Our annual Extended Summer Series Review is just around
the corner and with it, the time to welcome back our dear friend and Magical
Girl Champion, Usagi Tsukino. Yes, our
big series this summer is Sailor Moon Crystal, the 2014 reboot that basically
acts as an unabridged edition of the original series: no filler and hopefully
some events and characters done differently.
In case you missed it, when I tackled the original Sailor Moon series
last year, I always did a Top 5 covering the best events of the previous season
before hoping into the next one. Since I
have gone over all 5 season from Sailor Moon to Sailor Moon Sailor Stars,
there’s nothing to recap before jumping into Crystal. No today on T5W, we’re gonna do something a
much longer time coming. I’m finally
going to rank those seasons in order from worst to best…and I guess you can
think of this as a full series recap in the process. These are my Top 5 Seasons of Sailor Moon.
SuperS is widely regarded as the very worst of the
original series…and it is.
Every episode
from the get go tries its hardest to not only undo three seasons of solid
character growth for Usagi but also make the rest of the Senshi look freaking
incompetent and, to put it bluntly, kind of bad a their jobs.
The romance between Chibiusa and Pegasus is
just as terrible as Usagi and Mamorus (if not worse) and the season seems to be
more about senseless slapstick than anything else.
SuperS is Sailor Moons rock bottom, a season
that feels like 40 episodes of long padded out filler just to keep viewers
occupied until Sailor Stars was ready…and thank God the show didn’t lose me
here.
#4-Sailor Moon
Usagi Tsukino’s big Anime debut
has its fair share of typical first season growing pains.
Theres a lot of padding and filler episodes
and Usagi’s first outings don’t paint her in the most endearing light.
But she does grow and Ami, Rei, Makoto and
Minako all get very nice introductions and solo episodes to shine.
You can see the Magical Girl playbook being
written all season long from the Monster of the Week formula to the constantly
scaled up villains and some fun humor.
The Season Finale is still one of the very best, cementing Sailor Moons
status in the history books well ahead of the rest of its successful original
run.
#3-Sailor Moon R
While Sailor Moon R starts things off rough with the
Makai Tree filler arc that went on wayyyyy too long, once Chibiusa arrives, the
good stuff kicks in and doesn’t let up all season long.
Sailor Moon R shows it’s taken notes from
Season One with improved action, especially with the Senshi facing off against
the memorable Spectre Sisters, humor and character development.
Usagi and Chibiusa are also standouts due to
their bickering sibling like relationship which evolves into one of the most
loving bonds in the series.
#2-Sailor Moon S
This season features the arrival of the fan favorite
Queens of the series: Sailor Uranus and Neptune.
And honestly…they’re not my favorite part of
the season.
And yet despite their
stagnant character arcs and refusal to grow in the process, Sailor Moon S is
the series coming insanely close to its full potential.
We actually get something of a Senshi Civil
War between the Inner and Outer teams along with the Death Busters being both
terrifying and darkly hilarious.
Chibiusa also continues to grow as one of the shows best characters
thanks to her friendship with Hotaru aka Sailor Saturn.
This season, Sailor Moon stepped up to face
her biggest challenges yet and she always came out on top.
This was truly her season to shine.
#1-Sailor Moon Sailor Stars
If you can ignore how much of a stumble the final
episodes are in terms of tone and quality, Sailor Stars is everything it’s been
hyped to be.
Somehow it rectifies the
disaster left behind by Sailor Moon SuperS before giving us true super stars in
Seiya, Taiki and Yaten.
I love Usagi and
Seiya’s arc and the show makes an insanely strong argument for why they should
be a couple instead of Usagi and Mamoru.
The Inner Senshi all get some of their best episodes in this arc too,
never left to the sidelines just because the Sailor Starlights are always on
stage.
The story is both fun and
gripping, the action is taking chances and being inventive and the buildup to
Sailor Galaxia is pretty damn good.
Again, just ignore how it all comes to a close and relish in the very
best Sailor Moon has to offer in Sailor Stars.
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