Top 5 Problems with Sailor Moon

I am, as most people who are vaguely aware of me know, a huge Sailor Moon fan. An absolutely massive Sailor Moon Fan. I love it's characters, it's plot, it's themes, it's imagery, etc. The series has had a massive influence on me and I could honestly say that a day hasn't gone by that I haven't had at least a passing thought about it. But that said it certainly has it's share of flaws, in fact a lot of the series I only rate 9/10 I consider less flawed then SM. Of course having a higher rating doesn't mean you have less bad points, it mean the series is able to better get you to overlook those bad points. So this is my list of the top 5 problems with Sailor Moon.

Note this is going to be based on the manga. The manga is my favorite version and it would be cheating to say "I don't like the adaptation as much but the 'REAL' version is just flawless." That would be missing the point

5: Slight repetitiveness and slow arc starts
Sailor Moon has a fairly noticeable pattern. In the middle three arcs of the story there is 1 chapter focused on each of the 4 guardian senshi either immediately or after an introductory chapter. During this time the series introduces most of the plot elements that will be important later on and the series ramps up. This allows the series to get the exposition done mostly upfront, set up plot elements, and develop it's secondary cast, the guardian senshi. The first and final arcs do a modified form of this.

The problem with it is, is that it can be rather repetitive and predictable. Each arc starts the same basic way, and each chapter has some similarity to the point that you will be able to know some of what's going to happen before it happens. This isn't a huge deal which is why it's at the bottom of this list but the start of each arc can be a little slow, the middle speeds up and the finale of each arc are generally my favorite parts.

4: Time Travel plot holes
I am not a big fan of Time Travel, mostly because it tends to open huge plot holes, and Sailor Moon really isn't an exception to this. Sailor Moon Time Travel makes very little sense when you try and think about it.

I know this is possibly just a personal thing, but it is personally a really annoying thing for me, namely that the time travel in the series suggests that the characters should do things they simply don't do, and that it opens up lots of plot holes like why the Future Senshi were in their base form and easily beaten by the Black Moon Clan. If time travel plots and their plot holes don't bother you this probably won't either but for me it's basically the single reason Arc 2, the arc with the most time travel, is my least favorite.

3: Poor Fight Choreography
Sailor Moon is not a "fighting" series. It has fights in it, but they are not the focus of the series like say Dragon Ball Z. Sailor Moon's genre can be hard to figure out but most arcs plot are essentially a Lovecraftian Mystery of, some dark weird stuff is going on and the Sailor Senshi have to get to the bottom of it and find the horrific eldritch creature causing it.

That said when they are fighting the "cultists" in this analogy, the fights are really simple. The characters have impressive movesets but really rarely use them notably because most fights end in a few pages at most. They are overly simple and yet at times confuse the reader as well. I've gotten used to them but they're not the best. It's telling one of the things most fanfiction rewritings of SM try and do is rewrite the fights to be more dynamic and interesting.

This isn't a death toll for the series because again it's not really a story about fighting. It's a series that happens to have fighting in it.

2: Unexplored Concepts
Naoko Takeuchi has a very particular style of writing. She tends to write allusions or small references to a lot of concepts or will very briefly include a concept. Then later if she needs to, she connects the current events with the concept she briefly introduced. The upside of this style of writing is it makes the series seem more integrated and connected. The SM Universe feels big and like lots of things are happening in it.

The downside is that a lot of the concepts aren't brought back up so there's a lot in SM that simply isn't explored despite being brought up because it simply wasn't expanded on. It's a universe that feels like alot is going on but you only ever see a tiny part of it.

I have a lot of complaint about a lot of fiction that it feels slow. Like they take a concept and they spend so long on it that it feels boring. The SM Manga is not that but it perhaps goes a little bit too far in the other direction moving so quickly that some of it's concepts are rendered almost complete speculation.

1: Deus Ex Machina
The other things on this list are things that don't REALLY bother me that much. I concede their problems but I'm happy to read past them. This is the one thing about Sailor Moon that really does bother me. You'd think with all the concepts Naoko introduces that she wouldn't pull powerups out of nowhere to resolve a conflict but guess what?

If you're lucky she'll introduce the solution to a concept earlier the chapter, and if you're not she introduces it AS IT'S BEING USED. This is the one thing that does really bother me, I don't want there to be Deus Ex Machina and if I was rewriting SM I would certainly try to explain things before they become important.

The biggest problem for SM to me is when it resolves a conflict by introducing a new thing right then and there. It's sort of like in Silver Age DC when Superman would simply create a new power on the fly to solve a conflict but even that is almost more honest because SM will pretend it's justified by using emotional language like "our hearts are being unified" but if that is going to be a possibility, you need to tell your audience beforehand or it feels like the victory is completely unearned.