Let's address the biggest, pinkest elephant in the room from the start: the artwork. I think what happened here was an ambitious idea (trying to mimic Naoko Takeuchi's elaborate manga style in animation) with poor planning and sloppy execution. Visually speaking, they missed the mark. Right from the teaser, people rightfully pointed out that something was off. The first episode looks mostly fine-- not amazing, but ok-- and then it's like they animators gave up. The artwork flipflops between beautiful and cringeworthy. I've seen plenty of cheap animation in my life, but the bad art in Sailor Moon Crystal isn't just mediocre, it is painful to look upon. This is especially tragic because it's clear that this series could have been stunning. Seriously, go watch the Moon Pride music video and compare it to any scene in the anime. It could have all looked that good, if someone had cared.
But nobody cared.
Things move, but the only thing that really gets loving animation is Sailor Moon's hair. Nobody's walk cycles look quite right, ever, and a lot of the time, no one seems grounded in the environments. A lot of "animation" is accomplished by having still images pan across the screen or stretch/shrink, to unintentional comedic effect. Fight scenes show a bit more effort than the classic anime's JRPG-style "stock attack footage, villain reaction, rinse and repeat" fights, but still seem to cut away at moments that would be inconvenient to animate.
The excuses for Crystal's moldy potato quality are thin. The old series was low-budget, rush-it-in-a-week animation from the 90's. The manga was yet unfinished, and they pumped out filler episodes to compensate. Physical, painted cels would have to be completely redone to correct any errors. By contrast, Sailor Moon Crystal episodes were produced in two weeks instead of one. The source material is complete. The animation is digital, which allows for much quicker and easier corrections. Technology has given us better, more efficient ways to animate in the last 20 years. Even a lot of the art "fixes" for the Blu-Ray are mediocre at best. I feel like a decade down the road we might hear horror stories about animating on Sailor Moon Crystal, like that they were paid in ketchup packets and forced to work 23-hour shifts and every misshapen face is a scream of protest.
Also, the CG henshin sequences use these weird, rubbery 3D models of the senshi that look like they belong in a cheap video game. They don't quite look like their 2D selves, their faces are creepy and doll-like, and transformations are just low-effort rehashes of the transformation scenes from the first anime. They aren't fun. It's just not fun to watch a crappy CG senshi twirl around like a plastic bag in a breeze with mediocre special effects. Sailor Moon's henshin sequences are an icon-- of the series, of the genre, and of anime in general. I'd wager almost anyone that saw Sailor Moon, even if it was ages ago and they haven't thought about it since they were a child, probably remembers the henshin sequences. You put effort and budget into something like that because your viewers are going to see it every episode. That Crystal fails to deliver, even here, is a clear indicator that nobody took any pride in this mess.
Unfortunately, the story is as unsalvageable as the visuals. The 90's anime was notorious for its filler (though the filler is part of what endeared us all so much to its characters). Sailor Moon Crystal ran too far in the opposite direction, deciding to squeeze two story arcs into one 26-episode season. It's extremely condensed. One manga chapter can not always equal one anime episode; things just don't work that way. While it's true that the manga, which Crystal is heavily based on, is pretty fast-paced, the manga has a fairy-tale feel to it and still manages to be engaging and emotional though its much more expressive artwork. Meanwhile, most every character drawn in Crystal has the emotional depth and subtlety of an emoticon. The story itself is so excited to get to its next nostalgic plot destination and say, "Look how we did it THIS time!" that it forgets the journey, and the journey is the most important part.
Crystal takes no time to linger or to build its characters. Everyone but Usagi is a cardboard stand-up, pared down to their most basic traits. The inner senshi, after their introductions, are flattened so badly their dialogue becomes interchangeable, and by the climax of the first arc, they are literally just finishing every sentence together. It's like the writers wrote dialogue for one person and cut it up into little pieces so the poor things would all have lines, like a grade school play for a class with too many children. The senshi exist as little more than cheerleaders for Usagi, and any moments of personal achievement they were given in the manga are handed off to Sailor Moon. (Forget about this series as an adaptation of the manga: it diverges, pointlessly, all the time. Anyone who says it's "accurate to the manga" didn't read the manga.)
Because Crystal makes its characters strangers to us, drama comes off as melodrama, and any moment meant to be meaningful or touching flops. It lacks any emotional truth; it gives you no reason to care about what's happening. It's a series that sort of spoon feeds you what you're supposed to feel about the characters and the story, but never actually goes out of its way to create those feelings. Humor is almost absent, and feels forced or out of place when it happens. Characters pass the idiot ball around, with plot threads hinging mostly on their cluelessness-- especially Usagi, who we are meant to adore, and who the senshi praise mindlessly at every turn, even though this incarnation of her is annoying, selfish, and pathetic.
That's really one of the worst parts; Sailor Moon herself is no longer a good role model. The Sailor Moon I knew was a ditzy, clumsy, silly girl with a heart of gold and the capacity for infinite love and bravery, a person who lifted others up, drew them together, and still fought for them even when she was all alone. She started out childish and selfish, but she always came through for her friends and grew immensely over the course of the series. Crystal!Usagi is obsessed with Mamoru and frequently forgets about or outright ignores her friends while they get tossed around by baddies. The most she seems to be able to say about them is that they're beautiful. And while she's still an airheaded klutz, it's not cute or charming anymore, because she's so thoroughly unlikable. She doesn't seem to care about anything other than her own feelings and desires. She's just a witless, bratty child that never changes and never learns and gets exactly what she wants anyway. The senshi's unthinking devotion to her is downright eerie, like they've been brainwashed to worship her, because she is so obviously unworthy of their adoration. Even Rei, critical of Usagi and at first suspicious of the whole sailor senshi thing in every previous incarnation, doesn't seem to have a single doubt about Usagi as their leader. Sailor Moon Crystal successfully made me hate a character that I previously loved and would have defended until blue in the face. Sailor Moon is my least favorite character in an anime named after her.
Incidentally: there is also a hackneyed, half-assed romance subplot involving all of the senshi, executed poorly of course because Crystal doesn't have the time or the dexterity to handle 8 not-Usagi characters' subplots. The theme song claims they don't need princes to save them, but the senshi are more dependent on men than they have ever been. I don't think Sailor Moon has ever been the perfect flawless feminist holy grail that some people make it out to be, but this version is a step backwards in comparison to the others. For a specific example, a panel with a consensual kiss between Usagi and Mamoru is converted into an animated scene where Mamoru forces a kiss on Usagi while she tries to push him away. Miracle romance!
The main plot itself is ass pull after ass pull after deus ex machina. Admittedly, this is a staple of Sailor Moon, but with a rushed story, cardboard characters, downright ugly animation and basically nothing likable or exciting to hold on to, it's kind of the final nail in the coffin. There's no charm left to save it. The story itself hasn't aged that well-- it needed some updating that just didn't happen. Imagine Crystal under a different name, and you get a shabby imitation of the classic anime and a weak contender in a genre that it revolutionized. And that's terrible.
Also, other than the catchy OP/ED, the music is forgettable. Having heard some of the other soundtracks Yasuharu Takanashi has worked on, it sounds phoned-in. The music never strongly ties itself to any scenes, even the transformation sequences. Most of my music collection is anime soundtracks, and I can't say I even remember most of Crystal's.
I spent a lot of time being patient and forgiving with this series. I managed to convince myself I was enjoying it for about seven episodes. There are a select good moments that have made me smile or laugh, but they're chocolate chips in a pile of gravel. It makes me sad that this shallow, lifeless adaptation of the manga is how a lot of people are going to get introduced to Sailor Moon. The original manga story is a gem that could be easily polished, but nobody bothered.
This series was not given the respect or care that it deserves. Those two years of secrecy and delays were frustrating, but not nearly as frustrating as the result: a soulless, slapdash mess, a totally transparent cash grab (as clearly indicated by the ridiculous price gouging on the BDs). It's the anime equivalent of a cheap bath gift set-- presented like it's luxurious and classy, but it's just glorified hand soap. As a long-time Sailor Moon fan, it's hard for me to evaluate Crystal without comparing it to other incarnations, but as a reboot for such a popular, long-lived franchise, it's a massive letdown. Toei played us for chumps.
The best I can hope for at this point is that people will watch it, realize it's terrible, and check out the classic anime or the manga or PGSM.
WHAT I LEARNED IN BOATING SCHOOL IS: Sometimes the things you loved were fine the way they were. I didn't spend my days longing for a new Sailor Moon anime before I knew it was happening. And now that it exists, I mostly wish it didn't. Maybe it's ok for good things to be over. Maybe I'm wiser now. Maybe I just spent $15 on a gashapon Cutie Moon Rod. Don't judge me.
