Moon Prism Power, Take Two
Kotono Mitsuishi’s voice is one of those sounds that lives in a very specific part of the brain—the part that stores early Saturday mornings and the particular quality of afternoon light in the mid-1990s. She was Usagi in the original Sailor Moon, and the announcement that she was coming back for Sailor Moon Crystal felt less like casting news and more like a correction of something that had been wrong for too long.
The reboot was always going to live or die on whether it understood what made the original matter. The rest of the cast filled out well—Hisako Kanemoto and Rina Satou, familiar from Neon Genesis Evangelion, One Piece, and Gundam Build Fighters, finding their way into the senshi lineup. The character artwork looked like someone had finally figured out how to split the difference between the manga’s precise linework and the softer TV aesthetic—striking without being cold.
The series started streaming on Niconico Douga from July 2014, two episodes per month. That release pace—slow, deliberate, closer to the manga’s original rhythm—felt right. I wanted it back badly enough that I was prepared to forgive quite a lot. That’s how it goes with things that mattered to you at a formative age: you don’t return to them clean.