I watched this over the weekend, and overall, I was super impressed. I like the opening theme a lot more in the actual opening, getting to hear it from beginning to end and also having it not over the promo. The ending theme was also pretty neat and brings to mind the slow ending themes of old. There's a part of me that really misses the original music, but I think overall I'm glad that they chose to do something new rather than simply redo or reuse the old, since that helps it to feel more like a re imagining than a remake, which was likely the intent. The visuals are beautiful; I really love Usagi's flowing hair, the new-and-improved Jadeite, and a lot of the attention to detail. I know this story (especially the beginning!) like the back of my hand, so it was mostly the visual and audio that I was paying the most attention to. Still... I'll admit that I did find myself tearing up during Sailor Moon's introductory speech.
I kind of can't help but feel that Sailor Moon Crystal will probably not resonate well with new viewers, though. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of an old conversation that I had with a "newer" anime fan (got into the genre in '00s shows) about Ranma 1/2. The guy was complaining about the gags and overused cliches in Ranma, and my response was something along the lines of "Of course there are tonnes of cliches in Ranma; Ranma invented those cliches." Sailor Moon is certainly not the first Magical Girl anime (the genre began in Japan back in the 60s), but it did rejuvenate the genre in the early 90s and was the biggest and most well-known example for an entire generation of anime fans, the same generation that propelled anime internationally to the widespread fame and acceptance that it has now. It's also the first example of a cross between Magical Girl manga/anime and "Sentai" themes. Its wide-spread popularity and fame propelled the modern Magical Girl movement as its currently known, paving the way for the genre to expand and grow, and even branch into unconventional directions.
In short, the end result is that now there's so much that has been done with the genre (from additions, to changes, to parodies, to reconstructions, to parodies of reconstructions) that the original will likely look stale and cliche to new viewers.
I guess I hadn't really thought about this before until I was watching the first episode again. Like many people of my anime generation, Sailor Moon was the first anime I ever saw and fell in love with (DBZ also falls into this category often, but it actually came a few years later). I learned the show and manga and everything so well I could recite it in my sleep (and I could write all of the senshi's names in kana before I even knew what kana was) and it was simply perfect. Everything after that was compared to Sailor Moon, but seeing this first episode, I couldn't help but flip the tables a bit and try comparing Sailor Moon to everything else, and when you take a step back, you recognize the cheesiness of some of the lines, the improbability of the coincidences, the obvious hints, etc. and so forth.
And yet, when all is said and done... there's a very large part of me that doesn't really care what new viewers will think. The show wasn't made for them. It was made for me, and my old elementary school friend Maggie who used to play Sailor Moon with me in her backyard (I always got to play Sailor Jupiter because I was a tall brunette), for my best friend Sami whom I met in 7th grade when she saw a picture of Sailor Pluto taped onto my notebook at school, and the anime club I had in high school where we spent our time watching fansubs on VHS tapes, and all of the rest of us who grew up with Sailor Moon and will always keep the show in a special place in our hearts.
Bonus: I actually got my husband to watch the first episode of Crystal along with me. He dutifully sat by my side at the computer desk, not saying a word the entire show until the ending song started. His response? "What the f*ck did I just watch..."
I kind of can't help but feel that Sailor Moon Crystal will probably not resonate well with new viewers, though. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of an old conversation that I had with a "newer" anime fan (got into the genre in '00s shows) about Ranma 1/2. The guy was complaining about the gags and overused cliches in Ranma, and my response was something along the lines of "Of course there are tonnes of cliches in Ranma; Ranma invented those cliches." Sailor Moon is certainly not the first Magical Girl anime (the genre began in Japan back in the 60s), but it did rejuvenate the genre in the early 90s and was the biggest and most well-known example for an entire generation of anime fans, the same generation that propelled anime internationally to the widespread fame and acceptance that it has now. It's also the first example of a cross between Magical Girl manga/anime and "Sentai" themes. Its wide-spread popularity and fame propelled the modern Magical Girl movement as its currently known, paving the way for the genre to expand and grow, and even branch into unconventional directions.
In short, the end result is that now there's so much that has been done with the genre (from additions, to changes, to parodies, to reconstructions, to parodies of reconstructions) that the original will likely look stale and cliche to new viewers.
I guess I hadn't really thought about this before until I was watching the first episode again. Like many people of my anime generation, Sailor Moon was the first anime I ever saw and fell in love with (DBZ also falls into this category often, but it actually came a few years later). I learned the show and manga and everything so well I could recite it in my sleep (and I could write all of the senshi's names in kana before I even knew what kana was) and it was simply perfect. Everything after that was compared to Sailor Moon, but seeing this first episode, I couldn't help but flip the tables a bit and try comparing Sailor Moon to everything else, and when you take a step back, you recognize the cheesiness of some of the lines, the improbability of the coincidences, the obvious hints, etc. and so forth.
And yet, when all is said and done... there's a very large part of me that doesn't really care what new viewers will think. The show wasn't made for them. It was made for me, and my old elementary school friend Maggie who used to play Sailor Moon with me in her backyard (I always got to play Sailor Jupiter because I was a tall brunette), for my best friend Sami whom I met in 7th grade when she saw a picture of Sailor Pluto taped onto my notebook at school, and the anime club I had in high school where we spent our time watching fansubs on VHS tapes, and all of the rest of us who grew up with Sailor Moon and will always keep the show in a special place in our hearts.
Bonus: I actually got my husband to watch the first episode of Crystal along with me. He dutifully sat by my side at the computer desk, not saying a word the entire show until the ending song started. His response? "What the f*ck did I just watch..."
Or at least read the manga, which is both shorter and better. 
