Sailor Moon Animation Blips

I created this blog so I can maliciously nitpick any and every flaw in the original 1992 anime, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon. Any hate, harassment, or otherwise argument against this will result in sarcasm and ridicule. Any questions?

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Out of curiosity, who were the artists for the transformation? I'm aware that for the outer senshi, Ikuko Ito redrew them to better fit her style come crystal power, but that's all I know. The style seems to be slightly inconsistent. I just assume Crystal and Cosmic Power had the same artist.

The stock footage for the attacks and transformations were done by the chief animator of each season. Seasons 1 and 2 (Prism Power, Crystal Power, Star Power, etc) were done by Kazuko Tadano. Seasons 3 and 4 (Cosmic Power, Crisis Power, Outer Senshi, Super Inner Senshi, etc) were done by Ikuko Itoh, and Season 5 (Eternal, Starlights, etc) were done by Katsumi Tamegai

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But when will you start pointing out animation errors in PGSM?!?

But in all actuality, PGSM is my favorite canon. The romance between Usagi and Mamoru is built up in a way that seems natural, the girls get a LOT of character development, and I also enjoyed the way PGSM handled the inter-friendships between each girl in a way where everything just feels absolutely genuine.

The silliest thing about PGSM will always be the playdoh-like hair noodles from Usagi’s transformation

Whoever is responsible for this, I love you.

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Tamegai Katsumi is a man.

Katsumi is a gender neutral name in Japan. I couldn't find any pictures either, so unless you have one to show me, your guess is just as good as mine.

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hey. I really dont get the point of the 90s animation. I think the simplicity was what it make it cute. What I like about Serena thou is how expressive and warm she was. New Serena is just too delicate. Old Serena was a vulcan, she was someone who make you laugh. New Serena is just too delicate. And the new animation does not provide the overall harmony of color and movement that the 90s had

*Usagi

Fixed that for you

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ahaha omg I really appreciate this blog right now! I've been re-watching the 90s series for like a year or so now and there really are a lot of times when I'm just like..."huh, everyones faces looks really wonky today" but I don't know the names of the animators or anything. Do you think you would ever consider making a sort of 'guide to SM animators' sometime? though I get that it'd be a lot of work so I'm not expecting it or anything!! anyway thank you for all the effort you've put into this!

That sounds like a really good idea! I'm surprised screen caps blogs haven't done something like this yet. It would be really easy to just include the animator's name in tags.

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And may we never forget all the times leading up to Stars when the head animator would draw a character's eyes in two different styles.

Ikuko Ito certainly did change her styles drastically between seasons 1 and 5, didn't she. Haha

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I tend to be more critical of computer enhanced animation because there are many more opportunities to catch flaws in animation that are left behind. There's more time to spend on editing and the art can be produced much faster. I can excuse it if the company was strapped for cash/time so they had to rush the production, but this is Toei animation. They are big budget. They had the resources. Neither Crystal or the original are perfect but the latter is more forgivable.

The beauty of computer animation is they have the ability to go back and fix things, hence the touch-ups for  the upcoming bluray release. Neither is perfect, and with time constraints, things get rushed... but with the old anime, this was the mid-90's, and once the cels were captured on film, that was it. You can't go back and fix mistakes on physical film. The entire thing would have to be re-shot on new film, which is expensive and time-consuming.

Also, Sailor Moon Crystal seems to be an after-thought to Toei's in-house team working on Crystal, hence why the bulk of the animation is being done overseas at Toei's studios in Singapore, the Philippines, and China. Toei's Japanese studio is busy working on shows that have weekly airings, such as One Piece and Pretty Cure. So they're leaving the bulk of the SMC animation to outsourced animators, and fixing things as they release them on Bluray.

Animation is a tedious, time-consuming process, and when you have a small team that's working on multiple projects at once, something is going to suffer. 

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I am enjoying seeing the mental breakdown the Sailor Moon fandom is currently undergoing. Very entertaining. You should make a tumblr for Naoko Takeuchi's manga blips as well.

Well,  I certainly wouldn't be short on material

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Wait wait wait. You're doing all 200 episodes to point out the Quality? You're a god damn saint and a gentleman!

eventually. I might do them sporadically and out of order.

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Question. Do you know if it was standard back in the 90's to redraw episodes for the vhs release? I'm betting no one watched Sailor Moon when it first aired in Japan so the studios had time to redo the art. And there was long delay between when it first aired and the dubbing of it so a lot of the English audiences probably only saw the cleaned up version. Most of the errors we see in the 90's version are mostly gone. It's an unfair comparison between the old and new anime if this is true.

I have no idea because I never had a chance to see any broadcast Sailor Moon episodes. (Although, they did remake the SuperS logo a few episodes in)

I do know for a fact that Naoko retouched the manga from the original nakayoshi publications before Kodansha serialized them as books. So it could be the case with anime as well, I’m not sure though.

[hollyyblueagate]

For what it’s worth, I’ve been noticing my fair share of goofs in the Hulu uploads of the show, which I reasonably assume to be the home release version. I have no idea when it became standard protocol to redraw stuff for the home releases of anime, though most comparison shots of that sort of thing seem to be from anime done digitally rather than traditional/hand drawn, so it might not have been a thing until the gradual conversion from traditional to digital. [I can see why if that’s the case, I imagine it’d be easier to a certain degree.]

[wisnia-inactive-deactivated2015]

Judging by all the off-model I’ve seen in some ’80s and ’90s anime, I don’t think retakes were as big a thing. Can’t speak for all series.

It probably became more common in recent years. Usually dubs get the retouched version since that’s what’s on the home video releases, so some infamous bloopers don’t get seen on this end, though some still might.

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I know with the case of Dragon Ball Kai, there was some footage from Dragon Ball Z so deteriorated that that they had to redo it.

I think it's safe to say this is a recent thing with digital animation. It was impossible to fix things digitally at this time. All of the imagery was imprinted on a film reel with an animation camera. If they wanted to fix anything, it had to be done at the cel level, before they were recorded onto the film. If there was a mistake after that, they either had to just deal with it (Which, if you look at a lot of old anime, seemed to be the case), or they scrapped the film and started over.

[yewrose]

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Utada has some wall-eye going on in that 2nd image. Is it just me, or can you actually see the whole eye (not just the eyeball) move further away as she turns her head? XD

*runs from tomatoes being thrown at me* 

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Mari Tominaga's first episode ladies and Gentleman.

Don't worry, she gets better

And then... she gets weird

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look at the size of those odangoes

Lol forever

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Question. Do you know if it was standard back in the 90's to redraw episodes for the vhs release? I'm betting no one watched Sailor Moon when it first aired in Japan so the studios had time to redo the art. And there was long delay between when it first aired and the dubbing of it so a lot of the English audiences probably only saw the cleaned up version. Most of the errors we see in the 90's version are mostly gone. It's an unfair comparison between the old and new anime if this is true.

I have no idea because I never had a chance to see any broadcast Sailor Moon episodes. (Although, they did remake the SuperS logo a few episodes in)

I do know for a fact that Naoko retouched the manga from the original nakayoshi publications before Kodansha serialized them as books. So it could be the case with anime as well, I'm not sure though.

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Takao Yoshizawa was an episode director, not an animation director or an art director in Sailor Moon. Plus in episode 2, Katsuji Matsumoto was the animation director.

Ah, so it would seem. Well I have to leave for work, so I don't have time to fix it right now. Someone remind me later?

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Found this image sitting in a folder that I had saved from old desktop computer back in 2008… and I had to.

[vegapunk-aurora]

MAMORU IT FLEW RIGHT PAST YOU THE LEAST YOU CAN DO IS TRY TO CATCH IT

Useless.

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OH GOD, I LOST MY VOICE AT OTAKON AND THIS IS MAKING ME LAUGH AND COUGH UP A LUNG AT THE SAME TIME

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Someone give me strength to finish the episode I was working on and start episode 3... But I have to be up for work in less than 12 hours and I want to spend today being lazy