Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon

You know, it's rather a fortunate thing that we have YouTube now, because we can see what we're missing. And it's a good thing too, because what we see on YouTube so far really, really, helps us hesitate when it comes to buying the DVDs of the live action version of Sailormoon, otherwise known as Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.

Perhaps we were looking for a lot more realism, where their sailor suits don't look so bright and their bows aren't so big, or for Sailor Mercury to have a much darker wig in blue...or the four Shitennou to actually keep the costume design they had in the manga or anime, rather than have totally new radical costumes...or their poses. And we haven't seen enough to decide if Luna is supposed to be an animated doll, or that, not being able to use a real life cat as Luna, substituted a doll instead but everyone has to act as if it's a real life cat...And Tuxedo Mask's tuxedo, instead of looking refined, was spoilt by a cheap mask and shiny costume cloak.

Perhaps it's because we want the live action series to be a serious, realistic and rather yau yeng kind of live action series, rather than a more playful show...

We remember the first time we saw the transformation scene on YouTube. We almost died of embarrassment and almost went blind, figuring that Usagi was going to perform some ecchi scene but thankfully she was clothed, and instead horrified us with a less-than-elegant transformation scene with a far too bright background. Tuxedo Kamen's transformation, however, was so bad it should have just been done away with!



Took some gnashing of teeth and a change of perspective of what we expected from this live action series, but we sorta braved our way through the transformation scenes and snippets from the show and we must say, it probably isn't too bad.

Some plus points (based on what we've seen on YouTube, that is):



The characters don't have the hairstyles as in the original design (Usagi with blonde hair or Ami's blue hair etc) but only after they transform (it's funny watching Ami transform, she looks so serious until she waves her arm past her head, and then there is this suddenly bubbly cheerful face with blue hair), hence it's not like the manga/anime where it's odd wondering why people don't recognize that Usagi is Sailormoon in costume;

Luna does have some funny expressions (we think there's a few dolls with different eye expressions!);

There're more different attacks, like in the manga! Jupiter's Flower Hurricane, Venus's Rolling Heart Vibration, which never made it in the anime, get screen time here! Plus, we're not treated to stock footage of their attacks every time;

The script is rather different from the manga/anime, so there's something new to watch here! There's a Dark Mercury for one thing, although dressed far too weirdly!

Well, from reacting rather badly the first time we watched it, we're getting even more curious as to how the series really is.



It may be that the show could be bad enough to tear our soul apart and absorb it, turning the series into a Horcrux for us. It may turn out to be quite ok (but honestly, we kinda liked how the anime portrayed Zoisite and this new white, slit-eyed piano playing Zoisite isn't doing it for us just yet...). First, we gotta do some more teeth-gnashing and part with a pretty hundred or more to buy the DVD set.