Our year long look at Sailor Moon begins its final
chapter Next Monday when Sailor Moon Sailor Stars kicks off at long last. And while my expectations for it are high
since it’s the one season I’ve seen nothing of until now, it cant be nearly as
bad as the disaster that was Sailor Moon SuperS. Sure the SuperS Movie was much better but the
actual season was one of the worst titles I’ve reviewed this year (not a 0/10
mind you but still pretty bad). It was a
season of missed opportunity, character regression or assassination, moments of
pure and painful cringe and the feeling that the story had just stopped dead in
its tracks and was replaced by over 40 episodes of filler. It even ended on a cliffhanger (a first for the
series) that will likely get resolved in the beginning of Sailor Stars. It’s difficult to choose five actual good
moments or elements from a season that I consider the Gundam Seed Destiny of
Sailor Moon. In that regard, todays Top
5 Wednesday recap of our previous season of Sailor Moon will not be a Best
Moments list. No, the Fourth Season of
Sailor Moon deserves its bottom tier status and thus we’ll be looking at the
Top 5 Worst Moments from Sailor Moon SuperS.
Over the course of three seasons, we’ve watched Usagi
Tsukino evolve from bumbling, boy crazy crybaby into a strong, inspirational
and bad ass superheroine who isn’t afraid to put her life on the line to
protect everyone and anyone.
This is the
girl who fought to protect the life of a girl her Outer Senshi counterparts
wanted to assassinate cause she believed Hotaru was worth saving.
SuperS backpedals tremendously on all of this
positive character growth.
We saw Usagi
closely guarding Mamoru and believing all of her closest friends were trying to
make a move on him, nevermind that fact that she was getting into contests with
the girls over who could nab the hot guy of the week.
This was early days Season One Usagi, a
shadow of the brave woman she’s become over time.
#4-Sidelining the Senshi
While SuperS could be considered a major storyline for
Chibiusa (and I’m ok with that so long as it’s done right), this can at the
cost of basically pushing Rei, Ami, Mako and Minako to the background.
It was very rare for anyone to get a decent
episode around their character and even when they did, a lot of the action
hardly involved them at the end.
SuperS
doubled down on Sailor Moon and Sailor Chibi Moon being the ones to fight any
and all monsters and get in the finishing blow at the end.
You’d think we were far enough into this show
that it’s ok for any of the others to defeat a monster without their leaders
super move.
Even when we did get the
entire crew together, maybe one or two of them got in an attack before the big
finish.
Remember when this used to be a
nice ensemble show?
Well SuperS doesn’t.
#3-Pegasus
Ugh, while I should be happy Mamoru’s role got greatly
reduced in this season, it was done in favor of another equally infuriating
character.
Pegasus is supposed to be
Chibiusa’s first true love but nothing the show did ever gave me the impression
he was good enough for one of my favorite characters in the series.
Chibiusa bared her soul and feelings with
Pegasus on a regular basis…Pegasus kept himself closed off and hardly did the
same in return for the bulk of the season.
The guy even put Chibiusa and the Senshi at risk because he wasn’t ready
to share just what the hell was going on with Queen Nehelenia until the moment
was right.
And when was the moment going
to be?
When the world was on fire?
Pegasus being secretive and not forthcoming
is part of what dragged SuperS out longer than it needed to be.
It’s sad really.
I love Usagi and Chibiusa but their taste in
main love interests is the weakest part of this entire show.
#2-This Season Could Have Worked
The last couple of episodes of SuperS gives us major
revelations and details about Queen Nehelenia that both intrigued me and pissed
me off.
This is a woman who has the
deepest ties to Usagi’s previous life as Princess Serenity and her need for
revenge against her transcending centuries and lifetimes is a perfect setup for
a season long villain.
Instead, we
wasted so much time on everything else that by the time we got to this actual
good stuff, SuperS was done and leaving everything to be wrapped up at the
start of the Final Season.
SCREW THAT!!!
You mean we had to spend half the Season with characters I’ll rant about in a
minute and searching for a mythical creature that was hiding in plain sight and
watching our heroines not give a crap about the Dead Moon Circus until it was
time for the finale when the enemy base was RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CITY ALL
SEASON LONG???!!!!
If we had started
things with Nehelenia and the Amazoness Quartet and cut the Season in half, it
could have worked.
We got Sailor Moon
SuperS instead…and that’s not even the worst part of the whole thing.
No that honor goes to…
#1-The Amazon Trio
Every season, Sailor Moon has given us some really
memorable and fun villains for the Senshi to face from the iconic Four Kings to
the hilariously over the top Witches 5 to my gold standard, the Spectre Sisters.
While we did eventually get the wildly
entertaining Amazoness Quartet, SuperS still gave us the Amazon Trio for more
than half the season and they are the exact far opposite of any of those
aforementioned examples.
These three
were creepy and unrelenting in how uncomfortable their plans for stealing Dream
Mirrors became.
All involved preying on
the hearts of just about anyone from girls to boys to the elderly to freaking
grade school children?
And they just
kept getting more and more chances and kept messing up to the point where you
wondered why we were still being saddled with this trio of screw ups who never
changed their tune and never got anything out of me other than immense
spite.
Even the attempt to make them
sympathetic at the end of their tenure did nothing for me.
Tiger’s Eye, Fish’s Eye and Hawk’s Eye all
need to be on some sort of watch list for more than half the crap they
pull.
They’re officially at the bottom
of the Villains List in Sailor Moon, right there with Ail and An from Sailor
Moon R (and they didn’t even stick around as long as the Amazon Trio did).
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