The problem is not what Crystal is trying to do, but how it does. Their main hook was being a more loyal adaptation to the manga, but being a good adaptation and being a good anime is two different thing. Their aim really was, more or less, to bring the story of the manga to an anime as straight as possible, but their lack of vision caused that they missed the most important behind it, it's heart and soul.
Lets face it, if a show can't convince an audience, at the most critical time, AKA around the first 5 episodes that it's worthwhile. Especially in a case like this when we had high hopes and expectations towards the show, then that show is doomed. Or at least have a very hard time to be considered as a success. People will turn their backs, leave with a sour taste in their mouth, and that's exactly what happened with Crystal.
The 90s anime fans were unimpressed with the barebones storyline, the super fast pacing, and the simple characterization. While the manga fans felt Crystal didn't treat the source material with the reverence it deserved.
They promised us a remake for the 20th anniversary, which would be faithful to the original manga. Both were lies. The release date has been pushed back several times, and when it finally came out, after 2 years later when it origninally suppose to be, it felt like the product was half-assed and dated at the same time. It also turned out very quickly, while Crystal mostly stick to the manga, it also have changes, which just cause more confusion.
<b>Animation and art style</b>: Personally I hated the new color scheme, the noodle limbs, and in general the many floating, flying scenes. It just looks ridiculous, like they have rubber bodies, and the whole place have lunar gravity. They tried to reflect Naoko's art, but they messed up. The manga art style is good on paper, like looking at a fashion illustration, but it hard to translate on screen, because it requires movement. Ironically, the '90s anime was closer to that style than what they did in Crystal.
Quality wise, Sailor Moon in fact never was a high quality anime. The '90s anime have a lot of static things in the background, and some of those even looked pretty rough. However, at least it was a consistent quality, and that anime still have it's own unique and appealing art style. In the 90s anime, they made creative and bold design decisions, like the architect of the Dark Kingdom and Planet Nemesis was astonishing. It was eldritch, alien looking, with strange, abstract forms and weird powers. Compared to that, these places in Crystal just looks simple and barren.
The animation quality in Crystal is pretty inconsistent. A scene can look really nice and detailed, while another can look poorly designed, cheap and low effort. Not the mention the many, many animation errors, like bad perpectives, choppy animations, sudden quality drops, etc.
The transformation and attack sequences were also a huge disappointment, even after they abandoned the awful, fake 3D looking CGI. In the 90s anime these scenes are memorable and aged well, because looks beautiful and detailed, and have awesome, catchy music. Compared to those, the ones in Crystal are lazy, cheap, and uninspired. (Dead black backgrounds.)
Also, this is just a minor annoyance compared to the previously mentioned, but the presence of modern technology like laptops, smartphones, and LCD screens are also ruined the atmosphere. The show should represent the 1990s, when it was originally written. Imagine if we got a new RoboCop, which have modern technology, instead of that authentic 80s retrofuturism. (Oh wait, that already happened, and people hated it.)
<b>Story, pacing, characterization</b>: The 90’s anime and the manga are radically different from each other, despite and because of being produced alongside each other. The 90’s anime rather than being a straight adaptation, it basically only adapting the arc ideas over the actual executed manga arcs. Crystal is instead a straight forward adaptation of the manga, with very little in the way of changes or expansion. This however more of a curse than a bless, mostly because the Manga’s fast pacing does not translate well to animation.
Manga fans like to deny this, but the manga also have it's own fair share of flaws. The story is deficient and illogical in many ways, and the 90s anime fixed much of what was wrong with the manga. Like minimalistic personalities for the inners, villains dying after one panel, things happening out of the blue, etc. Crystal had an opportunity to make up for the manga’s flaws but they left the worst parts be, and the changes can considered rather forced and poorly executed.
The 90s anime, much like many mainstream anime of its time is notorious of having many filler episodes. However, fillers also have their own function, by giving the story adequate time to unravel, while also including fun slice of life parts, mixed with action packed monster of a week parts. Which allowed the characters, both senshis and villains to be more fleshed out.
The manga already focuses on Usagi to the point that the others, especially the Inners don't get many opportunities to shine, and Crystal just takes away from what little they do have. The Inner Senshi stop having any impact or meaningful effect over the events, and they have no real connection to the main plot either. They're just kind of there, occasionally acting as a sort of support characters. For all the flaws of the classic anime, I prefer it for the time it spends characterizing all of the girls into a true ensemble cast with Usagi at its heart.
<b>Overall</b>: Dark Kingdom and Black Moon arc was a mess. Both suffered from the same hideous designs, weird mistakes, and idiotic changes. Infinity had better production values than Black Moon but still suffered from bad direction and finding its own identity. Eternal was mostly fine. The direction was better than Infinity but the 1:1 adaptation format didn't work in movie format. The animation was nice and going for designs that emulate the original anime was a good move.
As a whole Crystal is okay. It starts off horribly and gradually gets better, but unlike the original it never becomes anything remarkable, or memorable. It just mediocre. It can't be called as a worthy sucessor of the original anime, or the faithful adaptation of the original manga. Which brings up the question, what is the point of Crystal? Because the only thing it successfully achieved over 10 years, is it become a disappointment for those who were (and maybe still) fans of the original. It gave us nothing.
