Sailor Moon SuperS

The Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon series is extremely iconic in the minds of many of us that grew up with anime in our households. I'm sure that there are many of us that remembered the days where we ran off of the buses to see the newest season of the Sailormoon series.

3 years ago, I rediscovered my love for this series. Through sheer luck, I was able to get a copy of the boxset. While I'm happy that I did (the boxsets tend to be quite expensive), this sadly is not the best season in the series. In fact, Sailormoon SuperS is arguably the worst.

Characterization and Storyline
The characters, of course, are already established - the cute, yet vapid Usagi, her equally-as-vapid though strongly acerbic daughter Chibiusa, the smart and slightly clueless Ami, the quick tempered Rei, the ass-kicking domestic Makoto and the love-obsessed and glamorous Minako. Of course, the biggest character change comes in with the villains - the Dead Moon Circus. The circus seems to be a very strange take for villains, and I never understood why it was used as a plot device. However, the villains tend to be just as formulaic as ever, with the elderly Zirconia, and well Zirconia's various flunkies - The Amazon Trio and the Amazoness Quartet - who have flunkies of their own. The big bad guy in this series is Queen Nehelenia, a very angry and very miffed queen of the Dead Moon (who also happens to have the biggest, most heaving and most glorious pair of breasts that I've seen in the series). She wants a crystal (like most villains), but this one is the golden crystal - which is owned by the Pegasus that they want. The Pegasus dwells in the beautiful dreams of certain people, and the person's dreams where the Pegasus resides is the one with the coveted Golden Dream Mirror.

This series has a strong emphasis on Chibiusa/Sailor Chibimoon. This series is where Sailormoon and the others takes a dramatic backseat. This is mainly about Chibiusa's life and loves and aspirations, though the other characters get involved only due to powerups - each of the characters (sans Sailormoon and Tuxedo Kamen) gets their Super forms in this season.

Music
The Music for this season is particularly weak. It sounds very superhero-esque and become cheesy at points. The strongest points with the music is the ending themes, "Watashitachi ni Naritakute" (a slow yet lovely 90s-era ballad) and the dance song "Raishiku Ikimashou", which is extremely catchy, and the animation is great in that ending, which very much so shows how the series is.

For the dubbing, the dubbing is MUCH IMPROVED from Sailormoon S. Linda Ballantyne as Usagi is not quite as shrill and annoying as she was originally, in fact, during the final episode, her performance is arguably the best during her tenure in the series. She's playing the role of a mother trying to awaken her daughter as they fall through the sky, plummeting to what seems to be almost certain death. Not only is she trying to calmly wake her daughter up, but the undertone of despair and urgency is apparent in her acting.

Animation
The Animation for this part of the series does, of course, show improvement in some episodes from it's predecessor, Sailormoon S. However, it suffers in that there are days where the animation is very lazily done and appears quite juvenile, and is not entirely in line with the stock footage from the season. The days when the animation is nice, it is beautiful, with vibrant colors, large eyes and various colors to convey depth, shadow and even hair sheen. Backgrounds in the series are like famous paintings, which, like the animation for the series itself, is very colorful and very magical-looking.

Overall, Sailormoon SuperS is a series that one would be better off watching online or renting (if at all possible). It is a series that is WAY weaker than it is in the Manga, and one can easily see why it is rumored that Takeuchi did not like this series. This season was an unjust way to end the Sailormoon series in the United States. It is far better to finish the series by watching the final season or to end it by watching Sailormoon S rather than watching this one.