understand why one of them is among some people’s favorites, but for me they are Mid at best.

I’m not even gonna cover all of Sumisawa’s Black Moon Saga episodes.

Sailor Mercury Moving On is the last Ami spotlight episode Sumisawa wrote and is thus the Capstone of a thesis I presented earlier.  I don’t think the Ami episodes of S or Stars or even SuperS are bad or anything, but they are mostly just elaborating on what was in the source material.  Thing about this Ami episode is it’s plot was remade as a sub-plot of the Summer 1994 Sailor Moon Musical though there reworked into the Death Busters era, which in turn was reworked a few years later into the first Last Dracul Musical which I really love.  If I oversaw my own remake of the Makai Tree Arc I would replace the bad Babysitting episode with a remake of this episode.

Enemies No More is one of the few where I also want to say the English Translation of the Japanese Title “Battle of the Flames of Love! Mars vs Koan”. This one is definitely not just good for a Black Moon Saga episode but one of the absolute best of all 200 episodes of the show, a must watch for those who want to understand why the 90s Anime version is good for more than just goofy filler.  I already talked about it on my Theology Blog.

No Thanks, Nurse Venus! Is hilarious and the best episode of the Esmeraude arc.  Brotherly Love is a good send off for a number of characters.  Follow The Leader is the recap episode that technically ends Sailor Moon R and I note it here only because watching it’s old Dub on Toonami is one of my earliest Sailor Moon memories. 

Driving Dangerously! Is the proper introduction of HaruMi and the final Sumisawa and Ikuhara collaboration, and it’s great, Iconic, legendary.

Birthday Blues! Is the two parter that ends the first Cour of Sailor Moon S which I have specifically fond memories of renting on VHS (where it shared a tape with a Venus episode Enokido wrote) and I’ve watched it’s modern VizDub version, I think it holds up well. 

Art Appreciation is one I don’t remember a whole lot but it is pretty important to the second Arc of S. 

It's in the Cards is the last episode of Sailor Moon that Sumisawa wrote, and it may not be a perfect Swan Song but it’s pretty good.

Between those two episodes Macross 7 started which two Sailor Moon writers wrote for, Sukehiro Tomita as the head writer and Sumisawa.  It also featured Oohashi Yukiyoshi who wrote with Tomita for Wedding Peach and then a lot of really good Pokémon episodes.

Katsuyuki Sumisawa spent 95 and early 96 as the head writer of Gundam Wing, which would become most Americans’ introduction to Gundam.

He also wrote a bunch of episodes of Cutey Honey Flash which took over Sailor Moon’s timeslot when it ended.  When I watched it I didn't keep track of who wrote which episodes but most episodes were pretty good, I liked it’s second Arc the best.

Sumisawa wrote 18 of the first 26 episodes of Corrector Yui in 1999, episode 17 specifically reminded me of Enemies No More.

He wrote a lot of Inuyasha episodes I just learned.

He also wrote the screenplays for Gundam The Origin which I have mixed feelings on.

And the first 5 and 7th episodes of Yashahime which I did watch, so it seems he’s still got it though I haven't seen most modern shows he’s worked on.

Sailor Moon seems to have originated the Toast of Tardiness trope.

That I seem to be the first person to propose this theory is interesting.  Because AniTubers putting together montages of famous examples of this trope in videos mostly about something else seem to know they can’t find an older example, if there is one it must be some super obscure old High School Anime forgotten by everyone but someone working on the 90s Sailor Moon Anime, and thus Sailor Moon was still clearly what popularized it.

The origins of this Trope is worth investigating since it’s actually NOT accurate to real world Japan.  In Japan, even casually walking while eating is considered Taboo because it’s disrespectful to the Labor put into producing it.  I learned about this interesting fact from reading the article linked below this paragraph.  Some things are common in Anime precisely because their Taboo in real life, but this is an oddly specific thing to be rebellious about, so there must be more to it.

https://honeysanime.com/editorial-tuesday-anime-and-real-life-running-with-a-slice-of-toast-in-their-mouth/

Project A-Ko does feature the lead running to school late, and shows her eating some food earlier, but not at the same time.  So maybe it played a role in inspiring this visual, but it’s not fully formed.

Here’s the thing I find interesting.  Every example of this cliché since the Spring of 1993 has either been in a pilot episode, or a parody of what a Generic High School Anime pilot looks like (such as it’s use in the finale of Neon Genesis Evangelion), or both at the same time like Attack on Titan Jr High.  But for Sailor Moon it’s not originally a pilot trope, it’s in no version of Usagi’s origin story, not the Manga or the 92 Anime Pilot or Crystal’s.

In Sailor Moon we first see this happen in episode 39 Let’s Become a Princess: Usagi’s Bizarre Training, which in the DiC Dub was episode 37 and titled Little Miss Manners, written by Shigeru Yanagawa and directed by Hiromichi Matano.  This gag actually bookends the episode appearing at both the beginning and end.  

However a few months later the first episode of Sailor Moon R, the beginning of the Doom Tree Saga, and episode 47 of the show total (41 of the DiC order), is very much a reboot, it’s like a new pilot repeating many beats of the original pilot.  But now the running late with Toast in Mouth is added, being a visual that must have stuck with someone after seeing it in the Princess episode.  

This episode was named Moon Returns: The Mysterious Aliens Appear and by DiC The Return of Sailor Moon.  It was written by Shigeru Yanagawa and directed by Kazuhisa Takenouchi (it would be this exact same combo who would end the Doom Tree Saga).  So the common denominator here is Shigeru Yanagawa.

Given that homevideo was only starting to take off in the early 90s, it wouldn’t surprise me if for a while after that episode aired in 93 many people misremembered this visual as having also been in Sailor Moon’s pilot, like an Otaku Mandela Effect.  And in turn influenced what High School Anime pilots are “supposed” to be like in their collective subconscious.

I consider this an interesting example of how Sailor Moon has been an influence beyond just the Genre she started or Shoujo in general.

Another example would be how many Teachers in Anime are basically just Miss Haruna, like Miss Yukari in Azumanga Daioh and Mis Kuroi in Lucky Star.

Or heck even Noir which uses it’s Golden Pocket Watch with an Iconic sentimental Melody near the end in exactly the same way, and by a Blond character voiced by the same Seiyu in Japan.

Moonlight Knight, the only problem with the Doom Tree Saga

I've made clear on this blog that I love the Doom Tree Saga, the first 13 episodes of Sailor Moon R.  The Moonlight Knight plotline is it's one issue, the one thing I have to ask people to try to ignore or look past as they watch it.

He is pretty unconnected to why I love this Arc so much.  I love it for how it's the last time a lot of characters and elements of season 1 are truly prominent, I love Ail and Ann and their wacky antics, and I love how looking forward this is the first time Sailor Moon truly looks like what the Magical Girl Warrior sub-genre will become.  I love most of it's one off Filler episodes but I also love it's Eucatastrophe of a finale.

So if someone today did a remake or adaptation of this Arc I would not have a problem with The Moonlight Knight being removed. In fact I would remove him myself even though in the American set Sailor Moon reimaging I've been writing in my head I intend to cast Darrien Shields (name subject to change) as ethnically Middle Eastern, and then maybe just homage the concept by having him Cosplay as the Moonlight Mask at a Halloween Party or something.  Referencing the Moonlight Knight is not even my reason for that decision, it's more a result of my comparative mythology theories where I compare Endymion to Dumuzid/Tammuz, so I want Prince Enydmion to look like a plausible Iraqi in the flashbacks.  (On an off topic note I do want people to know that Usagi herself will remain Ethnically Japanese in this adaptation I'm imagining.)

This post is only an Apology for this plotline in the sense that it's important to remember Japan doesn't relate to "Race" the same way America does.  Now it's wrong when some reactionary Twitter Weebs want to make it sound like Japan is unaware of the very concept., modern Japan has clearly become aware of it, and Racism has been a theme in some Anime.  But it's not their main ancient grudge breaking to new mutiny like it is for the United States.  Tropes related to American Racism pop up in Japanese media because of how Japanese media has been influenced by American Media with originally no knowledge of the context, hence why the further back you go the more often Black people in Anime are full on Loony Toons style Black Face.

But more importantly Japan is not one of the countries constantly bombing Middle Eastern countries back to the Stone Age.  Rather they are a Nation that knows what it feels like to be Bombed and so when 21st Century Anime does address the War on Terror in a show like Canaan it tends to do so from a very anti-American Imperialism viewpoint.

Positive Stereotypes are still a problem, I'm well aware of that, the stereotype that Asians are good at math for example makes things more difficult for Asians who struggle with math.  But I do feel like it's worth noting how the positive Stereotypes that used to exist for Arabs and Muslims have been pretty much gone from American Pop Culture since 9/11, they've just been Terrorists or in media critiquing the War on Terror passive victims.  Americans haven't been in the mood for a revival of 1000 Arabian Nights style fantasy.  And Arabs are kind of the only American Minority for whom that is the case.

So in that context discussing a character like the Moonlight Knight is a good opportunity to remind people that a lot of the tropes we associate with Chivalry and Courtly Love are the product of Medieval French writers borrowing ideas first innovated in the Arabic Literature and Poetry they were exposed to during the Crusades.  And those tropes are somewhat baked into Sailor Moon right from the original Manga, so acknowledging the Arabic version of that was probably well intentioned, I just wish it hadn't been done so poorly.

Sailor Moon seasons, the Good, the Bad and the Fishy

First of all I want people to understand when I refer to certain seasons of Sailor Moon as "bad" that is in the context of my considering no episode of Sailor Moon completely without value.  I think it's worth it to eventually watch all 200 of the 90s Anime and 39 of Crystal, just for the former maybe not necessarily in order.

Even the good seasons have episodes I don't think make good first impressions, and even the bad seasons have some gems that are among my absolute favorites.  But some seasons are more of the latter then the former.

But first let me remind people of my take on how the 90s Anime compares to the Original Manga/Crystal versions of the story.  Naoko Takeuchi's version of Sailor Moon is undeniably better written, the overarching storyline is far more coherent and it lacks the plot holes and dumb contrivances that the franchise is known for thanks to the 90s Anime.  And yet without all the 90s Anime's fluff and filler, without it's further exploration of the characters, I would not be nearly as invested in these characters as I am.

When breaking down the seasons of the 90s Anime, I am perhaps more inline with conventional fandom opinion then I can usually be expected to be.  Season 1 and S are the must see great seasons, R and SuperS are the difficult to watch seasons.  While SailorStars being the season we westerners didn't get right away doesn't instill as strong a reaction either way, it's perhaps the definition of average for SM.

But when I call R one of the bad seasons, I need to qualify that.  Because The Doom Tree Saga is technically part of R in terms of branding and MAL classification.  But in both spirit and execution it really is a Coda to season 1, being the end of Junichi Sato's run as Series Director.

Which leads me to the mildly controversial take that as a complete picture Season 1 and the Doom Tree Saga are better then S.  And now I need to commit the ultimate Blasphemy one can commit in Leftist Anime Fandom and actually express some criticism of Ikuhara Kunihiko-Sama.

When people briefly mention Ikuhara's involvement with Sailor Moon as mere preamble for their deep dive Utena analysis.  They will say how he was in charge of Sailor Moon S and the R Movie Promise of The Rose.  But they will ignore how he was also series director of the Bad seasons.

I like Ikuhara's original works, Utena is a must see masterpiece but it's probably Penguindrum that personally speaks to me the most.  And in his contributions to Sailor Moon I like him as an Episode Director (under which designation I'll include the movie he directed which is the best of them and perhaps an ideal microcosm of what the 90s Sailor Moon Anime is), all his episodes are at least above average and they include a number of my absolute favorites.

But as a Series Director of something that was in fact an adaptation of someone else's artistic vision, he was the worst of the 3 the show had.  S was great in-spite of Ikuhara's series direction, it was great because it's source materiel was perhaps the Manga at it's best, because it introduced some of the most popular characters in Anime, and because it's the only season that had all of the 90s Anime's best writers working on it.  But I place it below season 1 for a reason, it does have issues, and frankly every one of them is exactly what the Series Director's job was, to keep the overall plotline from becoming a mess.  It's a Hot Mess that manages to be beautiful and moving in-spite of it's lack of coherency, but it's still a mess.

Now in terms of adapting the Manga the way Toei insisted on adapting it, the Dark Kingdom arc had an advantage over the others.  That's the one arc where even the Manga/Crystal feels like it's following an episodic Tokusatsu superhero show formula.  Every other Arc in the Manga really does get into the main storyline right away and so an adaptation meant to run weekly all year long, expanding the story without even knowing the endgame up front, will inevitably go off the rails a bit.  

Still I do think a lot of why season 1 and the Doom Tree Saga work so well is because of Sato, he also directed Hugtto Pretty Cure in 2018 proving he's still got it.  Sato is simply better suited then Ikuhara for being in charge of an episodic kid's show.  Sato also continued to return as an Episode Director or sometimes just Storyboarder after his time as Series Director ended, though not during R.  His episodes continue to be highlights though not as much as Ikuhara's.

However Takenouchi Kazuhisa was a recurring Episode Director of season 1 who left after the Doom Tree Saga, the Doom Tree Saga's finale was his last Sailor Moon episode, so he might have made a small difference.  His notable contributions to season 1 include episode 3(2 of the DiC order) Talk Radio which I'd kind of argue is where the 90s Anime found it's voice, the introduction episodes for both Mars and Jupiter, Ice Princess which is another highlight for Sailor Jupiter fans, and Fractious Friends which has proven to be a very memorable episode.  He also did Storyboards for episode 3 of Utena.

I also like to give the 90s Anime's Writers more credit then most do, but they don't much help explain the difference between the Doom Tree Saga and the rest of R.  Though Yanagawa Shigeru being seemingly the chief writer of the overall plot of the Doom Tree Saga is someone fans of that arc should take special note of, as I have, but I've still yet to watch any of his non Sailor Moon stuff since most of it hasn't been Dubbed.

The thing about R and SuperS being the "bad" seasons is that they're bad for opposite reasons.  

SuperS is the season that actually is what a lot of people cynically think every season of Sailor Moon and it's Mahou Shoujo imitators are always like.  A much larger percentage of the season is skippable, and the filler this time truly does get annoyingly repetitive.  Every other season gives us something we might call a mid-season finale at least 13 episodes in, but SuperS leaves us stuck with the Amazon Trio doing their creepy routine for over half the season's total episode count before we get anything that feels even remotely like progress.

The 90s Anime Black Moon Saga besides being an overly complicated adaptation of a Time Travel plot (so already on shaky ground at making sense).  Also does something no other season does.  In every other season each episode fits into one of 2 maybe 3 categories.  Either it's a stand alone Monster of the Week episode that tells it's own complete story, or it's something important to the overall plot, and sometimes it might manage to be both.  The Sailor Moon R version of this saga however does the only type of Filler I actually consider a problem, filler that's pretending it's not filler.  It has multiple episodes that are about the overall plot with no MOTW in sight, that tries to evoke the emotional gravitas of a game changing episode, yet nothing actually happens, none of the Antagonists are permanently or ever temporarily disposed of, and no one learns anything they didn't already know, nothing about the status quo even superficially changes.

So in both cases it's not the individual episode quality per se that is the issue.  It's what it feels like to actually go through all of it so I can finally say on MAL that I've completed Sailor Moon.  But I will still say the Black Moon Saga has more actually sub par episodes, almost any SuperS filler episode is at least fine, it's midway point finale is better then it's build up deserved, and it's final stretch of episodes are actually better then the climax of S.

Sailor Stars is again difficult for me to pass judgment on.  It feels like less of a chore to binge, and has many memorable moments, and yet besides the opening 6 episodes doesn't reach any of the prior season's highs. 

Sailor Moon Crystal has no Bad Seasons.  Even the Black Moon Saga was finally vindicated in my mind by seeing it as the Author truly intended (like how many feel about The Snyder Cut) and may be the subject of it's own post someday.  And now I'm hoping the Eternal films can do the same for the Dream Arc.

The people who hate Crystal, even if that antagonism is really only directed at season 1, are simply not Sailor Moon fans.  I don't care how many memeable jenky stills you throw onscreen in your YT video.  Story wise this is the characters and story finally being presented in dramatized form as their creator intended.  If that feels to you like a betrayal of why you like Sailor Moon, then you don't like Sailor Moon, you like Sailor Moon fan fiction.  And that's fine I in many ways ultimately like the Fan Fiction more too.  And the 90s Anime is closer to what I generally want from this Genre, but even it isn't fully there yet.

I appreciate Sailor Moon in all it's forms, from the PGSM Live Action show to the insane Last Dracul musicals.  My love for this franchise is unconditional, but not without the ability to critique it.

Eucatastrophe in Anime

Eucatastrophe is a literary term J.R.R. Tolkien invented for an ending that is more than just a standard Happy Ending.  I’ll copy/paste a more detailed explanation from a Tolkien Wiki.

Eucatastrophe is a neologism coined by Tolkien from Greek ευ- "good" and καταστροφή "destruction".

"I coined the word 'eucatastrophe': the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. It perceives – if the story has literary 'truth' on the second plane (....) – that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest 'eucatastrophe' possible in the greatest Fairy Story – and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love."

― Letter 89

In his On Fairy-Stories Tolkien describes eucatastrophe further:

"But the 'consolation' of fairy-tales has another aspect than the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires. Far more important is the Consolation of the Happy Ending. Almost I would venture to assert that all complete fairy-stories must have it. At least I would say that Tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function; but the opposite is true of Fairy-story. Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite — I will call it Eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function.

The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 'escapist', nor 'fugitive'. In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the “turn” comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality."

― On Fairy-Stories

He sees it in The Gospel and in many “Fairy Stories” but said it never happened in the “modern” novel.  "Modern" when he was writing would have included Victorian Era novels.  I should note that I think it’s safe to assume he hadn’t read any of the French Novels translated by BlackCoatPress.  Because I do think some of Paul Feval’s novels may have them.

Talking about what potentially counts as Eucatastrophes in modern fictional media like Movies and TV Shows and Video Games in Tolkien and Lewis Facebook groups has revealed that what does and doesn’t qualify can be quite debatable.  I’m inclined to define it fairly strictly since Tolkien said they are unheard of in any modern novels he was aware of.

I watched a YouTube video attempting to explain what distinguishes a Eucatastrophe from a Deus Ex Machina and I really feel they got it wrong.  Especially in how they said Peter Jackson improved what happened in the Crack of Doom, I am a Jackson apologist, but on that one NO the Book’s version is still a truer Eucatastrophe.

To me the suddenness of the Eucatastrophe is vital, it seems like Evil’s about to prevail, like it pretty much already has, then BAM! something unexpected happens.  That’s why I kind of feel Jurassic Park has the best Eucatastrophe of anything I’ve seen in a Hollywood movie.  But the end of Final Fantasy VII could perhaps also work depending on how you interpret what actually happened there.

What makes a Eucatastrophe still not a Deus Ex Machina in the literary sense (one certainly can be in a theologically literal sense, like maybe the end of Raiders of The Lost Ark), is that understanding how this resolution was properly set up requires paying attention to the themes and morals of the story rather than the technical mechanics of what was happening.  Good doesn’t prevail because everything went according to some brilliant plan, or because the hero won a fight, in fact the villains should win the fight.

Proper Eucatastrophes are rare in every medium, but this post is about how I feel Anime is more prone to them then Hollywood is.  But I had to cover some non Anime stuff first to provide context for what it means and how I personally view it.

And because I'll be talking about stuff a bit more Niche then everything referenced above, be prepared for Spoilers.

I kind of think the Purest Eucatastorphe in not just Anime but all of Fiction period, including Tolkien’s own examples, is the ending of the Makai Tree Arc (once known as the Doom Tree Series in English) of Sailor Moon R.

Some may argue every Season of Sailor Moon ends in one as well as Ikuhara’s movie, and that may be true.  But here more than anywhere else is where Sailor Moon embodies what a Eucatastrophe should be, and finally fully gives birth to what the Magical Girl Warrior Sub-Genre will become.  Because a good deal of the other Anime Eucatastrophes I recommend are also from Mahou Shoujo shows.

Like the ending of episode 9 of Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya 2wei Herz!, a scene that makes me Cry, it so perfectly embodies both my understanding of The Gospel and the Magical Girl Genre.

When I mentioned in one of those Facebook groups working on a project about Eucatastrophe in Anime someone else brought up the ending of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.  And yeah I do feel that also fits, given what I’ve learned following Clearandsweet’s videos on Madoka and what I talked about long ago regarding Kyoko Sakura.

But I want to go back to the Doom Tree Saga.  Certain Sailor Moon Podcasts hosted by western Comic Book writers have mostly not enjoyed the ending of this arc in their recent rewatches in spite of their Nostalgia for it.  And I think the problems that prevent conventional writers from doing Eucatastorphes are exactly what’s keeping them from appreciating this beautiful ending.  Western Superheroes don’t lend themselves to Eucatastrophe, even Endgame didn’t have the guts to do one.  

Another Spoiler Warning

The day is not saved by Usagi defeating anyone, the day is saved by the villains finally learning to truly Love each other, but it does happen because of Usagi, because her incredible capacity to Love is what inspires them to finally figure out what Love is.

Let’s go beyond Mahou Shoujo now.  Another Anime example suggested to me by others on Facebook was Nausicaa of The Valley of The Wind.  That is still my favorite Miyazaki film.

Kunihiko Ikuhara’s shows I would be less hesitant to count if their endings were more unambiguously happy.  Tolkien’s own Happy Endings do tend to have some Bitter Sweet quality to them however.

I still haven’t gotten to see Spring Song yet.  I’ve heard things about what happens in Heaven’s Feel that have me hoping we’ll get one here.  The True Magics are probably either Deus Ex Machinas or Eucatastrophes, it all depends on execution really. 

I think you could also possibly argue for the ending of Clannad: After Story qualifying.

I feel like some of the Pokémon movies have them, but I’m hesitant to definitively single out any of them right now.

I also think A Certain Magical Index: The Miracle of The Endymion might count.

Actually the Daihesei Festival arc of A Cretan Magical Index II (episodes 8-13, or 32-37 of the series as a whole) definitely counts.

I kind of get this feeling from the final episode of Accel World.  Technically that’s almost more a Heist Movie twist making it more like what I above defined an Eucatastrophe as not being.  But it does compliment the themes and morals of the show, and I just love how the seeming Damsel in Distress of the Arc actually had a plan all along.

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya’s ending is really right on the line between how I define a Eucatastrophe and a Deus Ex Machina and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Very recently I considered counting the last episode of Warlords of Sigrdrifa, but I also think that may be stretching it.  I really don’t want to look like I’m just giving this label to every ending I like.  In those Facebook groups some people suggested that Star Wars (presumably A New Hope) counts and I kind of had to laugh at that one.

The fact that it's kind of ultimately an emotional reaction is perhaps what really makes it hard to define.  In a weird way maybe some people think the Threesome Ending of the School Days Visual Novel works as a Eucatastrophe for the players who wanted that ending.

I may edit this post to add additional examples in the future.  I have a sense that I may regret not finishing Princess Tutu before publishing this.

Update: On April 1st I watched Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms and there was a moment near it's ending that I feel kind of maybe fits.

January 2022 Update: The first Detective Conan movie, The Time Bombed Skyscraper has an ending that perhaps counts.

September 2022 Update: Actually a better Detective Conan/Case Closed Eucatastrophe is probably the one in episode 345.

December 2022 Update: On my fourth viewing of Robotics;Notes it occurred to me that the Parrot saving Airi in episode 20 could qualify.

April 2023 Update: I have two to add.

First is that Re;Creators may very well count, and perhaps also embodies why the desire of us Tolkien nerds to distinguish Eucatastrpohe from a Deus Ex Machina is somewhat futile.  Nothing in the modern world actually matches 100% of Aristotle's definition of a Deus Ex Machina, we literally don't write Plays like they did in Ancient Athens anymore, so there is always some flimsy attempt to justify a resolution that appears to come out of nowhere.  What makes it one we'd call a Eucatastrophe or not is simply in how it's executed, or more truthfully whether we happen to like it or not.

Second is that, most shockingly I'm thinking of counting a Hentai called Triangle Blue, but I need to qualify some things.

Triangle Blue like a lot of Hentai of it's genre is a technically a Visual Novel adaptation, meaning it's source material has different timelines that could play out, which we commonly call Routes.  Most of the Triangle Blue two part OVA is a very condensed adaptation of one specific route, but then after reaching that story's end crams on some elements from other routes.

So if you stop episode 2 at about 22:14 (exactly when could depend on the upload), that's the end of the storyline it had been adapting and what's left is Anime Original Filler.  And in that story I'm willing to consider when Akane's Sister slaps her a Eucatastrophe.

Update April 2025: I've just rewatched Char's Counterattack and it's ending I think counts.

Update May 2025: The 9th Cream Lemon OVA "Happening Summer" has a Eucatastrophe, unlike the prior Hentai example I included this one has no qualifying statement.

Hanami, or How to Pretend Anime has Easter Specials

Easter (Pascha in non Germanic nations) and Christmas are traditionally the two most important Holy Days of the Christian Ecclesiastical Calendar.  And so in the many cultures where Christianity has been the dominant Religion for centuries they are also two of the most important Holidays people observe to some extent regardless of their religion.

Japan is not a culture where Christianity has ever been the dominant religion.  But it has spent the last Century and a Half of it's history being to varying degrees influenced by those cultures.  And so during that time Secular Christmas has caught on and became a popular Holiday in modern Japan, allowing Anime to seemingly have just as many Christmas specials as Western Cartoons have.

Easter did not catch on in the same way however.  Maybe Easter is just harder to separate from what's inherently Christian about it regardless of how much Puritans complain about all the Bunnies and Eggs.  And so this makes it difficult for a Christian Anime website like Beneath The Tangles to have the same fun during Lent that they have during Advent.

Another thing Easter has in common with Christmas is being compared to observances Pagans engage in at about the same time of year.  Often with hostile intent, claiming the Christians were merely stealing from the Pagans, or reactionary Christians saying the Mainstream Church has been corrupted by these Pagan holidays.  But I have come to be with those who see these Cosmetic similarities as not inherently a bad thing.  

These kinds of Pagan holidays are about observing what happens in nature, and we Christians believe everything in nature is God's design.  There is a reason this time of year was chosen for Passover and for the Death and Resurrection of The Messiah.  So the Hebrew Roots types need to get over themselves and realize The Torah's own description of it's High Holy Days are just as superficially similar to what the Pagan Canaanites were doing, like for example Emar 373 and Emar 446.  Which God we Worship is the point.

And that is part of how I would argue that the themes and messages of Easter can still be found quite unintentionally in plenty of Anime, just like the Unknown God of Athens in Acts 17.

The Hanami is not quite a formal Shinto Festival, it doesn't seem like it's organized by the Shrines or anything.  But it is a part of Japanese culture during Late-March through May, the same basic time of year as Palm Sunday through Pentecost, but usually the big ones are in April.

The first example of Hanami observance in Anime that western fans were likely to have been exposed to is the 5th Episode of the Makai Tree (Doom Tree) Saga of Sailor Moon R (episode 51 of the series as a whole and 45 of the DiC order), the only episode of that arc directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara, but has the same writer who both began and ended it, Shigeru Yanigawa.  The Doom Tree saga shall continue to be a recurring subject on this blog, and indeed the entire Arc might well be good for viewing during the Easter season given the relevance it will have to the Eucatastrophe project I'm working on.

A website called Honeysanime.com made a Top 10 list of Hanami Anime.  Their number 1 was Clannad, Clannad and Clannad After Story does inevitably become a show about Death and Resurrection, and Clannad is considered the Spring of Key's Seasons Trilogy.  They also have a list of Cherry Blossom Scenes.  Here is a blogpost Itadakimasu did on the subject called This Day in Anime Hanami.

Not actually Anime but I've already said on this blog how the original Mothra and Mothra vs Godzilla movies from the 60s can work as Easter Movies.  I was gonna now recommend watching on YouTube the Devotional Criticism video on Mothra, but it seems those videos are now unavailable.

This is just the tip of the Iceburg, basically everything in Anime I've ever referred to as intentionally or not reflecting my view of The Gospel, since Easter Sunday is The Day of The Gospel.  But in order to feel like it's also amendable to Secular Easter it helps if it's set at or is about Spring Time, like parts of Majora's Mask.

And anything Jewish Anime fans find they like to watch during Passover is probably also good for Easter.

Update: A Year later and I find myself thinking of Pretear as an interesting Anime to add to this list, it's got Spring Imagery going on and definitely has some Gospel allegory potential.  I controversially consider it a much better show then Junichi Sato's other early 00s Magical Girl Anime.

Updating again in April 2022:  Going back to the Sailor Moon reference above, anytime Sailor Moon seems to be in Spring really works surprisingly well.  Usagi's name means Bunny that's why her Hair is like that, to look like Bunny ears.  

Also I've been looking into the Hebrew scholars who argue "Passover" isn't actually an accurate translation of Peshach and that the word really means Protection or Protector.  I looked into how you'd say either of those in Japanese simply because I've been constructing a sort of "Weeb Bible Translation" in my head and found something I should have remembered I already knew, that's what the name Mamoru means.  Mamoru is the name of Tuxedo Mask but Takeuchi had one point planned for it to be Sailor Jupiter's name.

There is arguably Spring imagery in the first Sailor Moon movie, Sailor Moon R:The Promise of The Rose, but it's also common in the first Cour of each year of the 90s Anime which tended to air in March-May, that includes the Doom Tree Saga (there are only two episodes I consider not good, episodes 3 and 7 of R, 49 and 53 total but 43 and 47 of the DiC order), and the first 6 episodes of Sailor Stars which you should watch instead of SuperS.

Pretear is arguably those themes of Sailor Moon brought to maturity for a somewhat older audience by a more experienced Junichi Sato, and it's fantastic.

TV Anime Writers and Directors

As I've said I want to start talking on this blog about how I think Directors often get too much credit and we should maybe start paying more attention to the writers.

The thing that makes TV Anime a particularly interesting medium in this case is how there are usually less writers then directors.

The "Series Composition" credit seems to be the writing equivalent of being the Series Director, it's a job that in theory could be done by someone not writing individual episode scripts at all, but it generally doesn't play out that way.  Usually the writer with that credit also writes more episodes then anyone else and that includes the first and last episodes and a number of the other most definitely not filler episodes in-between.  And there are usually only 4 or 5 writers in total, often only 3 who could be said to have written a significant amount.

However there are usually between 7-10 Episode Directors, and the first and last episodes usually don't have the same director.  And the series director probably actually episode directs less Episodes then he would have if he weren't the series director.  And no director even comes close to directing as many episodes as the "Series Composition" person usually writes.

Some shows fail to give a Series Composition credit, at least on the main English language Database websites (MAL, ANN and AniDB), but it's often easy to guess who was serving that function by looking at what and how many episodes the writers wrote.  Like Sukehiro Tomitia for the first season of Sailor Moon who I've already talked about.  He also seems to be this again for the Black Moon saga, but for the Doom Tree Saga I would argue the most important writer was Shigeru Yanagawa.

For Sailor Moon S things are a bit different.  Tomita seems to no longer be obviously the most important writer, Megumi Sugihara wrote the most episodes for S at 10 episodes, but still not as many as Tomita wrote for prior seasons.  She had been around since season 1 but not quite from the start of it.  S had more writers total because of the newcomer, Youji Enokido who wrote 9 episodes, which began with the Jupiter and Venus spotlight episodes of the first cour, but would then include the HaruMi origin story episode.  Tomito did write the first and last episodes, but S is structured so different from season 1 that even that doesn't mean as much, the last episode of S is literally filler.  Tomita wrote 7 episodes total.

Three of Sailor Moon's writers including Tomita would leave after S to go work on other projects, to some extent I think they were writing less during S because they were doing the prep work for those projects.  The one I talked about in the Cutey Honey Flash post was the lead writer of Gundam Wing, if you've ever felt like Wing is the most Shoujo esque of all Gundam shows, that's because it was written by someone who spent most of the 90s writing Magical Girl shows.

Sailor Moon SuperS is the first season to actually have a Series Composition credit, which is given to Youji Enokido. Kind of surprising as he was the complete Newcomer for S, Megumi had seniority but I guess you can't have the lead writer of a show for girls actually be a girl.  Enokido also wrote the Screenplay for the SuperS movie, Black Dream Hole (the first two movies were written by Tomita).

Megumi and Enokido both left Sailor Moon after SuperS creating a situation where Sailor Stars the last season had no writing staff overlap with the first 3 seasons and two writers who had no prior Sailor Moon experience at all.  If you think Sailor Moon's quality went down hill it was definitely the writing staff that changed more then the directorial staff, the Series Director of Stars had been part of the Sailor Moon directorial team since Goldfish Warning!.  But I don't think the Stars writers are overall inferior writers, they were just at the time less experienced, some of them I know went on to write stuff that can compete with the early seasons of Sailor Moon (Doki Doki PreCure has the same Series Composition writer).  When Sailor Moon started Toei hired some pretty experienced writers and directors because they kind of wanted this to become one of their most important shows.  But once those writers wanted to go on to other things they were replaced by relative newcomers.

The first 6 episodes of Sailor Stars I feel would work really well edited together into a 2 hour movie. What's interesting here is each one has a different director, but it was all written by two writers, the only two Stars writers who were veterans of SuperS, so ideally placed to write that season's epilogue.  Though they had no experience writing the Outer Senshi since Enokido did their episode of the Special, in which case they did surprisingly well.

Megumi doesn't seem to have done much after leaving Sailor Moon.  Enokido while doing SuperS wrote 4 episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion, all of them from the first half of the show.  I at first thought the only reason he had writing credits in the Rebuild films is because the first two redo/remake stuff from his episodes.  But then he also has a credit in 3.33 which has no connection to any episode he wrote.  So either their credits by default list everyone who worked on the original or they did consult him on something.

The first thing Enokido did after he left Sailor Moon was be the head writer of Revolutionary Girl Utena.  Yes I'm applying my maybe we give directors too much credit idea to even the most revered work of one of Anime's most worshiped Auteur Directors.  Utena definitely looks the way it does chiefly because of Ikuhara, and the basic idea of it's story started with Ikuhara.

But there is a segment of the fanbase who thinks Utena is the only (completely original to him) Ikuhara show that's great and are not so infatuated with his over hyped 2010s stuff, like WhiningAboutYuri on Tumblr, and that could be largely because the 2010s shows had completely different writers.  I personally enjoy his 2010s stuff, and probably consider Penguindrum more rewatchable then Utena.  But Utena is the only Ikuhara show I'd ever really call a must watch show.  And YuriKuma's final act frustrates me, on a list of Yuri shows it'll always fall below Citrus and Strawberry Panic in my rankings.  Of course even with Penguindrum I'd have preferred a happier ending.

And also on Utena Ikuhara was never even an Episode Director.  So he was at the top of the pyramid but there was a lot of delegating.  It was a collaborative effort on every level.  It's almost like when that one comedian makes fun of Steve Jobs getting all the credit for the iPhone.  Enokido may well have done more writing then Ikuhara did directing.

Enokido wasn't Utena's only writer.  One I already made a post about due to my love of some of his other work.  But a lot of the other writers seem to have Utena as the only Anime they ever worked on.  Including the person who wrote most of the Nanami episodes, how is it that person hasn't gotten more work when they're obviously a comedic genius?

Enokido however had the Series Composition credit and wrote 20 episodes, just over half.  They include the first five, episode 7, and 9, the two not as filler as you think recap episodes, the episodes that start and end the Black Rose saga, the start of the Akio arc, and The Barefoot Girl which if I recall is the one with the leg message scene, and almost all of the final Apocalypse Arc.  And he wrote the Screenplay for the movie.

Enokido would have a lot of post Utena work, but not always stuff that is still well known.  He wrote 5 episodes of RahXephon, a show often compared to Evangelion that in my opinion is far better.  Maybe that's partly because Enokido wrote more of it then he did Eva.  He also wrote Redline which seems to be a popular racing movie.

But perhaps the most notable thing Enokido has done in the last decade is Stardriver.  I haven't seen Stardriver yet mainly because it lacks a dub, but at this point I doubt it ever will get one so I might as well just give in and watch it subbed.  I've seen it described as like if Eva and Utena had a baby who grew up to do musical theater.  And I feel like Musicals are maybe extra difficult to consume through a language barrier?

Stardriver's director is the same series director as Sailor Stars, who had been an episode director on Sailor Moon going back to season 1 and also worked on Cutey Honey Flash.  He then worked on Fun Fun Pharmacy and a number of the shows that proceeded Pretty Cure in it's time-slot, and did episode 8 of the first season of Pretty Cure.  His visual style is certainly an interesting one to combine with the writer of Utena.

Gen Urobuchi is a rare example of a writer who's name gets mentioned as much or more then the directors of the popular shows he wrote.  But sometimes his association is with the source material rather then the Anime directly, it varies.  I find it interesting how many of his shows have Yuki Kajuria on the music even though nothing else connects them, maybe they just naturally go together.

All that is just the tip of the iceberg.  There are plenty more Anime where I think the writer is more why I like them then the director.  I'll likely make more posts on this subject in the future.

One detail I'd like to point out before ending this post is that the two most popular up and coming Female Anime directors of the last decade also had female writers on their most notable work, who also wrote plenty of stuff directed by men.

Update 01/14/2020: Turns out according to AniDB two of those Utena writers who have no other credits are actually Non Deplums of people who were still working on Sailor Moon and Cutey Honey Flash while Utena was in production.  Maybe there was a legal reason for that.  One is the Director of Sailor Stars and Stardriver, and he also directed Utena episode 9 under that pseudonym.  However there are still two Utena writers about whom we have no other information.  And my mind is starting to wonder if one of them is really Megumi and that's simply been kept a secret all this time?

The Doom Tree Saga and the Magical Girl Warrior Genre

Earlier this year I had my somewhat chaotic post about my mind changing on the issue of comparing the Sailor Moon 90s Anime to the Manga/Crystal.  I have now come to a somewhat more coherent conclusion.

The core overall story is always more solid in the Manga/Crystal, there is a lot less (in the writing) to nitpick and some of the emotions simply land much better.  That said a lot of the "filler" you only get in the 90s Anime is still vital to why I'm a Sailor Moon fan in the first place and is material I still treasure to this day.

Sailor Moon is the founding franchise of an entire Sub-genre, the Magical Girl Warrior (Mahou Shoujo before Codename Sailor V were not warriors).  Like a lot of franchises that started genres it doesn't always fit what is expected of said genre a generation later.  Sailor Moon never feels like a Deconstruction of what the genre it created became the way some works do.  All of what I consider the core elements of the Genre are in early Sailor Moon somewhere when you combine the Manga and the 90s Anime.  But some of them are not a part of Sailor Moon as consistently as they are future examples of the genre.

That creates a scenario where something that is pure "filler" in the context of Sailor Moon could become important to the genre as whole.  And I think that is exactly the case with the Doom Tree or Makai Tree arc which spans the first 13 episodes of Sailor Moon R.

This Arc is pure Filler, it's based on nothing in the Manga and what makes it arguably not skip-able in the context of the 90s Anime version of the story could have easily been solved by a single episode.

However as an installment of the Magical Girl Warrior sub-genre, it is the beginning of the redeeming of the villains being an important part of the formula.  With Sailor Moon that was never really a thing in the Manga.  And earlier in the Anime there was a redemption of sorts for Nephrite but that wasn't in any way prompted by any actions of the actual Magical Girls, it just sorta happened.

This would not be the last time Sailor Moon did it, we see something similar in the R movie and it would be done selectively with villains of the Black Moon Clan and the Death Busters.  It is mainly in Sailor Stars where Sailor Moon really starts seeming like the rest of the genre in this regard.  But we have no way of calculating how dependent these later developments were on the existence of the Doom Tree Saga.

Outside of Sailor Moon this was becoming standard for the Genre as early as Wedding Peach in 1995, the Makai Tree saga aired on Japanese television in the Spring of 1993.  And the future lead writer and co-creator of Wedding Peach wrote 3 episodes of the Doom Tree saga.

So never underestimate the value of good filler.

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.

The Lineage of The Magical Girl Warrior

In 1991 the Magical Girl Warrior Sub-Genre was born in Manga with Codename Sailor V and Devil Hunter Yoko which technically qualifies but came out too close to Sailor V for one to have influenced the other.  Of the two it is mainly Sailor V that is the literary ancestor of the Magical Girl Warriors who've come since, chiefly via it's more well known spin off Sailor Moon.

However I'd have to say the main literary ancestors of the Magical Girl Warrior were not earlier Magical Girls but other types of Superhero stories.

The original Magical Girl genre was mainly a Sit-Com premise, basically inspired by Bewitched but focusing on younger characters rather then a house wife, it's western equivalent would be stuff like Sabrina The Teenage Witch and Wizards of Waverly Place.  Next came the Magical Girl Idol sub-genre which is basically Jem and the Holograms but more like how the Japanese Idol Industry works, and it's most in the case of that Magical Girl sub-genre where I can definitely say the Japanese version predates the western equivalent, Creamy Mammy was popular for a few years before Jem came along.  Harmony Gold started work on a Creamy Mammy dub that never saw the light of day, so Americans in the Animation industry were aware of it.

I don't want to over emphasize the extent to which certain western works were an influence, directly or indirectly, on the genre.  But I have to talk about it somewhat since Naoko Takeuchi has publicly admitted to Wonder Woman being an influence.

Mechanically speaking it is mainly the Lynda Carter TV Show Wonder Woman who seems like a proto Magical Girl Warrior (Or Magical Woman if you prefer since she's an adult), since in that version she doesn't have her powers when in civilian form and has the spinning transformation.  And I'm unsure to what extent any other version of Wonder Woman would have been available in Japanese in the 80s and early 90s.  But I feel the spirit of the Magical Girl genre is more anticipated by Marston's original vision in the Golden Age comics which were often distinct from the Male Superheros of the Golden Age in how they were about at least trying to solve things non violently and reforming the villains.  And the Magical Girl genre has similarly been associated with sexual kinks being thrown in.

Wedding Peach might have been drawing even more on Wonder Woman, they got similar looking Bracelets and a general ancient Greek soldier aesthetic to the Magical Warrior costumes and using Aphrodite in a similar way.

The lineage of Superheros with Magical Transformations probably begins with Fawcett's Captain Marvel aka Shazam, I watched Linkara's review of the first Shazam comic and if only Billy were a girl and Shazam a cute animal it would sure seem like a Magical Girl pilot.  A little later the character of Mary Marvel was added to the Shazam mythos and since she doesn't age up when she transforms she is perhaps the first true Magical Girl Warrior.  Mary Marvel unfortunately wasn't included in the 70s TV version of the Shazam mythos, instead they created Isis another Magical Woman Warrior.  Then there are the many Western Superheros viewed as knock offs of Captain Marvel in some way, from Thor having a similar kind of transformation to Miracleman and Miracle Woman to Marvel Comics' Captain Marvel.

But leaving the transformation element aside, I feel Supergirl may likely have been a visual influence on the genre, in her early to mid 80s look (which is still her most iconic look) she anticipates the basic look of the Sailor Scouts and Love Angels in a lot of ways, especially Mina and Usagi being inexplicably Blond.  And it was largely Bronze Age Supergirl comics that first explored balancing the Superhero life with School Life using a female character.  Another interesting DC Proto Magical Girl Warrior was Amethyst Princess of Gemworld, but I'm unsure to what extent that character could have been known across the Pacific that early. And maybe She-Ra could be considered a factor as well.

But as I said the Magical Girl Warrior is a Japanese innovation.  In many ways the concept was arguably just a Hyper Girlification of the Tokusatsu Transforming Superhero formula most popularly exemplified by Ultraman, Super Sentai and Kamen Rider, but arguably the first was a character known as Gekko Kamen or the Moonlight Mask, the Moonlight Knight from the Doom Tree Saga of Sailor Moon was a direct homage to that character.  When I was watching SSSS.Gridman it really felt at times to me like the MC was a male Magical Girl.

And this Genre of Japanese entertainment had even already had Female Superheroes before the Magical Girl Warrior, but they were all more Science Based then Magick which is why they seem related to the Magical Girl genre only in retrospect.  The first of them, or at least first to be the main character was Go Nagai's Cutey Honey, Cutey Honey's perceived relationship to this genre is why after the 90s Sailor Moon anime went off the air Toei put a more Shoujo oriented reboot of Cutey Honey in it's time-slot, Cutey Honey Flash.

Once again however I don't think transforming characters were the only influence.  I can't help but wonder if La Seine No Hoshi was an aesthetic influence in some fashion.  But adding further weight to the possible DC Comics influence mentioned above, I have come to think Project A-Ko must have been a factor.  That movie used the same kind of Sailor Fuku that Sailor V and Sailor Moon would later wear, and it anticipated running late for school as a common recurring gag.  And all three of it's lead Seiyu wound up being on Sailor Moon, two of them as major characters.

Update: I have now learned that there were a few Toei Toku shows that were basically live action Magical Girl shows in the late 80s and early 90s as part of the Fushigi Comedy Series.  The most important being The Masked Belle Poitrine.

https://twitter.com/KuudereKun888/status/1301967357905170435

https://www.tuxedounmasked.com/what-magical-girl-was-sailor-moon-based-on/