I rewatched Cosmos today... and it got worse
"as much as a person may prefer the 90's series to the manga plot, it must be said that Stars does not shine in terms of originality or beauty, is a jumble of recycled ideas that led to a meh ending that leaves several question marks"
Isn't that an incredibly subjective take. Most audience members in Japan did not at the time nor since feel the ending was meh, nor did I. The ending paid off Usagi's character arc very well. Kindly refer to earlier posts where I talk more at leangth about the success of the grand finale.
Recycled ideas? Arguably so...why is that a bad thing? The Black Moon arc recycles concepts from the Dark Kingdom arc, only extrapolating into the future not the past. Mistress 9 recycles ideas from Black Lady. Heck, SuperS is in a sense the most original season of the entire show as it is not in fact about Usagi and the filler plots with a victim of the week demand the Amazon Trio/Quartet become directly involved each time. It is regarded as the worst season.
That being said, which other season had evil Senshi as the villains? Which other season featured a love Usagi potentially falling in love with someone other than Mamoru? Which season omitted Mamoru altogether? These are concepts that hadn't been done in the show. SeiUsa is an incredibly popular ship in the fandom so I'd argue that is quite a bit of 'shine', right?
As for beauty, again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is necessarily subjective to a large degree. Me personally, I adore the visual style Stars had that was different to the whole show and carried through into Cutey Honey F. By virtue of being the most different looking of the whole show does that not by default means it stands out the most, or 'shines'?
"for example, if Chaos is sealed in people's hearts why do we have the Black Moon in the future and not her awakening? Given the darkness in the heart of the Black Moon Clan and death phantom she should have come out of her prison, or at least given them greater power than they had."
??????????????
I'm sorry, I do not understand your point here. The intention of the finale is not that Chaos was forever defeated but rather that Usagi restored balance. Galaxia's mistake was in trying to defeat Chaos once and for all (in the Manga this was Sailor Cosmos's error). Usagi in both cases acknowledges that the bad things Chaos brings about is in fact part and parcel of the adventure of life. Usagi did not forever end the Sailor Wars at the end of Sailor Stars, she put Chaos
back to where it belonged. Chaos exists within people's hearts alongside the Light of Hope. They check and balance one another, the Sailor Senshi being the most obvious expression of the 'Light of Hope'.
Therefore, the Black Moon Clan's arrival in the future makes perfect sense. It was just the latest evil thing, no different to the Dark Kingdom (indeed my personal headcanon is that the Anime BMC are descended from the Dark Kingdom).
To be clear Chaos in the anime is not the same as in the Manga. Manga Chaos is a distinct entity with a mind that has been orchestrating events, or at least setting them in motion, with a distinct end goal in mind. Chaos in the anime is more like a force of nature, it creates evil entities that do evil things but it hasn't got a plan in mind nor an end goal. It is more akin to the darkside of the force from Star Wars.
Of course, there are those who argue that Chaos in the anime is NOT the source of every villain in the Anime canon so the above would be moot anyway. I however, don't buy into that.
"Inners and outers here too are almost useless"
How can you say that given how they were distinctly proactive and showed their stuff in the Nehalennia arc? Or the Ami episode with the teacher? Or the scenes where Rei comforts Usagi? Or the episodes where Minako confronts realities of being an idol? Makoto got her best scene ever in the Nehalennia arc. Uranus and Neptune got a fair amount to do regarding the schism between the 2 Senshi teams and turning traitor by joining with Galaxia, which also helped build up just how OP Galaxia was in the first place (stopping Uranus's sword). Saturn essentially got the plot moving in the early episodes so really Pluto was the least useful. But then, that is her lot in life for the most part.
"relegated to the role of stopgaps (not even the power up with the strongest enemies...)"
See above. They weren't stopgaps. They were not as focussed upon however as Usagi. Which, given that the show had neglected
the lead character for about 1.5 seasons was sorely needed and refreshing. I also don't get the complaint about power ups when they also didn't get power ups in S, the allegedy greatest season. Of course, the Outers distinctly
did get power ups.
"Usagi despairs for Mamoru's absence, but is it possible that no one wonders where this poor guy has ended up? "
No one other than Usagi is close enough to Mamoru to contact him. They all presume he is fine because Usagi seems fine. Usagi seems fine because she is repressing her feelings. As for why doesn't Usagi wonder this, she does, she is just in denial, a different version of denial from what we see in the Manga. She either figures he must be
that busy or worse, maybe he has moved on from her. The latter is a frequent issue and very complicated with Usagi's character, but it is compounded by the fact that she is also growing closer to Seiya simultaneously.
"From the passengers of the plane he was traveling on to the university, no one really? "
What have they got to do with anything? Unless I am mistaken, Galaxia didn't blow up the whole plane.
"Then, if I were Usagi I would have moved heaven and earth to look for my love (called embassies, army, police and so on, from my memories of the series "marmalade boy" I learned that it is better to take a trip in person to verify the situation, maybe with a nice teleportation >w0 )."
Okay.
You woul have done that. Usagi isn't you though. Are you not making the misstep in your analysis of taking yourself as a standard? 'I would do this so everyone would obviously do this'. I have encountered similar situations in analysis before. Yes, there is such a thing as common sense but this isn't one of those situations. Mamoru told usagi he would not be able to write her for a while as he would be very busy early on. This is a case where her maturity this season winds up backfiring. She doesn't do what younger, more impulsive, more immature Usagi might've done. She waits patiently, she grins and bears it until she can't take it any more and breaks down in the iconic 'Ami I not enough' scene. (where the soap opera drama is
chef's kiss). This is set up in the early episodes of the show. Luna tells Usagi she has grown a lot and to see Mamoru off with a smile. Unfortunately this leads to Usagi repressing her concerns, her doubts and above all her lonliness.
Again, this is peak storytelling from Stars since loneliness is a pervasive theme in Sailor Moon and Usagi is typically the person who delivers others from their lonliness. But who saves the saviour? The 'Am I not enough' scene encapsulates this aspect of the story arc very well and on a meta level homages the R movie. Usagi gives a rose to save baby Mamo from his lonliness, Seiya 'gives' Usagi a rose to save her but it hammers home how lonely she really feels without her lover.
'The character design is up and down negatively (whoever is in charge of certain episodes did not give his best).'
Is this not once more a case of being highly subjective? I love the way the show looks in this season.
Now sure, some episodes look more off model than others but a) standard practice for this anime b) seriously standard practice at the time for the industry. Dragon Ball GT, a bigger brand with more money and higher ratings objectively looked WORSE than Stars did and so did some episodes of DBZ at the peak of its popularity as well.
"This video summarizes some of my other doubts and thoughts on the stars season, as well as my point of view on the plot of the manga (I didn't make the video, so please, don't go tormenting this girl. U.U ), unfortunately the Cosmos movies turned out to be far from representing the manga's story adequately but that's what Toei gave us."
With respect I am not going to watch that. I have a bad habit of getting worked up by video essays if i do not agree with them and therefore tend to respond at leangth to them which eats up my day and their comment section. Then my YT feed gives me more stuff like that and it just a vicious cycle as my OCD ass struggles to resist responding. Like you have no idea HOW many bad Spider-Man video essays I laboriously unpacked word for word back in the day.
If you are very passionate about the subject and your views on it perhaps
you could write down the points you have in common from the essay. I feel more comfortable responding in this format.
As for the plot of the manga I am not interested in discussing that in this post beyond how it pertains to the anime. I like the manga stars and Cosmos films, but both are flawed in my view.
"If they had waited to produce the series when they would have had the necessary material this wouldn't have happened, but noooo, let's milk the cow while it's full!"
That's just plain silly and doesn't take account of production realities. The way the industry worked back then shows rarely if ever took breaks. Advertisers and TV stations expected content at a certain time and a certain amount of it. The seasonal model we have now wasn't a thing back then and it is a risky venture if you are not doing it annually. High budget prestige TV shows made today for streaming struggle to combat the inevitable loss of audience interest whenever they take big gaps between seasons. It is why HBO has now committed to doing House of the Dragon every 2 years but doing a different Game of Thrones show in between. Game of Thrones content will (god willing) happen every year so keep the brand alive. Taking big breaks often hurts the brand as you have to reignite it. Attack on Titan took the gamble of waiting but in between seasons 1 and 2 they tried their best to keep the brand alive and relevant with other side content too.
Not to mention, you are asking a lot of people to be out of work or do other jobs whilst they wait almost a whole year, so you can't be sure you'd get them back. There is a reason so many of the staff worked on cutey honey F immediately after Stars, it is because it was cheduled directly after Stars finished in the same time slot. Similarly, many of SM's staff had worked on the anime Sailor Moon replaced in the schedule.
Furthermore, they wouldn't have had the necesarry material even if they had waited. The stars manga was NEVER going to work as fuel for the anime because it doesn't allow much space for filler which is the lifeblood of the anime and furthermore, it was a deconstruction of SM and the MG genre more broadly. This was absolutely the wrong direction for the anime to go in. Whilst the Dream arc had been successful in the manga SuperS had hurt the brand. Deconstruction was toxic to the anime whereas reconstruction was critical, hence the first 6 episodes redo the Nehalennia arc and act as an apology for SuperS in various ways.
"Naoko was in her first important story, Toei put a lot of pressure on her forcing her to add 4 additional narrative arcs from nothing and that had to hold up to expectations, do you think that's not enough?
All to fill a slot on TV? They do this with all the series they adapt?"
I mean...it is a business. Its just how it goes. The timeslot does need to be filled because there are financial duties that need to be met. The only anime or manga series I know of that got a fair amount of leeway in this regard was One Piece and that is Toei's biggest cash cow arguably, with the leeway granted to accomodate the author's health.
She was clearly willing and able to do it as evidenced by the fact that, well...she did. She signed up for it, made a lot of money. It was hardly slave labour or unfair. It was a lot of pressure but Eichiro Oda writing One Piece is also a lot of pressure (to the point where he got very unwell) and no one pressured him to do that.
It was a messy process because it wasn't intended to be more than one arc so I'm sure there were mistakes made on both ends, but there isn't a blame game to be had here. The anime staff aren't salty about how Takeuchi worked with them and she isn't salty with what they did either. At least I've never encountered any evidence of that. Honestly, in my experience in the fandom it is essentially the fans themselves who ascribe bad blood between the two parties (or anyone involved with SM to be honest) and I've never seen any hard evidence of that. The most I've seen Takeuchi take upset is with Rei being so different in the anime and the manga and that is a more personal thing for her, it wasn't a 'she was upset with the anime staff because of it'. Everyone, to my knoledge, seemed to be very grown up about it.
"As far as i know with series like one piece they either fill the gaps with fillers or take a break waiting for new material from the author (making important manga, above all weekly, in my opinion is pure and simple slavery)."
One Piece and Sailor Moon were not produced in the same way nor in the same time period. One Piece wa a weekly manga turned into a weekly anime 2 years after the manga started publication. Sailor Moon was a monthly manga turned into a weekly anime, the latter of which began airing less than 3 months after the former was first released. The manga in fact was created specifically so that toei could turn it into a anime. The business model being that the anime sells the manga, the manga sells the anime and both sell merchandise in a feedback loop.*
This means that from a pragmatic production POV the anime could never have been made in the same way as the manga nor have the same relationship your typical Manga and Anime adaptations have. Whilst far from exactly the same situation, the scenario was much closer to the working relationship between the Dragon Ball Super Anime and Manga, wherein both are taking the same basic concepts (dreamed up by a single creative, Toriyama or Takeuchi) and doing their own takes upon them. A lot of material in DBS the anime was never in the manga because the Manga was not produced on a weekly schedule like the anime.
In other words the comparison is very much apples to oranges.
However, I will stand in defence of Takeuchi. She made mistakes. There are flaws in her work. But her work, at the very least by the standards of its day,
was phenomenal and changed the genre completely. Sailor Moon the manga and anime are seminal works people should at least check out a bit of if they are interested in the MG genre or the craft of Manga in general.
Honestly, I get frustrated that as a fandom we must play this zero sum game of the manga or anime being good whilst the other must be bad. They are simply different beasts albeit from the same family. A rabbit and a hare you might say. They have their respective streangths and weaknesses. The same can be true if we throw in the Live action show or musicals.
"The Chibiusa-Helios relationship in the manga makes perfect sense, even having a worthy conclusion."
As someone who enjoys and even defends the anime version of this relationship, I do think it operates better in the manga. Whilst it does make sense when you think about it in the anime, the manga doesn't demand that degree of thought from the reader because the whole 'keep it secret' isn't as much of a thing in that version.
"Nehellenia in the 90s anime is moved by the sole, useless and deplorable motivation of not wanting to grow old, the thought of becoming ugly has gone to her head so much that she sacrificed her "beloved" people. If the ones at Toei were geniuses as you say, shouldn't they have found a less silly and more plausible motivation?"
This is false unless we are excluding Stars and riding only by SuperS. For the sake of steelmanning your POV, lets say it was just SuperS.
Nehalennia is also motivated by desire for Helios, so not wanting to age is not her sole motivation.
But, even if it was...why is this a bad motive? What makes this useless? Is it a deplorable motivation? From a morallistic POV yes it is...because, you know....she is a
villain. But from a characetrisation POV it is not deplorable in terms of its writing.
The Evil Queen from Snow White, an obviously big influence upon Nehalennia, has the same motivation. I fail to see how a fairy tale villain motivation is a bad thing in a story which is largely a modern fairy tale unto itself. Not to mention, countless people in the real world even today fear growing old and losing their looks, especially when they are to a large extent defined and valued for their looks. This in turn drives them to desperate measures. Case in point: Madonna.
I mean, there is a reason in mythology and folklore we have characters who seek out the Fountain of Youth or who through magic or divinity are eternally youthful. It is a deep set human fear. Fear in turn can drive people to do terrible things. This was literally the fundamental message of Darth Vader's story. He became a monster out of fear and in doing so wound up hurting and destroying those he loved, those he feared to lose in the first place. It was a classic Greek tragedy. In a sense this is true of Nehalennia as well. She was beloved by her people because she was beautiful, but to retain that beauty she destroyed her own people, and wound up losing it anyway. Given Sailor Moon's borrowing from greek mythology, inbibing elements of Greek tragedy like this seems all too apprpriate.
So it was in fact entirely plausible, albeit exaggerated and magnified as all things tend to be in a fairy tale/super hero narrative.
"For the sake of consistency in the plot, Nehellenia could have been envious of the bright part of the moon and of those who govern it, perhaps because she saw the difficulties of her people and the fact that they are almost unknown to the others made her furious, feeling abandoned to herself. "
That isn't consistency, that is just a different narrative you personally would have preferred to have seen. And would have required changing everything because in the anime Nehalennia never lived on the Moon in the first place, she came from an asteroid.
*This is obviously not common practice in America when it comes to adaptations of US comic books. However, in the early 90s (around the time Sailor Moon began ironically) X-men the Animated series began airing and visually, tonally and in terms of many of the stories and elements they adapted was quite close to the contemporary comic books of the day, to the point where the editor of X-Men was a consultant on the cartoon. This was the closest the US ever came to replicating the manga-anime relationship and unsurprisingly X-Men merchandise skyrocketed, as did sales of the comics and ratings for the TV show. So the business model works optimally if you have the manga and anime SIMULTANEOUSLY.