The Reset

I kept thinking Sailor Moon would stay finished. That was the ending—Usagi made it to the moon, destroyed the thing trying to destroy the world, and that was supposed to be it. The final act, the actual conclusion. Fifteen years went by and I basically forgot about it. Now they’re remaking the entire thing from the beginning, starting over from the 1992 manga, which means I’m about to watch her become this cosmic savior again like it’s brand new.

The new art style is what everyone’s mad about. It’s sharper, more grown-up, less cute than the ’90s version. Designed for people who actually want to watch Sailor Moon now without feeling like they’re sneaking kids’ cartoons in the middle of the night. I get it—you want what you remember, the thing that made you feel something back then. But obviously you can’t remake it exactly as is. If they’d done that it would just be a museum piece. Takeuchi clearly wanted something that honored the original manga but looked like it was made now, for people who’ve actually lived fifteen more years since the original aired.

It’s on Crunchyroll, Hulu, Neon Alley—everywhere—starting July 5. I’ll probably watch the first episode the day it drops and then completely space on the rest until I binge it all at three in the morning in a week.

The weird part is the reset itself. Sailor Moon’s always been built on cyclical time—worlds breaking and restarting, timelines looping, everything ending so it can begin again. And the franchise is literally doing that to itself right now. Usagi gets maybe thirty seconds of being a normal person before the universe reaches down and pulls her into it all again. It’s the plot doing what the plot does. The show has become what it’s always been about.