Sailor Moon Crystal Reveals New Animation for Blu-ray Release

Even diehard fans of Sailor Moon had to admit that the animation for the newly revived series, Sailor Moon Crystal, left much to be desired. Entire blogs have been dedicated to the mistakes and strange quirks of the animation, which often features limbs that suddenly look like they’ve turned to noodles, eyes that are on extreme sides of the face, and sometimes even ‘dead’ looking expressions—just to name a few problems.

The primary problem with the animation likely lies in the very low budget given to the team by Toei, who owns the copyright for the animated version of Sailor Moon. An extremely low budget means that the team doesn’t have the resources to spend additional time (and therefore, get paid money) on the series.

Thankfully, however, most of these problems with the animation may be swept aside when the show is released for home media on Blu-ray. The official Toei Animation YouTube page released a trailer for the Blu-ray version of the series, which showcased new animation that would appear on the Blu-ray version of the show’s episodes. The new animation was much more detailed, much more fluid, and it corrected most (but not all, of course) of the mistakes such as eyes that were too far apart, too small, and so on.

This trailer has been very well received by fans of the show from all over the world—the trailer was even a trending topic in Japan, where the animation has been especially harshly criticized in light of how hyped up the show was with various conferences and special events.

The reveal may also speak volumes about just how harsh the schedule to animate the show is for the creative team behind Sailor Moon Crystal. Shows are airing 2 weeks apart, which many fans at first believed was to ‘drag out’ the series as long as possible.

However given the low quality animation that appears throughout the show, it may be possible that Toei is making the animated team (as well as, potentially, the voice actor cast and other crew) animate each episode in 2 weeks rather than having them mostly finished before the series aired. This would explain the low quality as well as the desire for the team to go back and fix the animation, which may not be a reflection of their normal level of quality.

Sailor Moon Crystal Reveals New Animation for Blu-ray Release