Before anybody get's angry - don't get me wrong. Sailor Moon Crystal isn't bad because of the new look, CGI transformations, new voices or new theme music so many people are angry about. These things really don't matter, regardless whether you watched the original 90 version or not.
Sailor Moon Crystal is bad because, to put it plainly, it's very poorly made. VERY. As I mentioned at the beginning, the faces just can't stay consistent. Very often they look weird and out of style, like they were drawn in few seconds just to push the work through. Maybe the very subtle, delicate designs based on the manga are hard to present in motion within the tight budget and strict deadlines the series has (I assume). Maybe they've only have interns working on this. Maybe they thought nobody would notice. Or maybe they don't care.
In general the animation is very low quality - sometimes during the fights we can see some actual, nicely done moves, but other than that it's mostly static shots, moving mouths, some jagged running, little gesticulation... you get my point. This also hurts characters emotions, as they mostly look like they are half-surprised, half-curious all the time with half-opened mouths.
But that's not the worst of it. The absolute, most horrid aspect of Sailor Moon Crystal is the direction. Jesus. It's so bad. Sometimes you don't even know what's going on due to the confusing and cheap camera angles. Even the important scenes, and I mean really important scenes are done so poorly it's sad. Nothing about the camera angles and montage to highlight them. Nothing.There are so many mouth shots - and for what? It's not like they show any amazing expressions. No, they just don't really have to be animated so they chose them over anything else. Hell, sometimes I'm not even 100% sure where the characters are standing because I only saw shots of faces, hair an mouths. Oh so many mouths.
It's really sad - both for dedicated Sailor Moon fans from the 90' and the new viewers. This could have been something good. I don't know what happened. Is it really the budget? If so, why was it so low for a series so highly-anticipated? Is it because it's distributed online? Does Toei think that if they release a show for free it can basically be crap? I jut don't get it.
