Usagi Tsukino Takes Another Swing

Sailor Moon was one of those series that managed to reach people it wasn’t designed for. A magical girl show aimed at young Japanese girls, and there I was—a kid who was neither—completely absorbed. The transformation sequences, the costume design, the melodrama cranked up to operatic levels. Something in the visual language just worked, regardless of where you fell in the target demographic.

Sailor Moon Crystal, the reboot that began airing in Japan in the summer of 2014, goes back to Naoko Takeuchi’s original manga rather than building on the 90s anime’s sprawling filler arcs. It’s cleaner and more faithful, which is either a virtue or a loss depending on how attached you are to the original’s specific brand of chaotic, overstuffed energy. What I’ve seen so far is formally restrained in a way the old series never was—tighter, more austere—and while it hasn’t yet hit the same emotional register as the version I grew up with, there’s something genuinely affecting about watching Usagi stumble back into her destiny with updated linework.

The first season arrived on DVD and Blu-ray in Japan in October 2014, with an international release following not long after. Worth the wait for anyone who still has Moonlight Densetsu tattooed somewhere in their long-term memory—and honestly, who doesn’t.