First of all
@raymona thank you. I'm going to be honest. I only looked at the pilot and not the entirety of your videos, so I don't have a full context of all the work you did, but I applaud you for finding this treasure trove and sharing it.
That said, I'm just going to add my thoughts to the material because I am not reading dozens of pages of discussion.
My first impression of this was...this wasn't that bad. It's not good, but there seemed to be some competency in the production. I thought the live-action sequences would have been
worse. The hybrid model doesn't seem quite as bad in this pilot, but I still think it would have doomed the series.
I'm stunned that the proto-names were used in this production, and presumably this was the source of them. It only gives me more appreciation to the Optimum dub for going with new names. However, the footage indicated that the dub-only idea of Princess Serena being betrothed to Prince Darien started here,
Much was made of the appearances, I'm surprised that they seemed to switch the personalities around as well. Seeing as it was the mid-90's, I was sure Jupiter was going to be the
Sassy Black Friend as this was before the rise of the blerds (remember, "Urkel" used to be an INSULT). Instead, they made her the brains. Mars is the complete tomboy, which fits since Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. That left Mercury as the reckless daredevil of the group. I actually like this concept. Even if some people would cry about "political correctness" at the same time these characters would subvert a lot of stereotypes of the era. In the hands of some good showrunners, these characters would be even more well-rounded than the anime girls, although it was not likely for that to happen. I love canon Jupiter, but I think if this had been made, Toonmaker's Jupiter would have probably been my favorite. I'd probably have started thinking of crossing over this cartoon with Captain Planet, though.
Finally, even though the transformations were low-budget, the CGI used for Sailor Moon's transformation was extremely good for its time. It's better than the much hyped Real Adventures of Jonny Quest.
Even as less than ideal as this pilot is, it's better than American Darkstalkers. Now I wish we had an all animated-version of this.