Anime REVIEW: Sailor Moon Crystal Season 3

Given the seemingly negative reception towards Sailor Moon Crystal it may seem surprising that Toei Animation would go ahead with a third season. But with plenty of material left to adapt the anniversary-charged, manga-accurate retelling of the legendary magical girl series is back once again with a further 13 episodes to cover the next chapter in the Sailor Moon story – the Death Busters arc. This new season also brought along with it a structural and cosmetic changes, returning as a fully-fledged weekly television series rather an as a bi-monthly ONA (original net animation). Story-wise it also marks the debuts of Sailors Saturn, Neptune and Uranus – joining Pluto to form the “Outer” Sailor Guardians.

First Impressions: Sailor Moon Crystal Season 3

The first two seasons of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal are essentially a crash course in how not to handle a highly anticipated manga-accurate remake of a hugely popular anime series. Rather than simply just cutting the filler, Crystal somehow managed to cut everything that made the characters remotely memorable – leaving only a husk of a series that sped through events at breakneck speed. Shoddy animated and awful scheduling didn’t really help matters either. However the Sailor Moon juggernaut is one that can’t be stopped even in 2016, so Toei Animation have brought it back for another try. Thankfully Sailor Moon Crystal season 3 (also known as the ‘Death Busters’ arc) should have a little more coherency to it – sporting new staff behind it and a weekly airing schedule.

Anime REVIEW: Sailor Moon Crystal

Mention magical girls to any anime fan (or even just animation fan in general) and there's one name that'll usually spring immediately to mind more than most. While she wasn't the first entry into this long and illustrious genre, Sailor Moon certainly played a big part in defining it. Following the franchise's 20th anniversary back in 2011, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon has received a revival of sorts - however this hasn't just been limited to a surge in new merchandise. Over the past year Toei Animation have been carrying out their own celebration with Sailor Moon Crystal - a reboot of the series intended to be more accurate to Naoko Takeuchi's original manga. Despite a rather strange schedule of new episodes twice a month, the series was simulcast worldwide on Niconico and covered the first two arcs of the manga across a total of 26 episodes.