Sailor Moon Crystal
Death Busters Arc


TRIVIA:

The season started in April of 2016, and is based on the Death Busters/Infinity Arc of the manga. Picking up from the last season, this arc was much darker than previous Sailor Moon outputs.

 

In the months following the end of the Black Moon arc, Toei changed out the director and character designers, utilizing Chiaki Kon and additional staff from their metaseries PreCure. After Sailor Moon Sailor StarS ended in 1997, Toei produced PreCure and Magical Do Rei Mi to effectively "replace" Sailor Moon as a top female franchise. However, despite their best efforts, fans still clamored for a new Sailor Moon series. More ironic is the fact that the replacement girl anime titles not only share directors with Sailor Moon, they also share voice actors, weapon designs and costume designs.

 

This is the first Crystal series to feature Sailor Uranus, Sailor Neptune and Sailor Saturn.

 

This is also the first season of Crystal to officially have a Sailor Guardian back from the dead in Sailor Pluto. In the first two seasons, Sailor Venus, Moon, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars and Tuxedo Mask all came close to dying, but never officially perished, unlike 1992's Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon, where all five original girls and Tuxedo Mask died briefly between episodes 45 and 46. This is of course not counting the Silver Millennium flashbacks, where everyone died and then was re-incarnated into the 21st century. Pluto died near the end of the Black Moon Arc, but will be revived early into the new season.

 

In contrast to previous manga and anime media, most of the preliminary merchandise for this arc features Chibiusa and Hotaru looking seriously, and standing parallel each other, rather than hugging or arm-in-arm as friends. This would be an ominous foretelling of Chibiusa's fate.

 

This is the first season of Crystal to feature "Super" transformations. This is shown on the poster with Super Sailor Moon, who in the manga and in S was the first Guardian to reach Super status. By the end of the season, Chibi Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Pluto, Neptune and Uranus would each gain Super status.

 

This is the second Crystal arc to feature Sailor Chibi Moon on the poster. The Black Moon season also featured her transformed, but Sailor Chibi Moon does not actually appear until almost the end of the season. Here however, she is a full-time member of the team and is seen in combat more often.

 

This is the second season for Diana, following the manga. In Sailormoon S however, Diana was absent, and not even added to the S related merchandise until 2016, 21 years after S ended. She appears on a special puzzle, which similar to the manga, also features Super Sailor Chibi Moon. It is said that Super Sailor Chibi Moon may debut late into the new season, again matching the manga, in contrast to S, in which only Sailor Moon gained a super transformation.

 

For the first time ever, this season had three different versions of the opening song and three alternate ending sequences, each with it's own song. Momoiro Clover Z only performed one opening, while the voice actors for Uranus, Neptune, Chibiusa and Mamoru each handled the endings.

 

The series was originally slated for 14 episodes, however, Toei later confirmed it stopped at 13.

In response to fan demand, this season was animated by hand with little use of CGI. Animators were allowed to re-create Sailormoon S animations for the attacks and transformations and for several humorous segments. Chibiusa however has a wholly new transformation.

 

The breasts of the girls were all reduced, to make them look more like real 14-15 year old girls and to borrow from the 2014 Japanese reprint of the manga, which shows all 10 Guardians with flatter chests.

 

Due to more sexual themes and dark imagery, this season was moved from it's original primetime TV slot on Japanese TV to an 11pm/12 am slot, once again confirming this is an adult's series.

 It's also the first season to air on Japanese television first and on a worldwide market second. This has not happened since Sailor Moon Sailor StarS, which lasted from 1996-1997, but did not see a United States release until December 2015 when it debuted subtitled on Hulu. Japanese television aired the season first, and then minutes later, it would appear at 10:00 in the morning EST on Crunchyroll and Hulu, but not Nico Nico.

 

The television debut for this saga was April, 2016 for Japanese television, however, eleven minutes of the first two episodes aired on a Nico Nico Douga event on March 26, followed by clips on the official YouTube page that same day.

 

This is the very first season ever to open on a two-part episode and the first to split an arc in half. Episodes one and two are comprised Arc 27.

 

This is also the first season ever to feature caped Sailor Guardians in the form of Sailor Uranus. In the manga, Sailor Moon occasionally appears with a red cape, but only in color pictures, never in the actual story.

This is also the first time a voice actor passed away during production of a season. Yuko Mizutani, the voice of Ikuko Tsukino since the start of Sailor Moon Crystal, died just one day after an episode featuring Ikuko made air on May 17th, 2016 from breast cancer.

 

Similar to the ending for season one, season three of Sailor Moon Crystal ends with a glimpse into the next season. However unlike any other season before it, this glimpse lasts half of episode 13, the longest preview since episode 89 of Sailormoon R.

 

Episodes:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

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