Sailor Moon Crystal Commentary: A Smash Hit

For over twenty years, “Sailor Moon” has been the biggest and most popular magical girl series ever released. It has spawned an anime, various video games, posters, dolls and more stuff fans can’t fit into their homes. Of course, the original anime is where the majority of fans, both in Japan and Western countries, got started. Problem is the anime changed and added a lot of things not found in the manga. Seventeen years after the original anime ended, “Toei Animation” decided to reboot the series and call it “Sailor Moon Crystal,” which is meant to be much closer to the manga and stream on many sites such as “Crunchyroll,” “Hulu” and “NicoNico.”

The first episode aired on July 5, 2014 and there is plenty for fans to like.

First off, many fans will most likely watch the episodes while comparing it to the manga. So far in the first episode, it is seemingly frame by frame and line by line to the manga. This is a good sign in that “Toei” has taken much care to please its fans and stay true to the original story. It also feels much better paced than the original. This is also impressive in that making an anime scene by scene to the manga is hard. “Toei” managed to pull that off well.

The animation is absolutely gorgeous. It not only looks like the manga, but the colors and movements are truly something to behold. It sure looks a lot better than the original. In fact, it is one of the best looking anime in years.

Of course, fans are expecting the little things to excite them, such as the opening theme, Sailor Moon’s transformation animation and the song played during it. The opening theme can be summed up as OK. The lyrics fit the theme of the series, it has a group of girls singing it and the girl power message is front and center. Of course, it does sound like the typical magical girl them. It’s not as memorable as the original show’s Japanese theme and it is one million times better than the English theme.

The transformation animation seems much longer than the original’s. The original’s was long, yes, but this one seems to go on forever. It does look much better than the original’s due to the better animation. The song played during the animation is a vast improvement over the original. The original sounded like a generic theme while this one has that epic feel to it. The vocals at the beginning help a lot.

So after one episode “Sailor Moon Crystal” fans will enjoy fall in love with it. It is much truer to the manga, better animated and paced than the original. The opening theme may leave much to be desired, but “Sailor Moon Crystal” is worth taking out your “Sailor Moon” merchandise and having a blast watching.