The Intense Negative Aura of Stars

Why give such a shit about some stupid anime

I have tremendous respect for people who stick to objectivity when discussing the quality of a piece of art, because it's a monumental task. It's difficult to quantify art. Art is the language of emotions, and who is to say something is wrong in the realm of emotions? Who should tell you how to feel or how to express said feelings?

Trying to put a number on the pain level might feel dismissive, but the reason I respect the effort is because when nothing is quantifiable, nothing really means anything. When the same word can be used for completely different situations and it all depends on individual experience, what even is the use of trying to associate a word to the emotion? what even is the use of language? How do we communicate or convey emotions to other human beings when we all live in our little bubbles? What is the point of getting The Art out of your head and onto paper, if it stands no chance of grounding your feelings onto something more tangiable?

When it comes to art, I like stories the most. They remain the most effective way of conveying and navigating complex emotional states, way above making a rant every time you want to get something out of your heart. A story can guide you through the necessary motions to reach a deeper understanding of humanity, because every piece of media is (or should be) some human brain's special little way of navigating its passage through this mortal realm. This is why we listen to music or watch movies. It's to feel understood. To feel like we understand. To connect and communicate.

We can't really judge how hard an emotion is felt, but we can at least judge what constitutes the succesful communication of said emotion. Under this parameter we can get closer to what makes an objective assesment of art. There are better ways of conveying some things than others. There's getting nuances right and there's making a pig's ass out of something that can be expressed in a simple and elegant way. Emotions can be down to the individual perspective of every little creature, but once they're out of your heart and into the world, judging the product you make to express yourself is fair game. This is what truly helps us reach common ground and understand eachother: the emotions of the artist and the judgement of the audience meet in the lovely conduct that is the art.

I believe how you do one thing is how you do anything. This is why I like to apply this throughline to my consumption of everything that regards a story, however small or trashy it might be, and yet the very act of 'thinking too hard about it' can be met with contempt. It's almost as if that kills the magic to some people, or as if some things were not worthy of your brain power, despite the prevalence it might have in your day to day life.

The truth is we all sort of get the role that media plays in our modern, internet-ridden lives, but none of us really wants to admit. It's fairly embarassing to confess something like this has the capacity to ruin your day, your browsing experience, a thing that you like, despite the time and effort humans collectively dedicate to media. We can somehow shape our lives around fandom by making and watching videos on Thing and basing friendships on liking Thing and spending our free time consuming Thing and even investing money on art and merch of Thing, but the moment you feel bad? That is supposedly pathetic.

The reason we might be so averse to negativity is because being forced to confront the fact your fandom experience can be a source for sorrow necessarily means we have to accept that the act of creating is not sacred; it is not worthy of praise just for existing if it can bring more suffering instead of alleviating it... and we don't want that. We don't want to think about that when we make a post or a meme or a fanart or a fanfic or a whole ass video essay. We don't wanna believe our recreation can bring bad into the world. Maybe if we don't judge, no one can judge us, as an unspoken agreement between humans to never hold eachother accountable for our mistakes.

I think judgement is good. I think judging is making an assesment and making a decision, and life is made up of little decisions. I think when we decide we've found the Best Thing, we open up the discussion for The Worst Thing, and the intensity of one is directly proportional to the other. In order to understand why something is done so well, we need to draft in our heads how could it go so wrong. You can't be open to love while refusing the possibility of hate. I think this is a good thing, as it is how you make good art and convey emotions properly. Diving into the possibility of something being awful forces us into making the best things we can possibly make.

Pretending this doesn't apply to media is to deny how passionate a person can get over something he's constantly exposed to. It's nothing short of dishonest, and I'm tired of the lies. I'm tired of pretending I don't give that much of a shit about media. Why are we downplaying the importance of media when we live in a media culture?

It doesn't matter how casual or how hardcore your enjoyment of a thing is, doesn't matter if it's a passion project or just a tiny little something for fun; whenever you sit to do a thing, you owe it to the world to do it right. If you're down for the possibility that something you make resonates with someone else, you necessarily have to accept the fact it can also piss someone else off. So you have to make it worth it. You never know when some old fuck is gonna dig through your stuff and find meaning into an idea you flung out there into the world. You can never quantify how much it's gonna mean to someone, nor the heartbreak that can come when you decide to half-ass it on the last hurdle.

One day you won't know that you contributed to make, I don't know, Sailor Moon, and how much you fucked it up by not knowing or caring you were making Sailor Moon. And now Sailor Moon's last season is bad. It is bad forever.

Sailor Moon

There's many reasons to like Sailor Moon in this year of the Lord 2024.

Its place in culture should speak for itself, being an iconic portrayal of femenine heroism that was very progressive for its time. It invites one to like with a sense of pride if you wanna have a taste for its historical relevance. Stopping there should be enough reason to pique the interest of anyone, but it would also be really shallow.

I don't think anyone would be at fault for finding a simple approach to 'girl power' charming, but the way Sailor Moon handles womanhood is far from gratuitous. Watching Usagi go from a normal teenager, to coming to terms with her responsabilities after discovering the implications of her past, and ultimately becoming future queen of the world carries within itself some very strong greek myth-like qualities that are hard to overlook once you notice them, and they make the experience of watching this easygoing show infinitely more enriching than what you might think at first glance, and yet it manages to not be pretentious in the slightest.

I'd be speaking out of my ass if I said it was the first anime to juggle silly and deformed facial expressions alongside a solemn and serious approach to its drama, as I'm pretty sure it's not, but it certainly acts like it is. It carries itself with a tremendous amount of confidence in regards to its classic tropes, saving it from falling into cliché by constructing these elements from scratch and rebelling in the storytelling opportunities this presents. The end result is that of a modern yet timeless story with fairytale qualities. It's a sincerity that's refreshing to revisit when you grow wary of all the attempts at novelty and subversion that plague modern media.

I can fling a lot of adjectives at Sailor Moon and it wouldn't really begin to cut it. It's comforting. It's beautiful. It can be deep and it can be just a pleasant watch. It's iconic without feeling like a chore to watch. It's nostalgic, yet refreshing. And even if there's disagreements on what I've said here, I hardly think anyone would ask Sailor Moon to be anything other than itself given how it pays for itself in creative inspiration for a big chunk of our generation.

On an entirely personal basis I find a lot of what I value in life reflected in its components, like the way it tackles its romance and the natural end result of it. It's not a hard sell for particular builds of people, and it stands to validate an outlook on life that's oftentimes dismissed or overlooked by both loftier and sillier products. I like watching it with my husband and kid and watch it go brr, you could say. We get a lot out of it, and I consider it very worthy of giving a lot of shits about, as you can probably tell by the very existance of this site.

I'm guessing this and more is why so many people love it despite not being able to stand some of its core components. I'm not here to tell anyone how to enjoy the things they like, but I want to get something very clear: Sailor Moon is many things, but spiteful is not one of them. If I could point at any emotion as the complete opposite of what SM represents, it'd probably be that.

This is a problem when Sailor Stars is concentrated spite.

I've certainly made an attempt to measure how Sailor Stars is bad, and if this article goes up at the right time, I'll already have shown my efforts to do so. If not, rest assured that at some point you'll get my full tally of every single interaction between the characters rating them on on-screen chemistry, a full analysis of its plot points and holes, and everything that identifies the marks of a poor product.

And yet I still don't think that cuts the potential for this season to bring down not only the value of the series as a whole if I lend it any credibility, but my mood any time I think about it. I can find it in my heart to forgive earnest incompetence in order to sleep a bit better at nights, but this goes beyond what makes Stars an objectively terrible story. There's something very very nasty lurking in the corners of this season, and I wanna get to the bottom of it.

I am aware that I cannot claim most of what I'll present here as a fact. Sailor Moon's production is shrouded in mystery, I'll never actually find an interview featuring the creators of Stars saying how much they hated Sailor Moon. I can, however, prove that the end result contains traces of a horrible philosophy when it comes to creating any sort of artistic product based on the contradictions and holes present in the season. I will call this negative X factor The Sludge because it's drippy, mean and uncomfortable, and this rant will be my attempt to measure it in whatever capacity I have. I wanna measure these feelings I have.

The Bad Gunky

To find proper examples of what I mean with sludgy writing, I'm gonna talk about SuperS a little bit, as I believe it contains the earliest instances of it setting in.

There might be an isolated case around the solo Usagi run in Classic, or you can argue that Rei goes too far in a few places, but you never see spite and humilliation being used as a source of comedy until SuperS, and I'd venture to say it's the underlying reason why a lot of people struggle with it, way beyond the focus being shifted from Usagi to Chibi-Usa. This season at its worst is just concentrated sludge.

If part of the show's soul can be found in two girls becoming best friends over the acceptance that they both once loved the same man, SuperS introduces the idea that these ladies can make an embarassing display of competitiveness and risk their friendship for a rando they haven't even met before. If beforehand jealousy was a sign of villanous behaviour, here it's used and abused for laughs as it's displayed by our main character for the pettiest of reasons, such as seeing boyfriend help an old lady cross the street. This is the season that has Usagi's jealousy peak to ridiculous degrees as well as the displacement of the Innies as a supporting cast in favour of focusing on Chibi Usa and her immediate circle, giving the impression that the show has become about something else and has stagnated its characters in order to achieve this new light-hearted tone.

Things like these work against certain aspects of the show I've previously described as a positive trait, such as the romance and the friendship. Moreso than the introductions of concepts like jealousy or rivalry, it's the shallow way they're exercised, the exaggerated traits turning the cast from a group of believable friends into petty little cartoons of what they once were. The lack of a cohesive plot that evolves through the season also doesn't help, as it shines a spotlight on the character dynamics, meaning that when they're bad, there's little else to like about the watching experience.

Despite this, I don't cite SuperS as the season that kills the show. It's the moment the soul starts leaving the body, but it's still there. I'll take characters being weird and unhinged for laughs if the ending note is an apology or a sincere display of friendship, such as Diana's introductory episode featuring everyone throwing deadbeat dad accusations at Artemis and giving him the chance to prove his love for Luna, or Minako dating two of our seasonal baddies at the same time and offering the girls an apology for being so embarassing which they take without the need for any words, as she's already been punished for her bad decision-making. You see the point in the flanderization when it allows the show to hit these unexpected high notes that come as a result of being a little bit weird.

When this season is at its best it's doing things like the girls staying overnight with Makoto at a dance festival because she's waiting for the one man who would dance with her freakishly tall self. This can only happen because SuperS decided to have seduction as the main method of approach of the Amazon Trio, and because the location is the college Mamoru and Motoki go to, meaning that this is happening at the same time as the girls being surrounded by familiar faces. This is a setup that might be able to happen regardless of these elements at place, but the end result would probably be a character of the day doing the seduction with no relevant location and no recurrent characters to compliment and solidify the established relationships amongst the cast.

Characters of the day have never had an impact in the overall plot of Sailor Moon, but to criticize that would be to say the plot of Sailor Moon would benefit from a 'fewest cuts' approach. As if the filler was bad and not the whole reason to watch the 90s show. NPCs help flesh out the world that Sailor Moon saves, and they also contribute to form this idea of what Usagi is missing whenever she's refered to wanting a life as a normal girl. The more we see them, the more we get this sense of continuity and progression, like Juuban is a place that's habited, and by extension our heroines have people they care about protecting.

SuperS might be at its worst when character behavior is erratic and also unpleasant, but one of its saving graces is its dedication to populate the city and utilize previously established characteristics of our main cast, as well as keeping a consistent tone. Its low stakes approach or displacement of the protagonist role might be a disappointment to some in terms of enjoyment as they don't exactly give the impression that the story is continuing in a meaningful way, and that is to say nothing about the execution of these changes in themselves, but we cannot claim that SuperS is intentionally working against what Sailor Moon has established in terms of tone. It might be misguided, incompetent and infuriating at times, but that's not what defines our sludge.

Our first order of business here is to compare and point out that in Stars, most if not all of the recurrent characters of the day that we've previously seen are gone. There's a passing mention of Rei's grandpa still existing, and I recall three instances of them actually being at Hikawa Shrine. Despite the girls spending most of their time off school hanging out at Crown Café, we see no trace of Motoki or Unazuki. And of course, Chibi Usa and also Mamoru are gone to establish the plot of the season. A connection to Sailor Moon has been lost through the dismissal of its setting. This only just begins to describe what makes Stars a more unpleasant watch experience, but I'll have the rest of this article to define it in detail. What matters now is that Stars makes a conscious attempt to leave SuperS behind, and it begins with its dedication to the immediate surroundings of the cast.

SuperS and Stars are different from the rest of the series in that they try to shake up the formula that's been established up to this point, and they both do it in incredibly different ways. But SuperS still retains this connection.

A reason for this could be attributed to the change in staff that the show suffered between S and SuperS. Iriya Azuma was the show's producer until SuperS, but Toshihiro Arisako joined for this last one and took over the role entirely for Stars. Both of these seasons coincide with a change in focus for Sailor Moon, with SuperS trying to push Chibi Usa as a new protagonist while Stars drops her alongside most side characters all together, to say the least. It's a fair assumption to make that this new producer had something to do with an intent to spice up the formula.

Next off we have the writing staff.

Junichi Sato was the series director for Classic, with a set of four writers that are kept all the way until S, with an additional fifth introduced this season. Kunihiko Ikuhara takes over for series director from R until SuperS. SuperS in itself retains two writers, one from Classic and the newbie from S, with two new faces and a guest writer for a single episode.

Stars then has Takuya Igarashi as series director, who previously directed individual episodes. This would be the only holdout from Classic, as the writing staff is composed of the newbies from SuperS and two new writers.

Junichi Sato remains as an episode director, having 3 episodes under his belt in Stars... but plenty of the usual episode directors throughout the show also stick around for Stars. Their presence doesn't really explain away why these seasons feel tangiably different, so Sato's presence in The Date Episode won't give it any more legitimacy in my eyes.

This is important to get across first as we usually tend to associate the creation of a product to the big company names behind them. In Sailor Moon's case, the IP was deviced as a multimedia project, so we got the joined effort of Toei making the anime, Naoko writing the manga, and Bandai making the toys. It's easy to single out Naoko as the sole creative vision to respect because we are naturally geared to lend empathy to other fellow human beings, but we cannot neglect that Toei as a studio is also comprised of people, people who had different roles in the production of the anime, and that if these people were to be replaced, the creative voice of the show would also change, no matter if they're still working under the banner of "Toei".

One thing would be for me to say that Stars feels different with no real change in the production of the show to back up this claim, but this is confirmation that something is changing from the inside as the show reaches its final stretch. This means there is not a single cohesive vision that informs the decision making behind Stars. It is possible that they get things wrong, and that the things they've decided to prioritize completely contradict themes and ideas laid out by the previous seasons. They are not working with an inherent understanding of the source material, because they didn't make it. Therefore why should we look at this season with any sense of inherent authority? What separates a creator who is forming things with intent because they want to convey an idea properly, from someone who happened to be in the right chair at the same time?

Maybe the bad integration of the new characters and the poor use of the established ones can be down to lack of experience regarding the show's internal language. It can be lack of time or it can also be lack of experience in the craft. I can only make assumptions as to how it happened, but what truly puzzles me is the why. No amount of accidental incompetence justifies the decision making that leads to Stars, as there are much easier ways to achieve its intended themes and ideas without the insane amount of contrivances and unpleasantries displayed over the course of the season.

When I talk about Stars, I'm gonna exclude the first six episodes, obviously. I've never seen a show pull such a thing where the intro to its final season feels like a glimpse into what could have been, a checklist of things they never got to do, and for it to contain all of the thematic elements that the season proper will do a poor job of tackling. It's the last time we are blessed with the doughy artstyle of Masahiro Ando. It's a weird Swan's Song for the show. I don't know how it happened, but I'm leaving those little darlings alone.

I can only make another assumption here and say that it was a requirement to follow Naoko's blueprints for a final season instead. It might have had something to do with the origins of Sailor Moon as a multimedia franchise. Either we couldn't have a season that did not include new characters to sell toys of, or the manga running alongside the show meant that the storyline could not differ too much even when liberties were taken.

Whatever the reason, something was forcing the production to use these components for the final season.

I haven't read this far into the manga myself. All I have under my belt is the first 3 volumes and awareness of how some key plot points differ between the two continuities. I don't know how well Naoko's ending suited her story in her medium of choice, but I'm willing to bet treating the manga and the anime as complimentary material was the first big mistake in the production of Stars, as the way the anime was laid out is completely at odds with what this season presents.

What even is Canon

Maybe people don't wanna reckon Ail and An existed and that probably does away with the contradictions that the Starlights might bring, but their presence is a fact in the anime.

R proper, a season that was done and over before the Starlights even occured to Naoko, bears them in mind as a load bearing poster to explain the anime's diversions from the manga. The relationship between Usagi and Mamoru develops through the conflict they bring as potential love interests, something Naoko had a different take on entirely, and beyond the obvious aesthetic mismatches you notice if you compare the Makai Tree Aliens with the Starlights, there's a fundamental disagreement in what aliens are and what they're used for in the world of Sailor Moon. In one case they represent a faction that stands to learn from humans in matters of love, a key theme in the show. In the other they're adapted to society, just as valid as any other planet that harbors humanoid life, and part of a bigger picture that does not contemplate earth as anything particularly special. The presence of both is a thematic contradiction.

The existance of Moonlight Knight as Mamoru's embodied Usagi Alarm needs to be ignored entirely, too. Despite it being an important step for these characters in this continuity, it needs to be disowned in favour of what's to come.

The Starlights integration into the season proper also fails to bear in mind another distinction between manga and anime that I can't help but notice as a result of its lack of explanation: it feels as if the Starlights and their missing princess are meant to be foils to the innies and Princess Serenity, a reflection of how lost they'd be without her, but this is a dynamic that is not present in the anime. As far as what's on screen projects, the innies are equals to Usagi, not subservient to Serenity. The parallel makes no sense, as we have no concept of how important a princess is to their scouts without devaluing the relationship between Usagi and her friends from something unique and special to something that comes with just... being a scout.
>Which is a common occurence now, since everything and their mom is a Scout.

Stars as a season begins to feel less like a conclusion to the 90s show and more as a way to adapt the final arc of the manga in its style, that is to say, the same way of extending character roles and keeping the tone a bit more light hearted. Sometimes. We'll get to that.

If you and I want to talk about the show, generally speaking we'll take the show as the source of our arguments, no matter how much we disagree. Decisions like these mean that the anime staff has made that decision for us, and has decided that certain things don't count, no matter how much they are a part of your experience.

The negligence alone for the anime as its own separate thing is a first hint of the spite, a sign that they didn't care much for what was there to begin with or felt it was irrelevant enough in comparison to the finale they were planning. Before I take it as genuine disdain or evaluate how well this was done, I need to talk about Sailor Moon, and how this negligence for the anime can potentially ruin what Sailor Moon is about.

Mamoru Matters

Contrary to popular belief, Mamoru's instrumental in understanding what makes Sailor Moon so good. I've never seen a bigger pack of lies spread about a character's role in a show. It starts harmless enough with memes about how he doesn't do anything and following the river nets you with this rumour that the people making the show hated him so much that they internally sabotaged his characterization in comparison to the manga. As if the showrunners knew from the moment they asked Naoko to draw more scouts that Sailor Moon was destined to be a pillar of culture, so they could afford to work against themselves in their mission to make a succesful show out of sheer contempt for one of its components.

What I reckon is more likely is that Naoko's materials were a bit too vague to work with, and they interpreted the love interest role a bit differently when it came to shifting the focus from the romance to the friendship. "I've felt this before" might be a good basis for a relationship in a rushed format that can't spend any time explaining, but it won't do in a show that comes week to week. You have to feed it more lasagna, and deliberate on what makes it worth having for the story you're trying to tell. The lady can write her ideal man as much as she wants, but when you're trying to appeal to a wider audience you might struggle to convince boys what is there to gain in being a Mamoru if they don't speak period.

I think sidelining Mamoru was done to shine the spotlight on Sailor Moon and the Innies. I think giving him less insecurities was to emphasize his role as her support class. I think stripping him of his powers puts focus on his willingness to become responsible for Sailor Moon's well being rather than his capability to do so. I think everything in R was done to deconstruct the idea of destiny bringing them together just to build it back up as a sincere appreciation for the foundation of their love without taking it for granted.

I think it's perfectly possible to look at what Mamoru does and find the core components of an ideal man; one that is devoted and willing to do everything in his power to support you, without losing his own language. Not assertive, but still proactive. Not aggresive, but passionate. Not aloof, but respectful. One that pushes you to become the best version of yourself while remaining completely selfless. One that is comitted and devoted to the relationship and everything that might come as a result of it.

The director for the Latam dub took special care in making sure to hire a Darien that oozed nothing but love for his woman, and she would know how this is the perfect compliment for our lead, as she's the one who voices Serena herself. This very succesful man with hundreds of roles over 30 years cites Darien as one of his favourite characters to play because "he's the prototype of the ideal man, the perfect boyfriend". If this take survived the barrier of language and was actually incorporated in this interpretation of the characters via the voicework in one of the most beloved and culturally relevant dubs of this show, I'm inclined to believe there's some fire causing all the smoke.

The resulting relationship he has with Usagi is fairly unique and something I consider part of Sailor Moon's genetic material; a classic disney-esque love story brought to the modern and mundane reality of our generation. It has enough self-awareness to understand the casual and less grandiose things about modern relationships at the same time as recognizing True Love as a fuel that can dictate your every action. It's impossibly sincere. The core of Mamoru and Usagi's relationship can be found in how they would die for eachother in this life and the next only to have a chance to bicker and go on silly dates and get to know eachother all over again.

Following on from this, the foundation of Crystal Tokyo becomes less because they're destined to bring peace on Earth and stick to an interpretation of the future just because it's been revealed to them, and more about how a comittment to love in itself can result in something so grandiose that it's worth pursuing.

It's not just Mamoru, too. The anime can't help itself but make heroic men in the form of all the little NPCs our main girls interact with. From Umino to Yuichiro to Ryo and Motoki; these lads will sacrifice everything for the sake of their girls. Sailor Moon's idea of true love is selfless. Understanding this will usually be what redeems a villain, and corrupting this idea will condemn them.

When looking at what Sailor Moon actually means, I'd hope for it to be a champion of this idea, because I see all of the ingredients for it to manifest and be a pristine example of unconditional love in media. Let culture have all the other cliche tropes and subvert them all. Let God have all the cats He wants and kill them all; Church is my cat.

And in Stars, we have Seiya.

Let's Break It (Just Because we Can)

Seiya is a member of the Starlights, the new team of Scouts that come from outer space looking for their princess.

They disguise themselves as a boy band to sing and reach out to her, hoping she comes out of hiding. Their goal is presumably to find her and bail out of earth, and their contempt for humans and the planet is allegedly the character flaw they must overcome. That's the projected arc for them. Seiya's heart is torn, however. The dedication to the mission comes into question when she falls in love with an earthling.

This earthling is Usagi.

We got ourselves a love rival, an option for Usagi's romance, something to throw off the scent of the endgame couple. Mamoru's interactions with Seiya will be defined by indifference, frustration and confusion as Seiya tries to make assumptions on the nature of his character. He has to because Mamoru is not around. Mamoru managed to be in the same room as Seiya exactly once, not even exchanging a glance of acknowledgement at his existance before he got on a plane to leave for America.

We see immediately after that the plane is compromised by the season's villain. Mamoru's gone.

Mamoru cannot defend himself because he is dead.

Introducing a love triangle in the last hurdle of a show with a romance component feels like a bad enough idea on its own, but the fact it can't legally qualify as a love triangle in this context should be enough to paint the picture of the type of character Seiya is on a meta level. He couldn't just be introduced to challenge the status quo; the status quo had to be broken beyond recognition in order to accomodate his introduction.

This is foreshadowing of what's about to come as a consequence of his presence.

There's a laundry list of ritualistic sacrifices performed to ensure Seiya could happen. Dignifying this season as part of Sailor Moon's canon has to consider these sacrifices, and thus ruin plenty about Sailor Moon. I'd be forced to leave and take the love letter I wrote before with me, as it would now be meaningless, and I'm growing ever more tired of living in a world hell bent on taking away meaning from things.

I honestly cannot fathom why anyone on the production team thought the way Seiya was handled was appropriate for the final stretch of this show.

If I defended Mamoru's execution up to this point is because the idea of sabotaging a show with an uncertain future seems ridiculous. Even the most cynical take on Sailor Moon's production as the most capitalistic of capitalistic endeavors cannot deny the fact that if you wanna sell toys, you have to have a product worth buying toys about.

Sabotaging a show that's just been given its death sentence, on the other hand, seems awfully possible when none of the original writers are part of its team anymore. There's no obligation to care. If the only requirement was to sell Starlight toys, I can think of no better way to give them attention than through a move like this. The only audience they needed to capture was those who would enjoy one last novelty before wrapping up. Why not throw a few things under the bus in a last ditch effort to create said novelty? These are, once more, assumptions. I will never know if this has any validity or not, so instead I wanna talk about what's on the screen to examplify what I mean. We're gonna zoom in on that black sludge.

Seiya is presented to us as a potential love rival to Mamoru for Usagi's affections. Now a love triangle is a common occurence in a show that deals with romance on an ongoing basis. Sailor Moon however, as I've discussed, has a bit of a strong dedication to its endgame romance by showing us the results of it ahead of time and turning it into the focus of an entire season. If Seiya came along in Season 2, he'd probably be right at home in whatever type of character he turned out to be, as these themes are not yet set in stone and ripe to be explored. He could be called Ail and put Usagi's love for Mamoru into question, or he could be called Demande and be a villanous foil to the male lead. But Stars is the final season, which puts Seiya in a bit of an unsavory position.

One option is to have him doomed as a candidate from the very beginning and waste the time and effort of everyone involved in both creating and consuming this season. Another one is for him to be given a fighting chance and transmogrify Sailor Moon into a different show that deals with all sorts of fun themes such as cheating and abortion. The final option is that his character compliments Sailor Moon's themes of selfless love by sacrificing his own desires and highlighting the devotion of the main couple to one another.

As we can see, it's delicate ground. Our final judgement will depend on Seiya's attitude and the framing of his actions. Is our talented writing staff up to the task? Let's get specific with this and ask a question, hand on the heart; when does Seiya fall in love with Usagi?

No, really; when does Seiya fall in love with Usagi?

"I didn't notice when" is Seiya's claim in the show in itself, said in Episode 195 (The One where He Tries to Kiss Her). He's allowed not to notice. Who needs to notice is the audience. No matter how gradual it is, there has to be a point in which we can separate Seiya acting like himself from Seiya acting out of love.

Mamoru in season one goes from being annoyed at Usagi, to being endeared, to actively smiling at their encounters and it culminates in "never change, Usagi". Usagi herself goes from finding him rude and obnoxious to listening to his advice to seeking him out to bicker to actively comparing him to his crush who also happens to be him. Because of this we can be assured that their love did not depend on a plot point, nor is their attraction to eachother arbitrary, but more importantly: we can read the characters keeping this trajectory in mind to get more out of the show all together, because it's consistent.

As an example we have episode 28, where a painter wants Mamoru and Usagi to model for her. There's a scene in which Usagi just realized she means to pose them together and is apalled. Mamoru's reaction is to get up to leave on the spot. Isolated, this can mean that he just shares her shock and disgust at the idea. But because of the buildup of their interactions, we can interpret this as him being upset that Usagi thinks that lowly of him. In fact, the first interpretation wouldn't make any sense in the context of their relationship nor where it's going at this point in time. The second gives us a better read on how these characters feel and a more complete interpretation of their relationship.

There's a precedent for doing this dynamic right and it's in the show's founding season, so it's important to see how Seiya compares, specially when his whole shtick is stealing Mamoru's down to his leitmotifs. We are simply not allowed to ignore the parallel. Stars won't let us, as it's relying on it.

In theory, Seiya's relationship with Usagi should follow a similar pattern given how simple things are. Seiya falls in love with Usagi at some point, and the secret identity element puts a timer on when the curveball that recontextualizes these blossoming feelings is thrown. We'll call this The Reveal. The difference here with Classic!Mamoru is that Usagi is taken, but it's not a horribly complicated concept. It has no real excuse to be executed badly.

On Usagi's end we can compare the first interaction with Seiya with her last one pre-reval of his secret identity as Sailor Starlight, which happens in episode 188. We'll be using it as a cutting off point given a reveal of that magnitude necessarily means the characters will recontextualize their relationship up to that point, so everything that happens beforehand is what we can truly count as 'natural chemistry'.

173 (Where Mamoru Leaves) - she's assuming Seiya has bad intent and dismisses his advances by telling him she's taken.
187 (The Softball Episode) - she's assured Seiya has bad intent and dismisses his advances by telling him she's taken.

I'm glad he did a lot to change that initial preconception she had of him by adjusting his behavior and developing as a character as he got to know her better. We're off to a great start here.

In all seriousness, this is the smoking gun that the production staff wrote themselves into a corner, as any consideration from Usagi towards Seiya in a casual environment would mean our main character ceases to exist. Usagi's saving trait amongst her beautiful mess of a human being is that she has infinite trust and love for her friends and loved ones. Falling for Seiya would mean Some Guy has the potential to challenge the love of her life, the future of the world and the life of her future daughter. That's not very Love and Justice of her.

And so we start seeing the issue; we need some contrivances in place to give this impression of development and slowburn romance without actually having it ruin our endgame couple.

To examplify what I mean by asking this question, let's break down an easy one.

The Writers Really Wanted Them to Work

181 is cited as an episode that fully displays the natural chemistry these two share with eachother. It also perfectly displays these contrivances I mention.

It's of utmost importance that Usagi is written dumb enough to agree to a date without knowing the implications of it, despite already being shown suspicious of Seiya's intent. At the same time she needs to switch gears and be hyper aware of Seiya's intent once she's alerted to it by several characters.

This results in scenes such as Usagi being invited by Seiya to a dance club, being led to a backroom instead of dancing, remembering the warnings she's been flip-flopping on and believing she's about to be taken advantage of, only to be led to dance for real this time, the punchline to the joke being "it was all a misunderstanding".

Was it, though?

It's already a contrivance in itself for the joke to be "a misunderstanding", because it would imply Usagi is wrong in assuming Seiya to have ulterior motives when he aggresively tries to get her attention, dismisses her boyfriend and claims to have a chance, invites her out on a date, and takes her to a private room. But it's the only way this can even be qualified as a joke.

The alternative is that Seiya is indeed in love with Usagi, and that his active pursuit of her is sincere. Which would mean there's no misunderstanding to be had; Usagi's right to be wary of him, since his attitude towards her hasn't been 'just messing around' and there's actually a reason to back it up. ...And what is the joke in that scenario?

That this was the only time Seiya wasn't trying to get in her pants? That the universe is tricking her into doubting her common sense? That she was asking for it, for being too dumb or too nice? That she struggles because she secretely wants it? Is the scenario in itself funny?

Any of these answers qualify as prime cuts of Sludge to get to the bottom of this primordial question.

Seiya is somehow an idiot who doesn't understand how his own actions come across. Despite his use of flirting to get intel an episode prior. Despite being a celebrity aware of women's attraction to him. At this point he's innocent. Let's go with that.
We must go with that, or else we've accidentally turned our #TeamJacob into a #MeToo.

...Unless we're not meant to think that hard about it. Thinking hard breaks this illusion.

Next controversial episode on the list is 184, in which Seiya invites himself to sleep over at Usagi's house to protect her from robbers. Because her family is gone without her. And she forgot she's Sailor Moon. And her friends are made of cardboard.

Seiya recognizes he can't be seen with Usagi at her place or else the journalists might make a scandal. Potentially doxxing her and leaving her at the mercy of nail bombs in the mail. I wish I could shut down the real life implications of this, but 187 won't let me, since it makes it a point to have Seiya's fans be a threat to Usagi's well being. Either way, this is worth the risk, because Seiya wants a chance to be alone with her to confess something...

We're starting to see a pattern here with the contrivances that push Seiya and Usagi together.

Is Seiya in love with Usagi already?

Usagi has once more gone back to being stupid enough to allow this to happen yet wary enough to push him away when his attempts at confessing look uncomfortably romantic. The joke is that she's misunderstanding the romantic intent for what he truly means. What he has in mind (confessing he's Sailor Starfighter) is something he assumes she can't reasonably predict.

If Seiya actually has romantic intent... where's the misunderstanding? Why is Usagi treated as unreasonable for making these assumptions? Why is she asked to trust the intent of someone who has done absolutely nothing to earn her trust?

Am I implying that being in love inherently means his actions have ulterior motives? Given the core of his interactions with Usagi so far have involved dismissing her pushback and roping her into things against her will, it's a stretch to read his brand of love as selfless. Him being innocently in love and wanting to look out for her at the same time as being pushy and cocky and teasing are two things that don't meet in the middle, and knowing the distinction between the two is an awful lot of good faith to have for a character who hasn't stopped making wrong assumptions about the protagonist's love life. It is more of a contradiction at this point to consider both reads to be true than him just being an idiot.

So once more let's ignore that Seiya should be aware of the implications of being alone with Usagi at her place over the night. Let's assume his intent is innocent, and has genuine concern for her well being, and this is his motivation for turning down the picture of Mamoru and not petty jealousy, of course. This gesture should communicate to the audience that we're meant to see things from Seiya's point of view, and we should ignore what we know about Mamoru's character and about his whereabouts to sympathize with this new love rival and his wrong assumptions. That's very important. If it isn't that, it would imply that Seiya's imposing his feelings onto Usagi knowing very well she's going through a hard time, and that he's making her doubt her senses by constantly denying her read on the situation.
...But don't worry. It's not that. Seiya is good.

We fast forwards to 187, The Softball Episode.

Usagi is once more dragged to do something against her will, but this time her pride is on the line. The universe has conspired against her and left her at the mercy of rabid Three Light fans who have made the assumption that she's Seiya's girlfriend, unworthy of his affections. She now must win a game of softball to earn the right to date him.

Her besties for life seem delighted at the thought that she is such a stinky loser that this will work in the favour of getting Seiya off her back. Presumably because Usagi's agency on the matter is below Seiya's and below bending over to the fanclub's whims in terms of authority.

As I mentioned before, if any of what we've seen so far was meant to endear Usagi towards Seiya, this episode confirms the attempts were worthless, as her behavior towards him is no different than his first day at school. She seems even more reassured in Mamoru, bringing him up often through the episode against Rei's accusations and Seiya's teasing.

On her end, nothing has changed.

So is Seiya in love with Usagi yet?

If he is, then this could be a misguided but earnest attempt to bond with her, and flex his unapologetic affection with his fanbase. He mentioned before in 181 (The Date Episode, on the Ferris Wheel) how he doesn't mind being seen with girls. The little pep talk he gives her about her natural glow could be his attempt to be sincere about his admiration.

He'd still be a pushy pest, but the alternative would mean that he's throwing Usagi to the wolves for absolutely no reason. Wouldn't it be funny if my fanbase, whom your friends bow down to in awe and fear, thought you were my girlfriend? Wouldn't it be funny if your reputation depended on a sport you didn't even want to play? Wouldn't it be funny if what you wanted just didn't matter because me and your friends have already taken this bet for you?

At least he didn't call her fat. Now that would be a Red Flag.

This is his last chance to reconcile how he feels about Usagi before The Reveal, yet given this cocktail of awful behavior is packed at the intro, it needs to have happened sometime before 187.

185 and 186 barely feature Seiya interacting with Usagi though, as those episodes focus on Taiki thinking of quitting 3L and Usagi following Chibs's Day Out in an attempt to find the Land of Sweets.

Which necessarily means that in order for Seiya to remain a character with any semblance of benefit of doubt, he must have fallen in love sometime during the course of 184...
... or off-screen.

Whoopsie.

This bracket of episodes would be the most crucial in determining what exactly is the nature of the relationship between Seiya and Usagi, and yet they exist in this liminal state where uncomfortable contrivances happen with romantic music playing in the background and the writers trust that the viewers will be tricked into thinking something is going on if the characters blush, but I doubt they themselves know what exactly is meant to be going on.

Even if you look one episode beyond (188) and really milk the interactions Seiya and Usagi have before the exact moment of the reveal, we're greeted with some ridiculous situation where Usagi's friends have completely cast her aside in making plans for an on-flight 3L event. An on-flight 3L event. When the plane is compromised and Usagi is desperate to warn the airline staff, Seiya puts the moves on her in a framing that would suggest this is all going according to plan.

This one has the dubious honor of not only being another situation where Usagi's letting Seiya in while in a compromised emotional state, but also going out of its way to evoke the imagery of planes, which seem peppered around the season specifically to remind us of Mamoru.

I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to be thinking of him at this point? Is it a reminder of the Endgame? or does Mamoru represent this ambiguous Love Interest keyword that we are subliminally meant to replace with Seiya?

"Yes" responds the writers room.

Why can't their interactions have a normal buildup? What's with this It's Complicated Relationship Status thing that's both there and isn't at the same time? Why are you being so mysterious and dark, Stars?

Since Sailor Moon and Sailor Starfighter barely acknowledge eachother beyond being captains of their respective teams, the Reveal doesn't really recontextualize any of their interactions. We know they want to work together, and this is impeded by the Outies ocassionally butting in to remind us there's some sort of theme about mistrusting the intent of other scouts in this season, or something. There's nothing personal about it. Which makes Usagi's reaction all the more baffling.

After 188, Usagi is torn, destroyed, depressed, because some members of her team don't want her to see Seiya, and the Starlights take this personally.

I can't help but hold it in direct contrast to Mamoru being Beryl'd in season one, as she was put in a similar state of depression and worry over his absence. Episode 36 has the girls dealing with Usagi's feelings, with Rei beating herself up over treating Usagi badly (an excellent moment that packs Rei's relationshop with Mamoru, concern for Usagi, and her constant judgement of Usagi's performance all in one), and Minako going out of her way to cheer her up with a girls day out. It gives us valuable insight into how the characters deal with grief and it presents a chance to introduce a new character into the team properly as a friend and not a scout. It's not only tender and comforting, but very useful in setting some standards for the quality of the friendship and how many layers we should expect of this show when it presents us with a key plot point.

The reaction to Seiya's absence is blown out of proportion when you compare it to Mamoru's. Seiya is not in any perceived danger, and since the Scouts and the Three Lights were in the same amicable terms as with the Starlights, there's no conflictive emotions to navigate either.

Writing-wise, the only reason left for this reaction is to overcompensate for the lack of a meaningful chemistry between Usagi and Seiya. By all means it makes no sense that Usagi feels this strongly about it when Seiya's done so little to endear her to him and she's even shown rejecting his advances until the very end. Either we're meant to believe this reaction is carrying the brunt of how Usagi truly feels, despite it contradicting her on-screen behavior towards Seiya, or we're meant to think she's really feeling this guilty over not knowing a secret she had no reason to know to begin with.

...Unless, of course, we're wrapped in another plot contrivance. One that envelops a bit more than a couple of episodes and might be doing more damage than just a badly timed love triangle.

There is a third option that would explain this reaction.
In order for Seiya to have an in with Usagi, we need to remove Mamoru from the picture. She's now in a bit of a delicate mental state, as he doesn't keep in touch. The audience knows why, but she does not. The very foundations of everything she knows are being shaken, and the reason Seiya climbs the ranks as the person who was there for her, is because no one else was.
She was utterly alone.

...Where the fuck are her friends?

Mean Innies

Somewhere in the Softball episode, Seiya has a nice little scene with Usagi in which he essentially tells her she's got a nice glow, and it would be a shame if she became a loser and tainted it. It's very sincere and probably exactly what she needs to hear right now, given at the end of the episode she celebrates her win by telling Mamoru all about it. Usagi is bad at sports and didn't even want to join the softball team, but this matters to her.

During the course of this episode, her friends have done nothing but remind her of how much of a loser she is. And they frame it as a good thing, as they believe this is what's needed to prevent her from cheating on Mamoru. There'a no shortage of them pulling these expressions as if they're delighting in this situation, going so far as to replace the commentators of the match to highlight how much of a loser Usagi is. Apparently we are meant to think this behaviour is fine, as they eventually make up not with an apology but with a concession about how they're still not gonna let Seiya hog all of her attention if she wins.

General consensus on Stars seems to at least agree that the girls are casted aside to let the Starlights shine, but there's something a bit sludgier going on. Turns out her friends are not only gone, but they're actively hostile towards Usagi when she needs them most.

The Softball Episode comes as a dark horse in the race for the champion of the Bad Gunky. It was only upon a rewatch where I set myself to find cute moments between the girls that I realized how rare they are in Stars, if they're even present at all. The way they treat her in the Softball Episode is particularly reminiscent of high school bullying, but it's also the culmination of a larger pattern of the girls being just... flat out unpleasant and downright abusive at worst.

I've only talked about Seiya's portrayal so far. Seiya's interactions with Usagi are such a focus of this season that it makes sense if the audience has their eyes on them. What we might not notice is how the innies are used to frame these interactions, or the things they do to give focus to the Three Lights.

In 181 (The Date Episode), the intro features Minako unsuccesfully trapping Taiki into going on a date to the cinema with her. Makoto offers to go with her instead so she doesn't lose her tickets, and Minako requests she buys them off her instead. Ami also appears just to cast suspicion on Usagi for being asked out on a date.
They don't do anything else in this episode.

In 182 (Chibs first appearance) they're meant to be looking for a wandering toddler, but a passing mention by Pluto suggests they ditched for a 3L parade event.
They're not seen in the episode again.

184 (The Sleepover Episode) deserves a special mention in the Sludge meter by having the girls appear at Usagi's home only out of concern for her staying alone with Seiya. It turns out they don't suspect Seiya of inappropriate behavior, but Usagi herself, as they proceed to insinuate she's cheating on Mamoru when a magic little contrivance happens that lands Seiya naked in the middle of the hallway.
Ami says they should keep it a secret from him.

The absolute worst behavior can be found in 188 (The Reveal), in which they keep the 3L event a secret from her, and Usagi is heartbroken for being unable to go with them. You can argue Usagi does not like 3L and there was no reason to invite her, but this didn't stop them from roping her into getting tickets for the concert in 180 (The one where Michiru and Seiya flirt for intel). I'm assuming this neglect was utterly necessary to have the scene of Usagi rushing to get on the plane to save their bitchy asses. I'm also forced to assume that Rei delighting in Usagi's loneliness had some sort of purpose beyond making me think Usagi should change schools and never talk to them ever again.

Even if you dial it back to the beginning of the season, they're actively hostile to Usagi for her lack of interest in 3L, and Minako outright uses her to get closer to them when Seiya takes an interest in her.

You can make a drinking game. Take a shot any time you don't laugh at the banter. Take a shot any time a conversation devolves into talking about the Three Lights. Take a shot any time they're mean to Usagi. Take a shot any time they disappear from the episode. Make sure you don't drive.

Why are they like this?

I can think of no better indication of the fanrot taking over their brain than the scene where they try to get tickets to 3L in episode 180. The girls are all in sync, dialing buttons onto these payphones, with ominous music playing in the background before the purpose for this behavior is revealed.

Any other season would delight in them having a different approach or reaction to the task. Here the joke is that they've been turned into a hivemind, perfectly coordinated in their simp behavior. If it peaked there, at least we could assess the damage as being sidelined for the Starlights to shine. But that does not explain why they're mean.

There's already awful attempts at writing banter between Rei and Usagi that don't even feel suitable for the early days of classic, and I can easily put those down to just bad writing. But we're here to find the sludge. The sludge in this case is this Mean Girl attitude, the judgemental tone they seem to take any time the conversation becomes about Seiya.

There's an uncomfortable amount of accusations of cheating.

I believe this is done to emphasize the perceived romantic chemistry the audience should be feeling between Seiya and Usagi. I also believe that having other characters point it out is not only another confession of failure at building said chemistry, but it's also giving us the key to the refrigerator that hides all the corpses.

The accusations happening several times and with the same angle carry within themselves a number of implications that work against the characterization of the girls.

First of all, we must believe that the girls would not give Usagi any benefit of doubt nor the chance to explain herself.
Meaning that at this point in the game, and in spite of everything they've gone through, they don't trust her.

Second, we must believe that none of them in their little rainbow of personalities would take a different stance, such as blaming the uncomfortable circumstances on Seiya, or even wondering if Mamoru's neglecting Usagi in some capacity.
Meaning there's no other way the audience is meant to perceive these circumstances.

Third, by accusing Usagi of cheating, you have to think of who she would be wronging by doing so. This implicitly says they're taking Mamoru's side.
Meaning they care for him enough to judge Usagi's decisions on his behalf, but not enough to think about contacting him. Meaning not only they're shit friends to Usagi, but also to Mamoru.

Fourth, if they're taking this stance, they must know it has irreparable consequences for their relationship. Their relationship that culminates in Crystal Tokyo and Chibi Usa, whom they know and have seen glitching out of existance if Mamoru's compromised (courtesy of those first six episodes of Stars that I'm not blasting into space). And all they're doing to prevent it is being passive aggresive about it.
Meaning they're also failing their Scout duties of protecting Earth.

Fifth, we are watching the Sailor Scouts accusing Usagi of cheating. That is, dare I say, fairly unpleasant to witness in a cosy show about friendship and romance.

...Right?

Am I wrong?

It's at this point where I genuinely questioned if I was just seeing things when I called this show an adorable display of friendship. Maybe the banter was always this bad and catty. Maybe the bullying-adjacent situations were not so adjacent. Maybe I'm doubting my own sense of reality and the thing I liked was just a projection of what I wanted to see in the show rather than something that was there to begin with?

...Nah. Nah go back to R and notice how you can't keep Rei's hand from Usagi's shoulder. The sisterhood just keeps falling out of them. Take any random episode from Classic to S and you're likely to see them holding hands or congratulating eachother for menial tasks.

To what end was it necessary to sacrifice this, may I ask?

You could argue it's realistic to write a friendship drifting in adolescence, and it just adds to the high school vibe they were intentionally and deliberately going for. But if there was an active attempt to structure Stars around the girls drifting, it would have to be addressed as a plot point. And if you address it as a plot point, you might have to dive into the factors that are causing the drift... ...and given the cause for hostile behavior is either 3L fanrot or Seiya's involvement with Usagi, that would make our new characters seem antagonistic.

And you're not meant to think that.

If the girls were in-character, the audience would ask questions they're not meant to ask.

It would take one instance of Ami wanting to contact Mamoru out of the friendship they've shown to share for his whereabouts to be a cause of suspicion, but then we couldn't have this idea of Usagi being challenged by Mamoru's abscence.
Minako being Usagi's blonde idiot twin needs to have her brain melted in pop idol nonsense, because if she noticed something is off with her girl, she would have to ask her and find out that Mamoru hasn't responded.
We can't have Makoto telling Seiya to back off either, as it would mean he's forced to confront his awful behavior in some capacity.
God forbid Rei feels a disturbance in the force, or else we might have a completely different plot in our hands that renders the love triangle pitifully unimportant.

You know who else is a weird victim of this black hole of idiocy? Luna. Luna whose entire purpose has been to remind Usagi of her mission and be a connection to the Silver Millenium is now a Yaten fangirl, and Artemis is understandably too done with this season to even consider contacting Mamoru from his Future Dads club.

Imagine my shock when I remembered there's an episode in S (114, for the record) dedicated to Minako hiding her status as a fangirl because the girls find the behavior abhorrent and she's embarassed. "We would never do something like that", says Rei.

One possibility is that they ignored this episode entirely because they wanted to write the season they wanted to write. Another one is that they didn't look that hard into the source material and didn't see it. Either one would mean that they just reached a completely different interpretation of these characters. This would be neglectful, bad writing, but it would still be earnest.

...When we look back at the first six episodes of Stars though (who have my blessing, the little darlings), we might notice that the Sludge is completely absent, despite it having the same season director and writing team as the rest of Stars. Rei jumps towards Usagi when she dashes to save Mamoru, and the girls are there to pick her up when she crashes onto the floor. I don't even have to get into Makoto taking hit after hit for a brainmelted Usagi. My point is that they knew. They absolutely knew how to write these characters.

It is specifically the Starlights presence that pushes the Innies aside, and the attempts to frame Seiya as a valid love interest that ruins them.

The writing staff deemed The Sailor Scouts an acceptable sacrifices to prop up new characters as the focus of the last season of Sailor Moon.

...And they hoped we wouldn't notice their corpses dangling on the rope in the back.

I can think of no better example of this weird avoidance to have the innies act naturally and it's unintended tonal consequences than 191 (the Con Episode) in which we follow the girls cosplaying and having fun while Usagi is too depressed to get out of her house.

The link of these two situations is of course the notion that meeting Taiki and asking him if Seiya can come out and play with Usagi will fix her depression.
If they did nothing wrong, why are they overcompensating?
If they did something wrong, why are they not apologizing?
Shouldn't they be home with her instead of playing videogames and pulling these cheeky faces at the prospect of dressing Ami up?
Why is the only thing they're willing to do for her is arrange meetings with Seiya?

We know why at this point, of course. There's just enough of an effort to explain Usagi's focus on Seiya post-reveal as her being struck with guilt and grief over not knowing his backstory lore, but this feels like a formality. Cold comfort. Something to feed the people who don't want to entertain the romantic angle. Something to have as plausible deniability.

Seiya says in 195 "I wish I had met you sooner", implying the only thing getting in the way of their relationship is bad timing.
As if he wasn't standing on the biggest landfill of contrivances in order to make this statement.
As if this landfill wasn't being contained only by a wall of ambiguity that would shatter the moment a character asks a reasonable question.
What point in time, exactly? What do you have to say for yourself when we take away these monumental efforts to frame you as a viable love interest, Seiya?

Quotes like this one feel to me like the staples that hold together the wet tissue that is Stars' structure.
These load-bearing scenes help figure out some semblance of intent so you can ignore how everything else doesn't hold under scrutiny and pretend you know what they were going for. They dare imply this season has any themes, and that all of this was done for a reason. A good reason. It was done for art and interesting narrative twists and deconstructions and subversions and themes and all the Interesting Writing Devices that will trick any fool into thinking all art is subjective and not worth reading too hard into it when you got a quote summing up what you just watched.

But I'm not here to prove that this season is incompetently written. You can still argue that this murder was done in self-defense. There were themes they wanted to get across, and everything I've described so far has just been a side-effect of incompetent writing. They had an idea, but they didn't get it across properly.

Luckily for us, there's one last scene to discuss, and I probably would have never noticed how bad things were if it wasn't for it.

That is the ending of 194. It's the murder weapon. It's where I draw all of my accusations of sludgy intentions from. It's the very well you can peer into and find where the gunk is coming from.

When you present the evidence and the music stops

I have a bit of a hate boner for 194. I cannot fathom how this episode came into existance. I almost have to admire the nerve.

See, in their weird, probably unintentional mission to not make any statements at all on what the purpose of this season even was, 194 seems to exist only to validate my very own emergent read on it. The plot caught up to the girls and we can no longer ignore we are about to enter the final finale of Sailor Moon; the baddies are now after our main girl.

In one final attempt to overcompensate for their neglect of Usagi, Orange Bodysnatcher tries to justify this bodyguard routine they've invented by stating how she needs protection more than ever since Mamoru is away. And this comment breaks her.

At this point we can no longer ignore the reality of Stars: Mamoru's absence has been looming over everything since day one, and everything allowed to transpire within it wants to downplay or ignore this very fact.

It's here where we realize Seiya has been a distraction. The Three Lights giving him permission to come out and play has done nothing to help her emotional state. It's been allowed to get this bad because the girls all have been too busy fangushing to properly be there for her. The Big Bad took his Magic Bean to kickstart this nonsense, and no part of the plot has been allowed to progress until this very moment.

I've talked in length about the conditional state this season is in already. So much of it relies in ambiguous intent, as if 'room for interpretation' was the excuse they apply any time they have to reconcile two opposing ideas.

On one hand, Seiya is a valid love interest whose organic chemistry with Usagi puts a dark twist on the destiny that guides her life, and turns her choice for responsability over true love into something bittersweet that recontextualizes the very fabric of Sailor Moon.

On the other, Usagi has been utterly alone from the moment Mamoru left. She has no friends anymore, and she's being gaslit and harassed by a pop star taking advantage of her compromised emotional state until she realizes everything she's ever fought for has been taken away from her.

These ideas are incompatible.

Seiya cannot have a natural, organic chemistry with Usagi if everything in the season has been manufactured to give him a chance with her. The Innies cannot be Usagi's friends if they're the main contributing factor to her isolation. Mamoru cannot be an obstacle in the way of Usagi's happines if he's meant to be her true love. Sailor Moon cannot be about subverting all of the classic tropes if it ultimately wants to play them straight.

It's like Shröedinger's Cat. Simultaneously dead and alive.

194's framing made me believe maybe there was a possibility this little kitten was alive, after all. Maybe the remaining episodes still had room for the girls to apologize. Maybe the reality of the situation would make Usagi snap out of it. "This is NOT FINE" she shouts as she tries to put out the fire she's been sitting on for the entire season. Maybe it all had some sense of purpose after all.

The scene where she comes undone as a human being is probably the only moment in all of Stars that makes any sense and is genuinely good. Not only it's perfectly suitable for the confusing nonsense we've seen so far, but it's also perfectly in character for the Usagi we know, and the core premise of Sailor Moon too; her strength comes from those she loves. There's something gut-wretchingly sincere about the admittance that her character development never contemplated her growing as a strong independant girlboss, and that in order to become the all loving Queen of the World she's destined to be, she needs her man by her side. She can probably reshape the very fabric of reality, but she can't do it alone.

...

And it's triggered by Seiya throwing a red rose in front of her.

A red rose represents, obviously, Tuxedo Mask.

As I stated at the beginning of this article, Tuxedo Mask is many things.

Tuxedo Mask is a source of inspiration and motivation for Sailor Moon. He's there to pick her up when she can't do it herself. He saves her without stealing her spotlight, and reminds her that she's got the power to enact change on her own. He symbolizes protection and support, embodied by the ideal man, telling every girl watching the show to get themselves a guy who helps you become the best version of yourself.

Tuxedo Mask is also Usagi's boyfriend.

...And that's what this all has been in favour of, hasn't it?

There is a version of Stars that makes an ideal case for Seiya as a love interest. Maybe, if I squint, I can see that version of Stars buried in here. The rose throw in itself just puts this whole idea in my head about what I'm meant to see, what parallels I'm meant to draw from this comparison that I've been invited to consider. This rose throw in that version of Stars would be nothing short of brilliant.

The Sailor Stars we have instead is one where Seiya's been nothing but a source of confusion and distress, and any protective or supportive gesture he grants Usagi has come at the expense of everyone else's characterization, the quality of the season's writing, and the audience's creativity and willingness to fill in the holes in this net.

This gesture meant to evoke Tuxedo Mask is empty, it's a shadow that's hijacking our mental image of a better character to create parallels to situations we didn't actually see. What it ends up looking like is just an admittance of the writers that Seiya's meant to be a replacement boyfriend for Usagi, one that now has skinned her previous lover and is wearing him as a mask.

Because that's all it takes to be Tuxedo Mask, right?

There's no sacrifice involved, no loyalty, no reconciliation of your duties and who you want to represent in this girl's life. You don't need to give up anything nor uphold any values. You just have to throw a rose at the right time and have the hots for her.

In an ideal case, the ending of this episode would read as these two scenes having a conversation, each of them vouching for a different read of Stars' events. Were the season constructed for purpose, the ambiguity would benefit from a question that leaves it in the audience's head, an invitation to maybe consider the more philosophical implications of Usagi's plight for company and what would be a reasonable solution.

Let's pretend for a second that Seiya's case hasn't been completely obliterated by now. Let's squint real hard for a second and assume that the rose throw was indeed packing all of these potential implications. Let's assume we still have a question we must ask to pass judgement on this journey. It doesn't have to be a literal question! it could be a statement on what everything so far has been leading up to, something that leaves us thinking about what Sailor Moon truly means, perhaps, since we are six episodes away from the big finale. A final admittance of intent. A little hint of where to look for what we could hope to find in this carefully constructed narrative.

When Usagi finishes her heartfelt speech, Seiya kneels down to her level, and asks the question:

"Am I not good enough?"

There we have it. This quote. This quote right here. This quote is lifting the Shröedinger's box, and finding that there was no cat.

This is the admittance that Stars was built on a whole lot of nothing but bad intentions.

Are you not good enough, Seiya? Was the season meant to make a case for you? Is this was it was all leading to? Did I miss something in the development of Stars or human culture in general that would make asking a girl to justify why she loves her boyfriend instead of you a valid question to ask? ...Is that what you wanna ask, Stars?

Must it be this way?

Here's why this sucks, right. This quote right here has a solution, and it's:

"You're not alone"

This is what Usagi tells Mamoru at the end of Classic, when his little brain has been liquified beyond all recognition. We see a little boy who is scared, alone and confused, and has no sense of identity nor direction. Beyond the big bad's mind control, this has been Mamoru's plight since day one, and it finally comes together when Usagi puts the pieces of this broken mind together as the guiding light for him. She is from then on the love of his life, his reason for being, and before he gives up his own life to save hers, he thanks her for this realization.

This is also what Usagi needs to hear after she's poured her heart out to Seiya about how alone she feels, and how despite all of her little quirks and flaws, this is the one she has no idea how to deal with. Seiya throwing this quote back at her would have not only made a parallel to Mamoru's situation as a crumbling mess of a person who's struggled to navigate life on their own, but it'd also make Seiya out to be someone selfless who is there for Usagi when no one else was.

...This quote makes me think of a version of Stars where Seiya was constructed for purpose. Have an alien who relates to a human on the basis of having a love that's far away and not answering your call, and consider this concept of faith amongst hopelessness to be the one saving grace of his stay on earth. Usagi herself has friends who love her, but they can't relate on what it's like to have a long distance relationship, so Seiya's an unlikely source of comfort. Seiya slowly falls in love with Usagi, and starts to falter on his dedication to the mission, as he's unsure of whether or not he loves his Princess. Maybe have him take an interest in what Mamoru's like as a person, and feel emboldened to follow in his role as a protector. Maybe the big reveal of who everyone is comes about as a result of Seiya investigating Mamoru's absence and discovering Galaxia has taken him because he's the Prince of Earth, the planet the Scouts must protect. Maybe our hypothetical good boy Seiya here has to make a choice between his earthly disguise that allows him his own free will and choice to act upon his unrequited but selfless love, and his duty to the planet he comes from, making him a character that questions the very concept of destiny and free will without getting in the way of Usagi's already made choice.

...But the goal was never for Seiya to compliment the themes of Sailor Moon, was it?

The goal was to make it look as close to a romance as possible and the hide away from all the implications this would have upon scrutiny. If he happened to work against everything we know about Sailor Moon, the writers didn't notice, or didn't care. If the founding pillar of Sailor Moon that is the friendship between the scouts had to be chopped down with a big big axe, then so be it. For some reason it was of utmost importance that Seiya worked in this specific way that no sacrifice was big enough to ensure this very specific set of circumstances.

...Because a love triangle will spice things up after SuperS, right? You don't wanna waste any effort in being consistent or repecting the material you're working with if this is just some show that needs an ending, right?

Sailor Moon is just surface level tropes, after all. Nothing deeper than that. Replaceable. Any ending is good enough.

I ocassionally find myself thinking of Stars and considering plotholes and ways to fix them that would have made for a more gratifying watching experience. This is just one of them, but they fall out of me by asking the bare minimum questions. I doubt the writers ever thought they'd be burdening anyone 30 years after their contract ended, but here I am. I can't turn it off.

Where's the closure?

After this moment, Stars carries on as normal. Usagi does not give Seiya a straight answer, prompting Rei to look out for her new bestie Seiya's feelings and berate Usagi for leading him on.

Usagi finally spills the beans as a little disclaimer that this season does address Mamoru's abscence, but it's already too late for the girls to do anything about it. This information changes nothing. It could have changed the entire storyline of the season, but at this point, it's completely useless.

The next time we see them, they die protecting the Starlights, who have already lost their Princess by that point, so if Starfighter wants to tank hits for Sailor Moon it's awfully convenient for everyone involved that things have turned out in such a way that no one has to make any hard decisions in spite of the "dark, mature tone" of the season.

The big bad is defeated thanks to literally no one but Usagi's power of love and forgiveness, and we get rewarded with the Rooftop Scene in Episode 200.

In the Rooftop Scene, Usagi is written as completely oblivious of Seiya's feelings for her.

Nevermind the scene where Seiya confesses his love for her and tries to kiss her in Episode 195. No, she's either dumb, or playing dumb. This prompts the Innies to make fun of her one more time, and Seiya leaves for his home planet with the Starlights, not before making Mamoru promise to protect Usagi from now on.

What changed?
Who learned anything?
What was the point of all of this?

Part of me wonders if the weird editing between the Starlights leaving and the Innies making fun of Usagi suggests a last minute change. I wonder if there was a little kiss somewhere in there, maybe just on the cheek, but an acknowledgement of the excuse for a romance they tried to write in place of a final season. At this point I'm begging for it. Do it, you cowards, write a kiss. Burn it all to the ground. Tell me that this had a point and that you had a story to tell. As it is right now it's a limpdicked waste of time that has no real balls to tell anything of substance.

Does anyone like this scene?
Is this really the last impression of a show that has any sense of pride left?
Is this the way Sailor Moon ends?
Was this really a question anyone needed answered before leaving this moral plane? whether Usagi would cheat on Mamoru with some space fuckboy or not?

By now I'm wondering if these girls even remain friends after the events of the finale, and I've never seen a show trip over its last stretch this badly for absolutely no reason at all, because let's not kid ourselves and pretend there were any themes conveyed in this mess. Let's not pretend an effort was made. Those first six episodes of Stars (lovely guys by the way, great service) manage to perfectly tell the story of how Usagi reaches peak representation of Love by forgiving someone who went out of her way to take everything away from her. If that was meant to be the peak of Usagi's trajectory, we did not need the Starlights, nor Seiya.

But I suppose this was never about that. It was about getting those ratings up with some 90s equivalent of clickbait to sell some toys before Sailor Moon gets cancelled.

...So how did the Starlights do?

The combined efforts of the wikipedia episode list of Stars and an article or two from Tuxedo Unmasked reveal some shocking information about the ratings of the season. It had the lowest average viewership of the duration of the show, for a start, but it also happens to have some of the lowest viewership for independant episodes. The lowest it dips in the entire show happens to be 181 (The Date Episode), with an apalling 4.2 according to the episode list. I went back and checked the preview at the end of 180 to confirm if the Seiya and Usagi dynamic had anything to do with it and sure enough, it's the bulk of what they advertise. Emphasis put on the moment where Usagi thinks she's about to get kissed. Unless a natural disaster happened that day, I daresay this is a sign that people at the time weren't particularly invested in this plot development and decided to watch something else. Lagging behind is 184 (The Sleepover Episode) with a 5.1 viewership percentage, another Seiya/Usagi centered episode. Interesting.

I know the best-received Sailor Moon puzzle game was Fuwa Fuwa Panic. It's the one where you pop little balloons. Really cute. Sailor Moon Sailor Stars: Fuwa Fuwa Panic 2 was released for the SNES, at the end of its lifespan, only in Japan, and could not be played without an accesory that had a grand total of 13 games developed for it. I imagine the only sales figures sadder than this game's must've been the ones for Sailor Starmaker dolls.

...Is this a success, Sailor Stars? is this what it was all in favor of?

The source of the Sludge

You might think petty of me to bring up the meta surrounding it, but after everything I've pointed out I still feel kind of unsatisfied in terms of expressing what I mean by Da Sludge without delving into the meta itself, as I feel the murkiest aspects of Stars are dwelling within it.

Let's entertain one final excuse and say that they genuinely thought Seiya, and all of the corpses in his fridge, was worth it because he was a good idea. Let's assume for a moment this trainwreck started with an earnest attempt to adapt Naoko's ideas into something that could add to Sailor Moon's pantheon and finish on a decent note, but it got derailed along the way due to poor management. Nothing of what I said necessarily contradicts this.

However, 186 presents us with a unique little monster of the week called Sailor Antique. He rides a horse. He summons it by mocking Chibi Usa's prayer to Pegasus in SuperS.

If Sailor Stars earned the slightlest bit of good faith, I would probably call it an endearing inside-joke. The amount of videogames made for SuperS and the generally decent viewership ratings suggest that SuperS might not have done too badly at the time. Culture, however, suggests otherwise. People generally dislike SuperS. I don't know if this re-examination had set in as early as once the season was finished, or if there was information other than ratings and sales that the show runners could've known that dictated the dramatic shift in focus from one season to the next, but if we go with this logic, a lot of Stars... begins to make sense. It's entirely possible that SuperS was seen as an acceptable target of mockery and contempt.

Through the course of Stars, we see a framed picture of Usagi, Mamoru and Chibi Usa. Chibi Usa gradually disappears from it.

We first see it in episode 173 (The One Where Mamoru Leaves).
This same picture reappears in 182 (The One Where Chibs Floats Down from the Sky).
You can tell it's the same because Mamoru's wearing an orange shirt.
By the time Seiya places it face-down in 184 (The Sleepover One), Chibi Usa's gone.
You could argue it's meant to be a different picture, as their clothes are slightly different even if the posing remains the same.
But 193 (The School Festival One) and 194 (The Bad Thing One) both feature the frame with the same clothes they were wearing beforehand, and no sight of Chibi Usa.

I know Chibi Usa is a point of contempt for the western fandom, specially years after the show's been finished. I also know from the rumors that Mamoru was ruined on purpose that he sparks similar mixed feelings. I know the japanese audiences were a bit more accepting of her, as this is commonly cited as the reason SuperS was requested to focus specifically on her. There's several reasons why SuperS is not as good as the other seasons, but for all intents and purposes, it's not unreasonable to see Chibi Usa as a scapegoat for its problems.

Removing Chibi Usa from that framed picture is something I can address as a plot hole, at minimum. I reckon they did not want to create a situation where Seiya was staring directly at the pink blob in a context where he's having to ponder about the nature of the relationship between Mamoru and Usagi. I also reckon they were fully aware that addressing Chibi Usa while The Seiya Romance Plot was on-screen had pretty unsavory implications, and they wanted to avoid planting that seed in the audience's mind.

...So why did they go there anyways?

This decision opens a bit of a can of worms for me. It sheds a bit too much light on the situation that the writing staff put themselves into by trying to work with this plot of Mamoru being away. When I suggested the idea that Seiya could've been used as a benevolent force if he was played straight as the trope that had the potential to spawn an infinity of sad Joji edits, I wasn't considering that maybe a founding block of this season had to be the removal of Mamoru and Chibi Usa, not from the cast, but from the very lasting impression of Sailor Moon.

Other things that aid in this theory are Sailor IronMouse's constant interruption of Usagi's speeches. There's also addressing the fact that we got too many Sailors at home and they don't fit in a room. We also see plenty of Eternal Sailor Moon having to throw common objects in place of an attack as her design does not have a tiara no more, and her wings being constantly used as a point of jokes. There is Rei picking on Usagi for no reason, and Usagi sinking to new levels of stupid by not knowing what an engagement ring is, as if the staff was going off impressions and expectations of the characters moreso than writing natural situations involving them. All of this suggests Stars doesn't lack self awareness for the meta surrounding Sailor Moon and its more campy aspects, and it doesn't hold back on making fun of it. It'd be consistent with this throughline if the Sailor Antique joke as well as Chibi Usa being removed from the show without a farewell scene were a result of Stars being aware of the reputation of SuperS, and feeling a sense of superiority by holding it up as a source of embarassment.

...What if the entire founding principle of Stars was to displace Chibi Usa's relevance to Sailor Moon as an IP? What if this was done through Seiya, and Mamoru got caught in the blast? What if they felt in the right to sacrifice the innies and the plot structure and the sincerity because they saw no value in any of those things to begin with?

Now, I know it might sound like a bit of a stretch to think there was hatred for these components lurking amongst the writing staff. There's no proof to indicate they were trying to appeal to an audience that might have not been solidified until years after the show ended.

...But the mere act of shifting the focus of the show suggests there was a mistake to be fixed in how things were run up to this point. With the lengths they went to and the things they threw in the bin to make it happen, it's entirely possible that they might have created this audience.

Sailor Stars ideal audience seems to be one that has a certain disdain for the most classic aspects of Sailor Moon, and finds an allure in every subversion it tries to present. It's one that finds value in the attempt to shift the focus away from things like the romance, the tropes, formula, and the tone.

When trying to properly assess the appeal of this season, I've found some common threads amongst its supporters that aid this interpretation.

One take is that Stars is a juicy forbidden fruit. It's The Season That Didn't Make it Overseas, making it something you had to go out of your way to consume until very recently for the majority of western audiences. The reasons for this is pretty likely to be the decline in ratings, but the rumor that it had to do with how difficult it would be to censor the Starlights certainly adds an edge to it. Stars in this read becomes a symbol of being a true fan, and knowing the true ending to Sailor Moon. This sensation seems to be fading with the re-examination allowed by the new english dub, and Stars appeal as a little secret seems to be more of a legacy perception than anything that holds water.

There's also the tantalizing allure of Seiya and Usagi's romance. For the people who never bought Mamoru as a love interest, this comes along as a delicious option. I've already gotten my hands dirty trying to explain why Seiya fails in this regard, but something like that wouldn't stop people who really want the vibes to work. "Usagi should have stayed with Seiya" is a common sentiment you can see reflected in the comments of random clips of Mamoru and Usagi scenes on youtube. There's the more self-aware take of "I like Seiya because I like the drama", but this one is also less common. I'm inclined to believe a lot of Seiya's appeal comes from the fact he's just... Not Mamoru, rather than anything he manages on his own.

Following this thread you also find people who find Chibi Usa to be annoying, and not only enjoy her lack of presence in this season, but also enjoy the idea of a possibility that she could be done away with completely when it comes to analysing the value Sailor Moon might hold in culture, treating her like a mistake that holds this show back. Sailor Moon is commonly regarded as a peak in portrayals of femininity in media, and having an ending that separates this symbolic placement in culture from any allusions to motherhood seems awfully convenient for this crowd.

If Crystal Tokyo stands as a symbol of the good that can come about if you follow the trope of Destined Love and The Chosen One to its logical conclusion, then its absence in the series' conclusion also vindicates anyone who feels that the series had to drift further away from these cliches in order to have any value.

When you think of this hypothetical audience and how much they could get out of this last season, suddenly Stars makes a lot of sense.

Because Stars is the antithesis of everything Sailor Moon represents.

There's many things that jump to mind when I think of the worst aspects of Stars. I could say there's something sickening about the realistic portrayal of a long distance relationship and how it uses the very real fear of a long journey taking away the love of your life in order to prop up a grotesque idea of a secondary love interest as if it was cutesy. Usagi's very tangiable depression being held in direct contrast to Monsters of the Week that seem to try and mock the very structure of Sailor Moon as a show feels like a mockery of your emotional investment to begin with, as if you were meant to feel dumb and laugh at yourself for ever having enjoyed it. The Innies accusing their best friend, a heroine defined for her dedication to her love, of cheating hits a bit too repulsive when the implications would be the disappearance of a daughter that she's already been shown to cherish deeply. The moment you realize Chibi Chibi appearance is triggered by nothing you realize that so is Princess Kakyuu's Incense, and you have to wonder why the Starlights are even a thing to begin with when the only explanation is awful writing with awful intentions.

But I believe the real desacration of Sailor Moon is in how Stars managed to put the pieces in place to give voice to all of those who might hate what this show represents at its core. It gives validity to anyone who thinks this show had any responsability to subvert its themes as if they were a force of bad in the world. It gives credence to the idea that Sailor Moon had it in its genetic material to destroy, rather than create. It robs it of a proper ending that could've stood to reinforce everything it laid out and it puts in its place a badly worded question that tricked people into thinking that was good enough, because despite our vitriol for seeing good things burn and broken down, we still have a compulsive need to find meaning in things.

Are you not good enough, Stars?

No.
You never will be.
You never stood a chance.

The validity of canon

The first time I watched Stars, I had to go back and check if Sailor Moon was even worth keeping on my palette. The impression it left me with was of such profound disgust that I felt borderline ashamed of even liking the show to begin with.

Trying new media is always a gamble, as we know Current Times are quite concerned with monopolizing our eyeballs moreso than feed us any sort of quality content, so I felt I could be safe in the comfort of something tried and done that had nothing but an earnest look into narrative devices that we would now mock and find embarassingly campy. I never thought this sludge would find its way all the way to the 90s and end on a note that was so happy to mock my genuine investment for the sake of ratings or sales I could no longer partake of.

The worst part is that it acted in a way that so closely resembled the show that I liked, that I was tricked into believing the show I liked was always this way. Always this mean-spirited mess that was ashamed of the tropes that brought it into being, as if sincerity was always dead but we didn't notice. As if I was dumb for seeing something that brought me joy.

It took showing it to my Husbo and re-examining the actual show with him to properly see the value it had. It took retreading our steps carefully and taking inventory of what was actually there rather than what we thought we saw in it before we realized that Stars was just rotten to the core, and it had nothing to do with Sailor Moon.

At the beginning of this rant I said that Stars opens with the notion of disregarding important elements of the anime continuity in order to make its points. I feel it's perfectly in character for the way of enjoying the show if I, in turn, completely disregard Stars as having any legitimacy to it.

I do not believe for a second that Auntie Naoko had any part of Stars planned all along as part of the grand design of Sailor Moon. The hectic production schedule of both manga and anime is well documented by this point. You wanna go by seniority? Then the Makai Tree Arc has more Sailor Moon juice running through its veins than anything sans Classic.

I'd like to believe that the validity of what we end up consuming can be determined by its quality and how much it contributes to reinforce the values we find important and help us navigate life in a meaningful way. If this is the measuring stick I'm willing to use, I see no reason to lend any credence to a product that had a lack of perceived obligation to make anything of value.

Stars will never, ever go away. Maybe future retellings of this thing I like will always carry it as a backpack of gunk. Maybe that will prevent me from enjoying them to begin with, as I'd consider it a sign that we don't see eye to eye on what even makes Sailor Moon worth revisiting.

All I know is that through my hatred for it, I've managed to find something truly beautiful, and I'll probably never let it go.

In the latinamerican dub of Sailor Moon, episode 200 ends with Serena asking Darien how much he loves her. He hesitates a little, unsure of how to quantify it. Upon her insistence, he lets her know:

"My love for you is bigger than the universe".

I don't know if this was Serena's voice actress directing the dub. I don't know if this was Darien's VA's idea. All I know is some executive meddling happened to differ from the Japanese version of the show, and that this quote has become Tuxedo Mask's very own in this side of the world.

I reckon I'm gonna take a cue from it and make some decisions on how I consume my media.

I'll attach this quote somewhere in order to make a version of Sailor Moon that our little babygirl can enjoy without having to waddle through any sludge.