What do you think about Princess Serenity? Did you like the PGSM twist? Do you think the Sailor Senshi were right in not finding more ways to restrain her, and do you think Usagi increased her stamina and the power of love?
Thanks for dropping by, and sorry it took so long to answer the ask. I find these questions hard to answer, because all of them gave me really... visceral reactions, because it's forcing me to compare PGSM to some of the more classic Sailor Moon materials. lol
Q: Did you like the PGSM twist?
A: Let me preface, in case you are not aware: I'm an oddball and a "fake Sailor Moon fan" because I genuinely despise the 90s anime, and overall feel indifferent to the manga (with some parts I like more and some I dislike, and I guess collectively they balance each other out.) I identify myself as a fan of the live-action - PGSM, and not a Sailor Moon franchise/series fan. So, to ask me if I "like the PGSM twist"? Well... PGSM is the ONLY version of Sailor Moon I love, so... YES 100%. To anyone reading this: It's a personal preference. Do not come at me about this, please. I literally run a live-action only blog. What do you want me to do!? lol
Q: What do you think about Princess Serenity? Do you think the Sailor Senshi were right in not finding more ways to restrain her?
A: Where I really liked PGSM, and more importantly, screenwriter Kobayashi Yasuko's take on Sailor Moon is that it always focuses more on the characters' choices and their consequences, rather than following the formula of fate, destiny, tragedy, and love that the manga employed, PGSM also dared to really put into perspective the toll that making the girls soldiers has on the 14-year-old teenagers. (I appreciate the manga and its amazing history as a trend-setter/culture starter, but personally, I'm looking for more depth in stories, characters, and lore than the manga gives. The live action gave me that.)
The show's narrative took the choice of showing there is absolutely no pure evil and pure goodness (except Mio, she's pure evil in the most chaotic way possible and kinda fun to watch. lol)
Queen Beryl was obsessive and made a pact with Metalia, but ultimately sought to avoid the destruction of Earth and acted on her love for Endymion in the wrong way.
Princess Serenity mirrors Beryl in that her grief made her love obsessive and ruthless. But even before that, as a royal, you can see her as a selfish brat; by her action and reactions, we see she prioritized Endymion over the world, literally.
I think the girls did what they thought was best - they put their faith in Usagi, not the "princess". PGSM went down the route of separating Usagi from Princess Serenity, which is mirrored by Minako’s and Rei's shared storyline, where Rei tries to make Minako focus on the present rather than only prioritizing the past life missions.
I loved that approach.
The girls may have the same "soul" that was carried over from the past life, but each of them has a different experience growing up and that changes people's way of thinking. Their upbringing and life experiences make them different people - nature vs nurture! The girls in the present are not their past life-selves.
Only the Shitennou and Beryl are continuations of their past lives, because they were literally "revived" from their past life selves, though twisted a bit under the influence of Metalia's powers. But the bottom line is, they weren't reborn. If they were reborn (like I made them in my sequel fanfic), then I also would expect the Shitennou to behave a bit differently than what we've had in PGSM.
That's always how I feel when I read any stories/watch shows that involve a "previous" or "alternate" life, and I love that PGSM made a take that is similar to my belief.
Q: Do you think Usagi increased her stamina and the power of love?
A: Okay, let's break this down. Welcome to my soapbox regarding something as vague as the "power of love" concept. I have an issue with it. I think power is power - it can be weaponized, used to attack, defend, protect, etc. The Inner Senshi have their elements; Moon has light and healing powers. You can't really weaponize "love" or "justice" unless you are going for psychological battles or in a court of law. lol
Where Usagi's "love" comes in is this: Each Senshi has something specific to them that helps them channel their power best. Similar to how each of them grew and honed their Senshi power better once they learned their lesson and matured:
Rei - learning to trust
Makoto - accepting her loneliness
Ami - self-acceptance
Minako - self-love
In Usagi's case, her powers are light and healing-based, fueled by her capacity to love. There's no "stamina" involved in this kinda of quality; you can't quantify it.
Legit, I think the show pretty much made fun of Luna's attempt to help the Senshi awaken their power. (Girl literally missed the target completely. PGSM Luna is the most useless version of Luna I've seen; it's like the only complaint I have of PGSM.)
Usagi trying to get herself into a heatstroke did not help her build "stamina". Usagi's power is fueled by her love for Mamoru, her family, her friends and the world, and she was able to channel it properly. This was juxtaposed to Princess Serenity's ruthlessness in her love (obsession) for Endymion, so that as soon as Endymion is gone (kidnapped or dead), in her grief, her power consumed her, and ultimately, she ended the world instead. Twice.
In the past life, it seemed like she just lost control.
In the present, girl literally went into the caverns of the Dark Kingdom and deliberately did it.
Now, if you want to measure stamina in how much power output Usagi can possibly do in terms of returning energy to collapsed people... that would make more sense, I guess. As we have seen in the show, as Metalia's victims increased, Usagi / Moon / Serenity have also been able to counter and use her healing powers to give everyone their energy back to live. However, we can only see the result of it if someone has collapsed, so it's debatable if Usagi would have had the capacity to wake so many people in one go or not. What I mean is, it's not like in the early series, we saw a whole town of people collapsed, and Usagi wasn't able to wake all of them up and had to do it in batches. So we can't really compare.
We can kinda measure if the Senshi has grown stronger, given the power of their attack and other story elements, but it's not like the Senshi had timers on their transformation (like the Ultraman series), so stamina really isn't something we can... gauge and calculate.