~ By Jordan

If you have never heard of Sailor Moon, first of all, for shame! And secondly, it's a story about 5 teenage girls who fight evil with the powers of love, and friendship. It sounds very cheesy, but the story is surprisingly very well done. Bassically the story of this series in a nutshell envolves a cat named Luna who finds a girl named Serena and gives her a locket which allows her to transform into Sailor moon, and inherit mystical powers. As Sailor moon, Serena, and her fellow scouts fight against Queen Beryl, queen of the negaverse. And with a cool grand finale, the season ends leaving much to be desired.

When I think of the animation in Sailor Moon, I think amazing character animation, and fun setting drawings, along with cool attack sequences to boot, but it wasn't always like that. During this series the animation was very sketchy. The characters havn't gained there cool looks, and the attack sequences left alittle something to be desired. Now don't get me wrong, there are some episodes where the characters looked pretty good, usually the episodes with something big going on in the story. But 3/4ths of the time, everything just doesn't look all that great. This series is the growing stage for one of my favorite shows

Sailor Moon's biggest draw is ht elovable characters. Serena, Amy, Rei, Lita, and Mina all have unique personalities, and becuase of all of the funny situations that they get into, are the cause for the enjoyment most people get from this show. The one big gripe I have with the characters is that by the time that all of them are discovered, the series is allready almost over.

Now for ovious reasons, I am not going to review the music, and sound of the american series. Insted I will review the original Japanese one. I must say that Sailor Moon has the best music, of any anime I have ever heard. From the awesome main theme song : "Moonlight Densitsu," to all of the cool episode music. Now back to the american version for a second, the voice acting kind of sucks, but when Terry Hawks takes over the role of Sailor Moon, half way through the series the voice acting gets pretty good. After hearing the voices of the characters for a while, they begin to grow on you.

The majority of Sailor Moon episodes always consist of the same format : A character, (whether suporting, or main,) is focused on, is attacked by the negaverse, scouts come, 5 minute fight occurs where the scouts usually get beat for the duration, Tuxedo mask appears and saves them, or a diversion is caused, Sailor Moon attacks, negaverse monster defeated, character saved, and the episode ends with a bad joke. As horrible as it sounds, it doesn't come off that bad, but the repitition can become annoying. The best part of the show is on some episodes where a major event happens. When something like this happens, the format is scrapped, and thats when some surprises begin to happen that make the show interesting!

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