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She is. We get there when I get home.
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Jul 28, 2016 05:24
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kefkafloyd posted:Neptune's problem is that they didn't define her character as anything more than 'gifted violin player." It felt like they went "Hey, here's this really cool character, with a lot of depth. She's a fierce competitor who pushes herself hard on all fronts. She's a tough fighter who pushes against gender boundaries. oh and here's here girlfriend too I guess." I know there's more to Michiru than that, but it's what it feels like. I remember reading somewhere that Michiru is the character Naoko Takeuchi says she has the most trouble writing.
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Jul 28, 2016 05:32
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Rabbi Raccoon posted:I always got the impression that she was the brains of the Uranus/Neptune duo. She was the first to awaken out of EVERYONE (excepting Pluto, maybe, kinda fuzzy on that), and has some kind of psychic abilities. She's quiet, gifted, and powerful, and she keeps Uranus grounded. That's fair, without Michiru Haruka would have gone off the deep end. But that's still defining her in relation to Haruka, not on her own terms. I will also say in Michiru's defense that their solo story in the side-anime did a lot to shore up her character. Space Cadet Omoly posted:I remember reading somewhere that Michiru is the character Naoko Takeuchi says she has the most trouble writing. I can believe that. I think at some point you just have too many main characters to weave into a story and Sailor Moon suffers from that a bit. I wish we had more solo stories, or things that only involved a few characters, but that's not how manga and anime were written back then. I really believe that the enduring popularity of this series has nothing to do with its main story per se, but rather the strong cast of characters that could easily spawn a dozen stories on their own. I have a bunch of thoughts on these but I won't clog up Scoob's thread with them. On to the crushing of the enemies. 
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Jul 28, 2016 06:02
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kefkafloyd posted:I have a bunch of thoughts on these but I won't clog up Scoob's thread with them. On to the crushing of the enemies. I've derailed my own thread with Utena postings and Neptunia jokes, why the hell would I stop that unless this turned into the Sailor Scout Erotica Hour? Here, here is the point of where I crack down: don't break LP rules or spoil some poo poo I want to watch for myself. Don't worry, I'll throw a temper tantrum and lock the thread if you do the latter!
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Jul 28, 2016 06:17
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This thread is as much let's play Sailor Drops so it seems like derailing is not something to worry about.
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Jul 28, 2016 06:51
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What I like about Michiru is that she's the biggest practical joker in the entire main cast and arguably the meanest. Like, she has that perfect elegant lady thing going on that she makes look effortless and is probably a lot of pressure to keep up the image of the perfect rich family's perfect rich daughter with her piano lessons and her painting and her swimming and perfect manners and so on. She acts a whole lot like the classic princess ideal that Usagi gets held up to all the time and I got the impression that she didn't particularly like her life. Like, way unlike Usagi, she tends to distance herself from having emotions and acknowledging them, and I think that's a little bit the sapphic inclinations thing and a little bit the having a sacred mission that she thinks will mean having to murder three people, and mostly growing up in an environment in which displaying honest emotions and feelings like Usagi does would be shameful and undignified and unladylike, and being politely manipulative and catty was the only acceptable way of expressing anger, which is why she's so passive-aggressively vicious. And she gets along so well with Haruka because Haruka is pretty much always in on the joke, so it's between them rather than Michiru versus the entire world. And then they do poo poo like convince Minako and Usagi that Michiru is so perfect and elegant that she doesn't ever need to use the toilet.
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Jul 28, 2016 07:57
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 So everyone who's transformed right now is in our party for this adventure. Chibi-Moon spits some hot fire about Chronos' mom and we get sucked up into a time tantrum.  So we end up in this barren wasteland around the Space-Time Door. Because you assholes wanted me to stop putting these asides in footnote form, here, allow me to make a tangent. Most of the old translations went with "time-space", but I've got a volume here going on about "space-time", which is what I'm sticking with because I grew up on sci-fi and later journals and I just know it as the space/time continuum, it's easier for me. Yep. That sure needed to be in the text of the update. Now, I'm just going to make a quick design gripe here!  We're given control here, and while the horizontal is locked and won't scroll, both north and south go for a few screens apiece! If you go to the south, there's a save point, but to the north is our goal of the Space-Time Door. You will see neither of these unless you just hold the drat button. I'm just saying, stick us by the save point, because if I did not actively try to see them, we would not have spotted...  ...the lone random encounters out here!  Darien was the DiC dub name for Mamoru Chiba. Oh, wait, poo poo. I'll get to these dudes in a little, actually, because that's a weird story.  So approaching the actual Door triggers this cutscene, and I'm gonna break this one down because it's a loving basic error in translation.  Please note where Luna is right now.  / Setsuna Meiou/Sailor Pluto is not in this scene. That's Nergal in a wig. Anyway, let's keep playing tricks. Direct transcription... Sailor Moon, since you have the Silver Crystal, you must leave here immediately. Huh? Why? Because the Space-Time Door is full of evil energy. The Silver Crystal won't be able to handle the evil power within. Now quickly, please!Okay, so. This reads like "You've got to get out of here, it's beyond your strength", right? She's actually trying to steal the Silver Crystal. This translation is garbage, and whoever translated this should loving know better based on how they wrapped this scene up! Princess, your Silver Crystal as well!!And this is where Chibi-Usa goes "That's not Pluto, she didn't use my affectionate nickname" and the jig is up. But no, clearly she's trying to steal the drat things and how the gently caress did they not fix this? UGH.  So Nergal whips off her disguise and Luna actually leaps back and hides behind the others. I couldn't get a frame of it. There are actually two versions of this scene, which is one of the only branch points in the game to not hinge on a yes/no decision! In the version we see...  Who are you?! I am Nergal... huh? Sailor Mars isn't with you? (shakes head) No matter. This is the end of you all! Did you think I would get scared and run away? HAHAHAHAHA! Where's Pluto? Beat me and I'll tell you!(battle begins) However, if we go back to the scenes that I captured while y'all voted...  Yeah, it's me again, Mars. This time, you'll die. Are you... hunting me? Don't think I'm as weak as I was before! Let's go! You took the words out of my mouth!(the two charge at one another to begin the battle)  Nergal is the only Opposito Senshi we fight three times in the game, and the only one to get a custom scene like that. Again, I cannot tell if this game was rushed or just really, really half-assed.  The fight is basically identical to the prior round but with more HP. Chibi-Moon still sucks. What else is new.  Afterwards, we enter Epilepsy Corridor, which is a psychedelic fuckfest. About 3 layers of colors are going on at any given time on this screen.  To top it all off, there are random encounters still.  U-Ikasaman is... I am going to quote liberally from a wiki for this because every part of it makes me laugh. quote:U-Ikasaman was a Daimon supervised by Mimete. She was the head of the dimensional rift created in the Tomoe residence after Mimete shoved a variety of random items, mostly board games but also books and a rice bowl, into the Daimon-creating oven while Professor Tomoe was not looking. That's right, kids, there was a monster of the week who was made up of the concept "what if Zone Eater from FFVI hosed Luxord from Kingdom Hearts". Sailor Moon! Alright now we get into another gimmick I utterly loathe. So here is a thing. I have no problem with teleport mazes. One of the first games I ever played as a kid was Eye of the Beholder, which... well, this is from the EoB3 cluebook, this should sum up that kinda poo poo.  It was like Wizardry, but actually fun instead. So please note that I do not hate the basic concept, and it can be really fun.  What I hate here is random loving squares teleporting you somewhere else without warning, or, as we'll see later, the even-worse having to figure out which random square teleports you to the boss.  But first, the random encounters.   I saved these two because Campanula and Dahlian come out of the anime-only Sailor Moon R movie, wherein a comet deposits "Flower Youma" seeds on Earth and they take a liking to Mamoru for some reason and these things are supposed to be a galactic-level threat? They come in a bunch of varieties and one of them locks onto Mamoru's childhood bro or something. I haven't seen it in years and the movies are kind of hot trash. Anyway they're technically the same species. There's a third we'll see later as random encounters as well.  So let me sum up this dungeon. When we finish going through the Psychedelic Freakout Columns, we arrive in this room. The chest to the left contains one of those Collector's Items for the sidequest, the right contains Sailor Pluto's Garnet Pin. If we walk onto the left invisible teleport, we end up in the merchant room. If we walk onto the right invisible teleport, we end up in the mechanical room.  Just like the earlier forest, the merchant here is our only way to heal in this entire segment. You should basically assume anytime the party teleports we're locked out of inns or cheap healing for a while. This chest is a dessert, and the room has no exits save the one at the bottom, which will take us back to the room with the two chests and two teleporters.  The mechanical room uses the Tomoe Labs tileset and is clearly the "right" path given that it's the only one we can go forward from. Neither of these chests has anything cool.  This cosmic pillar stage is our new "hub" room, like the first teleporter room, where if we go "back" we'll end up here now. There are 4 chests in here, and they contain, in order, Foundation Cream (aka "F. Cream", the def+ item in battle), Garnet Earrings, a Special Dish (collector's item), and something that was clearly so valuable I forgot to screenshot it.  Just like the first room, you need to find your way forward with a blind teleport on a single square it's easy to miss. Yes, there are enemy encounters this entire time. God, I hate this.  The final room we have any player control in is this rehash of the first room, but larger and with a cooler floor tile. I love obsidian.  Once again there are a bunch of chests, and wait what  I cannot tell if "Crystal Burger" being a popular future trend is the best or the dumbest thing in this game.  We also find another majorly-powerful accessory, but this one is different to all the others. It can go on anyone, with a +24 Attack and +19 Speed. If you feel someone needs to strike first and put their fist through people, you give them a hit of BERSERKER CONTACTS, clearly.  And this part I hate more than most. This square is the sole way forward and it's a point of no return. I actually had to start scouring this room for the path forward and gained a level per character in the process.  Anyway. Where was I earlier... /Setsuna Meiou/Sailor Pluto Sailor Pluto guards the Space-Time Door. That's her job. Period. It's a lonely motherfucking gig. So when Parent of the Year Neo-Queen Serenity decided to let the nanny raise her daughter, all of the Inner Senshi did their part to help with the kid. Sailor Mercury did this by way of crafting her an insane toy in the guise of Luna's face in a hideous grin on a ball that could turn into anything. "Luna-P", it was called. But it was also a walkie-talkie, and more often than not, the person on the other end was Sailor Pluto, who felt for the lonely kid. You see, Sailor Pluto was the only hero who survived the fall of the original Moon Kingdom, because her job was "stand in the void outside of reality and watch this door". So for a millenium or so, she just did that. Sailor Pluto is the only hero in the series, possibly the only CHARACTER you ever see buy alcohol. She's got reasons. I told you that story to tell you this one: the Black Moon Clan were the dudes who came the closest to winning, because their boss, who is not appearing in this game, was a dude going by Wiseman, so we're going to talk about him for a sec. Wiseman was what he called himself when he was "fortune-telling" for them, but his goal was actually "I am going to destroy the Silver Crystal and the royals and the Moon Kingdom and every goddamn thing I can because gently caress everyone." This dude reinvented crime in an era of peace, and because she was so far beyond humanity at that point, Neo-Queen Serenity's response was to shove him into a planet's core to live endlessly. See, the name he called himself originally was "Death Phantom". And he basically got to the point wherein he manipulated things so that his pawn, Prince Demande, got hold of two Silver Crystals, one from the future (Chibi-Usa's, stolen from her mother), and Usagi's in the present, and went to jam them together and Timecop some poo poo. Sailor Pluto's job was to guard that door. Sailor Pluto forsook her job, broke every single rule she had lived by, stopped time, and took those crystals the gently caress back at the cost of her life. (For what it's worth, Wiseman/Death Phantom did not give a gently caress, and decided "Well, if that doesn't work, I'm just going to slam my body, which is a planet, INTO MODERN EARTH", so now you know where Majora's Mask's plot came from. That dude was hardcore. He even had one extra "gently caress you" but that was a retcon at the end of the manga.) So in the next arc, when the Outer Senshi appeared as a whole, there was this green haired lady older than everyone chilling around, and that was Pluto's reincarnation, because now she got to do that, and have a personality, and maybe enjoy herself a little. And that's her story. But right now she's trapped in the evil Mana Tree. Because Pluto is Pluto, and very duty-bound, her response to seeing us here is "Hey, guys, my staff is on the ground. Just grab it with your foot and take it to Earth and you can seal the door and unfuck history. That'd be swell. Thanks." But both Usagis decide that this is unacceptable and you aren't allowed to leave a friend behind, so their plan becomes "LET'S PUNCH THAT TREE OUT".  I gather, based on the layout of this room and the fact that it has an exit (even if we can't move to it because a cutscene starts when we teleport in), that at one point more was planned for this area. But it may have gotten cut because of one weird hack they used to make this boss look 'impressive'...  See, the "Dimension Tree" isn't a sprite. It's part of the background layer. Which means any encounters in this room use that BG, so any encounters we'd have had here would have seen it, just like how at the start of the update, I showed you that the Space-Time Door could be seen in the random encounters in the gray fog world. And you thought I was just making a cheap crack at the translators, huh! Speaking of those, though...  I am actually unsure of what the gently caress might be said here, because I get the sense it is incredibly wrong, especially since I don't think we're in the doorway anymore, or at least...  ...the next scene shows this tower shaking wildly. Oh, by the way, this is where we're going to fight the final boss, on this platform right here. So I hope you like this stage.  And just because she won't appear any further in this game and it fits the current infodump: Luna and Artemis eventually gently caress and have a daughter named Diana. She was also a cat who was a people. Diana went to watch the Space-Time Door while Pluto killed herself to save history. Now you know.  So back in modern day, we debrief as a full party! We're like 75% of the way through the game, and need I remind you, Sailor Pluto is level 16, so I'm going to have to grind her rear end up, accessories or no accessories. God, this game is a mess.  (To put that in perspective, this is what the party we just used looked like right before that tree battle, and everyone levelled up.)  Anyway, we now have a round-robin of everyone taking a few lines on the situation, so allow me to summarize:  Maybe their changing history is why the Moon Kingdom fell in the first place? What if we go tweak that? I wanna live on the moon again. (slaps the taste out of her mouth) YOU WANNA SAY THAT AGAIN?! I LIKE MY LIFE HERE. ...Um, that aside, we have a problem in that whatever they're doing in the past has not been positive for any of us. It's our duty to set things right, however we feel. Tweaking history to our every whim would be a hollow existence and we would be no better than our enemies, living lies. ...Uh, did our lines get swapped? When did you become the philosopher? I'm still here. And it totally wouldn't be true love if you altered history to get into someone's pants. Uh, Rei... Look, the bottom line is this is not allowed, period. Do not make me whoop any of your asses over this.And then the translation goes to poo poo again: I want to know where the city of the Marle Serenitaties is. Let me look that up! (fiddles with computer) Huh. "Data not found". There's not much information about the Moon.This has not come up anywhere in this game or translation before now, and it comes out of Usagi's mouth suddenly. I am going to be honest: at this point, I am looking up additional sources and asking a couple of people to help me figure out what the gently caress the original plot was, which was also a reason I stalled out this update with your vote. The translation shits the bed wholesale here. From what we can figure, chapter 4 is supposed to involve the plot actually starting: the chat with Mamoru at the beginning was supposed to mention that he can't transform now because time fuckery/the theft of his crystal he never needed before now. This is why "None of us remember Princess Serenity" is so pants-making GBS threads. Meanwhile, we didn't find where it came in before, but Usagi is asking about where the hell the ruins of the Moon Kingdom would be. It's the Mare Serenitatis ("Sea of Serenity") on the actual Moon. This is dumb for three reasons: a) they've all been there before b) even if the joke is that Usagi doesn't know what it's called, and not that this is the translators loving up, Ami sure as poo poo would c) how the gently caress does the computer not know about the Sea of Serenity, it's an actual, documented lunar landmark, even without the Moon Kingdom  Ahem. So next time we're going to send Usagi, and only Usagi, to the bookstore to solve this mystery.
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Jul 28, 2016 11:50
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END ME SCOOB posted:I've derailed my own thread with Utena postings and Neptunia jokes, why the hell would I stop that unless this turned into the Sailor Scout Erotica Hour? Clearly, the other 1% of fans are those people who do weird 90s Anime Porn things. Like, some kind of time capsule of what people thought of as 'Anime' in the 90s, like what you'd see if you opened up a copy of Big Eyes Small Mouth back then. Basically what I'm saying is, lesbians are better than bad porn. (Unless it's bad lesbian porn.)  kefkafloyd posted:I can believe that. I think at some point you just have too many main characters to weave into a story and Sailor Moon suffers from that a bit. I wish we had more solo stories, or things that only involved a few characters, but that's not how manga and anime were written back then. I really believe that the enduring popularity of this series has nothing to do with its main story per se, but rather the strong cast of characters that could easily spawn a dozen stories on their own. I have a bunch of thoughts on these but I won't clog up Scoob's thread with them. On to the crushing of the enemies. With what Scoob said in mind,  EDIT: Now I can't wait for the Prince Darien jokes. Queen Fiona fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Jul 28, 2016 |
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Jul 28, 2016 15:19
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Not only is Pluto level 16 when she joins, her stats are absolute poo poo. She's really more like level 12 or 13 stat-wise. And that might be too high as I haven't actually checked.
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Jul 28, 2016 15:26
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Queen Fiona posted:EDIT: Now I can't wait for the Prince Darien jokes. Okay.  OH poo poo HE CAN TRANSFORM TOO 
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Jul 28, 2016 15:37
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Dango Bango posted:Not only is Pluto level 16 when she joins, her stats are absolute poo poo. She's really more like level 12 or 13 stat-wise. And that might be too high as I haven't actually checked. True but now you can never lose. Ever
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Jul 28, 2016 16:45
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END ME SCOOB posted:I've derailed my own thread with Utena postings and Neptunia jokes, why the hell would I stop that unless this turned into the Sailor Scout Erotica Hour? I just didn't want to hit people with semi-personal tons-o-text out of the blue.  Queen Fiona posted:With what Scoob said in mind, It'd take me a while to write it all down, but when I was watching Crystal the second time (after having given up on it) I tried very hard to keep my bias towards my experiences with the original series at bay. But it instead just made me examine my relationship to Sailor Moon, which was something I had kind of put away for a decade or more. As I said before, the DiC dub in the 90s was a formative experience because we had no clue that such a thing like Sailor Moon could exist. In the 90s and 80s it was very rare to find a show focused so much on a female's point of view with a group of girls who were allowed to express themselves individually without the burden of needing to be all things to all people. It was a distinct viewpoint from the male sentai shows or ensemble cartoons. The only one I can remember was the original My Little Pony. Yes, there were films/shorts for Strawberry Shortcake and Rainbow Brite, and there might have been others I can't remember, but actual ongoing series were stupidly rare. I was a teenager at the time when SM first dropped, so I didn't think about it too hard, but the impact of this group dynamic stayed with me as I went on to art school and created my own work. I was so used to being catered to as a young boy with series like Transformers and GI Joe that Sailor Moon was like my first introduction to Indian food—until that moment my brain didn't even know that's what I wanted all along. Just in the inners alone you have five clearly defined characters who despite the fact you can slot them into archetypes (emotional, nerd, hothead, tomboy, klutz) have an incredible amount of depth purely by the amount of time we spend with them and how these characteristics are used to explore their relationship to Usagi. While I think the seasons on the original series were too long and dragged on a bit in places, Crystal had the opposite problem (because it was adapting the manga). Everything was bang-bang move on to the next plot point. Evaluating it on the merits of a manga adaptation, I would say it's done a fairly decent job on that front (especially in S3). But it didn't scratch the itch for me that Sailor Moon (and now Steven Universe and some other shows) do, in that it has almost no time to explore the lives and relationships of its fantastic group of characters. Does the manga deserve a proper adaptation? Sure, and I'm glad it's getting done, but I hope that's not the end of Sailor Moon because there's so much more they could do. In the anime only Ami got a kind of solo "story" where she was the primary character with her short film before the SuperS movie. Yes, there were focus episodes of the main series, but the difference in having someone be the protagonist versus the traditional senshi group dynamic was huge. There were manga side stories too as well as Codename Sailor V, but a lot of that material wasn't officially here for a long time. The series needed more of these in general, but they were too beholden to formula. After all, you can hear the TV executive say: "what's an episode of Sailor Moon without Sailor Moon?" I'm hoping that some day, Takenouchi will loosen the reins a bit and allow canonical material by other authors or creators, or hell, even a true Western adaptation in some form (either in comic books or animation) because there's just so much you can do with these characters. To get back to characters, whenever I talk Sailor Moon with people the topic always goes to favorite sailor and I'm always fascinated with everyone's picks (even though they're all wrong if they don't pick Makoto ). When you're a kid you might pick Ami because she's a nerd, or Mars because she's the red one. But over time the details turn to the way they talk, the way they fight, how they deal with trouble, what they do in their spare time. People hook into that and it defines their relationship with the show more than some plot about a time traveling child or a monster of the week. You can only save the world so many times before people go "eh, whatever" and it would have been nice if one of the ongoing series was, say, an adaptation of Codename Sailor V or something in that spirit.This is why the Crystal Tokyo future is so depressing to me, because it seems like Ami does nothing as a doctor (why bother when the Silver Crystal has cured all disease?) or Makoto never opens her cake shop (because she's Jupiter full-time now). Granted, you can say "We don't know that it didn't happen because they just didn't show it to us" but that's the drift I got from both the anime and the manga. kefkafloyd fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jul 28, 2016 |
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Jul 28, 2016 17:43
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Y'know, out of all the late stage bullshit the manga pulls, the only thing the really pissed me off was what happens with the Luna, Artemis, and Diana. After hanging around in human form a bit, all the crescent marks on their foreheads get hosed up, which as established way way waaaaay back in the beginning, screws with their higher moon being brain functions. And also no more fashionable as hell human forms. For the rest of the whole grim sequence of events they're just regular rear end cats, meowing in the background while Usagi cries about the horrible poo poo going on.
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Jul 28, 2016 18:19
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kefkafloyd posted:I just didn't want to hit people with semi-personal tons-o-text out of the blue. Well, you just did, so...is now the time for real talk? Because if now's the time for real talk, I have a lot of it.  My relationship with Sailor Moon is...a bit different. I wasn't even six years old when it was airing for the first time on YTV here in Canada. It aired extremely early in the morning, so I didn't get to see it a lot...but when I did, I soaked it right up. I had no idea I was trans back then at all, but the idea of 'boy/girl' for it never really crossed my mind, and even years later I'd be watching Cardcaptors or something without even blinking. I think it's around the time of Tokyo Mew Mew that I sorta tuned out on that, but that might be as much the actual over-reliance on 'girly' as opposed to the somewhat lighter use even in the SM anime, or something in the qualities of the series themselves, or paying too much attention to oh my god that girl plays card games and beats everyone at them how cool is that to really notice. But, for my part? I couldn't watch after a while due to a daycare that had lots of Veggie Tales tapes for those mornings, so I never got to see the Outers. I think I got to see some of Chibiusa (or 'Rini', I suppose), but I didn't get any experience with 'cousins' or anything like that, and I didn't catch up heavily with the fandom when I was old enough to use the Internet because, well, it was 1998 and I was too busy figuring out how to play that one video game without owning a Game Boy. And now I'm a weird, overdramatic queer lady talking to other nerds on the Internet about magical girls and feminist experiences, so look how that turned out. But I can't really share my experiences about life-changing Outer Senshi experiences or how this show opened me up to Girls Doing Things or anything like that, because none of those things actually happened to me and I have no real frame of reference for them. Instead...it's my earliest memory, just about. The episode Sailor Venus finally joins the team. At the end of it, everyone's just staring in awe at her, at her beauty, her power, wondering just who this person could possibly be...asking if she's the Moon Princess, and having her just smile and say she doesn't know, like she's just playing it off, being kind of...radiant and heavenly... Basically, it stuck with me. It stuck with me a long time. Not the only one, not the most important one, not even the weirdest one...but definitely the first. I remember it better than anything else back then. I was awed, I was jealous, and it was everything a girl could be that a boy could never hope to, in my little heteronormative world somewhere in the countryside, staring at the TV. And she definitely gave me part of my MO as I slipped through the faint cracks in my closet, and then when stepping out completely. ...pity it took me twenty-two years to figure the rest out, huh?  In any case, I've got a little side project going with some of my own magical girl fanwank from several series blended into one, and the backstory pulls heavily from Sailor Moon's past and future eras thanks to this thread giving me a tons of Cliff's notes for the various continuities. One thing that struck me from this thread is the descriptions of Usagi as god-empress and Crystal Tokyo as a society in stasis, which made me wonder about a story in which these things are actually true and their implications are explored in more detail. You can probably blame some Gundam fandom headcanons about Lacus Clyne, Terrorist Queen Pop Idol for that. So you have a society where a crystalline Earth ruled by an immortal magical girl has been in enforced cultural stasis for thousands of years, and this is a calamity to be prevented rather than some vague paradise world that doesn't really seem that much like paradise. I dunno. Some shows don't explore the deeper, darker implications of their setups. So why not take those implications and do something interesting with them instead?  My own personal wishlists for Sailor Moon spinoffs and side stories would involve my personal Best Girl Minako, who certainly already had one yet didn't get a chance to really show off as the Veteran after that. I think maybe she also spent some time working with British police or something? Or maybe it can be some kind of buddy-cop thing with Rei or whoever where they solve supernatural crimes with their powers and probably some obligatory love interests and... ...okay, maybe that's not the best idea. But she's kind of underappreciated overall compared to others, and I feel like her character has an added dimension that could use more exploring. That's just me, though! There's also, thanks to discussion with Scoob here, some thoughts on letting Ami show off a little more of her brilliance. Like, maybe she was the one who designed all the uniforms and transformations and gadgets the senshi use in the first place. Maybe she was part of setting up Crystal Tokyo. Did she see the Moon Kingdom's fall coming? Or even just her experiences as a medical student and trying to balance that and her role as a guardian. There's a lot of opportunities. Or, we can just have some alternate universe clashes with Black Lady and Mistress 9 teaming up as an ultimate villain duo, I'm cool with that. Ooh, or maybe instead of that, have them reform but maintain their adult forms and become a kind of third group within the Inner/Outer dynamic, or...
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Jul 28, 2016 18:30
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Is this the 'long-post-about-Sailor-Moon and-its-effect-on-you?' Hour? Cuz I got one too. I get two very different feelings when watching Sailor Moon 90s (Not the DiC dub though, barely watched it as a kid because I got made fun of), and Crystal/Reading the Manga. The 90s series is able to invoke all sorts of emotions, happiness, silliness, etc. But it also did a bang up job of characters who I connected with, who felt real, who I wanted to see succeed or was saddened when they got hurt (Especially Mako, who's not only my favorite character but the one I connected to the most other than Usagi). The finale of Season 1 and Stars brought me to goddamn tears and even though I only started the series back in 2013 (it took me just over two years to finish) its had a lasting impact (on both my life... And my wallet going by the shelf full of merch.) When it came to Crystal, that happiness and opimism was there at the beginning but faltered 6 episodes in. I saw the characters I enjoyed seeing get sorta lobotomized, everything was stiff. The characters I knew and loved simply weren't there, replaced by what is effectively a bunch of puppets. I still haven't managed to finish S2 and I doubt i'll get to S3 anytime soon despite the improvements i'm hearing. The Manga sorta got the same reaction from me, where I was in tears throughout Sailor Stars the Stars arc of the manga sorta just got  , maybe it was the fact that the inners were all killed off within the first five chapters before even getting to do much of anything, or maybe it was the fact that all the cats were cat people aliens, or how Rei's crows were Bird-people Aliens, and Sailor Senshi to boot. That literally all these new/changed characters sprouted up while quickly shooing out the cast we'd been following for the entire series beforehand. Part of me seriously dreads when Stars arc gets the Crystal treatment, the other part hopes that maybe they'll pull some bullshit like they did in S1 for the Shitennou.
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Jul 28, 2016 18:57
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RMZXAnarchy posted:or maybe it was the fact that all the cats were cat people aliens, or how Rei's crows were Bird-people Aliens, and Sailor Senshi to boot. That literally all these new/changed characters sprouted up while quickly shooing out the cast we'd been following for the entire series beforehand. Part of me seriously dreads when Stars arc gets the Crystal treatment, the other part hopes that maybe they'll pull some bullshit like they did in S1 for the Shitennou. That was all introduced in SuperS actually. Stars felt the need to actually use them for something else. And they weren't actually Senshi, just connected spiritually to the ones we already knew. They're probably from planets the Silver Millenium had diplomatic contact with in eon's past.
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Jul 28, 2016 19:12
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MightyPretenders posted:That was all introduced in SuperS actually. Stars felt the need to actually use them for something else. And they weren't actually Senshi, just connected spiritually to the ones we already knew. They're probably from planets the Silver Millenium had diplomatic contact with in eon's past. Weren't they just sorta spiritual apparitions in Dream though as opposed to actually physically transforming, or was that just for Mako and Ami because they were screwed out of having animal friends?
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Jul 28, 2016 19:23
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People may have issues with Crystal, and I do too, but I feel they did a good job at making Venus more of the leader she's supposed to be. But count me in among the people who wish they'd do more characterization on them in general.
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Jul 28, 2016 20:08
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I'm always interested in hearing from Minako fans. One of my best friends is a Minako fan, even though I peg her more as a Sailor Mars type. I get where you're coming from on the heteronormative bit. This show got a lot of people to open up and think about themselves differently (myself included) and I'm really happy that things are working out for you even though I'm some rando on the internet. quote:In any case, I've got a little side project going with some of my own magical girl fanwank from several series blended into one, and the backstory pulls heavily from Sailor Moon's past and future eras thanks to this thread giving me a tons of Cliff's notes for the various continuities. One thing that struck me from this thread is the descriptions of Usagi as god-empress and Crystal Tokyo as a society in stasis, which made me wonder about a story in which these things are actually true and their implications are explored in more detail. You can probably blame some Gundam fandom headcanons about Lacus Clyne, Terrorist Queen Pop Idol for that. So you have a society where a crystalline Earth ruled by an immortal magical girl has been in enforced cultural stasis for thousands of years, and this is a calamity to be prevented rather than some vague paradise world that doesn't really seem that much like paradise. They didn't think out the implications of so many things in both the anime and the manga. On the other hand PGSM does address that, sort of (but not quite). quote:Or maybe it can be some kind of buddy-cop thing with Rei or whoever where they solve supernatural crimes with their powers and probably some obligatory love interests and... quote:Or, we can just have some alternate universe clashes with Black Lady and Mistress 9 teaming up as an ultimate villain duo, I'm cool with that. Ooh, or maybe instead of that, have them reform but maintain their adult forms and become a kind of third group within the Inner/Outer dynamic, or... See, that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. They set up Chibiusa's sailor team in the manga but then do absolutely nothing with it (and I would heartily watch a spinoff of teen Chibiusa with her own sailor team having adventures). RMZXAnarchy posted:Is this the 'long-post-about-Sailor-Moon and-its-effect-on-you?' Hour? Cuz I got one too. Same. When I first watched the series back in the 90s, I was all about Ami, because hey, she's a nerd and I was a turbonerd back then, of course she'd be my favorite. But I slowly grew to find Makoto my true favorite, because she is constantly fighting how others see her and how she doesn't fit in, yet she is completely confident in who she is and what she can do, and it feels like she can succeed at anything. I think a lot of people relate to that. kefkafloyd fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Jul 28, 2016 |
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Jul 28, 2016 21:04
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Anoia posted:Y'know, out of all the late stage bullshit the manga pulls, the only thing the really pissed me off was what happens with the Luna, Artemis, and Diana. Someone I used to know was pretty consistently pissed off that everyone wanted to do 'serious' and 'angsty' magical girls now, and that there was no room for the innocent, heroic adventures of the Sailor Moon era and the 90s magical girl heyday. (Naturally, I got a little poo poo over this, especially given that angsty dark magical girl fandom has been around pretty much since Internet fanwork was a thing.) Every time I learn more about the Sailor Moon manga, I just kind of shake my head at this, because jesus christ is this one of the darkest tail-ends of a story I've ever read. But yeah, that is...it would piss me off, but it'd probably more scare the gently caress out of me, if I'm honest. Existential nightmares are fun! Rabbi Raccoon posted:People may have issues with Crystal, and I do too, but I feel they did a good job at making Venus more of the leader she's supposed to be. But count me in among the people who wish they'd do more characterization on them in general. I might give it another shot, then. I don't think I actually watched past one episode, being not exactly the biggest fan in the world and kind of being put off by the animation style. (I still have to get through the live action sometime...) kefkafloyd posted:I'm always interested in hearing from Minako fans. One of my best friends is a Minako fan, even though I peg her more as a Sailor Mars type. Rei's my other favorite, if it helps! She's pretty pissed off all the time, which I probably would be if I had to be in the Sailor Moon anime or spend time around Usagi or...you know. And she's got the Shinto theme, which is pretty cool in my eyes. Rei's more the recent favorite that I grew to like when revisiting the series, rather than one I held particular fondness for as a kid, but Minako's always gonna have that special place for that one memory. From what I can tell...Minako kind of drew the short stick in general due to being the prototype for Usagi. and therefore seeming kind of redundant in the process. Buuuuuuuuuut, I will point out that she was never as stupid as Usagi in all of Sailor V and the bits of the other adaptations I know. So she's kind of a vastly better character for that, even if they're broadly similar - she's Usagi minus all the massive character flaws that Usagi has and never really go away in the anime. She's got a lot of hidden depth that never goes far due to other characters getting more of the spotlight as time goes on. I was also not fond of her live action incarnation, which went too far with the angst. It's where I fell off when I watched them with my sister a decade or so ago. I am not well informed about Sailor Moon, honestly, so feel free to correct me if I'm talking out of my rear end. But, hey, she fights for love and justice, she's got her own lone wolf thing going on, she's awkward with metaphors, and she has a 'love-me chain'. What's not to like? EDIT: I guess there's also the fact that she seems lonely and distant on some level. Even when she's part of the team, valued, welcomed, she still seems a little outside their world by comparison. She's seen things the others don't, while she still hasn't seen anything like the Outers have. She had to give up the spotlight for Usagi's sake, and she's been cursed to never find success in love (well, with men, presumably). I can relate to a great deal of this, much more than I can with Ami's intelligence or the like. Queen Fiona fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Jul 28, 2016 |
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Jul 28, 2016 21:19
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If you already know the story due to being a Sailor Moon fan, I recommend skipping seasons 1 and 2 of Crystal, and jump straight into season 3.
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Jul 28, 2016 21:25
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Season 1 is a poorly animated mess, the inners were barely there and paints Usagi in a very poor light almost where she's Anime-Bella Swan for Mamoru.
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Jul 28, 2016 21:31
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I dove right in with Crystal season 3 knowing nothing other than a vague fandom osmosis of who the characters are, and I didn't have any problems.
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Jul 28, 2016 21:32
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kefkafloyd posted:Same. When I first watched the series back in the 90s, I was all about Ami, because hey, she's a nerd and I was a turbonerd back then, of course she'd be my favorite. But I slowly grew to find Makoto my true favorite, because she is constantly fighting how others see her and how she doesn't fit in, yet she is completely confident in who she is and what she can do, and it feels like she can succeed at anything. I think a lot of people relate to that. Funnily enough I was never really a fan of Ami. I think back as a kid I just didn't like her hair, but nowadays she's just sorta... plain. Back in the day I was a much bigger fan of Usagi, if only because she was the main character. Mako really appealed to the side of me that didn't care what I was or what I was doing as long as I was true to myself. It was through her that I was able to see that I was living a huge lie and was able to break free of my phobias, find friends, start cosplaying, and come out as trans. I saw in Mako something to aspire towards, something that I hadn't really had beforehand. I think its safe to say I wouldn't be where I am today without Sailor Moon. Robindaybird posted:Season 1 is a poorly animated mess, the inners were barely there and paints Usagi in a very poor light almost where she's Anime-Bella Swan for Mamoru. Don't forget how the staff said the Inners had no character without forcing past romances with the Shitennou in and making that something their present incarnations cared about for some reason! 
RMZXAnarchy fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Jul 28, 2016 |
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Jul 28, 2016 22:17
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RMZXAnarchy posted:Funnily enough I was never really a fan of Ami. I think back as a kid I just didn't like her hair, but nowadays she's just sorta... plain. Back in the day I was a much bigger fan of Usagi, if only because she was the main character. Breaking down heteronormativity: not just for the Outers anymore!  I'm kind of 'eh' on Mako myself, though I'm not entirely sure why one way or the other. It's honestly been so long that I might end up liking her a lot if I rewatched things, and I never had a feeling of hate like I did for Usagi, but I don't think I ever identified with her that highly. Probably doesn't help that I tended to identify with, or at least wanted to emulate, villains more than anything else...as though the avatar didn't make that blatant as all hell. RMZXAnarchy posted:Don't forget how the staff said the Inners had no character without forcing past romances with the Shitennou in and making that something their present incarnations cared about for some reason! Hold on, let me phone up Alison Bechdel and Lauren Faust so I can find some appropriate things to yell at Crystal's producers...
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Jul 28, 2016 22:29
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Queen Fiona posted:Hold on, let me phone up Alison Bechdel and Lauren Faust so I can find some appropriate things to yell at Crystal's producers... I'm sure Naoko Takeuchi herself had some choice expletives to scream once she found out.
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Jul 28, 2016 23:31
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KataraniSword posted:I'm sure Naoko Takeuchi herself had some choice expletives to scream once she found out. Given she really was not happy about the Stars were handled in the 1st anime, I wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't thrilled about this either.
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Jul 28, 2016 23:33
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One aspect of Crystal that was kinda nice was how it painted Ami/Makoto/Rei as outcasts that Usagi brought together as friends. It's a good concept, you know, to have Usagi as this super friendly person that brings people together and makes them feel like they belong. Unfortunately they didn't really execute it very well, so it ends up being "Usagi is nice to them in their first episode and then never speaks to them again."
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Jul 28, 2016 23:43
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Robindaybird posted:Given she really was not happy about the Stars were handled in the 1st anime, I wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't thrilled about this either. Honestly though, other than Seiya's everything, I much prefer anime Stars to the equivalent manga arc. But I'm not a huge fan of the manga in general, I guess.
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Jul 29, 2016 00:00
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TurnipFritter posted:One aspect of Crystal that was kinda nice was how it painted Ami/Makoto/Rei as outcasts that Usagi brought together as friends. It's a good concept, you know, to have Usagi as this super friendly person that brings people together and makes them feel like they belong. Unfortunately they didn't really execute it very well, so it ends up being "Usagi is nice to them in their first episode and then never speaks to them again." The live action series handles this a lot better.
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Jul 29, 2016 00:17
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hopeandjoy posted:Honestly though, other than Seiya's everything, I much prefer anime Stars to the equivalent manga arc. But I'm not a huge fan of the manga in general, I guess. I didn't mind Seiya, at the very least they weren't doing the "grr I hate you we're not allies" thing Taiki and Yaten ripped off from Haruka and Michiru. Plus, Nagareboshi He is such a beautiful song. Seiya's VA nails the hell outta it.
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Jul 29, 2016 00:18
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Anoia posted:The live action series handles this a lot better. I'm actually a really big fan of Usagi's live-action incarnation. She doesn't seem stupid, just a little frazzled and generally an ordinary-seeming teenage girl who takes on her role quite well. She actually seems like someone you'd enjoy being around, even if she doesn't always make the best decisions. Basically what I'm saying is, PGSM is amazing and y'all should watch it.
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Jul 29, 2016 00:58
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Mako was always my favorite, because as a kid green was my favorite color, and as an adult, Pink is my favorite color.
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Jul 29, 2016 03:06
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I also have my own Sailor Moon story. I got into anime long before Sailor Moon in the 80's due to Astroboy, Robotech, Star Blazers and Kimba The White Lion. I was lucky enough at 8 years old to have a friend who's dad was Japanese and started the Vancouver Japanamation Club and owned a business called Anime Jyannai where I spent hours watching VHS tapes of broadcasts of the original anime from Japan. It's how I actually learned to understand Japanese. The whole idea of the business was that he had several VHS duplicators in his back room where you could bring your own tapes and for a fee, record as much as you wanted. It's how I got to see all 200 eps of Sailor Moon long before DIC started to dub them. Incidentally, years later, I got to speak to Terri Hawkes (the most notable voice of DIC Usagi) at a convention here and got her to talk about her experiences voicing a character who became so iconic. Nobody on the cast ever expected the show to ever become as big as it did, and most figured that it wouldn't last for more than a season.
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Jul 29, 2016 06:18
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Oh, are we sharing our Sailor Moon stories now? Cool! I was eight when the series first started airing in Italy. Back then I was already really into anime (almost all Italians are, whether they admit it or not), and I gobbled Sailor Moon right up. I remember playing with my sister acting out scenes from the anime. Thing is, back then there was a stark, clear cut contrast between "girl" cartoons and "boy" cartoons. All my friends at school and outside mocked me the first couple times I tried talking about Sailor Moon with them, and after that I stopped trying. So I couldn't talk about it with anyone but my sister, since even though I had female friends at school there was the (actively encouraged by the teachers  ) tendency to form single-gender cliques, and I of course was in the Boy Clique.I distinctly remember being kind of pissed off at that. Why the hell couldn't I watch Sailor Moon? Who the gently caress decided that? (It was the TV-celebrity psychologists, that's who, the fuckers who went on talkshows and said "moms, don't let your little boys watch girl cartoons, it will make them gay!", thankfully my mom wasn't dumb so she let me watch whatever I wanted but general consensus was against her.) Anyway me and my sister watched Sailor Moon and also recorded it religiously so we could rewatch it over and over, I think we still have all the tapes in a closet back at my parents' house, I should look for them next time I'm over there. It took me some years to figure out why I grew that attached to the show (and other shows, like when I played at Power Rangers with my friends as a little kid I always pretended in my mind's eye I was the Pink Ranger  ), but once I did it became clear. It was a sort of "oh, ok, that explains a lot actually" moment.And even though my favorite at the time I first watched the show was first Ami, and then (when she showed up) Michiru, Makoto is the Best Girl. Fight me.
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Jul 29, 2016 09:03
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Man, everyone here has stories about how Sailor Moon was an eye opening experience for them, and all I got is the time I borrowed the entire managa series from a friend and told her I'd get the series back to her tomorrow. And I did. My reasons for liking my fav are also pretty simple, too. Mako is lightning themed, and she's one of the few magical girls and/ or sentai heroes to just outright slug a villain. She has a pragmatism I very much appreciate. As for getting made fun of, I can only remember getting made fun of for liking the show once, when I was in high school. And that was because it was a kid show, not a girl show. I didn't let it stick. Not only did I not give a poo poo what that person thought (they were into DBZ, which I love, but is also super a "kid show") they also decided to mock me right as the dub was airing one of the first appearance of the "Cousins" and doing a very bad job of hiding the lesbianism. Now I'm remembering "Cousins" was a running joke for a few years between my friends, referring to bad censorship, especially of gay matters. Like many jokes you make as a teen, we more or less ran it into the ground, and it died out sometime around Utena.
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Jul 29, 2016 14:57
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Joining the chorus. As a boy I had nobody I could talk to about Sailor Moon, and I was blown away by Haruka and Michiru being gay (thank you, German TV, for not censoring this aspect of the show) and not being portrayed in a negative light.. There were other things that opened my eyes to the fact that I liked boys myself, but this queer-positive series left a lasting impression on me.
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Jul 29, 2016 15:18
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Torrannor posted:Joining the chorus. As a boy I had nobody I could talk to about Sailor Moon, and I was blown away by Haruka and Michiru being gay (thank you, German TV, for not censoring this aspect of the show) and not being portrayed in a negative light.. There were other things that opened my eyes to the fact that I liked boys myself, but this queer-positive series left a lasting impression on me. Being thirteen years old and in middle school in the mid-90s was possibly the worst time for someone to discuss Sailor Moon because you would be fighting against institutionalized homophobia/transphobia and gender roles every step of the way. I basically watched the show by myself and had nobody to discuss it with until the internet came along. Not even my friends who were amenable to Japanese material watched it (and I didn't even think of the genre as anime back then, when Sam Goody's had a section called "Japanimation" in the store). Also glad to see the Makoto crew represent. 
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Jul 29, 2016 16:40
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Ryushikaze posted:Man, everyone here has stories about how Sailor Moon was an eye opening experience for them, and all I got is the time I borrowed the entire managa series from a friend and told her I'd get the series back to her tomorrow. And I did.
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Jul 29, 2016 17:13
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FractalSandwich posted:The secret is that the hundreds of people reading the thread who only have non-stories to tell aren't posting about them. i watched it in elementary school and when playing make-believe during recess i had to be Tuxedo Mask because i was the only boy watching even though i wanted to be Mercury this is my Sailor Moon story thank you for listening
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Jul 29, 2016 17:39
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