Okay so here is my full review, sorry for keeping you all waiting.
The movie was overall pretty good. It starts with a digest which was the same one that was uploaded to Youtube last week. Then we go straight into the Outers at their house. The pacing was a definite improvement over the first movie, but then I think that also has to a lot to do with the fact that the first half of the Dream arc is very episodic in nature. So the second part does lend itself to the movie format a lot more. It follows the manga almost word for word.. so if you are a manga purist, rejoice! For people like me who wanted something that expanded and improved on the weaker areas of the manga it is slightly disappointing but after part 1 I fully expected a 1:1 adaptation so it is what it is at this point, really. I am not gonna spoil the whole story for those who haven’t read the manga but some of the darker scenes were slightly changed. Blood for example was kept but didn’t really look like blood, more like particle effects. Other things like melting senshi were changed to them turning to stone and crumbling, etc.
(One thing I wasn’t a huge fan of was when Haruka was referred to as Michiru’s “boyfriend”, but perhaps this goes with Naoko’s wishes of Haruka being both “male and female”, I don’t know. I would have enjoyed it more if they had just gone with girlfriend myself, though. ) I enjoyed the short interactions between them, though. Their fashion was on point! Haruka showing skin and Setsuna in that lace, yas queens!
There were parts of it that just felt that too much was going on, but I guess that’s just how the manga was, so not exactly a movie gripe.
The animation I have already gone into detail on. I know some people get really touchy about this sort of stuff but I am indeed one of those “picky fans” who aprreciates quality animation and for me it just wasn’t completely there this time around. Don’t get me wrong, nothing was UGLY and there were no scenes that really made me go “what were they thinking?!” but there were definitely parts that looked below par for a movie and worse than part 1. The hair for example, it needed more frames all around. Also I felt there were too many “still frames” (hair and fabric on still images, if that makes sense) The final 20 minutes or so were a considerable step up and featured quite a lot of pretty scenes, but I would say a lot of it wasn’t uglyness, just a lack of frames. They also needed some quality control for some of the attacks. I have an inkling that the production of the second film may have been hindered by COVID but who knows? Anyway,
Standouts for me were:
Every scene with Saturn.
Saturn’s transformation.
Pluto and Uranus’ attacks
Outer senshi speeches
Eternal Moon’s transformation and attack
Moving onto the music. It was a big improvement over the first part! There is quite a lot of variety in the tracks this time around. The biggest stand out for me was the track that was played when the Outers are introduced. It sounded slightly techno-ish and really got me pumped. There was another tracks which featured a more middle-eastern motif which also sounded really nice. They played Moon Effect as an insert song towards the end of the movie. I would have preferred Chainon personally, but it was still a nice touch.
Also, the sound effects! They definitely used A LOT of 90’s sound effects. I don’t remember them doing that many for the first part but they really went all out this time. One’s that I can recall were them using the same sfx as the 90’s for Aqua Rhapsody, and I am pretty sure they used the same sound effects as the 90’s for Usagi’s attack and the Outers transformations.
Overall it was pretty good. As an adaptation I would give it 100 percent in terms of faithfulness to the source material. Aside from some animation hiccups any issues that I really had with the movies could also be applied to the manga so I can’t really hold it against the movie. I do wish some things were expanded upon but they did their best considering the 76 minute runtime. Is perfect? No Is it gonna please everyone? No. Is it an enjoyable watch? YES. I think watching both of the movies in one sitting in the comfort on my own home will make me appreciate things a lot more, but for now I can say that both parts were pretty good, but your mileage will vary depending on how critical you are of the finer details and how much of a manga fan you are.