Does It Suck?: Sailor Moon Crystal

     Ladies and gentlemen, She's back! The pretty sailor soldier, Sailor Moon is back with a brand new anime series. Ever since making her debut in 1992, Sailor Moon has became a hit, forever becoming an anime staple and is even responsible for putting it on the map here in the U.S. Sailor Moon has build an empire not stopping with anime and manga, but branching out to cosmetics, musicals, toys, a live action drama, and video games to name a few. It's not a surprise that she is being introduced to a new generation with a brand new anime series. The new anime christened Sailor Moon: Crystal is described as being a reboot and not a continuation of the previous anime series that ran from 1992 to 1997. There have been a few setback trying to launch the series. The studio, Kodansha, had to postpone it a few times due to things not being ready, but it is now ready to be seen to fans worldwide. But the question is, does it suck?

The Story
The story is the same as the other adaptations. If you don't know: Usagi Tsukino is a crybaby 14-year-old schoolgirl that is given a magical brooch by a talking cat named Luna that transformers her into the Soldier of Love and Justice, Sailor Moon. It is up to Usagi to find and reawaken the other Sailor Soldiers to help her find the Legendary Silver Crystal and the Princess in order to defeat the Dark Kingdom and save the world from destruction. The studio says this time around, the new series will be following more closely to the manga. This is can be both good and bad. I enjoyed reading the manga more so than the anime. With most adaptations you try to diverge from the original content in order to have your version stand out and make it individual. The new anime has the opportunity to do just this. I'm worried that (and this is the huge problem at hand) the new anime would follow too closely to the manga. This is a major problem as it wouldn't be anything new. It would just be a glorified animated comic. This is just the first episode so let's see how far they go.

The Animation
Since Sailor Moon Crystal will follow more closely to the manga, it is drawn as such. The animation is drawn to look as closely to the manga as possible. A matter of fact, some of the illustrations from Crystal are drawn exactly as they appear in the manga. They did make some subtle changes like Usagi's alarm clock. It's fun to look at the manga and the anime and compare. The series' eye catch and title card is done in the classic Naoko Takeuchi-designed that we all love. With it being a modern spin on the series, the animators decided to incorporate CG into some scenes like the transformation scene and the opening sequence. This is a win and lose situation. It looks amazing in the intro, but it is poorly executed in the transformation scenes. The transformation scene looks a little shoddy. It looks like the original transformation only added with unnecessary CG added which drags it much longer than the original. Hopefully hey can fix this in later episodes.

The Music
I'm actually impressed by the BGM if the anime so far. The score is done by Yasuharu Takanashi who has done the music for PreCure, another popular Magical Girl anime. At first hearing the choir-sung BGM music in the trailer and transformation scene, I was a bit skeptical, but hearing it in high quality I actually like it. It's also a plus that you won't be getting all vocal featured music. The opening and ending songs are sung by the popular idol group Momoiro Clover Z. The opening song, Moon Pride is energetic and action packed, which is MomoClo's style. The ending song, Gekkou is a bit unusual hearing the girls sing  and but they do a good job.

The Voice Acting
The cast of Sailor Moon is mostly new. The castors have gathered themselves a crew of well known voice actors like Kenji Nojima (Mamoru Chiba/Tuxedo Mask) who has Naruto, One Piece and Blood+ and Ami Koshimizu (Makoto Kino/Sailor Jupiter) who has worked in Death Note and My-Otome. Kotono Mitsuishi reprises her role as Usagi. Oddly enough, her performance was strange. She sounded a bit different than what she used to sound like in the old anime. Everyone else did a good job. We haven't heard the voices of the other soldiers yet so I'm excited to hear them.

Final Verdict
Sailor Moon Crystal has a lot potential. It shows a lot of promise. It's great that it wants its story and art to be more faithful to the manga, but again, it can back fire by not having any originality and make the series dull. The first episode overall did an ok job, but I'll watch more to see how the series develops. Sailor Moon Crystal premiers an new episode ever first and third Saturday of the Month. The second episode debuts this Saturday. You can watch it either on Hulu or Crunchyroll.

Feeling Prideful

     In the past few days at work, I've been asked not once, but twice by my co-workers whether I would be going to the Pride Festival this Sunday. I reluctantly said that I wouldn't. My reason was that I would be working that night and I didn't feel like being out in the heat, taking the bus and train downtown to Halsted where they always have the parade, and rushing all the way downtown to get to work that afternoon. Reflecting on my co-workers asking me about pride, I realized just how far we've come as gay people have progressed towards equality in society.
     When I was taking a few steps coming out the closet, being gay and going to gay pride would almost feel like a secret that only a few knew about. Like every other gay person before they came out, I was afraid to let people know of this secret. Now, it's not that big of a secret anymore. Everyone knows and they seem to be ok with it. We have came far. Over the years, we have marched on to combat ignorance and hate. The world is starting to accept us.
     I see us in media. We have shows like RuPaul's Drag Race and Ellen that shows we can do things. We have characters in books and TV that represent us in all different spectrum and tell our stories. We even have our own channel, LOGO. I see us in music. Not only do we have gay rappers like Fly Young Red and Le1f to name a few, but we have people in Hip Hop like Kanye West and T-Pain, another genre that didn't accept us, that have spoken against the homophobia in the genre.
     We are in sports. In the past year, we have professional athlete like Darren Young, Michael Sam, Derreck Gordon, Jason Collins, and Tom Daley who have come out. Bravely dispelling the stigma that Sports is no place for us since we are not "manly enough" and have been given mostly support and love from fans and their peers alike. We have President Obama who seems to be the first president to not only acknowledged us, but gas been on our side. We have passed gay marriage in a total number of 19 states, including one where I live in, Illinois. We have come so far, but we have more to do and more to go.