The Mattress

Something Blue.

[image description: Michiru standing in water magically calling upon her transformation lip rod to appear in her hand.]

i really enjoy how haruka and michiru’s reasons for not wanting to band together with the rest of the senshis went from ‘DRAMA!!! EMOTIONAL BURDEN!! WE’RE WORLDS APART FROM YOU YOU’LL NEVER UNDERSTAND!!!’ to ‘bitch we’re too good for you get out’

hahaha it’s hilarious and sad at the same time

s is my favorite season but

LETS MAKE THE OUTER SENSHI ANTAGONISTIC FOR NO REASON

is one of my least favorite decisions they made in the anime

like in the manga they didn’t want to team up at first either! but they had consistent reasons for it and it was clear they would rather not be doing this, but felt they had no choice rather than being obstinate for the sake of it.

AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT OMG IT HAPPENED

I love conflict and I love the outers no matter what I mean I totally get being an obstinate loner. But it really gets old because it’s clearly conflict for the sake of conflict rather than organic conflict. So I really hope they…don’t do that in 2013 and like take a cue from the manga? bc I JUST LOVE EVERYONE AND WANT THEM TO KICK IT AS A GROUP.

ugh no yeah, those are my EXACT FEELINGS TOO though i hasn’t gotten to the point where they drag it out yet. it already reeks of ‘NO THEY CANT WORK TOGETHER BECAUSE REASONS. REASONS THAT WE CAN’T BE ASSED TO ACTUALLY THINK THROUGH. CONFLICT MUST PERSIST!!!!!!’ and it’s kind of making me :(, especially because I really really wanted some sort of midway-conclusion for haruka and michiru there?

like, come on. they died and came back to life, that alone is kind of a big deal, but then they obtained all the talismans without having to take a single life. you know, the whole thing they’ve been angsting about for roughly two years now? the main source of all their self-hatred and issues? all of haruka’s talk about ‘hand sullying’ has now been rendered PURELY HYPOTHETICAL? come on, this should be a huge relief. the moral conflict is gone! their job is now purely a good-guy job, with no innocent sacrifices to be made! they can officially step out of the morally grey zone! THIS SHOULD BE SUCH A MAJOR THING FOR THEM and yet they continue to sulk and act ~tormented~ and detach themselves from everybody because. why?? COME ON I WANT MY CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT YOU PRICKS MY BABIES HAVE EARNED IT

Nothing more to add to this. The writing took a huge nosedive at this point.

If I may, uh, go off on this….

There are instances of weak or lacking writing for story events and characters. There are instances of downright appallingly bad writing for story events and characters. And then there are instances of straight up flunking Writing 101. This turn with the Outer Senshi falls into that last category. Because if such a dramatic shift in characters’ motivations and behavior like this was to happen, there would need to be a very clear reason given in-universe for why it has occurred. The anime gave us absolutely NO FUCKING REASON for why Uranus and Neptune had this shift. Nothing organic in-story, nothing that made any logical sense for the characters and how they’d drive or impact the plot, nothing whatsoever. So if no reason is provided, it’s left to the audience to guess for themselves, and it could be anything like they think they’re invincible now that they’ve cheated death, they decided that being older and more mature than the Inners makes them better Senshi despite their comparative lack of experience, they’ve come to believe that being Sailor Senshi is deadly Serious Business and so younger girls like the Inners are best left out of it, or they now just really fucking hate Sailor Moon and the Inners’ cleaner, more idealistic and moralistic approach to heroism. Any one is now plausible and literally none of them reflect well on the two Outers. Some fans might find Uranus and Neptune contentious from the get-go since they were so aloof, jaded, smug and dismissive or even antagonistic towards the Inners regarding the importance of their mission and how they thought it best that the Inners stay on the sidelines of it, to the point where they took violence and sacrificial killing as their only option and disregarded the feelings of others who might be negatively impacted by their decisions. But that flawed behavior made sense for their characters as set up in-story and was balanced out by likable traits and audience sympathy, as they were older girls united in both love and the burden of responsibility of dealing with a looming apocalypse that they’d have to sacrifice innocent people in order to prevent, and them holding talismans would make the chances of them making it out of their fight alive slim to none. They were dimensional and developing characters, not the sociopathic jerks for the sake of it that Enokido turned them into.

And that’s just critiquing this on its own merits. When I compare it to Takeuchi’s version, it actually angers me more. In the manga and Crystal’s Infinity Saga, these characters and the conflict they and the Inners had with each other was incredibly nuanced. The Outers, in their hearts, desired nothing more than to be able to fight alongside their fellow Senshi and protect their Princess and Commanding Officer close and personally rather than guard from afar like they used to do in Silver Millennium, but given the dark and ugly nature of their mission against the Death Busters at Infinity Academy, and the reality that their Inner counterparts were still children who should not have to face such a loss of innocence on the level of having to kill another child in order to protect their world (which the Outers knew it might have to come down to), they kept their distance and shut the Inners out, wishing to give them no part in this particular mission so that the hand-sullying is left to them while the Inners get to happily live out the rest of their youth none the wiser. It wasn’t exactly right of them to do, but it was also quite selfless in nature. And even then whenever push came to shove, the Outers always acted in the best interests of others and helped the Inners out against the enemy. Then when their conflict did become one of Idealism VS Cynicism, it was a huge gray area where both sides had a point. Killing Hotaru sounds absolutely horrible, so Usagi and Chibi Usa were well within their rights to be distraught at the idea, but not only did not killing Hotaru at the right opportunity to do so lead to Mistress 9 overtaking her, but when Sailor Saturn reappeared just as Uranus and Neptune had been fearing, she straight up vindicated their “Hotaru has to die” stance by saying that Hotaru was meant to perish back in the lab fire, and her father keeping her alive and experimenting on her to make her a new lifeform was a problem for everyone, Hotaru herself included, so ending her life would’ve been the sensible and merciful option. However, it was the power of friendship and idealistic love and positivity from Usagi and Usa that reached Hotaru and allowed her to become Sailor Saturn, the one person capable of destroying Master Pharaoh 90, and it was because Usagi was the Messiah that she was capable of keeping Saturn from destroying anything else, capable of undoing what Pharaoh 90 had done, and capable of saving Hotaru’s life via a magical rebirth so that no one had to be sacrificed in the end. So neither the Inners’ more idealistic approach to things nor the Outers’ less idealistic approach to things were entirely wrong, strengthening the idea that all the Sailor Senshi are at their best when working together. So to see in place of that, in the 90s anime, a black-and-white conflict where the Outers are turned into unjustified Straw 90s Antiheroes and Anti-Magical Girls who are unambiguously just entirely wrong about everything and made to see how entirely wrong they were in the end, all while the writing still expects us to like and sympathize with them in order to have its cake and eat it too, is just about the biggest insult to what Takeuchi came up with for these characters and this story material I could imagine.

But hey, at least Enokido was later able to recreate that sociopathic portrayal of them for a far more appropriate context in Star Driver.

yet another case of ‘i don’t care that i already reblogged you, get on my blog’

pretty sure i reblogged this in gif form once but i need it on my blog again, ok

I LOVE HOW MICHIRU MADE HARUKA FEEL LIKE SHE’S BEING UNREASONABLE FOR BEING JEALOUS, and she looks so pleased with herself for it too, she is the master troll

also her voice when she says ‘are you going to help me’ is so erotic oh my god, this episode needs to be outlawed due to potential deaths from boner eruptions

SOPHISTICATED LADIES!!

‘you’re a gay’

'am not

ok maybe a little bit’

Rei and Michiru teaming up: the only good part of this godforsaken story arc.

so i know this has been posted by like every sailor moon fan on tumblr but WHAT THE FUCK EVER, i need it on my blog

perfect

perfect baby

do NOT feed into my michiru having had to struggle to come to terms with her sexuality headcanon, show

DO NOT

another one of those ‘nothing interesting, just LOOK AT HOW CUTE AND PRETTY SHE IS OH MY GOSH’ caps

HARUKA JUST HAD HER FIRST FAILURE MOMENT IM SO PROUD

lesbians

No let Haruka laugh XD

Michiru doesn’t like when it’s at her expense.

The fact that this is Rei and Michiru’s only significant screentime together is a crime. They’re so good together!

omfg

I mean, these “patrons” are pretty suspicious…