Dear Chibi,

After many months of anticipation, Sailor Moon The Movie (Independent Short) was finally released on youtube today! I was at work during the time it was announced, but I managed to sneakily watch it since I couldn’t wait to get home first.

Here’s the movie for those who haven’t seen it:

My expectations for this was incredibly high, so there was bound to be some disappointments. Below are some of my personal thoughts on the film:

I quite enjoyed the first half of the movie during the Silver Millennium~ the visuals were quite amazing  for a low budget film. I was surprised when the Moon Kingdom came up.  I also liked Queen Beryl. She looked awesome with her costume, props and make-up, though her voice echoed so much it was hard to understand what she was saying. Endymion and Serenity’s voices also sounded like it was recorded in a room, and that took away some realism.

I liked the opening credits when the music “Story” started playing. I was particularly fond of the Disney-ish/cell-shade shot (below)- it looked like a painting. I’m not sure that was intentional but I liked it as a standalone.

The little references such as the Sailor crystals falling into earth was a nice touch.

The dialogue could have been improved; it was kinda cheesy (especially when Endymion was speaking to Serenity) and it felt unnatural. I didn’t like Prince Endymion very much, he came off as rather…aggressive/cold.

I liked Serenity, but I couldn’t warm up to Bunny as much. She came out really whinny and her “I hate my life” part seemed out of character. Personally, I would have liked to see more of her innocence/naivety, which is a huge part of Usagi’s original character. I really liked Melvin! He was funny and I didn’t expect Eric to pop out all of a sudden XD~ He is quite charismatic, hehe :)

Naru was okay, a little over the top sometimes but I enjoyed her interaction with Bunny. Like a lot of other fans, I thought it was a bit strange they kept her Japanese name, but everyone else had westernised name. I would have preferred “Molly” instead. As far as minor characters go, I didn’t mind her or Motoki. I didn’t like the two FBI characters though, since they’re not part of the Sailor Moon plot (I’m not familiar with Sailor V). They had a decent amount of screen time (for such a short film) which could have been spent on more character development on important characters.

Luna was a little scary. Kaz was equally freaked out by Luna as much as the monster XD. She looked more like a devil/dog than a cat :( I like the telepathic idea though again the audio wasn’t the best. I couldn’t really understand what Luna was saying.

I guess the biggest let down for me was the battle against the monster near the end. It was anti-climatic. I don’t think the battle music really complemented the scene that well. Perhaps my expectations were a bit too high, especially after seeing the behind the scene clips of all the stunts they could have done.

I understand this is Sailor Moon’s first fight, but Tuxedo Mask stole too much of the spotlight. The focus was more on him than her. I wanted to see Sailor Moon do the fighting! The visual effects for her transformation and Moon Tiara Magic were awesome. I would have loved to see her introduce herself as “Sailor Moon” too. …Has “Sailor Moon” ever been mentioned in the film..?

Despite all the criticism, I actually enjoyed the movie (I’ve watched it over and over). Congratulations to the entire crew for making this happen. It’s obvious a ton of hard work, passion, effort and dedication was put into this project, and for that I thank them :) Although there are areas that could be improved on such as the acting, characterisation and dialogue, other areas like costume/make-up and visual effects were well done. Without a doubt, this is clearly the best Sailor Moon fan film production made to date. Ahh.. I hope they make more of this! I’m still excited about the special Sailor Moon vs Prince Endymion bonus fight scene…hope it won’t disappoint!

P.S Can you find my name in the credits? ;)