1284: MIRAKURU ROMANSU

I’m a little further into Sailor Moon now. (That sounds a bit wrong. Never mind, let’s just run with it.) Still not a long way, but long enough for both Sailors Mercury and Mars to have shown up, which has thrown an interesting twist into things.

As I suspected, both Mercury and Mars are considerably more competent than poor old Usagi, who is still a clumsy crybaby even when transformed. That said, it’s interesting to see the different ways that Mercury and Mars come to “competence” — Mercury, in keeping with her “normal” incarnation as Ami, is quiet, intelligent and thinks things through; Mars, meanwhile, is aggressive, quick to anger and courageous. Mercury is by far the most “mature” of the bunch, despite Mars clearly being the oldest (I assume, anyway; I’m judging largely on the basis of their physical development and the fact that Mars has a job rather than attending school) [correction — the episode I watched the day after this post was written saw Mars turn up in a school uniform, so scratch that!] — the episode I watched today featured Usagi and Mars arguing throughout, with Mars in particular betraying the facade of maturity she clearly tries hard to keep up by getting sucked into Usagi’s ridiculous world. I’m spotting a bit of a tsundere streak in Mars, too (well, mostly tsuntsun at present) which, of course, means I find her tremendously attractive.

The show continues to be simplistic, entertaining fun at its current stage. I don’t know if it gets any more complex later on, but to be honest, I don’t mind at all if it continues in its present, rather formulaic fashion. You don’t have to think too hard about it or try to hunt for hidden meanings; you can just flop down in front of it and enjoy the silliness. It’s the Saturday morning cartoon formula — predictable villains who are always after the same thing (the curiously non-specific “energy” in Sailor Moon’s case), a predictable main cast who get to do one majorly awesome thing per episode that can be easily represented through the insertion of stock footage, and a comic sidekick character. (That said, Sailor Moon’s sidekick character Luna the cat is actually the most mature, sensible one out of all of them.)

What’s interesting about Sailor Moon at this early stage — and I could be wrong about this, since I’m only ten episodes into the whole run — is that it’s essentially a superhero show, focused almost exclusively on female superheroes, in which said female superheroes don’t appear to be there just to be “sexy”. Sure, they’re all in short skirts, Sailor Mars is wearing some distinctly impractical-looking high heels and there was a rather gratuitous pantsu shot (Sailor Mars again) in the last episode I watched, but for the most part when they’re in their Sailor Senshi forms, it’s all business, bubbles, fireballs and Moon Tiara Action. (Incidentally, I feel that Sailors Mercury and Moon drew the short straws when it came to their awesome powers — Sailor Mars can set things on fire, while Mercury can, err, make a lot of bubbles, and Moon can throw her tiara at things. Granted, getting hit by Sailor Moon’s tiara generally appears to make things turn into dust, but still. Sailor Mars can set things on fire.)

Anyway, yeah. Sailor Moon is awesome. I’m disappointed in myself I haven’t watched it sooner, but at least I can make up for lost time now.