@MamoRei4Life
Your post was great, too bad it got deleted not sure why
Didn’t feel like arguing with possible manga/Crystal UsaMamo fans yesterday.
Hot Take: UsaMamo was more rushed plus more intertwined with their past lives in the manga & Crystal than in the 90’s. From the get go their Love At First Sight meet cute focused mostly on Mamoru recognizing Usagi because she looks like the girl from his dreams a.k.a past life memories. Then proceeds to follow her out of curiosities from this plus Sailor moon suspicions. Then he brings her to his bedroom in his apartment once he knows she’s Sailor Moon, tells her his sad backstory and right after that they’re already calling each other “Usako” & “Mamo chan “.
All this after very few encounters where some were just them feeling familiar because of the past and memory or the Sailor Moon identity thing.
90’s Mamoru at the start wasn’t completely one with TM and wasn’t as aware of these memory dream connections unlike manga & Crystal Mamoru who was very much aware and made those decisions to interact with Usagi based on those dream past lives & SM identity curiosities.
90’s Mamoru decided to interact with Usagi because he himself wanted and not because of these curiosities and familiarities. When he told Usagi his backstory he still didn’t know she was SM but unhesitatingly spilled the beans about his dark past and weird past lives dreams with no suspicion of her being SM or related to the past life dream. He knew her for a while at this point too versus the Crystal version where they didn’t see much of their civilians selves enough. Crystal Mamoru decides to tell her his dark past after he knows for sure that she’s SM.
Side note: Feel like people misinterpret Usagi and Mamoru softening up on each other just because their memories have come back at that point too as them just falling for each other because of the small little flashes of the past that aren’t complete.
Folks forget or ignore that they just went through a traumatic experience together that had nothing to do with destiny says so where their lives were constantly in danger. Mamoru got nearly stabbed to death for her after they let each other in on a big secret of theirs after knowing each other longer. Of course they’d soften up.Those had nothing to do with past memories.
Anyways, to answer the OG question, both manga/Crystal Mamoru and 90’s anime Mamoru have their flaws, but manga /Crystal Mamoru is not memorable. I do not think of La Smoking Bomber or whatever else he’s known for in that version when thinking of his character or alter ego. Roses, canes, and dramatic entrances and speeches is what I think of. No matter the beef some have with 90’s Mamoru, he still has more memorable traits than the other interpretations of him that the current fandom likes to glaze about.
Think that’s what I wrote.