We'll start with the good: The art has improved pretty drastically. The animators had the good sense to ditch those awful CG henshin sequences and make some nicer hand drawn ones. Fight scenes are punchier and the artwork is overall more expressive. The portrayal of the Outer Senshi is about the best you could ask for from a direct manga adaptation. In fact, most everyone's characterization has improved, including Usagi; they have personalities and actual lines now that aren't just repeating what someone else has said or collaborating on a single sentence together. Some of the humor is back, at least at the beginning, and I feel like even the music has improved by a few notches. Also, all the gay is dialed up to eleven, and that warms my little bi heart.
Here are my complaints: Someone on the animation team really needs to Google "what do cats look like?" The writing is still pretty lazy; I always thought a straight adaptation of the manga was a bad idea, and I stand firm on that. It makes for bad pacing and stifles character development. There's still some Art Weird. Episode 35 in particular looks like nobody cared much about it, and there's an ongoing problem with Usagi and Chibiusa's heads being drawn with giant, misshapen craniums in every profile view. Late in the season as we move into the final conflict, I'm definitely noticing that we're falling back into that pit where it's constant drama with almost no emotional resonance, which I think is a consequence of the rushed pace.
In conclusion, the Infinity Arc of Crystal is... okay, in that it is easy on the eyes and not a catastrophic destruction of everything that made Sailor Moon good [insert pointed look at seasons 1 and 2 here]. There are some parts that are worth watching for, but it can't at all rival the 90's anime for soul and charm. It's definitely still not the Sailor Moon we deserved from the 2010s. It's not really doing anything particularly new or exciting with the IP. I would call it ornamental, for the most part. It's a nice, pretty thing to look at for a while if you like Sailor Moon, and if you're particularly attached to the manga you'll probably enjoy it a lot more than me.
