Reading Sailor Moon Spoilers In The 90s

While nowadays spoilers are considered rude and people feel like you ruined the movie or TV show by spoiling something and I try to be respectful about spoilers, when I first learned about the Japanese version of Sailor Moon in the 90s, I remember constantly devouring any new information I could find online about the series and the characters, no matter how major a spoiler it was. I remember digging through those episode guides at Hitoshi Doi's site and reading character shrines to find out as much about the show as possible. Even though I pretty much knew all the major spoilers about the later seasons when they finally came to the U.S. or I was able to watch Stars fansubbed, I didn't ever feel like reading so many spoilers ruined the experience of the series for me. If anything, I feel like years of only being able to read about the episodes and movies made me even more excited to see it and it ended up feeling more rewarding when I finally got to watch it. Did you ever spoil yourself as much as possible when you first got into Sailor Moon and do you think reading all those spoiler effected your enjoyment of the series any in either a positive or negative way?

I remember that I saw some screenshots of episode 200...before seeing the anime!!

But only years later (after pgsm era) I saw the 90s naime on youtube...soo great!!

I remember how terrified I was, seeing a video clip the first time of Stars, seeing the Senshi get killed. I had no idea who the enemy was, what was happening, what Sailor Moon was wearing, who those other three girls were. All I knew, I was clearly missing something. I still avoid stars because I don't want to see my heroes killed (the first season killed them off in a better way, instead of them simply playing the human shields).

As a kid I did the same thing but now...don't tell me any spoilers! haha

The closest thing I got to reading spoilers was reading Hitoshi Doi's Sailor Moon Stars episode summaries and as that never got dubbed during the original dub's run I hardly count that.

I remember reading all about Sailor Moon that I could online when I was younger and I was still getting to know the show. I remember finding one site that actually had a list of all major events in the show and what episode they were in. I even printed that list off.

As a fan of a certain age...did I spoil myself rotten.

As LIfeGaveMeLemons mentioned, one of the very first sites I encountered when searching for Sailor Moon was Hitoshi Doi's Sailor Moon fan page. Since I only knew the DiC dub at the time, it took me a moment to get the names of the characters. In fact, I was surprised there was more Sailor Moon after the first 65 episodes stopped airing, since I thought the series ended on that note and was just cancelled. To me that there were more Sailor Scouts for all the planets was a shock in of itself (I had some very, very vague ideas of what a Sailors Neptune, Pluto, Uranus, and Saturn would be like but I largely assumed they just didn't exist). Strangely, I wasn't surprised by Chibi-Moon, because I thought she was going to become a Sailor Scout, but her color scheme actually endeared me to her much more to the point where she remains my second-favorite Guardian to this day.

Also, even though Hitoshi Doi did have episode summaries, between the difference in the names and the fact that the summaries were text, I didn't read all of them or understand what was going on. I was open to the idea that there was more Sailor Moon material out there but I had no idea what was in it. I actually thought for a time Rini had an older sister from the Negamoon.

Then there was Ken Arromdee's Sailor Moon FAQ which cleared up a lot of the confusion I had. I liked that it also clearly delineated between the dub and the dub so I knew who was who.

But the real gateway for me to understanding it all back then was Castle In the Sky.

By the time I got to Castle in the Sky, I had learned some things prior to that page, but that page really dedicated itself to noting the difference between the dub the original version. By then, my inner fan had been roused enough to ask myself questions such as "Why didn't any of the Sailor Scouts get affected by the negative energy?" Then answer to that came in the form of the illustrated episode summaries.

By looking at the summaries I could see what was unfolding, and that the author used dub names helped me tremendously. I didn't quite get what was going on with Esmeraude and those dark henges although I gathered it was similar to what Rubeus and the Four Sisters were doing. I remember thinking upon reading the summary of Serena and Darien's reunion, "What would have happened if Rini hadn't had that bracelet removed from her, and why is she always saved in the nick of time?"

Then the episodes showed the Scouts going to the future (at last), then Rini being converted into Black Lady (My thoughts were, "You mean that WASN'T her SISTER? That was HER?"), and the rapid decimation of the Black Moon Clan. I eagerly awaited the S video summaries and read them...only for them to be voluntarily taken down once the episodes started airing on TV. I still looked for everything Sailor Moon related on other sites, most of which I have sadly forgotten. Back then I wished there was some centralized location to find out this information, but looking back on it, I was foolish. There was a fun to the scavenger hunt-era of fandom that just is not possible now, since everyone knows everything.

And if I am honest with myself, reading all of those spoilers and fan sites did affect me and my views of Sailor Moon in a negative way.

Before I had access to the Internet, Sailor Moon was a TV show that aired, had its run, and like many cartoons, stopped airing. I didn't know what the driving force was to create new episodes. I just thought Sailor Moon was one of those shows that just ended.

Sailor Moon introduced me to the greater concept of fandom. Prior to that, I only knew fandom as Trekkies and while I liked Star Trek, I never felt myself be the level of a Trekkie, someone who would go to a convention dressed like a character and would know all the episodes by heart. Aside from comic book fans and Star Wars fans, I didn't think fans congregated together for anything else. I thought I was genuinely the only one who liked Sailor Moon as much as I did.

So when I connected to the Internet, at first I was thrilled. I would spend all night long in the summers to just meet like-minded people and to learn. That started spurring more concrete fan ideas than the ones I came in the series with or even ones that I came up with from reading fansites and fanfics. Seeing others like me encouraged me to latch onto the series even more and I wanted to know everything about Sailor Moon that I could. Unfortunately, that had two horrendous effects.

One is that I became a know-it-all, a canon purist, and led me to reject the dub entirely because it was too childish and I was too old to be watching cartoons. I wanted the original version, unfiltered, adult jokes and all. This was partially remedied by me actually seeing the original version and realizing I liked the dub more than the original version, but I was (and still am, at times) still a know-it-all.

The other effect is that when the new episodes were dubbed....I couldn't quite enjoy them as much.

You see, when Sailor Moon healed Catsy, Bertie, Prizma, and Avery in different episodes, it was a mild, but pleasant surprise. To be fair, I saw the episodes out of order, and thus I saw some of these episodes before the Rainbow Crystal and later Negaverse episodes, so I didn't know healing bad guys was Sailor Moon's thing. I thought she used her tiara or waved a scepter. I didn't know she could cure or heal the bad guys. The point remains that it was unusual to see her make bad guys good. Of course, I also wondered if the reverse couldn't be done, and then I saw with Darien that it was.

However, when I watched the later episodes that were dubbed, I could only compare them to the episodes that came before, how the entire tone of the show seemed to be different, and I was wondering how the episodes were going to be adapted. In addition, all of the moment I had seen unfold in summary format...seemed horribly underwhelming when watching them. I couldn't enjoy Sailor Moon for being that, Sailor Moon. Everything existed as a comparison to something else.

So learning about Sailor Moon has made me warier of spoilers in general, to the point where I try to avoid heavy spoilers in media where I can. Even if the journey is predictable, there is nothing like seeing it unfold with fresh eyes. I can't do that with Sailor Moon.

Anyone remember that website that had screenshots of S episodes and kinda went on about what they were? I used to read those.

I'm a weird case. I never got to watch it on American television in the 90s, but I was exposed to the characters thanks to the Internet. I'd look at character shrines, and pick up plot tidbits in forum discussions. When I finally did start watching the series in 2005, I kinda knew about the characters' personalities and certain plot elements, but all in all I don't think much was spoiled for me.

There were several fansites, but the one I remember most clearly was Castle In the Sky.

I'm not sure if this was the same site you were thinking of.

Even though I do try to avoid spoilers, sometimes I do that with series I'm tangentially familiar with on TV Tropes, but I tend to forget the details by the time I encounter the media. Between TV Tropes and Wikia I can get a feel for a series I never watched to see if I'd be interested in it.

Not from a website but I would see screenshots from stickers and would wonder what was going on or who the characters were. Like one I have with Sailor Moon and with a black haired woman holding a gold egg shaped item which we all know is Mistress 9 and the Holy Grail. Or the one with a girl with purple odangos and a crescent moon on her forehead with a blond haired guy. And another one with Sailor Moon disheveled holding a baby.

Who else saw naked Sailor Moon from episode 200 without any context?

I did. Randomly downloaded episode 200 raw from Kazaa back in the day

I wasn't in the loop in the 90s, but I've always been casual with spoilers for most long-running anime, because it's just so difficult to avoid. To me, it matters less WHAT happens, but HOW it happens. Knowing that something takes place doesn't completely take away from the experience of seeing it. Actually, my favorite viewings of movies and TV shows are usually after I've already seen it once, so I feel like I can take it all in, and just appreciate it for what it is.