................The anime that would become
Sailor Moon Crystal was first announced in 2012 and I cannot explain to you the complicated emotions that rose up during that announcement. Fans had often toyed with the idea of wanting an adaptation that stuck closer to Naoko Takeuchi's story, as each season diverted in one way or another beginning with the first season. I hoped that modern anime aesthetics would also lend itself to this new version, so we might see something a bit
luscious. Sorry, but in retrospect this makes the first season of Crystal almost hilarious in the saddest way. Not to beat a dead horse, but Crystal was delayed over a full year only to be relegated into a bi-weekly net anime that
Toei heavily outsourced. Honestly, the result was insulting.
Crystal featured character designs that were, frankly, impossible to animate. Yes, they were heavily influenced by Takeuchi's art, but making that art move consistently was too high of a cliff to scale for the animation team. The series also did a great job of illustrating how the original manga is best treated as a skeleton to build off of; adhering too closely to the original served to reveal how barebones the story was and viewers are left with characters that lacked any sense of personality or emotional depth. The result is something that I own out of obligation to the series but never plan to watch. Are you starting to see a trend here?
............
Back in the anime world, the third season of Crystal showed some improvement, I'll give it that. The series moved back into an actual television slot, the character designs were completely redone, and
Chiaki Kon came onboard as director. Kon initially inspired some hope for the show; at the time, she was associated with fan-favorite series
Nodame Cantabile and
Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Kai. I honestly don't know what's going on with her career now; the third season of Crystal was serviceable at best, suffering from all the same writing issues as the previous two seasons. Now Kon is stuck working on anime that are little more than slideshows on
Netflix.