Season 1: The Dark Kingdom saga

This is the season that starts it all. It was origionally made to be a "magical girls show" made for young girls ages 4-12. The first season is very cute. It starts with Tsukino Usagi, a normal 14-year old girl who loves to eat, sleep, and totally hates everything to do with school. She meets a talking cat named Luna, who says that she is Sailor Moon, and that she has been sent to awake her because they must search for the Moon Princess, Princess Serenity, as well as the Silver Crystal. When Usagi first becomes Sailor Moon and fights her first few (well many) battles, she totally sucks and is basically not ready to face her destiny. More help is needed than just Sailor Moon, so other girls, chosen by destiny, are awakened as Sailor Soldiers and together, they all make the Sailor Team.

Now that the little introduction to the first season is complete, I can get more into detail. The first season starts out as a fun, cute, kiddyish show which is directed to young girls. At first sight, it revolves around looking for the Moon Princess and stopping Queen Beryl, but it goes much deeper than that. The story revolves alot around friendship. Five girls, total strangers to each other, are brought together by destiny for a common cause. This is really where the story starts. Even though there's alot of fighting the yoma's from the dark kingdom, under all that there's a friendship brewing between the five girls.

If there's one thing that made Sailor Moon so popular in Japan (actually, it's considered one of the most popular anime of all time), is the outstanding character development. Sailor Moon features some of the best character development of all time, and the series is full of so many twists and turns that you always find yourself watching again. There's more than just friendship in this series though. That's when Mamoru comes in.

Chiba Maroru (Darien in the US) is a young man that Usagi finds herself constantly arguing and fighting with throughout the season. You later find out that Maroru is Tuxedo Mask, the mysterious man that always comes at the neck of time to help the soldiers. Usagi has a huge crush on him, which is funny because she also has a secret crush on Mamoru, who is Tuxedo Mask.

Not much is ever told about Mamoru throughout the series. His background is pretty mysterious until the middle of the series when you find out the secrets of his past. He is definately one of the most tragic character throughout the series. He's what you can call a lone wolf. His only reason of life is to find his princess, and his past.

In the middle of the season, Usagi and Mamoru finally fall in love only for Mamoru to be taken away. Througout the entire series, there is always something tragic happening between those two. This is when the series finally starts getting serious. Because Sailor Moon picked up such a huge audience of older viewers, it started turning towards more mature subjects.

Art and Animation:
Now to the animation. The art is good, portraying realistic looking characters along with fantasy backgrounds. It is not very clean though. It's obvious this season didn't have a big budget, but the art and animation seems to fit in some way and won't turns most viewers off. The animation is pretty good, but still not the best I've ever seen. It too seems to fit, though.

The music and voice acting is pretty much constant throughout all the series, so I'll mention it at the very end of the review.

Sailor Moon R, Part I: Ail and Ann Saga After the defeat of Queen Beryl, Usagi wishes apon the Silver Crystal that everything were as it was before Beryl arrived. Now starts the R season.

The R season is broken into two parts: The Ail and Ann saga, and the Dark Moon saga. I'll review both.

Q: what does "R" stand for?
A: I think that it stands for two things. In the Ail and Ann series, it's Returns, and in the Dark Moon saga, it's Romance.

I personally did not like the Ail and Ann series too much. Even though it's not bad, it hairs in comparison to the Dark Moon saga.

The series starts out with a strange seed that's flying through Tokyo. It crashes and everyone runs to the impact site to look at the crater it left. It just so happens that Usagi and the gang are there, as well as Mamoru. But because of the wish Usagi made on the Silver Crystal, they all lost there memories, including their friendship.

New enemies show up. They are two aliens who have come to earth to get energy for their tree. These aliens cannot survive without energy from the tree, so they must supply it with energy. They do this by the use of Cardians, monsters that form from cards. They send the monsters out to recieve energy for the tree.

Without the Sailor Senshi, there is no stopping these monsters. Therefor, Luna once again awakens Sailor Moon by returning her memories. She defeats the first monster alone, but barely. Her alone is not strong enough, so the others are awakened also. The Sailor Wars have started again.

This series is basically fighting the monsters that Ail and Ann send forth. But of course, not withought once again awesome character development. Ail and Ann enrole in Juuban Middle school as students as Seijuurou (Ail) and Natsumi (Ann). Seijuurou has a crush on Usagi, which really bothers Natsumi since they're supposed to be lovers (but are brother and sister in their "human" forms). Natsumi then forms a crush on Mamoru.

This saga is a bit sad due to everybody having their memories back except for Mamoru, and Usagi spends alot of the saga attempting to restore them. It seems this time that Mamoru really does kinda like Usagi though, which is good.

A new character enters the scene. He is Tsukikage no knight (Moonlight Knight). He jumps in a battle at the neck of time with his trademark white rose. Who he is is mysterious throughout the saga, until the last episode. You also find out the mystery of the tree and Ail and Ann's past. Not too much in this saga. Oh yeah, and Mamoru gets his memories back at the end.