Sailor Moon is a magical girl anime and manga written by Naoko Takeuchi in the 90s. The story is about a crybaby and clumsy girl, Usagi Tsukino, becoming a magical girl called Sailor Moon after meeting a talking cat called Luna. She is able to transform using a brooch, which she only originally cared about because it was a gift from Luna and it looked pretty.

With her new powers, she has to fight the Dark Kingdom and the monsters that they summon, since they want to spread darkness across the Earth. Throughout her adventures, she meets other girls with similar powers to her and befriends them. At first, she is horrified of fighting monsters and cries in battle, but she receives help from Tuxedo Mask regularly (one of her crushes) giving her advice on how to win battles.

I found out about this anime by browsing through Geocities archives and to my surprise, it was extremely popular on the Tokyo district. It convinced me to try it out and I do not regret my decision. It has the same exciting but relaxed 90s soul that you get in Pokemon with the setting, funky music and interesting characters. The comedy is actually funny and unique, unlike a lot of modern day slapstick anime. The animation and character design is extremely well done too.

There are 5 main senshi in the series: Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter and Sailor Venus. They each have different moves depending on their names. For instance, Sailor Mars uses moves that relate to fire. Excluding Sailor Moon, they are modern day reincarnations of soldiers, which existed on the Moon Kingdom a long time ago. Sailor Moon is the reincarnation of Princess Serenity of the Moon Kingdom.

As mentioned before, Usagi is normally clumsy, dumb and a massive crybaby. Despite her defects, she manages to push through each battle, especially with the help of others. She falls in love with hot guys easily (much to the dismay of Umino, her nerdy friend who likes her) and is just like a normal girl, trying to enjoy her life. Unfortunately she is forced to battle against the Dark Kingdom.

In the beginning of the anime, she falls in love with Tuxedo Mask (Mamoru Chiba) and Motoki. She was unaware that Tuxedo Mask was the same person as the annoying professional troll Mamoru. When Mamoru reveals his identity, she ends up in a relationship with Mamoru and has a daughter called chibi-Usa in the future. She also has a smart but annoying little brother, who she cherishes dearly.

She is my 2nd favorite character in all of anime, behind Brock from Pokemon, as she is funny and it feels like she actually has some humanity within her and is not just a character from some anime. Infact she could possibly be the female version of Brock with how easily she falls in love.

Her attacks are: Moon Tiara Action. She can transform her appearance using her transformation pen.

Ami is quiet but the most intelligent senshi. She scores the highest on tests and goes to graduate school. Because of her technical literacy, she can help the senshi out by using a portable supercomputer to work out the coordinates of monsters and other objects. Her attack is Bubble Spray.

Rei is an aggressive, short-tempered shrine maiden, who is as clumsy as Usagi. She can use the attack Fire Soul and she is able to use the fire at her shrine to see into the future. She goes to a girls-only school and has a perverted grand father, who owns the shrine.

Makoto is the tallest and boyish senshi, whose heart was broken by her senpai from middle school. She thinks of anyone who she falls in love with as just like my senpai who broke my heart!

Minako was the first senshi known as Sailor V. She is already widely known in the Sailor Moon universe and has a white talking cat with a crescent bald spot, like Luna, called Artemis. She was suddenly introduced to the others later into the series, which I wish more time was spent into building up her introduction as it felt like she just showed up from nowhere. Anyway, if you read the mange Codename: Sailor V, the prequel to Sailor Moon, you would see that Minako is exactly like Usagi. She may be an earlier version of her.

She had a crush on a man called Alan during her time in London. She found out that Alan and her close friend Katrina had feelings for eachother and she faked her death after an explosion to allow them to think she was dead and date eachother, even though she was emotionally disturbed by the relationship.

Motoki is a college student who works at an arcade, which Usagi regularly goes to. He is her first love interest. Usagi refers to him as Motoki Onii-san (no that is not incestual, it's just how younger people refer to men older than themselves in Japan).

He is good friends with Mamoru and he already has a girlfriend, who is travelling abroad.

Mamoru is Sailor Moon's lover. Ever since the first episode, he appears as the mysterious Tuxedo Mask, who looks suspiciously similar to the annoying person Usagi runs into quite often in the city. His past life was Prince Endymion, who was Princess Serenity's lover. He joined the Dark Kingdom for a brief while after breaking up with Sailor Moon.

I think it could have been more interesting if Tuxedo Mask was not Usagi's lover. When his mysterious persona is eroded after his identity is found, it takes a lot away from his character. I also miss the scenes where Usagi gets annoyed by Mamoru.

There is a part of the show where the senshi suspects him for being evil because he does not want to reveal his goals. It would've been really cool if he was like a third party or neutral party to the senshi and the Dark Kingdom but that is probably outside the scope of a magical girl anime meant for young girls.

The Dark Kingdom is ruled by Queen Beryll and plans to spread darkness throughout Earth by gathering energy from humans. They plan to obtain the Silver Crystal, which Sailor Moon has, in order to complete their mission. Queen Beryll has 5 handsome minions by her side, most of whom summon monsters to aid in each mission, which Sailor Moon and her friends defeat.

Jadeite is the first minion of the Dark Kingdom to appear in the anime. He is killed by an airplane while fighting the senshi and has disguised himself as handsome men throughout the series, to manipulate the senshi and other unsuspecting girls.

He was crushed on by Tetis, a female assistant of Queen Beryll but when Tetis died during a mission she planned out, Jadeite got punished for her death.

Jadeite is my favorite villain in the series, as he looks cool and his arrogance towards the senshi is comedic. He makes me laugh more often than other villains. I also feel like he is extremely unfortunate sometimes, so I feel bad for him.

The music of Sailor Moon is magical as it brings you back into the 90s, with the Jazz Funk and upbeat composition of the tracks. Excluding the opening and ending theme, there are multiple tracks in each file in the soundtrack, which is hard to deal with if you want to seperate them but I guess it makes sense since a lot of the tracks are short.

You can download the soundtrack and other Sailor Moon music in lossless format with this torrent [magnet].

01. ムーンライト伝説

02. あたしだって普通の女の子

03. 本当に選ばれた戦士なの？

04. 星空はミステリアス

05. おっちょこちょいは生まれつき

06. 恋する乙女心

07. 誰かが狙われている

08. 夢見るおだんごアタマ

09. 夕暮れ時は妖魔の予感

10. ムーン・プリズム・パワー・メイクアップ！

11. Heart Moving