ToriJ Watches Sailor Moon
The English dub! Dun! Dun! Dunnnnnn!
That's right, this morning I had a random urge to watch Sailor Moon and talk about it. I'll contribute it to the Sailor Moon shirt I'm wearing... right now. So, without further ado let's dive into SAILOR MOON!
First things first, the intro. There isn't much to say about the intro. It's the only thing people can universally agree on that is good. Whether you liked the show, hated the show or just felt indifferent about the show, the intro song is catchy and memorable, it's cut well, there's a lot of fast paced action, it utilizes scenes from the show well and it does its job of getting you pumped up for the episode that's about to air.
From there we're given spoilers about the Moon Kingdom which we weren't supposed to know until much later. We're shown that it was destroyed by the villains called the Negaverse, we see the cats Luna and Artemis are there and then we're shown the queen herself, Queen Serenity.
Where was I? Oh, right, spoilers. So, they even address the princess by name, which they do not change at all. Queen Serenity says, “Princess Serena.” And what's the name of the main character? Serena. COME ON GUYS! I mean, I know Usagi/Sailor Moon being the Moon Princess probably isn't the hardest plot point to figure out, but at least in the anime there was some reasonable doubt who it was. It could have been a different character altogether. We wouldn't have known until it was revealed. Instead you list her by name and show us a frigging picture of her. It's not like we can't already put two and two together.
After all of that we're finally introduced to our title character who is late for school. Again. Ugh, already I forgot how fast paced kids shows are because of the show creators (dubbers in this case) assuming children don't have much of an attention span, and I'm sure that's true for some, but heaven forbid kids are exposed to atmosphere! We go from scene, to scene, to scene, everyone is always talking about something and when they're not talking, they're thinking ruining what was otherwise a nice quiet scene that built suspense and mystery, like all the scenes with Luna for example. For crying out loud I saw a woman talking WHILE she was falling. Nobody does that. If you are falling to the ground you do not have time to provide commentary during!
Another thing that bothers me about the dub is the fact that by the name changes, the accents and behavior, we're supposed to accept that these are Americans in an American town, but if you take the time to actually observe you'll notice a few things that betrays this notion, mainly Serena holding a pair of chop sticks to eat the lunch her mom prepared for her, oh, and all the Japanese writing that's printed everywhere! Would it have been so hard and unreasonable just to keep the setting and the names the same and have them speak English for the sake of the audience? It worked for Ranma. It worked for Utena. It worked for a good number of Japanese Anime dubbed into English. Why wouldn't it work here? You could have had kids learn something about a new culture without even knowing they're learning anything, win-win. Oh well.
Then we get a sneak peek at our villains. Queen Beryl and Jadeite.
Oh, I'm sorry, I mean Jedite. I get them confused since they're about the laziest changes to names I've seen on TV! Jedite plan is to take advantage of the humans greed to sell them jewelry rigged to drain their energy for the Negaverse and has one of his people inside the jewelry store disguised as the store's owner. That... That is actually a very good plan. It shows enough research went into our culture to know where and how we can be exploited and enough infiltration was done to get someone on the inside to conduct it all. Actually, a lot of Jedite's schemes seen throughout his time on the show are clever and it all steams from our own desires whether it be love, wanting to be fit, dreams of being famous. As far as villains go Jedite is well organized and actually pretty smart, but more on that as we progress.
Eventually Molly (Serena's best friend and the daughter of the woman who's been replaced by a monster) witness all the customers passing out as their energy is drained and that's when the monster of the day, Morga, finally reveals herself!
Right, so, it's around this time that the mysterious black cat, Luna, meets up with Serena in her room and explains that she is Sailor Moon. Serena naturally doesn't believe her so she's given a locket that allows her to transform into Sailor Moon. I suppose people would like me to touch on the transformation sequence. It's not done in real time. It's a slowed down process just meant to be pretty and in-synch with the genre of the show, the villains are not literally standing there waiting the whole time. It's like how Power Rangers always has the morphin sequence. Only more drawn out, like how later morphin sequences were.
Sailor Moon arrives to help her friend and actually does a pretty decent job with the dodging until she's finally thrown down on her butt. Which makes sense, she's fourteen years old, never had any training nor been in a fight her whole life. I'm not sure what Luna was expecting going in. That said, one rose and handsome speech later Sailor Moon cries and her hairpieces increases the volume of it taking care of the kinda sorta zombies Morga created with her victims and giving her the opening to use her tiara to quite literally dust the enemy.
THEN EVERYHTHING IS OKAY! Apparently. I mean, we never see Molly's real mother anywhere and for all we know that could have been her possessed that just got rendered into ash, but Molly ties up that loose end by saying she and her mom had a strange dream last night. Serena doesn't care to hear any of it because she's tired as smurf and just wants to go to sleep.
And that concludes the first episode of Sailor Moon. Overall it's not a bad start. We're introduced to our main characters and villains, it delivers on the action its promised and what can be said bad about it can basically be said for any episode, minus the spoilers at the beginning. That was terrible and the dubbers should be ashamed.
Until next time, ToriJ says stand on one foot and hop.
