So, the first episode of Sailor Moon Crystal hit various streaming sites today. I just watched it with my roommate (I was thinking of watching it this morning, but if I watched it without her, she would have murdered the fuck out of me) and I have thoughts about it.

I used to watch the original Sailor Moon anime when it was a part if Cartoon Network’s old Toonami block, back when I was about 16 or 17 (and now you can probably guess about how old I am). It was, of course, the heavily edited and kinda poorly dubbed version of the series, but I ate that shit up. Friends of mine in college had bootleg VHS tapes of the unreleased (at least in North America) Sailor Stars season that they brought to the dorms.

Needless to say, I’m kind of a giant nerd over this series.

So, when they announced that they were going to do a brand new series in 2012, this was pretty much my reaction:

Of course, there were a fuckton of delays, but that’s just the way these things work sometimes.

In this episode, 14-year-old Tsukino Usagi meets a talking cat who gives her a magical brooch that transforms her into the eponymous Sailor Moon. Meanwhile, there have been a rash of jewelry store robberies going on and Usagi’s best friend’s mother is acting very strangely.

From interviews and other sources, it seems like they are going to be sticking closer to the original manga than the previous anime did. This basically means that there should be less filler/monster-of-the-week episodes. I think this is actually a good thing, since it actually takes several episodes for the actual plot of the original series to get going.

Another point I want to discuss is the art style. This was, of course, one of the first things that some people complained about when it was unveiled. I think those people are kind of full of shit, since the animation is fucking beautiful here. It’s also a lot closer to Naoko Takeuchi’s original artwork:

So, basically this pretty much gets my thumbs-up, not just for its nostalgia-inducing qualities, but because it’s also quite good so far on its own merit. I’m just not sure I’m crazy about the bi-weekly release schedule. I guess I’ll just have to hold out until the 19th.

The series is currently streaming on Hulu, Crunchyroll, Nico Nico Douga, and Viz Media’s Neon Alley streaming service. From what I understand, they are only able to track views through Hulu and Neon Alley, so I would recommend using one of those services if you can.